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Rodrigo Paramo

Prof. Prieto

HUSL 6370

3 May 2017

Andrew Hurley, Author of Borges Collected Fictions

No hay ejercicio intelectual que no sea finalmente intil.


- Jorge Luis Borges,
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Ana Mara Barrenecheas Borges the Labyrinth Maker was hailed by Borges as a text that

all students of the literary craft should read.1 Labyrinth Maker is the result of Barrenecheas

attempt to identify and catalog a distinctly Borgesian aesthetic. The monograph focuses on five

thematic areas that appear throughout Borges fictions, nonfictions, and poetry, with a focus on

the way that Borges vocabulary his system (or jumble) of fads, oddities, and subjects of pet

words and effective or ineffective tricks and turns of speech2 melds his writings content with

its form. Labyrinth Maker is thus a crucial tool for the critic hoping to unpack the many secret

links and affinities in Borges oeuvre, especially given Borges repeated admission that as a

storyteller he has but few stories to tell; he needs to tell them anew, over and over again, in all

their possible variations.3 The loftiness of Labyrinth Makers goals, and the degree to which it

succeeds in accomplishing them, should not, however, occlude the potential pitfalls that await the

critic who attempts to wield it as an interpretive tool. Namely, Borges the Labyrinth Maker is the

expanded, edited, and translated edition of a previous work by Barrenechea her doctoral thesis,

La expression de la irrealidad en la obra de Jorge Luis Borges. While the texts expansions are

generally limited to biographical notes in a new chapter entitled Borges: Life and Works, the


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monographs status as a translation means it attempts to cull the authors style across works for

which Borges was not directly responsible.

Labyrinth Makers project is further troubled by the contentious and controversial

circumstances surrounding Borges relationships with his translators. At the time of Labyrinth

Makers first publication in 1957, none of Borges four story collections had been translated into

English. His first English publications came in 1962, with Anthony Kerrigans translation of

Ficciones and Donald A. Yates and James E. Irbys assorted translations of his stories and essays,

published as Labyrinths.4 In 1967, Borges met Norman Thomas di Giovanni at Harvard, a meeting

that launched the mens relationship and saw di Giovanni travel to Buenos Aires, where he and

Borges would collaborate on English translations of the latters work for five years.5 Although

these collaborations were at first envisioned as the definitive English versions of Borges output,

the two men unexpectedly fell out and their work was never completed.6 The falling out, nominally

over Borges first marriage, was ultimately resolved and saw their relationship healed, but any

hope for a definitive English text was put to rest with Borges death.7 Less than two months before

his death on June 14, 1986, Borges married Marie Kodama, his second wife. With his death,

Kodama became the executor of his estate, and proceeded to use this authority to re-negotiate the

English translations of Borges works. This decision was only possible after Borges death, as he

had felt strongly that his work with di Giovanni was of such high quality that his translator

deserved fifty percent of any royalties earned.8 As Borges executor, Kodama sold the rights to the

Argentines English translations and rescinded all existing agreements between Borges and di

Giovanni.9 As a result of these negotiations, the estate commissioned Andrew Hurleys translations

of Borges fictions, published as Collected Fictions, the first of three volumes envisioned as the

definitive English editions of Borges works.10


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The commissioning of Hurleys Collected Fictions effectively ensured di Giovannis

collaborations with Borges would never be published again when di Giovanni attempted to

publish some of their work together online in 2009, the Borges estate took swift legal action forcing

him to remove them from his website.11 Hurleys Collected Fictions has thus become the de facto

English edition of Borges oeuvre. Recognition of this fact should not be read as a claim to the

quality of Hurleys translations.12 In part, such a disclaimer is necessary because of the mixed

reception Hurleys Fictions received. Reviews of Collected Fictions ranged from praise for Hurley

as exceptionally attentive to such nuances in Borges work to a dismissal of Hurley himself as

having no ear for the rhythms of Borgess language.13 The latter of these comments is

particularly noteworthy, as it comes from Alberto Manguel, who as a teenager in the 1960s read

to Borges several times a week.14 Manguels comments with regards to Hurley are consistent with

the negative opinion Manguel holds of almost all existing English translations of Borges work:

Since the first American translations of Borges, attempted in the Fifties by well-intentioned admirers
such as Donald Yates and James Irby, English-speaking readers have been very poorly served. From
the uneven versions collected in Labyrinths to the more meticulous, but ultimately unsuccessful,
editions published by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, from Ruth Simms abominable apery of Other
Inquisitions to Paul Bowless illiterate rendition of The Circular Ruins, Borges in English must
be read in spite of the translations. That one of the key writers of the century should lack an
outstanding translator is indicative of how low foreign literature lies in the estimation of English-
language publishers. English-language readers have either to resign themselves to the old, barely
serviceable translations, or submit to the new, barely serviceable translations by Andrew Hurley,
Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico.15

Manguels criticisms notwithstanding, Hurleys translation has become the most widely-accessible

English collection of Borges fictions and is in fact the only series still in print. It must thus

function as the starting-point for any work on Borges English catalog, irrespective of the quality

of the translation.16

The tie between Hurleys Collected Fictions and Barrenecheas Labyrinth Maker may at

first be difficult to ascertain. In part, this is because no obvious connection exists. Labyrinth Maker

was published more than twenty years before Collected Fictions, which necessarily means it


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cannot have taken Hurleys translations into account. Nonetheless, Barrenecheas project grapples

with questions at the heart of Borges studies, perhaps none more important than what is a

translation?17 Although translation, broadly speaking, forms the playing field for my endeavor

here, it is perhaps more accurate to refine the question further: what is a translation for Borges?

What is a translation of Borges? Are translations the aesthetic equal of their originals? While

these questions inevitably crop up in the margins of all work on Borges, my focus here will be on

whether a distinctly Borgesian style can exist outside of the authors original productions. This

question is of unique interest due to both how highly Borges praised Barranecheas project, and

the fact that Borges views on translation are widely available.

Borges believed that there was no compelling reason to presume the original text was in

any way superior to a translation (at least, no universally applicable one). Borges at times favored

a translation over its original, other times an original over its translation, and he was often

interested in weighing their relative merits, aesthetic and otherwise.18 Of course, this does not

come close to capturing the complexities inherent to Borges theories of translation, as revealed

by Borges suggestion, for instance, that so-called originals are as much drafts as translations

are.19 It must thus be concluded that for Borges, translation and writing are near-indistinguishable

acts. Both practices involve the re-creation of a pre-existing text while casting writing as re-

creation at first sounds strange, Borges first collection of stories proves his point.20 1935s A

Universal History of Infamy found Borges fictionalizing accounts of real criminals these stories,

recreations of true events which he at times took significant liberties with, are theoretically

indiscernible from a generic translation, invested in the re-creation of a text that necessitates

creative liberty on the part of the translator.


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We must therefore read Hurleys translations as chiasms: translations of Borges originals

that are simultaneously Hurleys own original texts.21 Such a reading further necessitates an

explicit reckoning with Barrenecheas project, one that can, in English at least, not be limited to

the Argentines own words. Attempts to identify a Borgesian style must contend with the texts that

translators have produced and published under Borges name. A Borgesian style must always

include Kerrigans, Yates, Irbys, di Giovannis, and Hurleys styles. Similarly, each of these

translators stories is likely to frequently lack some or all of the elements that Barrenechea

identified as key to Borges style.

I will focus my attention on Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, one of Borges most acclaimed

stories. Tln has a unique relationship to the problem of Borgesian translation: while di Giovanni

& Borges did publish several collaborations in their The Aleph, Tln was excluded, much to the

authors dismay. They note in their foreword that we would have preferred a broader selection

that might have included such stories as Tln, Uqbar, ORbis Tertius [] However, rights to

make our own translations of these stories were denied us, despite the unselfish and unswerving

efforts of Dr. Donald Yates on our behalf.22 Not one to be easily deterred, di Giovanni nonetheless

published his version of the story online, where it remains to this day despite Viking Penguins

efforts to have it taken down in hope of stunting di Giovannis Borges-related output.23 The

juxtaposition of Borges original, Hurleys official translation, and di Giovannis apocryphal

Tln provides valuable insight into the ways that a distinctly Borgesian style manifests itself

across texts and languages. Perhaps most importantly, such an examination further reveals the

ways that this same style evolved over Borges career from the 1941 original Tln to his

collaboration with di Giovanni, written more than two decades into his career. Further, Tlns


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expansive scope ensures that the story represents each of the five thematic areas that Barrenechea

identified as frequently recurring throughout Borges literary output.

I. Tln, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius

Widely regarded as one of Borges finest stories, Tln, qbar, Orbis, Tertius is in many ways

the lynchpin of Borges philosophical project.24 While Borges was certainly not invested in the

development of a fixed doctrine behind all the theories that abound in his books, Tln is deeply

invested in the performance of many of the principles that informed his aesthetic theories.25 In the

foreword to The Garden of Forking Paths, Borges wrote that It is a laborious madness and an

impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an

idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend

that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them.26 This gesture of

pretending vast and complicated systems of thought already exist and merely referencing their

existence is emblematic of the representation of Tln throughout the story, invoking unreal

systems of language, philosophy, and metaphysics in passing, populating a vast intellectual library

that now exists in our own reality through Borges story.27 Further, Tlns content (in particular

the hrnir) embodies the infinitely repetitive and duplicative (as generic attributes) that so

fascinated Borges. It is thus no surprise that the words Barrenechea identified as typical of Borges

style (see Appendix 1) make 61 appearances in the original Spanish text.28 44 of these 61

appearances are unaltered in Hurleys version of the tale.29 However, Hurley has altered the

remaining 17 terms, at times so drastically that they lose any affinity with the rhetoric of their

original author. A few merit particular attention. The first occurs in the storys second paragraph;

I include here the original Spanish, followed by Hurleys English re-creation:

Desde el fondo remoto del corridor, el espejo nos acechaba.


Down at that far end of the hallway, the mirror hovered, shadowing us.30


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In the Spanish, remoto is highlighted by Barrenechea as an epithet that Borges regularly employs

to blur his beings as they withdraw and his objects as they become distant, even highlighting

other instances of remotos juxtaposition with espejo [mirror].31 Hurley translates el fondo

remoto as that far end, while Barrenecheas Labyrinth Maker translates remoto as remote.

Remote certainly makes more sense when attempting to identify a Borgesian vocabulary. The

similarities between the English and Spanish words allows for readers to identify affinities across

the languages, and it comes considerably closer to preserving Borges original text than Hurleys.

It is especially surprising that Hurley would choose not to use remote when one considers his

insistence in other translations to include odd-sounding adjectives in the hopes of emphasizing

connections he believed Borges hoped the reader would make.32 Thus, Hurleys translation here

severs a crucial term from Borges vocabulary. While an emphasis on a singular excision of the

word remote perhaps risks falling into the hyper-classificatory mode of thought that Borges

regularly criticized, it is important to note that Hurleys change is not made in a way that could

easily be appended to Barrenecheas list of words. That far end is such a singular translation that

it occludes the development of the consistent patterns necessary to identify an authors style. This

becomes particularly clear with the way that Hurley translates Tlns second appearance of

remoto:

El remoto grito de un pjaro.


The distant caw of a bird.33
Here, Hurley translates remoto as distant. While the translation is literally accurate, this

decision to translate the only two appearances of remoto as not only something different from

remote, but in two different ways throughout Tln robs the storys readers of a connection that

Borges has left for them to unpack. Hurley is not alone here di Giovannis translation similarly

eliminates remote from the story, translating it as From along and, like Hurley, distant.34


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Hurleys translation/re-creation further complicates matters by creating new affinities that

are not present in the Spanish text. For instance, in his translation of Down at that far end of the

hallway, the mirror hovered, shadowing us, the decision to translate acechaba as shadowing

serves to conjure an image of shadows that is not present in the original Spanish but that

Barrenechea does highlight as consistent with the Borgesian style. Similarly, Hurleys translation

of an extended passage from the story mysteriously adds a word that Borges did not include in his

version of the tale, in the process allowing the story to perform the very self-replication it is

describing:

Another school posits that all time has already passed, so that our life is but the crepuscular memory,
or crepuscular reflection, doubtlessly distorted and mutilated, of an irrecoverable process. Yet
another claims that the history of the universeand in it, our lives and every faintest detail of our
livesis the handwriting of a subordinate god trying to communicate with a demon. Another, that
the universe might be compared to those cryptograms in which not all the symbols count, and only
what happens every three hundred nights is actually real. Another, that while we sleep here, we are
awake somewhere else, so that every man is in fact two men.35

Every sentence in this passage begins with the word another. This is consistent with the

translation (in the Spanish, otra), and serves to underscore a strategy Borges deployed in this

passage meant to underscore the storys pre-occupation with repetition and doubling. The

repetition of another serves to tie the sentences together while the periods at the end of each

sentence segment this passage into separate pieces, the consistent use of another serves to cast

doubt on that separation; or, at the very least, to cast the separation as paradoxical the sentences

are both distinct and united, syntactical elements that mirror those pieces on either side of

themselves.

While one could argue that the second of these sentences beginning with yet another

threatens the coherence of my reading, I believe that would miss the point Hurley is making. While

the yet is not present in Borges version of the story, its inclusion here allows the story to mirror

the world of Tln: the hrnir that appear on Tln include slight variations from the original - in


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length, luster, or some other aberration - this is the function that the yet another serves: in the

process of duplicating Borges sentence structure, Hurley introduces an aberration meant to

command his readers attention and further the texts performative value. This makes perhaps the

most compelling case for Hurleys translation as adding something to Borges text although

Hurleys Tln excludes key strategies utilized by Borges, it also establishes Hurleys willingness

to toy with the original and take it to new places the inclusion of the yet is a minor choice on

his part, but it serves to elevate the text considerably. Once more, the astute reader finds an affinity

between Hurley and di Giovannis translation: di Giovannis Tln similarly inserts a yet into

the chain of otras. However, his comes at the end of the paragraph: Yet another, that while we

are asleep here we are awake somewhere else and that consequently each man is two men.36 While

it may seem presumptuous to read too much into a seemingly innocuous similarity, the mirrored

yets reflect that Hurleys translation was onto something with his yet another. Given that

Hurleys translations were not commissioned until after Borges death, di Giovanni & Borges re-

creation likely predates Hurleys sanctioned translations. Further, given that di Giovanni &

Borges Tln was never officially published, it is difficult to envision that Hurley had ever read

their version. The fact that the translators thus likely made this change independent of one another,

and that Borges was involved in one of the efforts, bolsters the need to read such changes by the

translators as inseparable from the Borgesian idiolect Barrenechea hopes to catalog.

Hurleys Tln further deviates from the original (and his fellow translators) in his

invocation of Greek myth in the story. While it occurs only once, the allusion positions the world

of Tln in a new system of thought, one that Borges himself has at other times incorporated into

his bibliography (namely, in 1947s La casa de Asterin). Here I include Borges original,

followed by three translations:


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la sensacin de quien se deja llevar por un ro y tambin por el sueo.


the feeling of letting yourself drift down a river or into sleep.
the sensation of being carried along by a river and also by sleep.
the sensation of being swept along by a river and also by Morpheus.37
Hurleys translation alone includes reference to Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Such an

interpolation is notable because, while theoretically consistent with Borges proclivity to establish

affinities between his fictions and other literary traditions, the text of the original story provides

no guidance to the translator that sueo should be read as a reference to anything other than

sleep. Rather, the decision to include Morpheus is indicative of Hurleys own awareness of a

Borgesian style a hyper-referential library that thrives on its consumption and re-incorporation

of other texts (for examples of this near-cannibalistic tendency, one need only look to Borges

treatment of Don Quixote in Pierre Menard, or to his re-telling of Poes The Purloined Letter

in Death and the Compass, to say nothing of his Universal History of Iniquity & The Book of

Imaginary Beings). In part, the realization that Hurley inserted his own allusions into Tln is

revelatory for the ways it demonstrates the translators as active participants in the furthering of a

style whose originator no longer graces this world. Yet, this alone is an insufficient takeaway.

Hurleys contributions reveal the ways that Tln has taken on a life of its own or perhaps more

accurately, embraced the life Borges foresaw for it: each of the translations I am dealing with

function as testaments to the auto-generative nature of the story. In this reading, the translators

divergences must be viewed simultaneously aberrations that challenge the notion of any original

text and as additions that add new meaning to each of Borges drafts.

Perhaps the most notable alteration of Borges language comes in the way Hurley treats a

series of adjectives that Borges deployed to convey the sense of the infinite that permeates through

much of Tln. While these discrepancies in the translation are reminiscent of Hurleys handling of

remoto, I believe that they portend a more significant alteration to the original text. The original


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Spanish words I reference here are innumerable, interminable, and inagotable, all of which

appear on the same page. The three words, united by the prefix in-, serve to establish a sense of

negation that permeates through the story, as each of the words is defined in relation to a lack. By

this I mean that these three words should be read as meaning not-numerable, not-terminable,

and not-exhaustible. While each of these terms locates Tln as an iteration of the infinite

that Barrenechea believes Borges to be so pre-occupied with, this resonance is largely lost in

Hurleys English rendering of the text. He translates each of the above terms as there is no limit

to their number, inexhaustible, and countless, respectively.38 These translations emphasize

one of the central dissonances to be found in Hurleys handling of Borges: he regularly occludes

verbal structures and repetitions that function as through lines for the Argentines stories. While a

savvy reader may, upon reading Hurleys translation, identify a thematic connection between terms

preoccupied with the nature of infinity, it would be difficult for them to identify any structural or

systematic representation of that theme. This makes it difficult to consider Hurleys project a

success. In his attempt to transport Borges into the English-speaking world, he removed the ways

that Borges grammatical structures performed the very acts of negation, duplication, and

repetition that so thoroughly populated the fictional civilization of Tln. This becomes clearest

when one inspects di Giovannis text for these same adjectives. In the di Giovanni Tln, Borges

Spanish becomes the English countless, inexhaustible, numberless.39 While the connections

here are still not perfect, di Giovannis story preserves some portion of the originals undercurrent

of infinity. The connection between the terms is further buoyed by di Giovannis insertion of

endless immediately before the relevant section begins. Di Giovannis endless is Hurleys

infinite and Borges infinito, and while the latter two may seem preferable given their explicit

naming of the infinite, I believe that it is di Giovannis (and Borges) endless that deserves the


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credit here, as it serves to extend the chain of words ending in the suffix -less, a substitute for

the Spanish -in. di Govannis translation serves to salvage at least part of the originals

interconnected quality, and while it sacrifices the emphasis on negation, it introduces a sense that

something is missing or insufficient in this way, Tln once more is replicated as a necessarily

different text, a near-perfect iteration of the Borgesian project.

Barrenechea closes the final chapter of Labyrinth Maker with an extensive discussion of

Borges use of the parenthetical, a gesture which she sees as Borges attempt to demonstrate a

thought process within a syntactical framework the first idea enters the authors mind and is

presented in the main clause; this is followed by realization that reality is more complex, and

therefore Man can be both timid and valiant within the parenthetical manifestation.40 While this

particular strategy does not account for every appearance of parentheses in Borges stories, it

speaks to the authors insistent return to them. This is particularly true of the parentheticals

deployed in Tln. Given the texts purported engagement with an exhaustive list of scholarly

works, parentheses are often used as mere citations, representing not a thought experiment but

Borges attempt to shore up Tlns credibility as a scholarly work. Further, a few times the

insertions serve to propose two [other explanations] so that the reader may choose; when this

occurs, the one within parenthesis is always the more profound.41 Even when the text seemingly

corrects itself (era una ilusin o (ms precisamente) un sofisma),42 it serves to draw attention to

the storys tenuous status as a work in a near-constant state of revision, a fact belied by the sheer

number of translations of it that exist. Nonetheless, Barrenechea is correct in highlighting it as a

strategy that Borges returns to insistently.

In the original Tln, asides are included in parentheses on forty-two distinct occasions,

each of which Hurleys re-creation faithfully replicates. This replication serves two functions: first,


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it underscores the importance of asides to Borges fictions, opportunities for the author to

alternately complicate and clarify reality; second, it raises the question of whether di Giovannis

translations should in fact be read as definitive versions. In di Giovanni & Borges Tln, the

parentheticals are noticeably absent. Only fourteen of the originals forty-two make an appearance.

While the di Giovanni edition largely preserve the asides by replacing the parentheses with either

commas or em dashes, such a gesture fails to preserve both the visual interpolation that the

parenthetical allows and the affinity across asides. While evening the distribution of asides across

commas, parentheses, and em dashes seemingly serves to diversify Borges syntax, that very

diversification robs the story of the repetitive iteration of the parenthetical. In doing so, it excises

the original form of Borges interpolated structure, transforming it into something radically new

which, while functionally the same, raises fundamentally different interpretive questions, shifting

the locus of the debate from the unique way that Borges deploys parentheses to a discussion of

interpolated elements more generally.

The discrepancies between Hurley & di Giovannis Tln as it relates to the parenthetical

are of particular interest here given Borges likely involvement in the drafting of di Giovannis.

While there is no public record of when exactly di Giovannis version was written, it is difficult to

imagine that it precedes his relationship with Borges. Thus, implicit in comparing the Spanish

original and di Giovannis translation is a comparison of the Borges of the 1940s with the Borges

of the 1970s. Viewed through this lens, it is difficult to know what to do with the excision of the

parenthetical. Should it be read as oversight on Borges part? An active decision to move away

from the interpolated structures that so thoroughly defined his early fictions? Frankly, no satisfying

answer exists. While di Giovanni has insisted that he and Borges held in common a whole


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groundwork of ideas which, naturally, became [their] own personal rules about what makes a

good translation, there is no clear record of these rules across any of their work together.43

While a few principles are invoked by the men across a litany of texts, the one they most

often refer to is that words having Anglo-Saxon roots are preferable to words of Latin origin.44

However, even this, the most oft-repeated of their principles, is regularly violated both in their

translations and in the original Spanish fictions. To illustrate this rejection of words of Latin

origin, Borges would often make a point of the need to ignore the impulse to, when faced with

the Spanish habitacin oscura, translate the phrase as dark habitation. Rather, the word [he

wants] is room: It is more definite, simpler, better. This hypothetical is beside the point for Borges

however, as he insists I wouldnt, of course, have written that [habitacin oscura], but cuarto

oscuro.45 Yet, Borges stories consistently use the word habitacin in exactly the way Borges

rejects namely, in Death and the Compass, The South, and The Intruder.46 It is thus

difficult to lay the blame for the Latin words which exist in the English translations on anything

but the Spanish originals. The disconnect between Borges insistence on avoiding Latinisms (and

more specifically, avoiding habitacines oscuras) while his earlier work is filled with them,

perhaps more than anything else illustrates the difficulties of translating Borges. More germanely,

it illustrates the need to read English translations of Borges as singular iterations of the broader

idiolect I have tracked here. Although there is no easy answer to the question of why di Giovanni

and Borges so starkly deviated from the interpolated syntax favored by the Borges of the 1940s, it

is simple enough to identify that to hunt for this answer in any concrete way would be to misread

both versions of Borges. In much the same way that Hurley and di Giovanni present radically

different Tlns, worlds which are nonetheless inextricable from one another, each stage of

Borges career adds something new and distinct to both his stories and his stylistic habits. This is


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not lessened by any shift in his theories and opinions over time. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Borges stories regularly stymy readers efforts to discern a singular philosophical claim that the

author hoped to forward because, all too often, his stories would prove homes to contradictory

ideas and impulses. The authors grammar is no different. While it may be difficult to reconcile

the authors stylistic changes with one another, particularly as they manifest in distinct versions of

an identical text, nothing could be more fittingly Borgesian.

Post Script (2017)

Although Ive found no trace of other projects hoping to apply Barrenecheas study to the broader

library of Borges translations, to call the contribution that this paper has made in any way

original seems to miss the point. In part, this is because, like all potential works of criticism, it

has always already been included in Borges infinite Library of Babel. More concretely, this

project was pre-destined. Thirty-six years ago, Ronald Christ proposed a new model for Borges

criticism. Taking as a launching pad the tendency of Borges fiction to agitate more by concrete

suggestion and implication than [] by lavishness of evidence or processes of solution, Christ

outlines eight summaries or projections of works about Borges which have been conceived by

their wholly imaginary authors but never written.47 In his first, The Verbal Poverty of Jorge Luis

Borges, he imagines an author who, beginning with Ana Mara Barrenecheas exhaustive list of

Borges most expressive words, hopes to identify the heart of Borges. While this is not my

exact project, my conclusion feels inextricable from that of Christs fictitious author: the author

concludes by refusing to see his list of key words as final and suggests the possibility of other,

equally valid lists.48 Although cataloging the additions that every one of Borges translators made

to the Borgesian idiolect would be impossible, I hope that my reckoning with Hurley and di


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Giovanni lays the groundwork for a far more expansive project one that likely transcends the bi-

lingual focus I maintained throughout my work here and that, in time, does away with the very

divisions between English, French, and mere Spanish that currently necessitates the diffusion of

work on Borges across languages.49


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Appendix 1

Ana Mara Barrenechea has catalogued an extensive list of words that comprise Borges rhetorical
toolbox. Included here are the words she identified in the 2nd edition of La expresion de la
irrealidad en a obra de Borges and in the 1st edition of Borges the Labyrinth Maker, sorted
according to the chapter in which she identifies them.1

La expresion de la irrealidad en a obra de Borges

1. El Infinito

Vasto, remoto, infinito, enorme, desaforado, eternizado, inmortal, grandioso, desmantelado,


dilatado, incesante, inagotable, insaciable, interminable, hondo, concavo, agravado, profundo,
final, ultimo, penultimo, lateral, perdido, desterrado, extraviado, cansado, fatigoso, vertiginoso,
perdurable, hondo, profundo, agravado, concavo, hueco, muchedumbre, multitude, chusma,
caterva, conventillo, llena, abarrotada, repleta, saturada, cargada, copioso, abundoso, rico,
cuadaloso, atareado, minucioso, numeroso, innumberable, prodigar, cundir, pululacion, populoso,
vertiginoso.

2. El caos y el cosmos

Laberinto, nombre, rostro, forma, teher, entretejer, urdir, barajar, intrincado, inextricable, tortuoso,
sinuoso, dibujo, forma, mapa, sombra, sueo, reflejo, copia, simulacro, imagen, predicado, epiteto,
arcano, oculto, recondite, invisible, oscuro, secreto, sospechar, prefigurar, conjeturar, secreto,
oscuro, central, ciego, elemental, fundamental, irresistible, profundo.

4. El tiempo y la eternidad

Morir, rojo, sangre, heridas, mutilacin, desgarramiento, cicatrices, enloquecer, tiranizar, crimen,
espadas, maniatada, quejas, irrecuperable, fantasma, desdibujarse, sueo, irrecuperable, azaroso.

5. El idealismo y otras formas de la irrealidad

Irreal, irreladida, irrealizar, desrealizar, ilusorio, afantasmado, afantasmar, no-ser, apenas-ser,


simulacros, reflejos, idolos, apariencias, sombras, quiz, tal vez, acaso.


1
Two disclaimers here: first, Barrenechea is at times repetitive in the words that she highlights this accounts for any
duplicate terms in the lists above; second, the discrepancy in the chapter numbers is due to the inclusion of a new first
chapter in the English edition of the work.


Paramo 18

Borges the Labyrinth Maker

2. The Infinite

Vast, remote, infinite, enormous, outrageous, perpetuated, immortal, grandiose, dilapidated,


dilated, incessant, inexhaustible, insatiable, interminable, deep, concave, aggravated, intense,
final, farthest, penultimate, lateral, lost, banished, misplaced, tired, exhausted, vertiginous,
everlasting, fatigued, deep, intense, aggravated, concave, crevice, depth, hollow, populace, crowd,
multitude, rabble, throng, mob, masses, full, overcrowded, replete, saturated, loaded, copious,
abundant, rich, plentiful, thorough, numerous, innumerable, minute, lavish, expansive,
germination, populous, swarming, vertiginous.

3. Chaos and the Cosmos

Labyrinth, drawing, weave, intertwine, contrive, shuffle, intricate, inextricable, tortuous, sinuous,
name, countenance, letter, cipher, symbol, emblem, metaphor, adjective, attribute, image, form,
shape, map, mirror, dream, simulation, shadow, dream, reflection, copy, predicate, epithet, arcane,
occult, recondite, invisible, dark, obscure, secret, suspect, guess, conjecture, secret, obscure, dark,
central, blind, elemental, fundamental, irresistible, profound.

5. Time and Eternity

Dying, red, blood, wounds, mutilation, laceration, scars madden, tyrannize, crime, swords,
handcuffed, moan, irretrievable, phantasmal, dissolve, dream, irreplaceable, unfortunate.

6. Idealism and Other Forms of Unreality


Unreal, irreality, unrealized, illusory, phantasmal, phantasmality, phantomize, non-being, hardly
being, images, reflections, idols, apparitions, shadows, mere, perhaps, maybe, perchance.


Paramo 19

Bibliography

Acoca, Miguel. The Dreams & Washington Post, May 18, 1982.

Alazraki, Jaime. La prosa narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges. 2nd ed. Madrid: Editorial Gredos,
1974.

Barrenechea, Ana Mara. Borges the Labyrinth Maker. Edited and translated by Robert Lima. New
York City: New York University Press, 1965.

Barrenechea, Ana Mara. La expresion de la irrealidad en a obra de Borges. 2nd ed. Buenos Aires:
Centro Editor de Amrica Latina, 1984.

Bernstein, Richard. "'Collected Fictions': Savoring a Borges Blend of Imaginings," Review of


Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley. The New York
Times, September 9, 1998. Books of the Times.

Borges, Jorge Luis. The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969. Edited and translated by Norman
Thomas di Giovanni. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Collected Fictions. Translated by Andrew Hurley. New York City: Penguin
Books, 1998.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. New York City: Vintage Espaol, 1995.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings. Edited by Donald A. Yates &
James E. Irby. New York City: New Directions, 1964.

Borges, Jorge Luis. On Writing. Edited by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, Daniel Halpern, and
Frank MacShane. New York City: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1973.

Borges, Jorge Luis. Jorge Luis Borges, The Art of Fiction No. 39. By Ronald Christ. Paris
Review 40 (Spring 1967).

Brown, Kimberly. In Borges Shadow, review of The Lesson of the Master, by Norman Thomas
di Giovanni. Janus Head 8.1 (2005): 349-51.

Christ, Ronald. A Modest Proposal for the Criticism of Borges. In The Cardinal Points of
Borges, ed. Lowell Dunham and Ivar Ivask, 7-15. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

de Gerayalde, Giovanna. Jorge Luis Borges: Sources and Illuminations. London: Octagon Press,
1978.

di Giovanni, Norman Thomas. The Lesson of the Master. 2nd ed. London: The Friday Project, 2011.
Kindle edition.


Paramo 20

di Giovanni, Norma Thomas. At Work With Borges. In The Cardinal Points of Borges, ed.
Lowell Dunham and Ivar Ivask, 67-76. Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

di Giovanni, Norman Thomas, and Jorge Luis Borges. Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. Norman
Thomas di Giovanni. Last modified March 25, 2012.
http://www.digiovanni.co.uk/borges/the-garden-of-branching-paths/tlon-uqbar-orbis-
tertius.htm.

Dirda, Michael. Review of Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley.
Washington Post, September 27, 1998, Book Reviews.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/reviews/collectedfictions0927.htm

Kristal, Efran. Invisible work: Borges and translation. Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.

Louis, Annick. Jorge Luis Borges: oeuvre et manoeuvres. L'Harmattan Edition, 1997.

Manguel, Alberto. The world, by Jorge, Review of Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges,
translated by Andrew Hurley. The Guardian, January 3, 1999. Books.

Manguel, Alberto. With Borges. London: Telegram, 2006.

Molloy, Sylvia. Signs of Borges. Translated by Oscar Montero. Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 1994.

Nesbitt, Huw. Jorge Luis Borgess lost translations. The Guardian, February 19, 2010.

Sorrentino, Fernando. Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges. Translated by Clark M.
Zlotchew. New York: Whitston Publishing Company, 1982.

Waisman, Sergio Gabriel. Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery. Lewisburg:
Bucknell UP, 2005.


Paramo 21


Notes
1
Ana Mara Barrenechea, Borges the Labyrinth Maker, trans. Robert Lima (New York City: New York University
Press, 1965), viii.
2
Barrenechea, Borges, viii.
3
Barrenechea, Borges, viii.
4
Michael Dirda, Review of Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, Washington
Post, September 27, 1998, Book Reviews, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/style/books/reviews/collectedfictions0927.htm
5
Kimberly Brown, In Borges Shadow, review of The Lesson of the Master, by Norman Thomas di Giovanni, Janus
Head 8.1 (2005): 349.
6
Dirda, Review of Collected Fictions. For examples of Borges and di Giovannis collaborations, see Jorge Luis
Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969, edited and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni (New York:
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970).
7
Miguel Acoca, The Dreams & Washington Post, May 18, 1982.
8
di Giovanni has written extensively about the unique relationship he and Borges shared. Borges himself was well-
aware of the singular nature of their relationship, going so far as too once tell an audience When we [di Giovanni and
I] attempt a translation, or re-creation, of my poems or prose in English, we dont think of ourselves as being two men.
We think we are really one mind at work. See Norman Thomas di Giovanni, The Lesson of the Master, 2nd ed,
(London: The Friday Project, 2011, Kindle edition), Location 57. For more on di Giovannis approach to translating
Borges, see Appendix 1: Borges in English, in Fernando Sorrentino, Seven Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges,
translated by Clark M. Zlotchew (New York: Whitston Publishing Company, 1982), 169-82; At Work With Borges,
In The Cardinal Points of Borges, ed. Lowell Dunham and Ivar Ivask (Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 67-76.
9
Brown, In Borges Shadow, 349.
10
Dirda, Review of Collected Fictions.
11
Huw Nesbitt, Jorge Luis Borgess lost translations, The Guardian, February 19, 2010.
12
For Hurleys collection, see Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley, (New York City:
Penguin Books, 1998).
13
The first of these quotes comes from Dirda, Review of Collected Fictions, while the latter comes from Alberto
Manguel, The world, by Jorge, Review of Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley,
The Guardian, January 3, 1999, Books.
14
For more on Manguels relationship with Borges, see Alberto Manguel, With Borges (London: Telegram, 2006).
15
Manguel, The world, by Jorge. Emphasis mine.
16
Besides Manguels criticisms, Hurleys translations have been further maligned by di Giovanni himself. For di
Giovannis critique of Hurleys translation of The Garden of the Forking Paths, see A Translators Guide in
Norman Thomas di Giovanni, The Lesson of the Master, Locations 2225-2300.
17
On Borges and translation see Jaime Alazraki, La prosa narrativa de Jorge Luis Borges, 2nd ed, (Madrid: Editorial
Gredos, 1974); Efran Kristal, Invisible work: Borges and translation, (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002);
Annick Louis, Jorge Luis Borges: oeuvre et manoeuvres, (L'Harmattan Edition, 1997); and Sergio Gabriel Waisman,
Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery, (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2005). Of particular interest is
Borges own discussion on the matter. For this, see Jorge Luis Borges, On Writing, edited by Norman Thomas di
Giovanni, Daniel Halpern, and Frank MacShane, (New York City: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1973), 103-160.
18
Kristal, Invisible Work, xv.
19
Waisman, Borges and Translation, 14.
20
Borges, On Writing, 104.
21
While this claim is likely universally applicable to translated texts, I limit it to Hurley here because, as noted earlier,
his are the most widely-read English translations of Borges.
22
Borges, The Aleph, 10.
23
I believe it a mere fluke that this story is still accessible the rest of the website has been notably scrubbed of di
Giovannis translations of Borges, leaving their Tln the only un-touched piece. See Norman di Giovanni & Jorge
Luis Borges, "Tln, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," Norman Thomas di Giovanni, last modified March 25, 2012,
http://www.digiovanni.co.uk/borges/the-garden-of-branching-paths/tlon-uqbar-orbis-tertius.htm.


Paramo 22


24
See Richard Bernstein, "'Collected Fictions': Savoring a Borges Blend of Imaginings," Review of Collected
Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Andrew Hurley, The New York Times, September 9, 1998, Books of
the Times.
25
Giovanna de Gerayalde, Jorge Luis Borges: Sources and Illuminations, (London: Octagon Press, 1978), 19. For
more on this lack of a coherent Borgesian philosophy, see Barrenechea, Labyrinth Maker, 144. On thematic
throughlines throughout Borges work, see Sylvia Molloy, Signs of Borges, translated by Oscar Montero, (Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 1994).
26
Borges, Collected Fictions, 67.
27
Borges, Collected Fictions, 74.
28
References to the Spanish editions of Borges stories will refer to Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones, (New York City:
Vintage Espaol, 1995).
29
Of course, even this number is inflated a large portion of the 44 unaltered terms are repetitions of the words
name and labyrinth, words it is difficult to imagine Hurley mis-translating.
30
Borges, Ficciones, 15; Borges, Collected Fictions, 68.
31
Barrenechea, Labyrinth Maker, 26.
32
See Dirda, Review of Collected Fictions, for a brief discussion of Hurleys translation of The Circular Ruins.
33
Borges, Ficciones, 23; Borges, Collected Fictions, 73.
34
While Yates translations fall outside my scope here, his Tln does translate remoto as remote in its first
appearance. In the second, however, remoto becomes faraway. See Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected
Stories & Other Writings, edited by Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby, (New York City: New Directions, 1964), 9.
35
Borges, Collected Fictions, 74. Emphasis mine.
36
Borges, Tln, Norman Thomas di Giovanni.
37
Borges, Ficciones, 24; Borges, Tln, Norman Thomas di Giovanni; Borges, Labyrinths, 9; Borges, Collected
Fictions, 73.
38
Borges Spanish uses of the words appear in Borges, Ficciones, 24; Hurleys translations in Borges, Collected
Fictions, 73.
39
Borges, Tln, Norman Thomas di Giovanni.
40
Barrenechea, Borges, 140.
41
Barrenechea, Borges, 140.
42
Borges, Ficciones, 16.
43
Di Giovanni, At Work with Borges, 69.
44
For the quote, see di Giovanni, At Work with Borges, 69. For other invocations of this principle, see di Giovanni,
The Lesson of the Master, 170; Jorge Luis Borges, interview by Ronald Christ, Jorge Luis Borges, The Art of Fiction
No. 39 Paris Review 40 (Spring 1967); Sorrentino, Seven Conversations, 176. On other rules that guided di Giovanni
and Borges translations, see Sorrentino, Seven Conversations, 175.
45
Borges, interview by Christ.
46
Ronald Christ, A Modest Proposal for the Criticism of Borges, in The Cardinal Points of Borges, edited by
Lowell Dunham and Ivar Ivask (Norman: U of Oklahoma Press, 1971) 11.
47
Christ, A Modest Proposal, 8-9.
48
Christ, A Modest Proposal, 9.
49
Borges, Tln, Norman Thomas di Giovanni.

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