Prologue to eternity translated

I've been working on an essay for the Quarterly Conversation about Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952), an Argentine author who mentored the far more famous Jorge Luis Borges and lent him many of his key ideas in 1920s Buenos Aires, and yet receives little credit for it, at least outside of Argentina. Arguably, Borges the international literary legend, would not have existed without Macedonio as a precursor. Some of Borges's principal metaphysical ideas, the illusory nature of time, the trap of individual personality, the permeability of life to dreams and vice-versa, the love of paradox, can be traced back to Macedonio. Here is a small translated fragment, one of many prologues (which take up over half the novel), from Macedonio's posthumously published Museo de la Novela de la Eterna:

Prologue to Eternity

Everything has been written, everything has been said, everything has been done, God heard this said to him, and he still had not created the world, nothing existed yet. That too already has been said to me, he countered perhaps, from the old, indented Nothing. And he began.

A popular musical phrase was sung to me by a Romanian woman, and later I rediscovered it ten times in different works and composers from the last four hundred years. Without a doubt, things don't begin; or they don't begin when they are invented. Or the world was invented ancient.

Prólogo a la eternidad

Todo se ha escrito, todo se ha dicho, todo se ha hecho, oyó Dios que le decían y aún no había creado el mundo, todavía no había nada. También eso ya me lo han dicho, repuso quizá desde la vieja, hendida, Nada. Y comenzó.

Una frase de música del pueblo me cantó una rumana y luego la he hallado diez veces en distintas obras y autores de los últimos cuatrocientos años. Es indudable que las cosas no comienzan; o no comienzan cuando se las inventa. O el mundo fue inventado antiguo.