The Dialectics of Heresy and Authority in Borges and Carpentier

Abstract

word translation derives from the past participle of the verb transfero (translatum), which means transfer, bring over. Translation constitutes a key term in understanding the aesthetics of Borges who, throughout his life, was engaged with it in three ways: as a translator, critic, and writer. First, as a translator, Borges made his debut as early as at the age of eleven when he translated Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince (1888), which was published in ElPais (25June 1910); on page three of the issue, we read: traducido del ingles por Jorge Borges (hijo) (Helft 23).' As Efrain Kristal argues in Invisible Work: Borges and Translation (2002), Borges's translations by no means are mere linguistic renderings of an original text but transformations (xvii). Secondly, Borges as a critic wrote and gave numerous essays, lectures, and interviews, which are engaged either with the notion of translation in general or with different translations of a given text; such examples are his essays Los traductores de 1001 noches (1935), Sobre el 'Vathek' de William Beckford (1943), Las versiones homericas (1932), and El enigma de Edward FitzGerald (1951) to mention but a few. Finally, Borges's interest in translation is manifest in his fictional work where translation is a recurrent motif; among his short stories, La busca de Averroes (1947) is perhaps the finest example along with El evangelio seguin Marcos (1970). In fact, as