Saturday, April 23, 2011

Quevedo's (hypothetical) prologue to More's utopia

Thumbing through Borges always causes referential mania because he invents epigraphs, books, places, labyrinths and kings.  The text as a memory machine (cf. Cy-Borges) outside of the human is always in some way re-read, that is to say, re-invented by the present reader-writer.  One beautiful epigraph that is indeed accurate, it seems, is from Quevedo (the baroque poet that Borges calls less a man than a collection of works -- so true!).  Borges deploys "Utopía, voz griega, cuyo significado es, no hay tal lugar"... wow.  Perfect. I would love to read a Quevedo translation of More.

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