The Role of the (In)visible and the Secret in the Translation of Harryette Mullen s Muse & Drudge

This paper, based on Jacques Derrida’s thoughts in Des Tours of Babel, addresses the issue regarding the (in)visible in translation, by arguing that the latter, beyond the traditional conception of communication, produces a complex set of relations between the visible and the invisible, which highlights the values of the non-dit and the secret that take place in their relation to interpretation. This line of thought underpins the discussion of my translation of two poems from Muse & Drudge (1995), by the African-American poet Harryette Mullen, whose dense poetry displays un(expected) possibilities of meanings and associations that proliferate in translation. It is argued that every act of translation entails a relationship between that which is translated (and made visible or intelligible through this act) and that which remains invisible and secret by resisting a definitive translation, which, as such, requires further interpretations in search for intelligibility (or “visibility”). We analyze the extent to which such relation between the visible and the invisible takes part in the translation of the notion of blackness raised by Mullen’s poems and how her translated poetry dialogues with issues of reception in Brazilian culture.

O relógio do Rosário anuncia A máquina do mundo: Haroldo de Campos relê Drummond

Considering fragments of the haroldian poem A Máquina do Mundo Repensada, this paper approximates Drummond and Haroldo de Campos. In this poem, the poetic person’s unquietness conducts him to very peculiar displacements: the one that concerns to the end of millennium, marked by the utopia’s collapse, by the subjectivity fragmentation, by the frontiers’ reconfiguration between people and places. Assuming what the drummondian fatigued eyes have seen, the poet Haroldo de Campos will (re)think his world disharmony

Um drink de tradição e novidade: considerações sobre Rilke Shake de Angélica Freitas

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Players, Mao II e Falling Man: O terror em três versões (publicado em 2014)

This paper aims at analyzing the different approaches to terror in the novels Players (1977), Mao II (1991) and Falling Man (2007), by the American writer Don DeLillo. In Players, terror is shown as something attractive and exciting to a character who leads a very tedious personal and professional life; in Mao II, it is connected to the kidnapping of a poet and the text brings up relevant debates focusing on the contrast related to the power of novelists and terrorists in society; and in Falling Man, the author reviews the tragedy of September 11, in an attempt to try to understand the reasons why the attacks happened. The novels show terrorist actions connected to historical processes and also to the present form of capitalism and globalization. Theoretical texts by Bauman (1998), Eagleton (2005), Freitas (1989), Fraser (2000) will be used to discuss the issues addressed in this paper.

Dilemas na tradução de Muse & Drudge (Musa E Mula), de Harryette Mullen: negritude, dissonância e miscigenação

This paper aims to discuss a project of translating part of the work Muse & Drudge, by the award-winning African-American poet Harryette Mullen, into Brazilian Portuguese, with focus on a single poem. In Muse & Drudge Mullen combines cultural critique with humor, lyricism and punning, which has unfolded the frontiers between cultural and racial identity, and has put into question the opposition between popular and high culture. This work analyzes to which extent the proposed translation produces a new set of intertextual relations that might culminate in “unexpected” meanings. It is a goal to understand how the effects of such “unexpected” meanings reveal the “encounter” between the so-called racial “black/white” dichotomy, predominant in the US culture, and the notion of “miscegenation” and “racial democracy” in Brazil.

Poesia em tradução: a resistência tradutória nos jogos do invisível e do inesperado

This essay addresses translation as a form of resistance, whose invisible, unexpected effects underlie my rendering into Portuguese of two poems by the AfricanAmerican contemporary poet Harryette Mullen, with interesting developments that enable to envisage the complex intricacies that characterize different black aesthetics.

A forma poética do mundo: notas sobre o poema em prosa "Paisagem", de Julien Gracq

In this article, we examine the landscape “locus” by reading a poem in prose of Julien Gracq’s collection “Liberté grande”. Our aim is to understand how the poet uses rhetorical strategies in order to recreate or create – by means of the verb, the space around him. The term “rhetorical strategy” is used here in its broadest sense, and relates to devices that the poet uses to give iconic visibility to the space described, exploring the landscape through language and in this way unraveling a bit of  the poetic form of the world

A obra do poeta politradutor Armand Robin: marcas de uma existência em fuga

Armand Robin was a prodigious translator, that is to say: his works were translated into 22 different languages, not to mention his missing texts. During his bulletin on the radio, it was also possible to notice that 18 idioms were fluently received. This poet was notable not only because of his capacity of knowing several languages, but also because of his conception about translation. According to Robin, the meaning was not enough; a target text (TT) must be based on the recreation of the source text (ST), signification by signification; sound by sound, language by language. Since his first book, Ma Vie sans Moi, was released, Robin always wanted his translated texts were presented as works of his own, creating the idea that there was no difference between ST and TT, before giving priority to translation, either in publications or in radio transmissions. In 1942, ÉditionsGallimard published his single “novel”, Le temps qu’ilfait, which was object of studies related to the poet as a translator, emphasizing the pulse of life, which was visible in his TTs. However, in our paper, we are going to observe his production as an author, more specifically his writings, his novel and some of his fragments, in order to deepen the knowledge about his experience and also understand the dramatic and peculiar speech which is present in his writings.

L'Arrière-pays de Yves Bonnefoy, viagem e escrita de si

This essay attempts to approach the book L’Arrière-pays by Yves Bonnefoy from two central ideas: the notion of travel and autobiographical writing. They belong to the poet’s project, according to which, since L’Improbable published in 1959, and with reference to Baudelaire, “poetry and travel are of the same substance”. Invited by Albert Skira to participate in the collection  Sentiers de la création, Yves Bonnefoy produces in  L’Arrière-pays  a long essay in which he combines art criticism, philosophical reflection and personal narrative. With narrative projects abandoned or transformed into poems, as in the case of L’Ordalie, incorporated into the book Du Mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve (1953), Yves Bonnefoy in L’Arrière-pays establishes a first path to reconsider the association between narrative and fiction and, for that reason, is the central text of what the poet called his «conversion».

The Invisible Blackness of Harryette Mullen's Poetry: Writing, Miscegenation, and What Remains to Be Seen

This essay addresses the poetics of Harryette Mullen, an awarded African-American female poet whose work questions the boundaries that shape the expectations for accessible intelligibility in African-American literature. Mullen’s poems skirt the edges of intelligibility by going beyond the expectations for a visible/intelligible form of language that would embrace the experience of blackness. I argue that writing in Mullen’s poetry works as process of miscegenation by playing on the illegibility of blackness, beyond a visible line of distinction between what is or should be considered part of blackness itself, which engages new forms of reflection on poetry as a politically meaningful tool for rethinking the role of the black (female) poet within the black diaspora.

A poesia de Harryette Mullen e a (des)construção da mulher e de suas fronteiras

Harryette Mullen is a contemporary African-American poet whose work has been increasingly analyzed and commented upon in American literary circles. Along her poetic career, one can identify the development of a complex relationship with the construction of the (black) female identity. Early in her career such construction involved the affirmation of a safer, if not “truthful” locus that could encompass the meaning of the female existence, which has ultimately come to develop a deconstruction, in her current poetry, of any centrality or essentiality in the search for a an authentic female identity. Translations of her poems will be presented in order to investigate their implication for understanding the fragmented body of the contemporary woman.

Quando o lírico e o narrativo se encontram em Nuno Júdice

Nuno Judice’poetry has a peculiar discourse, whose devices of construction mixe poetry and prose in order to eliminate the borders between the two kinds of language. The Classical tradition is a constant reference in his poetry, by means of the imagery and the allegory in which some Greek myths are mentioned. Nevertheless, the context of modernity from which the poet Nuno Judice emerges put together the dimensions of space and time so as it is impossible to separate them. In this paper we analyse two poems extracted from the book As Regras da Perspectiva (1990) and our purpose is to discuss some literary questions as the metalanguage, the sensations, the lyric subjectivity, the narrative trends, the special meanings and the forms of the world.

Memoria se deseja, o resto se ouça ou veja: considerações sobre um poema de Frederico Barbosa .(2010)

In Frederico Barbosa’s poem “Memoria se”, the memory experience is marked in the body, which means that the memory is not only recorded on the lyrical person unconsciousness, but it is also something that, as an insignia, presents itself and becomes dense as permanence in this lyrical person body. The poet is heir of what may be called “tradition of rigour,” consequently, a discussion of his poetics aspects must consider the inventiveness and the dialogue with other texts, not only those from the canon but also those from the popular repertory that Frederico Barbosa assimilates and recreates.

Mais ou menos negra? Questões de negritude, tradução e a poesia de Harryette Mullen

This paper addresses issues regarding my translation of selected poems by Harryette Mullen, a rising African-American contemporary poet, whose dense poetry works on the black oral tradition, the experimentalism of writing, the (African-American) pop music, in addition to delving into issues such as the representation of (black) female sexuality. One of the complex aspects of her poetry is the notion of miscegenation, conceived as an aesthetic argument and as a constitutive condition of the identity of multiracial Americans. This concept establishes a textuality that questions the accessible intelligibility generally expected from black American poetry, insofar as a mosaic of dissonant voices are brought to light in her text, which makes it difficult to categorize. In Brazil, especially among politically engaged Afro-Brazilians, there has been criticism towards the praise of miscegenation, since the latter has been considered to support of the myth of racial democracy. Building on these aspects, we investigate the extent to which it is a challenge to translate her poetry – based on miscegenation and hybridity as aesthetic constructs – especially when taking into account the discursive locus of readers identified with an Afro-Brazilian aesthetic, particularly critical of miscegenation. From the point of view of translation, we evaluate the extent to which her poetry could be read by the predominant cultural discourse in Brazil, inclined to favor miscegenation as an integral concept of national identity, as a seductively experimental poetry. In view of this, one wonders whether this perspective makes hers poetry “less black” for Afro-Brazilian literary standards.

José Feliciano de Castilho e a tradição clássica do séc. XIX: memória sobre a segunda égloga de Virgílio

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)