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Passing Over, Passing On: Survivance in the Translations of Deor by Seamus Heaney and Jorge Luis Borges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Ben Garceau
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Abstract

Near the end of their lives, the poets Jorge Luis Borges and Seamus Heaney both translated the Old English poem Deor. Medieval Germanic literature was an object of deep ambivalence for these poets, and their identification with Deor, the poem's eponymous scop, charges their translations with a sense of preemptive self-mourning. Analyzing the structure of the poem, particularly its refrain, “That passed over, this can too,” reveals a chronological framework in which the reader's temporality forms a legible outer limit enclosing the poem as a whole. The poem's acceptance of its own finitude resonates with the work Borges and Jacques Derrida produced late in their careers, as they tried to understand the afterlife and independence of their own creations. Just as the poet Deor was outlasted by the poem that ostensibly bears his name, the authorial name survives and mourns the mortal author.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 132 , Issue 2 , March 2017 , pp. 298 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2017

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