SOURCE: “One Mind at Work,” in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 5019, June 11, 1999, p. 14ff.

In the following essay, diGiovani discusses the process of collaborating with Borges in the translation of his poetry.

In November 1967, in Harvard Square, I walked into Schoenhof's Foreign Bookshop and asked for a copy of Jorge Luis Borges's collected poems. When the clerk brought me the book, he said, “You know Borges is speaking here next week.” That was the first link in an invisible chain of cause and effect that brought me together with Borges in a working association that lasted for nearly five years. It was also the first link in a network that was soon to connect me with Buenos Aires in particular, with the River Plate in general, and with many dozen friends the world over.

I went home from Schoenhof's that day with a copy of Borges's Obra po...