Borges, Second Edition: The Passion of an Endless Quotation

by Lisa Block de Behar, William Egginton (Translation), Christopher RayAlexander (Translation)

Expanded edition with new chapters and updates to the translation and bibliography.

Borges cites innumerable authors in the pages making up his life's work, and innumerable authors have cited and continue to cite him. More than a figure, then, the quotation is an integral part of the fabric of his writing, a fabric made anew by each reading and each re-citation it undergoes, in the never-ending throes of a work-in-progress. Block de Behar makes of this reading a plea for the very art of communication; a practice that takes community not in the totalized and totalizable soil of pre-established definitions or essences, but on the ineluctable repetitions that constitute language as such, and that guarantee the expansiveness—through etymological coincidences of meaning, through historical contagions, through translinguistic sharings of particular experiences—of a certain index of universality. This edition includes a new introduction by the author and three entirely new chapters, as well as updated images and corrections to the original translation.

Lisa Block de Behar is Professor of Communications at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay and is a renowned Jorge Luis Borges scholar. William Egginton is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of several books, including In Defense of Religious Moderation. Christopher RayAlexander is a graduate student and language instructor in the Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures at Johns Hopkins University.

270 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Hon Lady Selene · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm going to let Borges himself tell you why I'm black-flagging and giving this 1 star, an excerpt from Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges:

Burgin: I mean people that write about you all write the same things.
Borges: Yes, yes, and they all make things too self-conscious and too intricate at the same time, no? Don't you think so?

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 2 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like it, and I found several chapters very helpful, but the prose was fiendishly difficult to read and the translation seemed - to my blinkered eyes - variously inadequate at times. This is not, by the way, an unqualified difficulty, for I find Derrida marvelously clear and concise in comparison. Spivak, however, still retains her crown, so Block de Behar dodged that one.