I have an even greater appreciation of Borges now.

The last thought in that story was this, the fourth and final footnote:

Letizia Álvarez de Toledo has observed that this vast Library is useless: rigorously speaking, a single volume would be sufficient, a volume of ordinary format, printed in nine or ten point type, containing an infinite number if infinitely thin leaves. (In the early seventeenth century, Cavalieri said that all solid bodies are the superimposition of an infinite number of planes.) The handling of this silky vade mecum would not be convenient: each apparent page would unfold into other analogous ones; the inconceivable middle page would have no reverse.

It was possibly this early thought that led Borges to (many years) later write the Book of Sand, and so by now it counts as a foreshadowing, though the author didn’t know it at the time.

So how fitting it is, then, that the Book of Sand ends by being lost in a vast library, harking back to the Library of Babel and its mysterious volumes, which in turn foreshadows the Book of Sand, in an endless loop befitting Borges!

- you’re right: I looked it up and Hurley made a howler by translating matear as butchering rather than something like passing the bombilla around drinking mate (it’s specifically mate they’re drinking in the social way that it’s done over there rather than the tea-drinking style of others around the world). Hurley must have missed the e in matear and read it as matar.

One of the worst howlers, though, was committed by Anthony Kerrigan, I think it was. The translation of the The Lottery of Babylon made reference to the race between the tortoise and the hare when it should have been a reference Zeno’s paradox and the race between the tortoise and Achilles!

- Guillermo Martinez’s books look like exactly the kind I’d love. Will definitely have to read some of his works. He does make reference to Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox it seems, at least according to this review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/feb/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview13

- I’m more familiar with the rule-following paradox in relation to Quine’s work, i.e. for a set of data, there are countless explanations or theories that can account for the data. The only way we decide between the theories is via judgement, which, fortunately or unfortunately, is not deteministic.

And I love Wittgenstein’s quip when asked about how natural it seems that the sun revolves around the earth given what we see: “And how would it look if the earth revolved around the sun”?

My From the nineteenth century I’d hazard is a translation of Será del siglo diecinueve. By my understanding, the use of the future tense, i.e. será instead of es, can be used to indicate uncertainty or probability, which is why I added the I’d hazard.

On the sentence starting Acaso para dar a entender que los términos…, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a reference to something else. What I would be surprised about, however, is that it was a reference to Wittgenstein. I’ve never read anything to indicate that Borges read Wittgenstein — or any other 20th-century philosopher for that matter. I remember reading that he couldn’t be bothered with Heidegger because his prose is so abstruse and inelegant, and that’s the only example I remember of Borges referring to a 20th-century philosopher. I’d love to know if that’s not the case, though.

As for Guillermo Martinez and the Hurley’s translation of the History of Eternity, I’ll have to get back to you on that: I’ve not heard of Guillermo Martinez and the History of Eternity is not something that immediately springs to mind.

Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hurley had mistranslated Borges. I’m no fan of Hurley’s, and here’s where I explain why in more detail:

• http://anagrammatically.com/2008/08/14/hurleys-inelegant-borges-an-exegesis-part-i/
• http://anagrammatically.com/2008/09/15/hurley%E2%80%99s-inelegant-borges-an-exegesis-part-ii-of-ii/