Bosquejos americanos: a intuição de uma identidade americana na poesia de Gonçalves dias (1823-1864)

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

A questão da autoria feminina na poesia de Emily Dickinson

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

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.

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.

O papel da tradução na construção da identidade da literatura afro-americana no Brasill

This paper discusses the role of translation in the construction of the identity of African-American literature in Brazil, by considering the relations between the Brazilian sociocultural context, infl uenced by biological and cultural miscegenation, and the particular way that the literary criticism represented by essays and translations of the Brazilian critic Sergio Milliet, published in between the 40’s and 60’s, approaches AfricanAmerican poetry, with special focus on Langston Hughes’ poems. In this paper, differences between Brazilian and American racial contexts are brought into light in regard to the discourses on miscegenation and race. It is discussed the extent to which Sergio Milliet developed a racialized identity for African-American poetry in his essays, which, however, was rebuilt through translation, in his anthology Obras Primas da Poesia Universal, with a less racialized perspective so that African-American aesthetics could sound less dissonant and regional and more inclined towards the principle of universality which characterizes the anthology composed of renowned foreign and Brazilian poets.

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.

The invisible blackness of Harryette Mullen's poetry: writing, miscegenation and what remais to be seen

Este ensaio aborda a poética de Harryette Mullen, poetisa afro-americana cuja obra questiona os limites que moldam as expectativas pela inteligibilidade acessível na literatura afro-americana. Os poemas de Mullen exploram as bordas da inteligibilidade, avançando para além das expectativas por uma forma visível/ Rev. Let., São Paulo, v.52, n.1, p.101-120, jan./jun. 2012. 119 inteligível de linguagem que abarcaria a experiência da negritude. Argumenta-se que a escrita na poesia de Mullen funciona como um processo de miscigenação ao jogar com a ilegibilidade da negritude, para além de uma linha visível de distinção entre o que é ou que deveria ser considerado como parte apropriada da negritude, o que possibilita novas formas de reflexão sobre a poesia como um instrumento politicamente significativo para se repensar o papel da poetisa e do poeta negros no espaço da diáspora negra.

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.