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🦋 Inscribed
In the array of inexplicable matters which is the universe, which is time, a book's dedication is surely not the least arcane. It is presented as a gift, a boon. But excluding the case of the indifferent coin which Christian charity lets drop into the indigent's palm, every gift is in truth reciprocal. He who gives does not deprive himself of what is given. To give and to receive are identical.
Like every act in the universe, dedicating a book is a magic act. It could be considered as the most pleasant, the most fitting manner of giving voice to a name. And now I give voice to your name, MarÃa Kodama. So many mornings, so many oceans, so many gardens of the East and of the West, so many lines of Virgil.
Jorge LuÃs Borges
inscription to La cifra:
May 17, 1981
Juan Gabriel Vásquez' column from last week is fun: "About a Magic Act" is about dedications, spinning off from his dedication of The Secret History of Costaguana to his daughters, and the difficulty his various translators have had in rendering “que llegaron con su libro bajo el brazo†in their target languages -- apparently, so he learned, it is not the case in every language, that a baby can arrive with a loaf of bread under its arm (it looks at first glance like nacer con el pan debajo del brazo means roughly, "be born with a silver spoon in one's mouth") -- Anne McLean rendered it, "For Martina and Carlota, who brought their own book with them when they arrived." He looks at dedications from GarcÃa Márquez, Juan Carlos Onetti, Camilo José Cela, Joyce, Hervé Guibert, Shakespeare, Borges... My own very rough translation of the Borges dedication Vásquez refers to is above.
posted evening of Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
➳ More posts about Juan Gabriel Vásquez
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Nice blog, Jeremy.
"Nacer con el pan debajo del brazo" is not related with silver spoons at all. It basically means that a new child will bring her own food with them: plain wishful thinking.
posted morning of December 13th, 2015 by Carlos
Thanks, Carlos!
posted morning of December 14th, 2015 by Jeremy
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