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It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.

Alberto Manguel

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Alberto Manguel
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 13
Editor
Translator
Writer
Buenos Ayres
Alberto Manguel
Faced
Lost
Paradox
Attendant
Another
Innocence
Inescapable
Also
Mystery
Restored
Firsts
Reader
Guise
First
Wealth
Translation
Since
Translations
Text
Reading

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In any of my pages in any of my books may life a perfect account of my secret experience of the world.
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In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long.
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Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, re-creating it, as it were, in the very act of bringing it into being.
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Unpacking books is a revelatory activity.
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A writer stops writing the moment he or she puts the last full stop to their text, and at that point the book is in limbo and doesn't come to life until the reader picks it up and the reader flips the pages.
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There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, by which my existence is justified find that line, and immortality is assured.
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At night, here in the library, the ghosts have voices.
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