View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Repositório Institucional da UFSC UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA CENTRO DE COMUNICAÇÃO E EXPRESSÃO CURSO DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM ESTUDOS DE TRADUÇÃO Juliet Attwater TRANSLATING BRAZILIAN POETRY: A BLUEPRINT FOR A DISSENTING CANON AND CROSS-CULTURAL ANTHOLOGY Tese submetida ao Programa de Estudos de Traduçao da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina para a obtenção do Grau de Doutora em Estudos deTradução. Orientador: Prof. Dr. Walter Carlos Costa Co-orientador: Prof. Paulo Henriques Britto. Florianópolis 2011 ii Catalogação fonte pela Biblioteca Universitáriada Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina A886t Attwater, Juliet Translating brazilian poetry [tese] : a blueprint for a dissenting canon and cross-cultural anthology / Juliet Attwater ; orientador, Walter Carlos Costa. - Florianópolis, SC, 2011. 246p.: grafs., tabs. Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução. Inclui referências 1. Tradução e interpretação. 2. Poesia brasileira - História e crítica. 3. Cânones da literatura. 4. Antologias. I. Costa, Walter Carlos. II. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos da Tradução. III. Título. CDU 801=03 iii iv v For Olívia Cloud and Louie Sky vi vii AGRADECIMENTOS With thanks to my parents for everything, to Magdalen for her friendship, love and constant support, to Walter and Paulo for their astounding professorial qualities and even more astounding patience, to Luana for being in the same boat and beating me to it, and to my late husband for sharing his love of his native country with me – wherever he is now I hope he is at peace. I would also like to express my sincerest gratitude to Charles Cosac, my friend and colleague in virtual space, to Régis and Flávio for their patience, support, and friendship, and my dear friend Sophy, as without her help this thesis wouldnot have been possible. And finally, last but by no means least: to Kevin – for surprising me, believing in me, and keeping me on the straight and narrow. viii ix A tradução é uma interpretação, conversão guiada pelo sentido entrevisto, vôo cego contra alvo certo. Num momento é pura liberdade, inventiva, risco pleno; noutra, é adesão ao modelo, imitação, busca de encontro e fusão no outro, como a imagem poética. (Arrigucci, 1999:143) x xi RESUMO Este trabalho parte da investigação do cânone poético brasileiro e o ‘cross’-cânone anglo-brasileiro com o objetivo de criar uma nova antologia em inglês de poesia brasileira canônica e contemporânea de 1922 aos tempos atuais. Dessa maneira, examina a formação e os critérios de seleção de antologias em ambas as culturas literárias e analisa estratégias e abordagens para a tradução de poesia. Para concluir, discute três dos poetas e os poemas escolhidos para o projeto, bem como o processo tradutório e o resultado. Palavras-chave: Poesia brasileira do século vinte, Cânone, Antologia, Tradução xii xiii ABSTRACT With the aim of creating a new anthology in English of canonical and contemporary Brazilian poetry from 1922 to the present day, this thesis investigates both the Brazilian poetic canon and the cross-cultural Anglo-Brazilian poetic canon. It examines the formation and selection criteria of anthologies in both literary cultures, and strategies and approaches for poetry translation. Finally it discusses three of the poets and their poems chosen for the project, analyses the translations, and evaluates the finished product. Keywords: Brazilian Twentieth-Century Poetry, Canon, Anthology, Translation. xiv xv CONTENTS/SUMÁRIO INTRODUCTION 17 1. ANTHOLOGIES AND CANON 27 1.1. ANTHOLOGIES AND THEIR ROLE IN CANON 30 1.2. ANTHOLOGIES OF TRANSLATED POETRY 31 1.3. ANTHOLOGIES – A SELECTION 34 1.3.1. Brazilian Anthologies of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry 34 1.3.2. Anglophone anthologies of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry 46 1.4. LITERARY HISTORIES AND CRITICISM 63 1.4.1. Brazilian Literary Histories 63 1.4.2. Anglophone Literary Histories 69 1.5. POET AND POEM SELECTION 72 2. POETRY AND TRANSLATION 77 2.1. LITERARY TRANSLATION 77 2.2. POETRY TRANSLATION 81 2.2.1. Historical approaches 86 2.2.2. Prosody in Lusophone and Anglophone poetry 89 2.3. BRAZILIAN POETRY SINCE 1922 96 3. SELECTED TRANSLATED POEMS 109 3.1. GUILHERME DE ALMEIDA 111 3.1.1. “Epigraphe”/ “Epigraph” 114 3.2. MANUEL BANDEIRA 123 3.2.1.“Sacha e o poeta”/“Sacha and the poet” 134 3.3. ORIDES FONTELA 144 3.3.1. “Teia” / “Web” 154 3.3.2. “Vespér” / “Vesper” 160 CONCLUSION 165 REFERENCES 171 BIBLIOGRAPHY 185 APPENDIX 197 xvi 17 INTRODUCTION A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone ’s knowledge of himself and the world around him. (Dylan Thomas, 1960, “On Poetry”, Quite early one morning ) While Thomas’ statement is true to an extent, it is almost certainly utopian. His comment is somewhat hyperbolic; he seemingly ignores any extra-linguistic and cultural repercussions and one must surmise that his use of ` everyone` is limited to those who understand the language in which the poem is written. He also does not define a “good poem” (in itself a utopian task), but one assumes that he is referring to a work that through its quality and emotive power pertains – or will pertain – to a cultural canon. It is this that limits the veracity of the statement and his use of ` everyone` . While a ‘good’ poem may well help to change the shape and significance of its surroundings, it is invariably limited by its own linguistic parameters. In the light of this, perhaps one of the greatest values of translation is that through the process of the transmission of a poem into other linguistic realms, one hopes eventually to really reach ` everyone` – in a truer sense of the word. In any culture much of what we know has come through the vehicle of translation; we have inherited a wealth of knowledge though the mediation of frequently invisible translators, who have made works from one language culture available to others. In all cultures the literary canon evolves over time, but although there have been numerous studies of national mono-lingual cultural canons 1 and their evolution, there has been comparatively little investigation into how translated works infiltrate and shape other cultures, and until relatively recently 2 fairly scant formal research on comparative and cross-cultural canon, the translated literary canon and the role of anthologies of translated works in writing cultures. Although 1 Eg. Ezra Pound’s ABC of reading (1934) (with a pedagogical slant), T.S. Eliot’s On Poetry and Poets . (1944), and rather more broadly, Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon ( 1994). 2 Particularly with the Göttingen group in Germany (cf Essmann and Frank, 1990). 18 this last area is now experiencing increasing academic interest 3, as Frank observes, Translation anthologies were, until quite recently, part of a 'shadowculture', overlooked, by and large, by cultural critics, literary historians, and translation scholars alike. (1998:13). Even though the dynamic is complex and difficult to analyse, this lacuna is somewhat surprising if one considers that literary anthologies are a highly effective means of transmitting a culture and expressing its spirit internationally. We should first determine what the banner of translation embraces. Although in its widest terms translation is intralingual, a process constantly operating within just one cultural-linguistic system, it is interlingual translation that interests us here. Interlingual translation has been variously defined as ‘identity across linguistic systems’ (Quine, 1960:69), ‘regulated transformation’ (Derrida, 1987:20), ‘refraction’ (Lefevere, 1982:234), ‘recodification’ (Frawley, 1984:251), ‘the process of intercultural communication’ (Vermeer, 1989:222), an ‘accurate collection of synonyms strung together in the most proximate syntax’ (!) (Spivak 1992:398), ‘an ideological activity’ (Hatim and Mason, 1997:146), and ‘a culture-bound phenomenon’ (Lambert 1998:131). Translation may also be ‘adaptation’ ( les belles infidèles of the 17 th and 18 th centuries), ‘imitation’ (discussed by Dryden in his 1680 preface to Ovid’s Epistles ) or even ‘reterritorialization’ (Brisset, 1986:10). A socio-historical systemic approach allows one to embrace all of the above within an expanded definition of translation that includes ‘…all utterances which are presented or regarded as such [as translation] within the target culture on no matter what grounds’ (Toury, 1995:32). As all the above models of translation have been valued within individual cultural systems at certain times, they are also justifiable within Even-Zohar’s descriptive rather than evaluative concept of a literary polysystem, which holds that not only translation, but every kind of writing, is done to submit to or satisfy specific personal, political or social constraints and that certain cultural systems hold greater international influence than others. Even-Zohar’s approach can be adapted to other uses for translation, but it tends to focus on literary 3 Cf Echevárria & Pupo-Walker (1996), Pym (1995) and Naaijkens (2006), among others. 19 translation, i.e. ‘inter-systemic transfer’ of poetry, drama and prose created within a society along patterns of creativity in style, genre, and literary tradition, and which may include use of poetic and stylistic devices such as alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, metaphor, pun, irony, neologisms, intertexuality, and cultural allusions. Prior to the polysystem theory there was comparatively little consideration of the role translated works played within a given culture4; but because the theory is descriptive, target-oriented and functional, it is able to treat translation as deservedly having an important reflexive influence in literary systems and in the multicultural formation of literary styles.