The Sonnets: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Borges, Jorge Luis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143106015 ISBN 13: 9780143106012

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2010

Synopsis

The complete sonnets of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—in English and Spanish

This landmark collection brings together for the first time in any language all of the sonnets of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. More intimate and personally revealing than his fiction, and more classical in form than the inventive metafictions that are his hallmark, the sonnets reflect Borges in full maturity, paying homage to many of his literary and philosophical paragons—Cervantes, Milton, Whitman, Emerson, Joyce, Spinoza—while at the same time engaging the mysteries immanent in the quotidian.
 
A distinguished team of translators—Edith Grossman, Willis Barnstone, John Updike, Mark Strand, Robert Fitzgerald, Alastair Reid, Charles Tomlinson, and Stephen Kessler—lend their gifts to these sonnets, many of which appear here in English for the first time, and all of which accompany their Spanish originals on facing pages.

About this title

About the Author

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1989 and was educated in Europe. One of the most widely acclaimed writers of our time, he published many collections of poems, essays, and short stories before his death in Geneva in June 1986. In 1961 Borges shared the International Publisher’s prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in 1966 for his “outstanding contribution to literature.” In 1971 Columbia University awarded him the first of many degrees of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa (eventually the list included both Oxford and Cambridge), that he was to receive from the English-speaking world. In 1971 he also received the fifth biennial Jerusalem Prize and in 1973 was given one of Mexico’s most prestigious cultural awards, the Alfonso Reyes Prize. In 1980 he shared with Gerardo Diego the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish world’s highest literary accolade. Borges was Director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 until 1973.
 
Stephen Kessler (editor, introducer, notes) is a poet, translator, essayist, and editor. He is the author of numerous books of poetry and the translator of books by Julio Cortázar, Vincente Aleixandre, Luis Cernuda, and Pablo Neruda, among others. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.
 
Suzanne Jill Levine (general editor) is a professor of Latin American literature and translation studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the distinguished translator of such innovative Spanish American writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Manuel Puig, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Julio Cortázar. She lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"Music Box" by Jorge Luis Borges

Music of Japan. Drops of slow honey
Or of invisible gold are dispersed
In a miserly way from a water clock,
And repeat in time a weaving that is
Eternal, fragile, mysterious, and clear.
I fear that each one may be the last.
It's a past coming back. From what temple,
From what fresh garden in the mountain,
From what vigil before an unknown sea,
From what shyness of melancholy,
From what lost and ransomed afternoon
Does its remote future come to me?
I cannot know. No matter. I am
In that music. I want to be. I bleed.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0143106015
• ISBN 13: 9780143106012
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336
• Editor: Levine Suzanne Jill, Kessler Stephen