TALK: Borges in/and Translation
Willis Barnstone (Comparative Literature, Indiana
University, Bloomington)
Thursday, April 26 / 3:30 PM
Girvetz 2116
Download Flyer
Willis Barnstone, distinguished poet and translator from many languages, and author of With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires, was born in Lewiston, Maine, and
educated at Bowdoin, Columbia, and Yale. He taught
in Greece at the end of the civil war (1949-51), in
Buenos Aires during the Dirty War, and during the Cultural
Revolution went to China, where he was later a Fulbright
Professor of American Literature at Beijing Foreign
Studies University (1984-1985). His publications
include Modern European Poetry (Bantam, 1967), The
Other Bible (HarperCollins, 1984) The Secret Reader:
501 Sonnets (New England, 1996), a memoir biography
With Borges on an Ordinary Evening in Buenos Aires
(Illinois, 1993), and To Touch the Sky (New Directions,
1999). His literary translation of the New Testament
The New Covenant: The Four Gospels and Apocalypse was
published by Riverhead Books in 2002. A Guggenheim
Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist in poetry, Barnstone
is Distinguished Professor at Indiana University.
Professor Barnstone will read and comment on his translations
of Borges's poetry as part of a dialogue with Prof.
Suzanne Jill Levine on the life and works of this important
Argentine literary figure.
Sponsored by the IHC's Translation Studies Research
Focus Group, the Spanish & Portuguese Department
and the College of Creative Studies
