Composición escrita en un ejemplar de la gesta de Bowulf
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- Genre/Type Descriptor(s)
- Poem or Poetry
- Language(s)
- Spanish
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- Author
- Borges, Jorge Luis
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- Contained in
- Antología personal, by Jorge Luis Borges
- Location Details
- Page 187
- City
- Buenos Aires
- Publisher
- Editorial Sur
- Date
- 1961
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- Relationships
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(Downstream) Translated as -> Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf, Borges, Jorge Luis (1967)(Downstream) Revised as -> Composición escrita en un ejempla de la gesta de Beowulf, Borges, Jorge Luis (1964)
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- Identifying Numbers
- Fry 172; MO2 1961(b).
- Descriptive Notes
A sonnet about the choice to study Old English as loss of sight progresses. "Bowulf" in title sic; corrected to "Beowulf" in reappearances of the poem in El otro, el mismo (a section within Obra poética, 1923-1964 [Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores, 1964]) and thereafter. An English translation by Alastair Reid was published in 1967 (see Borges, "Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf"), and another by R. G. Barnes appeared in 1993 (see Borges, "Written in a Copy of the Geste of Beowulf").
The poem begins:
A veces me pregunto qué razones
Me mueven a estudiar sin esperanza
De precisión, mientras mi noche avanza,
La lengua de los ásperos sajones. (187)And ends:
Más allá de este afán y de este verso
Me aguarda inagotable el universo. (187)- Scholarship
• M. J. Toswell, Borges the Unacknowledged Medievalist: Old English and Old Norse in His Life and Work (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 35.
- Notes on Prior Documentation
Not in GR or MO1.
Fry and MO2 both give the spelling "Beowulf" rather than "Bowulf" in the title.
- Authentication
BAM.
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- Last Updated
- 03/31/2022