#48 Mon (8/8/22) - Los cuatro ciclos (The Four Cycles) by Jorge Luis Borges (El oro de los tigres, 1972)
Found this piece in the usual place and proceeded to translate and examine it. It was not in any of my previous translated editions, although it has a familiar feel, touching as it does upon so many of the favored topics and references; Illiad and Odyssey, myths of Ragnarök , Anglo-Saxon poetry, Sir Gawain, Jason and the Golden Fleece, the Simurgh, Captain Ahab and Kafka, Odin and Christ. In so doing I followed (forged?) the links to Rosetti's Troy Town and Yeats' Leda and the Swan. I found out about the Game of the Gods (tafl) recounted in the Voluspa (which also has a long roll call of familiar dwarfs, including Gandalf), and the castrated Phrygian fertility god, Attis. I veered then back into Beckford's Vathek, and found out about the Sultan Moulay Ismail ibn Sharif of Morocco , one of the true inspirations for the cruel Caliph Vathek. In the same edition, Beckford wrote about his dream and described some of his travels in letters (hilarious!). I ...




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