Cosmopolitanism and the Nation: Reading Asymmetries of Power in Victoria Ocampo’s “Babel”

Resumen

October 1944, in the sky above Paris, sheets of paper are floating down to the ground. A few people below are looking up, waiting for the sheets to reach them. Most pay no particular attention, accustomed as they are to receiving political pamphlets in such a fashion. These sheets may look the same as all the rest, but they are not. These pages are different, both in nature and purpose. These are not political propaganda pages. They are pages of a literary review. The review is Lettres Françaises, edited in Buenos Aires b yan exiled French writer, Roger Caillois. The pages are written in French, but they come from far away: from across the ocean, from Argentina. The pages include Néstor Ibarra’s French translations of Jorge Luis Borges’ stories “La lotería en Babilonia” and “La biblioteca de Babel”.