Borges and Translation

241 Pages·2011·1.13 MB·English

by  Efrain Kristal

IInnvviissiibbllee
Work
Borges and
Translation
Efraín Kristal
Invisible Work

IInnvviissiibbllee
Work
Borges and Translation
EFRAÍN KRISTAL
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
Nashville
© 2002 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First Edition 2002
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kristal, Efraín, 1959-
Invisible work : Borges and translation / Efraín
Kristal.— 1st ed.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8265-1407-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8265-1408-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1.Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899—Criticism and
interpretation. 2. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899—Views
on translating and interpreting. 3. Translating and
interpreting. 4. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899—Transla-
tions—History and criticism.
I. Title.
PQ7797.B635 Z77155 2002
868'.6209—dc21
2002002607
To Christopher Maurer,
one of the happy few

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
1
Borges on Translation 1
The Translatable and Untranslatable 3
On the Translation of His Own Works 11
The Arnold-Newman Discussion 19
On the Arabian Nights 25
Borges’s Doctrine of Translation 30
2
Borges as Translator 36
German Expressionism 41
Whitman and the Translation of Poetry 46
Poe 60
Reyes and Chesterton 67
Translating Names and Titles 70
Borges’s Arabian Stories 71
Kafka, the Fragment, and the Dream 74
The Prose Edda 79
Borges’s Method As Translator 86
3
Translation in the Creative Process 88
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” 89
“The Immortal” 98
“Death and the Compass” 103
“Emma Zunz” 111
“Garden of Forking Paths” 113
“The Circular Ruins” 116
“The Writing of the God” 122
“The Lottery in Babylon” 124
Original Work as Translation 130
Toward a Poetics of Borges’s Oeuvre 134
Conclusion 135
Afterword: Borges and Philosophy 141
Notes 147
Bibliography 191
Index 205
viii
Acknowledgments
I first presented my ideas on Borges and translation in a conference
held at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, organized by Gui-
llermo Guicci in 1996. I continued discussing various aspects of my
ongoing research in lectures and conferences in Peru, Australia,
Germany, and the United States, as well as in graduate seminars at
UCLA, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Göttingen dur-
ing my tenure as Mercator Visiting Research Professor. In Göttingen
I profited from conversations with Professors Manfred Engelbert
and Armin Paul Frank.
For five years during my research I received annual grants from
UCLA’s Faculty Senate with which I enlisted the assistance of sev-
eral graduate students to gather materials and to prepare aspects of
the manuscript for publication: Kelly Austin, Nataly Tcherepashenets,
Zaia Alexander, Philip Walsh, Kirsten Mcleary, and Susan Bausch.
I would like to express my gratitude to several individuals for
their support during this project and for their valuable advice and
counsel: Herbert Morris, Charles Backus, Randal Johnson, Dietrich
Briesemeister, Karsten Garscha, Alexander Coleman, Roy Boland,
Roberto Alifano, Dominic Thomas, Kathleen Komar, Franco Betti,
Kryztof Urban, Cathy Jrade, Marcelo Abadi, Erick Felinto de Oli-
veira, Jorge Wanderley, Carmela Zanelli, Susanne Grosse, José Luiz
Passos, Jonathan Post, H. A. Kelly, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Saúl
and Gladis Yurkievich.
I also would like to offer my gratitude to the wonderful staff at
Vanderbilt University Press and to Bard Young for his superb edi-
torial work.
ix