ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Isaac Babel's "Guy de Maupassant", a story first published in 1932, and which may remind readers of Borges's "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". Like Borges's story, "Guy de Maupassant" offers a captivating reflection on the relationship between original writing and its translations as well as a portrayal of the translator as an aspiring writer who desires to become a great author. "An Idyll", the second story mentioned in Babel's piece, first published in Gil Blas in 1884, is about the encounter between a buxom peasant woman and a slender young man whose dark skin suggests long hours of hard work under the burning sun. Regarding the gendering of textual practices that underscores Babel's story, the "knocking down" of the author in the scene of translation is only the culmination of a process that also involves the manipulation of the Maupassant stories that are incorporated into the plot.
