The first poem that Jorge Luis Borges published, at the age of twenty, was called “Hymn to the Sea.” It was in the magazine Grecia of Seville, in the year 1919. He never included it in any poetry collection or anthology, as it belongs, as he himself said, to his period of ultraist error. Years later he writes in his Autobiographical Essay: “Today, I hardly think about the sea, not even about myself (…) when I arrived in Madrid a few months later, since this was the only poem I had ever printed, people thought of me as a singer of the sea.” Despite this, almost 50 years later, he writes the poem we quote here.
The Sea
Before sleep (or terror) wove mythologies and cosmogonies, before time was coined into days, the sea, the always sea, was already there.
Who is the sea? Who is that violent and ancient being that gnaws at the pillars of the earth and is one and many seas and abyss and splendor and chance and wind?
Whoever looks at it sees it for the first time, always. With the amazement that elementary things leave, the beautiful
afternoons, the moon, the fire of a campfire. Who is the sea, who am I? I will know on the day beyond the agony.
In his Autobiographical Essay, Borges reflected that he hardly thought about the sea or himself anymore. When he arrived in Madrid a few months after publishing the poem, people thought of him as a singer of the sea because it was the only poem he had ever printed.
Recordamos, cuando está a punto de cumplirse un nuevo aniversario, la expedición de Shackleton En 1914 no había ni GPS, ni internet, ni teléfonos satélites. Tampoco nadie hablaba de liderazgo de equipos, de resiliencia o de comunicación interpersonal. En 1914 había sextantes, brújulas y mapas. Y en ese año Sarajevo es escenario de un asesinato …
Hymn to the Sea by Jorge Luis Borges: Poetry at Just the Sea
The first poem that Jorge Luis Borges published, at the age of twenty, was called “Hymn to the Sea.” It was in the magazine Grecia of Seville, in the year 1919. He never included it in any poetry collection or anthology, as it belongs, as he himself said, to his period of ultraist error. Years later he writes in his Autobiographical Essay: “Today, I hardly think about the sea, not even about myself (…) when I arrived in Madrid a few months later, since this was the only poem I had ever printed, people thought of me as a singer of the sea.” Despite this, almost 50 years later, he writes the poem we quote here.
The Sea
Before sleep (or terror) wove
mythologies and cosmogonies,
before time was coined into days,
the sea, the always sea, was already there.
Who is the sea? Who is that violent
and ancient being that gnaws at the pillars
of the earth and is one and many seas
and abyss and splendor and chance and wind?
Whoever looks at it sees it for the first time,
always. With the amazement that elementary things
leave, the beautiful
afternoons, the moon, the fire of a campfire.
Who is the sea, who am I? I will know on the day
beyond the agony.
(The Other, the Same, 1964)
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FAQs
The first poem Jorge Luis Borges published was titled “Hymn to the Sea.”
Borges published his first poem at the age of twenty in the magazine Grecia of Seville, in the year 1919.
Borges never included “Hymn to the Sea” in any of his poetry collections or anthologies because he considered it part of his period of ultraist error.
In his Autobiographical Essay, Borges reflected that he hardly thought about the sea or himself anymore. When he arrived in Madrid a few months after publishing the poem, people thought of him as a singer of the sea because it was the only poem he had ever printed.
Yes, almost 50 years later, Borges wrote another poem about the sea.
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