My coarse take on the story: Borges imagines that a modern writer rewrites Don Quixote by "immersing himself so thoroughly in the work as to be able to actuall

My coarse take on the story: Borges imagines that a modern writer rewrites Don Quixote by "immersing himself so thoroughly in the work as to be able to actually re-create it, line for line, in the original 17th-century Spanish". Based on this conceit Borges then reviews both versions (which remember are identical) and finds the modern version superior. It's an extended joke and/or thought experiment which is meant to investigate ideas around the extent to which the merit of a work is contained within the work itself vs our knowledge of the conditions in which it was created (especially our knowledge of the intent and situation of the author). It goes to the heart of a lot of debates around artistic value and the approach to literary criticism. It's very short and quite funny in a dry, academic way. In general I tend to read Borges as somewhere in between a very concise, elegant philosopher and a stand-up comic.