Many, many people have given me advice, answered questions, and offered support of all kinds—they know who they are, and will forgive me, I know, for not mentioning them all personally; I have been asked to keep these acknowledgments brief. But two people, Carter Wheelock and Margaret Sayers Peden, have contributed in an especially important and intimate way, and my gratitude to them cannot go unexpressed here. Carter Wheelock read word by word through an "early-final" draft of the translation, comparing it against the Spanish for omissions, misperceptions and mistranslations, and errors of fact. This translation is the cleaner and more honest for his efforts. Margaret Sayers Peden (a.k.a. Fetch), one of the finest translators from Spanish working in the world today, was engaged by the publisher to be an outside editor for this volume. Fetch read through the late stages of the translation, comparing it with the Spanish, suggesting changes that ranged from punctuation to "readings."
Translators want to translate, love to translate; for a translator at the height of her powers to read a translation in this painstaking way and yet, while suggesting changes and improvements, to respect the other translator's work, his approach, his thought processes and creativity—even to applaud the other translator's (very) occasional strokes of brilliance—is to engage in an act of selflessness that is almost superhuman. She made the usual somewhat tedious editing process a joy.
I would never invoke Carter Wheelock's and Fetch Peden's readings of the manuscripts of this translation—or those of Michael Millman and the other readers at Viking Penguin—as giving it any authority or credentials or infallibility beyond its fair deserts, but I must say that those readings have given me a security in this translation that I almost surely would not have felt so strongly without them. I am deeply and humbly indebted.
First, last, always, and in number of words inversely proportional to my gratitude—I thank my wife, Isabel Garayta.
Andrew Hurley
San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 1998
Notes to the Fictions
Notes to A Universal History of Iniquity
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the 1954 Edition
The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell
The Widow Ching—Pirate
Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities
The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan
The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kôtsuké no Suké
Man on Pink Corner
Et cetera
Index of Sources
Notes to Fictions ("The Garden of Forking Paths" and "Artifices")
THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS
Foreword
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain
ARTIFICES
Funes, His Memory
Three Versions of Judas
The End
The South
Notes to The Aleph
The Dead Man
A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)
Emma Zunz
The Other Death
Averroës' Search
The Zahir
The Writing of the God
The Wait
The Aleph
Notes to The Maker
Foreword
Dreamtigers
Toenails
Covered Mirrors
The Mountebank
Delia Elena San Marco
A Dialog Between Dead Men
The Yellow Rose
Martín Fierro
Paradiso, XXXI, 108
Everything and Nothing
Ragnarök
In Memoriam, J.F.K.
Notes to In Praise of Darkness
Foreword
Pedro Salvadores
Notes to Brodie's Report
Foreword
The Interloper
Unworthy
The Story from Rosendo Juárez
The Encounter
Juan Muraña
The Elderly Lady
The Duel
The Other Duel
Guayaquil
Brodie's Report
Notes to The Book of Sand
The Other
The Congress
There Are More Things
The Night of the Gifts
A Weary Man's Utopia
Avelino Arredondo
The Book of Sand
Notes to Shakespeare's Memory
August 25, 1983
The Rose of Paracelsus
Shakespeare's Memory
These notes are intended only to supply information that a Latin American (and especially Argentine or Uruguayan) reader would have and that would color or determine his or her reading of the stories.
Generally, therefore, the notes cover only Argentine history and culture; I have presumed the reader to possess more or less the range of general or world history or culture that JLB makes constant reference to, or to have access to such reference books and other sources as would supply any need there. There is no intention here to produce an "annotated Borges," but rather only to illuminate certain passages that might remain obscure, or even be misunderstood, without that information.
For these notes, I am deeply indebted to A Dictionary of Borges by Evelyn Fishburn and Psiche Hughes (London: Duckworth, 1990). Other dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, biographies, and works of criticism have been consulted, but none has been as thorough and immediately useful as the Dictionary of Borges. In many places, and especially where I quote Fishburn and Hughes directly, I cite their contribution, but I have often paraphrased them without direct attribution; I would not want anyone to think, however, that I am unaware or unappreciative of the use I have made of them. Any errors are my own responsibility, of course, and should not be taken to reflect on them or their work in any way.
Another book that has been invaluable is Emir Rodriguez Monegal's Jorge Luis Borges: A Literary Biography(New York: Paragon Press, [paper] 1988), now out of print. In the notes, I have cited this work as "Rodriguez Monegal, p. x."
The names of Arab and Persian figures that appear in the stories are taken, in the case of historical persons, from the English transliterations of Philip K. Hitti in his work History of the Arabs from the Earliest Times to the Present (New York: Macmillan, 1951). (JLB himself cites Hitti as an authority in this field.) In the case of fictional characters, the translator has used the system of transliteration implicit in Hitti's historical names in comparison with the same names in Spanish transliteration.— Translator.
Notes to A Universal History of Iniquity
For the peculiarities of the text of the fictions in this volume, the reader is referred to A Note on the Translation.