Some Versions of Homer

Extract

“Las versiones homéricas” (“Some Versions of Homer”) was first published in 1932 in Discusión, a volume of essays reflecting Borges's principal preoccupations at the time: Argentine reality, Eastern philosophy, and literary and rhetorical issues. Doubtlessly belonging to the last category, “Some Versions of Homer” is the first of a series of pieces that question translation's marginal status and resituate the translator's activity at the center of literary discussion. These texts include “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” (1939), which is one of Borges's first “ficciones” and which George Steiner, in After Babel, calls a summa of all translation theory (70). “The Translators of the 1001 Nights” (1935) and “The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald” (1952) are among other noteworthy Borgesian discussions of the historical paradoxes and metaphysical mysteries of translation.