>To Borges, who had blood infection in 1938,
resulting in eventual loss of sight, - words were the light.
From Ursus' Spanish verses sung by blind Dea ("The
Man Who Laughs," Part Two, Book Three, IX):
De palabra
Nace razón
De luz el son.
("The word gives birth to reason, the
singing gives birth to light," I translate from a Russian
translation provided by a foot-note, not sure if this translation is
correct; anyway, Ursus' Spanish is not perfect either.)
By the way, the action
in Borges' "South" (the story that
can also be compared to Nabokov's Terra Incognita, 1931) takes place in
1939, therefore 1938 as a year of publication seems wrong.
To tackle a different subject: if I were an
Anglophone VN fan with no Russian, I would have asked Dmitriy Vladimirovich, if
he plans to translate Zud (it had appeared in 1940 in Novoe Russkoe
Slovo and was reprinted in Volume V of the Symposium edition of VN's works, in
the Notes section) into English?
Alexey Sklyarenko