the author
Considered by many to be one of the greatest stylistic writers of the twentieth century, Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentinian short-story writer, essayist, poet, translator, and librarian serving as a key figure in twentieth-century Spanish-language literature. Though his legacy stems from his work with the Spanish language, Borges actually was fluent in multiple languages, among them English, French, and German – the latter two of which he learned after moving to Geneva, Switzerland in 1914. In fact, he knew how to speak English before Spanish. His relationship with language is reflected through his work as a translator; at age nine, he translated Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince into Spanish, and it ended up being published by a local journal.
By the 1930’s, he was a regular contributor to Victoria Ocampo’s Sur, founded in 1931, where he gained much of his popularity. In 1933, he was appointed to the newspaper Crítica, where he published a collection called Historia universal de la infamia. Come 1938, his father died, which was a particular tragedy. On the Christmas Eve of that same year, he suffered a severe injury that nearly killed him. Incredibly enough, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” was the first story he wrote after his accident. In “Pierre Menard” he tackles that concept of authorship. The story is written in the form of a literary review of a fictional twentieth–century French writer named Pierre Menard, and the “review” covers Menard’s attempts to “translate” Don Quixote, which extend beyond mere translation and into the realm of re-creation. Borges is able to discuss issues of authorship, of interpretation, and of authenticity – all of which are issues in the field of translation – and he does it in a style that only Borges could pull off. In 1941, he published his first collection of short stories, titled El jardín de senderos que se birfurcan. This work included a story titled “La biblioteca de Babel”, which is the inspiration for my work.
But Borges was not merely a writer; he first translated a book in 1951, leading him to translate influential literary figures like Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, and Franz Kafka. But his career is not to be confined to his life as a writer and translator. In 1955, he was appointed as the director of the National Library, a position which he occupied until 1970. As a librarian, Borges could relive his childhood, as some of his early memories were of reading encyclopedia volumes from his father’s library. During his time at the National Library, Borges’ international status grew, receiving the Prix Formentor in 1961. This new recognition lead to Borges’ works coming to life in English, and the first translations of his works into English (Ficciones and Labyrinths) were completed in 1962.
Borges list of literary awards is impressive: the Prix Formentor (1961, co-winner with Samuel Beckett), the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society (1971), the Special Edgars Award (1976), the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (1979), the Balzan Prize for Literature and Philosophy (1980), the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1980), the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (1980), the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism (1999).
By his early thirties he had begun losing his eye-sight, which would eventually lead to him becoming blind. Unable to see, he began a career as a guest lecturer and gave public talks at a variety of universities around America and South America. His death in 1986 in Geneva marked the physical end of a fine career. But as writers of classics typically do, Borges had produced work that transcends any material form of death; work that has endured and will continue to endure in the decades following his death. Through translation, Borges’ work will continue to be circulated and spread in the world literature community.
the book
Ficciones is a collection of Borges’ short stories consisting of two parts. The first part – The Garden of Forking Paths – is a collection of eight short stories that Borges published in Spanish in 1941, only 3 years after his traumatic head injury. Artifices is the second part of the book, and it is a collection that consists of nine short stories that Borges published in 1944. Together, The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices make up Collected Fictions. The book was first translated in 1962 by Anthony Kerrigan (Grove Press), and a second version of the translation was published that same year by James Irby, entitled Labyrinths. Below, I will discuss the translation history of the story, but for now it is important to understand in where and in what ways was this story published.
the story
“The Library of Babel” was originally included in Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, a collection of eight short stories that was first translated in 1948 by Anthony Boucher in the Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Since that time, the story has been translated three times. It was translated twice in 1962 by Anthony Kerrigan and James Irby, and most recently in 1998 by English professor Andrew Hurley.
The story takes place in an infinitely large library that resembles the universe. Inhabitants of the library spend their lives wandering through hexagonal galleries that contain books with all possible combinations of twenty-five orthographic symbols. Borges embeds issues of religion, language, and metaphysics within the narrator’s description of the infinite library. The narrator recounts the fundamental laws of the library:
- Each book is made up of 410 pages, each with 40 lines, each line 80 characters.
- The Library exists eternally, with no beginning or end.
- No two books are identical
- The Library has books containing every possible combination of 410 pages allowed by the twenty-five orthographic symbols.
Borges takes the reader on a journey through a dystopian universe, where librarians are frantically search for meaning in their lives. Presented with nothing but books in seeming gibberish, the madness of the librarians is only reflected through the various cults that they make up – of the Purifiers, Inquisitors, the Vindications.
Want to visit the Library? Click here.
the history
Originally published within the collection The Garden of Forking Paths in 1941, and later included in the 1944 work of Collected Fictions, “The Library of Babel” has been translated into English three times, two of which almost simultaneously appeared in 1962:
1962: Included in Labyrinths; translated by James E. Irby and Donald A. Yates, published by New Directions Publishing.
1962: Included in Collected Fictions; translated by Anthony Kerrigan, published by Grove Press
1998: New edition of Collected Fictions; translated by Andrew Hurley, published by Viking
The translations from 1962 garnered international attention and are considered to be a major reason for Borges’ international fame. Hurley’s (1998) translation was commissioned as a commemoration of Borges’ centennial (born in 1899), and was published by Viking along with two other anthologies, Selected Non-Fictions and Selected Poems. Hurley’s translations has cemented its status as the most widely circulated English translation of today, and regrettably (in the words of Ilan Stavans’ splendid essay on translation and Borges, which you can read here) is seen to have “replaced earlier English translations, in particular the admirable ones by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby in Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings.
Translation is necessarily a reflection of a certain socio-politico-linguistic moment, and thus by extension, translators are fixed within a broader system of society’s communicative norms. This is unavoidable – it comes with translating, and translators must be aware of this. In this light, I know my translation was inevitably effected by the moment in which I live now. This very nuance in inter-cultural and inter-linguistic transfer is something that Borges himself saw as unavoidable. As mentioned earlier, Borges was an avid translator himself. As Stavans puts it in the essay I mentioned above:
“Borges didn’t see translation as a substitute, a replacement, a hand-me-down; instead, he perceived it—especially the translations of classics such as The Iliad and Dante’s Divine Comedy—as equal to, if not more valuable than, the originals.”
In no way am I suggesting that my own version could supplant Borges’ original; however, what I have produced – just as the translators before me have – is a new version of the original, which is, through the concept of new, an original in some sort of way.
Considering his status in the ltierary canon of the twentieth century, to me it is surprising that only three translations have been commissioned in this story, the most recent being Hurley’s in 1998. This may be due to the issue of copyrights and permissions for Borges’ work, which, after his death in 1986, were sold by his widow María Kodama, thus ceasing all reprinting of his literature. This particular deal gave Norman Thomas di Giovanni a rough ride, who was once very close with Borges and the translator with whom Borges worked (read more about Giovanni here and Giovanni’s personal account of their relationship here). Perhaps many see that their is no need for a new translation, as Hurley’s continues to be sold and circulated. But classic works of literature are timeless, and as historical contexts change, new translations and interpretations must be brought forth. The work I have presented – though merely one story – is a feeble attempt at continuing the circulation of Borges’ work.
Brendon MacKeen is completing a degree in Spanish with minors in Portuguese, Linguistics, Anthropology, and Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has experience studying a variety of languages – Catalan, Italian, Swedish, Quechua – but focuses on Spanish to English translations. His first experience translating was with a book on Incan architecture by Santiago Agurto Calvo, titled Estudios Acerca de la Construcción Arquitectura y Planeamiento de los Incas. He has also translated an academic paper on the number system in a language called Chatino, spoken in the coastal southern mountains in Oaxaca, Mexico. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking, and has completed the Camino de Santiago del Norte, an 850-kilometer walk across the Atlantic coast of Northern Spain.