Jorge Luis Borges lifts a paragraph from Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1833) for his story "The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell" (1935). The paragraph depicts the Mississippi River expanding the North American continent into the Gulf of Mexico. Borges, however, replaces the word “expansion” with “dissolution.” In his version of the story, the Mississippi does not “extend” America into the Gulf, but becomes “a continent in perpetual dissolution.”

Dolores Zinny, Word for Word: extension for dissolution/Twain and Borges, 2017, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Judith and Alexander Angerman through Contemporary@LACMA, © Dolores Zinny, courtesy of the artist