Laudator Temporis Acti

Eric Thomson informed me that Victor Hugo's poem À Albert Durer was inspired in part by Dürer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel (Knight, Death, and Devil):

Eric also brought to my notice another poem inspired by the engraving, by Jorge Borges (tr. Norman Thomas di Giovanni):

Our ways are two. His—the man of steel
and pride, who rides unshaken in his faith
through the world's dubious forest, between the Devil's
scorn and Death's immobile dance; and mine—
different, shorter. In what forgotten night
or morning now long dead did my eyes first see
Dürer's lasting dream, this strange epic—
the hero and his thronging shades—seeking
me out, lying in wait, uncovering me?
It's me and not the Knight that the old, white-
faced man, head crowned with writhing snakes, exhorts.
The hourglass, grain by grain, measures my time,
not his eternal present. I will turn
to ash and void. I, who started out
long after you, will reach my mortal end,
while you, who's never been, Knight of bared sword
and leafless wood, will go your way as long
as men endure—aloof, unreal, eternal.

Los caminos son dos. El de aquel hombre
de hierro y de soberbia, y que cabalga,
firme en su fe, por la dudosa selva
del mundo, entre las befas y la danza
inmóvil del Demonio y de la Muerte,
y el otro, el breve, el mío. ¿En que borrada
noche o mañana antigua descubrieron
mis ojos la fantástica epopeya,
el perdurable sueño de Durero,
el héroe y la caterva de sus sombras
que me buscan, me acechan y me encuentran?
A mí, no al paladín, exhorta el blanco
anciano coronado de sinuosas
serpientes. La clepsidra sucesiva
mide mi tiempo, no su eterno ahora.
Yo seré la ceniza y la tiniebla;
yo, que partí después, habré alcanzado
mi término mortal; tú, que no eres,
tú, caballero de la recta espada
y de la selva rígida, tu paso
proseguirás mientras los hombres duren.
Imperturbable, imaginario, eterno.