Response to “Jorge Luis Borges in Turkish: Magical Realism in a Politically-and-Poetically Motivated Literary Field” by Ceyda Elgül

Abstract

Response to “Jorge Luis Borges in Turkish: Magical Realism in a Politically-and-Poetically Motivated Literary Field” by Ceyda Elgül Kurosh Amoui, Respondent This survey of Turkish translations of Borges is remarkable for two reasons, broadly speaking. First, it offers a window into the contemporary national literature of Turkey, and how the Turkish literary field (and the field of cultural production at large) must be contextualized within larger regional social and political frameworks. Second, it is part of the global reception of Borges, who certainly has become a canonical author of World Literature-travelling well beyond Argentina’s national borders. The overlapping of these two scopes has produced a comprehensive analysis that demonstrates how the reception of Borges in Turkey has been part of the globalization of “Latin American magical realism.” Borges’s own views on translation have been studied by Efraín Kristal and Sergio Waisman. I am quoting here at length the opening of Borges’s 1932 essay “Las versiones homéricas” (“The Homeric Versions”) that resonated with me when reading the closing of Elgül’s article: No problem is as consubstantial to literature and its modest mystery as the one posed by translation. The forgetfulness induced by vanity, the fear of confessing mental processes that may be divined as dangerously commonplace, the endeavour to maintain, central and intact, an incalculable reserve of obscurity: all watch over the various forms of direct writing. Translation, in contrast, seems destined to illustrate aesthetic debate. The model to be imitated is a visible text, not an immeasurable labyrinth of former projects [End Page 223] or a submission to the momentary temptation of fluency. Bertrand Russell defines an external object as a circular system radiating possible impressions; the same may be said of a text, given the incalculable repercussions of words. Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers. Are not the many versions of the Iliad-from Chapman to Magnien-merely different perspectives on a mutable fact, a long experimental game of chance played with omissions and emphases? (There is no essential necessity to change languages; this intentional game of attention is possible within a single literature.) To assume that every recombination of elements is necessarily inferior to its original form is to assume that draft nine is necessarily inferior to draft H-for there can only be drafts. The concept of the “definitive text” corresponds only to religion or exhaustion. The superstition about the inferiority of translations-coined by the well-known Italian adage-is the result of absentmindedness. There is no good text that does not seem invariable and definitive if we have turned to it a sufficient number of times. Works cited Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Homeric Versions.” Selected Non-Fictions, edited by Eliot Weinberger, Penguin Books, 1999, pp. 69–74. Google Scholar Kristal, Efraín. Invisible Work: Borges and Translation. Vanderbilt UP, 2002. Google Scholar Waisman, Sergio. Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery. Bucknell UP, 2005. Google Scholar Copyright © 2022 Canadian Comparative Literature Association / Association Canadienne de Littérature Comparée