User:OldNasSoul

OldNasSoul is a new WikiUser interested in contributing to Wikipedia particularly through the editing and translation of articles from Spanish and Portuguese into English. He is graduating with a degree in Spanish and Portuguese Literature and Culture, with significant focus on translation, and sees the translation of articles which do not yet exist in English on Wikipedia as a wonderful opportunity to continue valuable, legitimate scholarly work.

As a first attempt, he has translated and will experiment with formatting the article on Jorge Luis Borges' collection of essays Historia de la eternidad from Spanish Language Wikipedia:

Historia de la eternidad
Historia de la eternidad or A History of Eternity is the title of a collection of essays by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges published by Viau y Zona de Buenos Aires in 1936. The essays deal with metaphysical concepts such as the nature of time and space.

Although the collection has not been translated into English, translations of several of the essays contained therein can be found in Labyrinths translated by James East Irby, and Selected Non-Fictions. translated by Esther Allen.

Content
In the titular essay of the book, Borges explores the concepts of time and eternity at length, drawing mainly on Platonic, Nietzschean and Christian thought. In his own introduction to the work, Borges declares that “eternity is a splendid artifice that liberates us, if only fleetingly, from the intolerable oppression of time.” This essay is complemented by two previously written and thematically related essays, La doctrina de los ciclos and El tiempo circular.

In his essays Las Kenningar and La metáfora, Borges analyzes these same concepts as poetic devices, particularly through the lens of ancient, Germanic epic poetry. Comparing metaphors from the ancient Icelandic sagas with others from much earlier times, centuries older, he observes that the same images and tropes repeat again and again.

In Los traductores de Las Mil y Una Noches he discusses the various distinct translations of the celebrated collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian folktales, compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age and known in English as the Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights.

The collection is rounded off by one of his most well known essayistic short stories, El acercamiento a Almotásim, which itself appears in his book Ficciones, and a brief review of satirical literature and classic insults, El arte de injuriar.

List of Essays

 * Historia de la eternidad
 * Las Kennigar
 * La doctrina de los ciclos
 * Los traductores de las 1001 noches
 * El capitán Burton
 * El doctor Mardrus
 * Enno Littmann
 * Dos notas:
 * El acercamiento a Almotásim
 * Arte de injuriar