Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” Fictions, 1944

I have reflected that it is legitimate to see the “final” Quixote as a kind of palimpsest, in which the traces — faint but not undecipherable — of our friend’s “previous” texts must shine through. Unfortunately, only a second Pierre Menard, reversing the labours of the first, would be able to exhume and revive those Troys…