The Garden of Branching Paths

By Borges, Jorge, Luis

Book Id: WPLBN0004102233
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.9 MB
Reproduction Date: 12/12/15

Title:	The Garden of Branching Paths
Author:	Borges, Jorge, Luis
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Drama and Literature, Literature
Collections:	Short Stories, Authors Community, Favorites from the National Library of China, Most Popular Books in China
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Self-Published


Citation APA MLA Chicago Luis Borges, B. J. (n.d.). The Garden of Branching Paths. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.us/

Description
An author who frequently played with the borders of his own identity, Borges loved to create works in collaboration with others. One of his longtime companions in this literary game of exquisite corpse was Norman Thomas Di Giovanni, who translated this edition of El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan. They worked together on English editions of much of Borges’ fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, all of which was signed by both authors together as a collaborative effort. Borges loved translation, and brought a creative infidelity to the effort that embraced the inevitable transformations of the original and highlighted his own interests in the source text. His translations of his own work with Di Giovanni are no more faithful, and represent an important part of his literary output. Unfortunately, they were allowed to go out of print after Borges’ death, most likely because Borges’ widow María Kodama and Viking-Penguin could secure more royalties for themselves if they broke the 50/50 agreement Borges had established with Di Giovanni for all their shared projects. Di Giovanni has even been legally barred from making his translations available for free on his website. The present edition gathers his translations of Borges’ most important collection of fiction, including versions of “The Library of Babel” and “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” and other translations which have never appeared in print. All their published translations can be downloaded from http://libraryofbabel.info/Borges/borgesdigiovannitranslations.zip

Summary
A suppressed translation of the most important collection of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, arguably among the most influential fiction writers of the 20th century.

Excerpt
The writing of vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea which could be perfectly expressed orally in a few minutes - is an exhausting and impoverishing piece of extravagance. Far better to pretend that such books already exist and to provide them with a summary or commentary. This is what Carlyle did in Sartor Resartus and Butler in The Fair Haven, works that have the imperfection of also being books and no less tautological than any others. More rational, more inept, more idle, I have chosen to write reviews of imaginary books. These are ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, ‘A Glimpse into the Work of Herbert Quain’,and ‘The Approach to al-Mu’tasim’

Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 The Approach to al-Mu’tasim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Pierre Menard, the Author of Don Quixote . . . . . . . . . 15 Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Circular Ruins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 The Lottery in Babylon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 A Glimpse into the Work of Herbert Quain . . . . . . . . 65 The Library of Babel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 The Garden of Branching Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85