Miguel A Gomes Gargamala

University of Sunderland

miguel.gomes@sunderland.ac.uk

Borges and beyond: Reception and translation of The Old English dialogues of Solomon and Saturn in the Spanish Speaking world

In 1966 J. L. Borges, in collaboration with María Esther Vázquez, published Literaturas germánicas medievales, a study on the origins of Anglo-Saxon, German and Scandinavian literature. Borges included a number of translations, sometimes single sentences, often fragments, of a range of Old English poems alongside a brief discussion of those texts; such was the case of The Finnsburgh Fragment, The Ruin, The Battle of Brunanburh, Deor or The Old English dialogues of Solomon and Saturn.

This paper aims at exploring Borges’ interest and understanding of the rather unusual Anglo-Saxon texts featuring King Solomon and the pagan Saturn, as well as his translation of certain passages taken from two of the four existing Old English dialogues. Borges’ engagement with these texts, starting with the publication of “Un diálogo anglosajón del siglo XI” in 1961 (La Biblioteca, Revista de la biblioteca nacional, 2° epoca, Tomo IX, N°5) will be discussed alongside the little attention that the dialogues have received from the Spanish speaking academic world since, and from a perspective that takes into account both recent scholarship and a number of translations of the Dialogues into other modern languages.