The Routledge Handbook of Latin

American Literary Translation

The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Literary Translation offers an understanding of trans-
lation in Latin America both at a regional and transnational scale. Broad in scope, it is devoted
primarily to thinking comprehensively and systematically about the intersection of literary
translation and Latin American literature, with a curated selection of original essays that
critically engage with translation theories and practices outside of hegemonic Anglo centers.
In this introductory volume, through survey and case-study chapters, contributing au-
thors cover literary and cultural translation in the region historically, geographically, and
linguistically. From the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, the chapters focus on issues
ranging from the role of translation in the construction of national identities to the challenges
of translation in the current digital age. Areas of interest expand from the United States to the
Southern Cone, including the Caribbean and Brazil, as well as the impact of Latin American
literature internationally, and paying attention to translation from and to indigenous lan-
guages; Portuguese, English, French, German, Chinese, Spanglish, and more.
The first of its kind in English, this Handbook will shed light on different translation
approaches and invite a rethinking of intercultural and interlingual exchanges from Latin
American viewpoints. This is key reading for all scholars, researchers, and students of literary
translation studies, Latin American literature, and comparative literature.

Delfina Cabrera is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Portugiesisch-Brasilianische Institut of

the Universität zu Köln. She is an active literary translator and the author of Las lenguas vivas:
Zonas de exilio y traducción en Manuel Puig.

Denise Kripper is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Lake Forest College (USA) and the
Translation Editor at Latin American Literature Today. She is an active literary translator and the
author of Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature.
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The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Media

Edited by Esperança Bielsa

The Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting

Edited by Michaela Albl-Mikasa and Elisabet Tiselius

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology

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The Routledge Handbook of Translation, Interpreting, and Bilingualism

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The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Literary Translation

Edited by Delfina Cabrera and Denise Kripper

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The Routledge Handbook
of Latin American
Literary Translation

Edited by
Delfina Cabrera and Denise Kripper
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First published 2023
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Names: Cabrera, Delfina, 1984–editor. | Kripper, Denise, editor.
Title: The Routledge handbook of Latin American literary translation /
edited by Delfina Cabrera, Denise Kripper.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. |
Series: Routledge handbooks in translation and interpreting studies |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022040257 | ISBN 9780367689247 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367689254 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003139645 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Translating and interpreting—Latin America. | LCGFT: Essays.
Classification: LCC PN241.5.L29 R68 2023 |
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LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040257

ISBN: 978-0-367-68924-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-68925-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13964-5 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003139645
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by codeMantra
 Contents

Acknowledgments xiii
Contributors xiv

Delineating a Latin American Approach to Literary Translation 1

Delfina Cabrera and Denise Kripper
Introduction 1
Content Overview 4
Pedagogical Applications 9
Further Reflections 9
Works Cited 10

PART I
In Translation: Linguistic & Cultural Diversity Within the Continent 11

1 Philology and Translation on the Way to a New World: Andrés Bello,

Translator 13
Juan Antonio Ennis
Introduction 13
Philological Foundations for a New Order: Transcription and Translatio 16
Translating for the New World: The London Reviews 19
Conclusion 25
Works Cited 26
Further Readings 28

2 From Romanticism to Modernism: Translating Heine in Spanish America 30

Andrea Pagni
Introduction: First Translations of Heine in Buenos Aires and
Montevideo (1836–1838) 30
Heine’s Lyrical Self Travels to Spanish America 32
Translating Heine in the Contact Zone: Spanish American
Exile in New York 34

v
Contents

Ways of Translating Heine 37

Conclusion: Heine and His Spanish American Translators at the
Outset of Modernization 42
Works Cited 44
Further Readings 47

3 Translation and Transculturation: José Martí, Helen Hunt Jackson,

César Vallejo 48
Esther Allen
Introduction 48
A Tentative Genealogy 49
Jackson, Martí, Vallejo 53
Macrotexts 56
Conclusion: Transculturation 61
Works Cited 63
Further Readings 64

4 José María Arguedas: Decolonizing Translation 65

Fanny Arango-Keeth
Introduction 65
Methodological Approach 71
Corpus 72
Conclusion 80
Works Cited 82
Further Readings 83

5 The Woven Threads of Literary Translation in the Greater Caribbean 84

Mónica María del Valle Idárraga
Introduction: A Colonial Legacy Embodied by Language 84
Beyond Colonial Monolingualism, a Literature Born in Translation 86
Beyond National Language 88
The Voices of Creole and Vernacular Languages Are Heard 89
The Publishing Market and the Search for Circum-Caribbean Connections 95
Conclusion 99
Works Cited 99
Further Readings 101

6 Translation and Anthropophagy from the Library

of Haroldo de Campos 102
Max Hidalgo Nácher
Introduction: The Library of Haroldo de Campos as a Space for
Criticism and Creation 102

vi
 Contents

The Translation Space and the Worlds of the Library 103

Networks, Voyages, Textual Galaxies 106
Toward a Poetics of Translation 109
Transcreation and Transculturation: Uses of the Library 112
Translation as a Parodic Space 114
Conclusion 115
Works Cited 115
Further Readings 116

7 Resisting Translation: Spanglish and Multilingual

Writing in the Americas 118
Sarah Booker
Introduction 118
Spanglish and Hybrid Languages 120
Hybridity in Action 124
The (Un)translatability of Spanglish 131
Conclusion 135
Works Cited 136
Further Readings 137

8 Approaching Literary Self-Translation in the United States and Latin

America 138
Marlene Hansen Esplin
Introduction 138
Self-Writing 142
Intralingual Translation 145
Interlingual Translation 147
Conclusion 150
Works Cited 152
Further Readings 153

PART II
In & Out of Latin America: Reception of Translated
Literature 155

9 José Salas Subirat and the First Ulysses in Spanish 157

Lucas Petersen
Introduction 157
A Young Man from the Outskirts 158
The Path to Ulysses 159
An Adventurous Publisher 162
The (Hypothetical) Story of a Translation 165

vii
Contents

Critics and Interrupted Revisions 168

The “Problem of Language” 170
Conclusion: Crossed Tensions 174
Works Cited 175
Further Readings 176

10 Jorge Luis Borges’s Theory and Practice of Translation 177

Efraín Kristal
Introduction 177
Translation as a Creative Art 178
Borges the Translator 179
A Case Study: Max Beerbohm’s “Enoch Soames” 183
Commonalities and Differences 185
From Parody to Fantastic Literature 188
Conclusion: “August 25, 1983” 190
Works Cited 191
Further Readings 192

11 The Boom of the Latin American Novel in French Translation 193

Gersende Camenen
Introduction 193
Before the Boom 195
The 1960s: A New World and New Actors in Publishing 197
The Boom in the Cadre vert Collection of Le Seuil 198
Two Translators of the Boom: Albert Bensoussan and
Laure Bataillon 200
The Boom in the French Press 205
Conclusion 207
Works Cited 208
Further Readings 210

12 Chinese Translation of Latin American Literature (1950–1999) 211

Teng Wei
Introduction 211
Beginnings: A Literature of Resistance 212
Highly Politicized Translation (1950–1970) 213
Depoliticized Translation (1980s) 215
Translation Entering the Global Market (1990s) 218
Conclusion 219
Works Cited 220
Further Readings 221

viii
 Contents

13 Octavio Paz, Thinker of Translation: Versioning Matsuo Bashǀ and

Fernando Pessoa 222
Christian Elguera and Daisy Saravia
Introduction 222
Sendas de Oku Translated by Paz: Diffusing the Haiku in
Latin America 224
Octavio Paz in a Labyrinth of Ideologies and Norms: Modernizing
Alberto Caeiro’s Poetry 230
Conclusion 238
Works Cited 238
Further Readings 240

14 “Tequio literario”: Translating Indigenous Literature as

Communal Labor 241
Paul M. Worley and Ellen Jones
Introduction 241
From Individual Craft to “Tequio Literario” 242
Self-Translation and Translingualism in Indigenous Texts 244
The Politics of Translating into English 249
Literary Translation as “Tequio Literario” 251
By the Community, For the Community 251
Respect for Oral Versions of the Text 253
Translating Translingually 254
Publication in Multiple Complementary Versions 255
Reciprocal Labor 256
Conclusion 256
Works Cited 257
Further Readings 259

15 Killing Bill: Shakespeare in Latin America 260

Heather Cleary
Introduction 260
The Art of Transfiguration 265
Lear, Ready for Her Close-Up 268
Into the Woods 270
Conclusion 274
Works Cited 275
Further Readings 276

ix
Contents

16 “New Female Gothic”: Latin American Fiction in the Anglophone

Markets Through Translation 277
Ilse Logie
Introduction: Premises and Objectives 277
“New Female Boom” 281
The Importation of the Southern Cone Gothic 284
The Making of the “Andean Gothic” 290
Tropical Ghostliness 295
Against the “Female Gothic” 298
Conclusion 301
Works Cited 304
Further Readings 306

PART III
In Circulation: Publishing & Networks of Translation 309

17 Translation and Print Culture in Latin America 311

María Constanza Guzmán
Introduction 311
Print Culture and Translation 311
Translation and Print Culture in Latin America 312
The Twentieth Century: A Turning Point 314
The 1960s and 1970s: Politics and Culture 316
A Look at Publishing Houses: Translation in Fondo
de Cultura Económica 317
A Look at Cultural Magazines: Translation in
Revista Casa de las Américas 320
Latin American Print Culture from the Twentieth to
the Twenty-First Century 325
Conclusion 326
Works Cited 327
Further Readings 329

18 Exile Networks in Spanish-American Publishing Houses: Translation

and Adaptations of Translations 330
Alejandrina Falcón
Introduction 330
First Scene: Spaniards in Paris and Translations for the Americas 330
Second Scene: Challenging the French Hegemony with
Hispanic-Argentine Translations 332
Third Scene: The Republican Spaniards Exiled in Argentina and the
Exportation of Translations in Latin America 335

x
 Contents

Fourth Scene: Latin American Translators and Translations in Spain

during the Second Cold War 337
Conclusion 340
Works Cited 341
Further Readings 343

19 Manipulation in Translation: The Case of the Modern Woman and

the Flirt in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American Magazines 344
Martín Gaspar
Introduction 344
Flirting in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American Magazines: Local
Texts and Tips 345
Flirting in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American
Magazines: Translations 348
Manipulating Provins: From the Parisian Belle Époque to Buenos Aires
in the 1920s 349
Manipulating Matilde Serao: Marriage, Passione, and Flirt 352
Conclusion 357
Works Cited 359
Further Readings 361

20 A Laboratory of Texts: The Multilingual Translation Legacies of

Haroldo de Campos 362
Isabel C. Gómez
Introduction 362
Political Poetry in Translation: pura or para? 364
Cartonera as Planetary Literature and the Uncountable Languages of
Latin America 367
Transcreating Haroldo’s gostoso portunhol 370
Landless Landlocked Labor Movements 374
Translating a Transcreation: Mayakovsky and Haroldo’s Laboratory of Texts 377
Conclusion 380
Works Cited 381
Further Readings 382

21 The Deep-Sea Diver and the Sculptor: The Translations of José

Bento Monteiro Lobato, Brazilian Publisher, Translator, and
Children’s Author 383
John Milton and Taís Diniz Martins
Introduction 383
Lobato on Translation 385
Translations for Children 386

xi
Contents

Lobato’s Adaptations for Children 388

Peter Pan (1930) 388
Prison and Peter Pan Burned and Banned 389
Translations in Partnership 390
Conclusion: The Golden Age of Translations in Brazil 391
Works Cited 393
Further Readings 394

22 Author, Reader, Editor, and Translator in the Digital Age: Changing

Norms of Production and Reception 395
Elizabeth Lowe
Introduction 395
Questions for the Future of Translation 395
The New Publishing Environment 397
COVID-19 and its Impact on Contemporary Brazilian Literature 399
Three Contemporary Brazilian Writers of the Digital Age 399
J.P. Cuenca 400
Noemi Jaffe 404
Paulo Dutra 406
Conclusion 409
Works Cited 409
Further Readings 410

Index 411

xii
 6
Translation and Anthropophagy
from the Library of Haroldo
de Campos
Max Hidalgo Nácher

Introduction: The Library of Haroldo de Campos

as a Space for Criticism and Creation
Haroldo de Campos (São Paulo, 1929–2003) was a poet, critic, translator, literary theorist,
researcher in literary translation, and tireless cultural mediator who actively contributed to
forming networks by establishing contact with writers, critics, and intellectuals at the van-
guard from many countries. He translated from English, German, French, Russian, Italian,
Provençal, Spanish, Greek, Latin, Japanese, Chinese, and Hebrew, among other languages,
and he did so with a keen awareness of the cultural specificity of Brazil and, more generally,
Latin America. As will be discussed later in this chapter, inspired by the Manifiesto antropófago
[Anthropophagic manifesto] (1928) by Oswald de Andrade, Haroldo de Campos’s theory and
practice as a translator are marked by a poetic commitment militantly established through
an anthropophagic appropriation of difference. Thus, throughout Haroldo de Campos’s in-
tellectual and creative journey, one can observe how his practice of translation as an incor-
poration of difference and a capitalization of language itself deepened over time. Beginning
in 1962, it is also possible to observe how his theory of translation developed, a theory that
would ultimately conceive of translation as a general cultural apparatus. As will be seen be-
low, Haroldo de Campos’s work serves as a key contribution to how translation is conceived
of at large by incorporating singularities from the Latin American experience.
Haroldo de Campos, along with his brother Augusto de Campos and the poet and trans-
lator Décio Pignatari, led a collective translation project that made it possible to incor-
porate many poets into the assets of Brazil’s Portuguese poetic language, such as the likes
of Homer, Sappho, Horace, Catullus, Arnaut Daniel, Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Ungaretti,
Hölderlin, Goethe, Rilke, Brecht, Rimbaud, Laforgue, Corbière, Mallarmé, Ponge, Maya-
kovsky, Khlebnikov, Pasternak, Biely, Mandelstam, Gennadiy Aygi, Joyce, Gertrude Stein,
e.e. cummings, and Octavio Paz, as well as elements of biblical and contemporary Hebrew
poetry, classical and modern Japanese poetry, and classical Chinese poetry. This translation
work belongs to a broader project of capitalizing Brazilian poetry, which made it possible to
incorporate a mobilized, pluralistic corpus into its heritage and traditions at the service of
contemporary poetry.

102 DOI: 10.4324/9781003139645-8

 The Library of Haroldo de Campos

Studying Haroldo de Campos’s library, with its more than 20,000 volumes preserved in
the Casa das Rosas on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, proves highly valuable in understanding
both his reading–writing practice (observable in the traces he left in his library books, see Hi-
dalgo Nácher 2018) and the material and institutional space in which that practice was made
possible. The library can be viewed simultaneously as a creative workshop and the material
result and sedimentation of a writing practice intimately tied to translation.
For Haroldo, criticism was first a question of choice, as it was for the writer and transla-
tor Ezra Pound. The idea of paideuma—what is necessary to read, pass on, teach, not just as
knowledge of the past, but also for use in the present—is a slice of the library as a whole,
but the library already prefigures paideuma, making it possible to mobilize it in the present.
Haroldo expresses it that way in a letter to Roman Jakobson, one of the most important lin-
guists and translation theorists of the twentieth century, with whom he would share a close
intellectual relationship:

A qualidade da escolha decide um pouco de antemão, como uma verdadeira condição

de possibilidade, do êxito final da análise, da sua plenitude pelo menos. A operação
seletiva—a escolha do objeto—seria já uma primeira decisão constitutiva do ato crítico
[The quality of the choice determines a bit in advance, as a true condition of possi-
bility, the final success of the analysis, at least of its completeness. The act of selection—
choosing the object—would then be the first, formative decision of the critical act].
(De Campos 1970: 197)

Leyla Perrone, who becomes a part of this school of thought and reconstructs it, also asserts
that what is now at stake in the choice itself is the “julgamento de valor implícito em todo
discurso histórico” [value judgment implicit in all historic discourse] (21). Therefore, above
all, criticism is “choice and value.” Haroldo’s library is a material result of that principle, and
it can be conceived of as a slice of the culture, preserving that which not only deserves to be
preserved, but that which may also be worthy of being mobilized for use in the present. For
as Haroldo said when taking a militant stance in citing Walter Benjamin: “Quem não é capaz
de tomar partido, deve calar” [One who is not capable of taking sides, must stay silent] (De
Campos 1997: 252).
And here it follows that what is said about the library can also be said, all the more so,
about translation. The texts worthy of translation are precisely those, which, due to their
extreme difficulty, seem untranslatable, making them, for that very reason, transcreatable—
texts that can enrich language itself and the very poetic and cultural tradition by becoming
incorporated into the very cultural wealth in order to be presented as contemporaries. In
1962, Haroldo states it clearly: “Quanto mais inçado de dificuldades esse texto, mais re-
criável, mais sedutor enquanto possibilidade aberta de recriação” [The more difficulties a
text has, the more recreatable, the more seductive, it will be concerning open possibilities
for recreation] (5).

The Translation Space and the Worlds of the Library

The library is where Haroldo de Campos’s translation theory and practice have their possibil-
ity space, a place that can be conceived of in terms of its own dynamics and transformations:
its open porosity (how does it communicate with the outside world?), its flows and entrance
channels (how, and how quickly, do books enter the library?), its plausibility (what types of

103
Max Hidalgo Nácher

books in the library are plausible?). This is a case of a multilingual, cosmopolitan library,
which includes thirty-six languages. The library’s main collection in Portuguese represents
43.63% of the total. The second collection is composed of works in Spanish (18.30%), English
(14.91%), and French (11.92%). The subsequent collection is made up of Italian (7.52%) and
German (6.37%). The rest of the languages—which are significantly different, with Japanese
and Greek preferentially placed—represent less than 1% of the total and, together, comprise
approximately 3% of the total.
Haroldo’s plurilingualism was excessive, and its specific nature lies in the fact that he
sought to destabilize language itself and its semiotic codes through contact with other lan-
guages and codes. “Tant de langues dans toute langue” [So many languages in every lan-
guage] Jacques Derrida would say in a note paying homage to Haroldo, where he would
present him as one of his “grands-amis-admirables” [great-admirable-friends] (2015:18). The
practice of heterolingualism allows language itself to be affected by other languages and poet-
ics, thus questioning the very semiotic codes through contact with other codes, a movement
confirming the fundamental link between the writing process and the translation process.
A description of the library’s multilingual collection is only the tip of the iceberg when it
comes to the choice part of the equation (for Haroldo, the first aspect of criticism, as discussed
above), for the books in his library are no longer the same after having been read, digested, trans-
lated, and rewritten by him. The cosmopolitanism that appears here is neither passive nor re-
productive, but rather it serves an appropriative function, simultaneously fracturing the national
culture and the stories inherited about the international circulation of ideas. For that reason, his
library and his theories of translation and transculturation stem from a foundational act in 1566,
when the Caeté indigenous peoples devoured Bishop Sardinha. The scene is one in which, in a
heterochronic and anthropophagic gesture marked by translation, the Brazilian modernism of
Oswald de Andrade (Manifiesto antropófago, 1928) and his theory of anthropophagy are affirmed as

devoração crítica do legado cultural universal, elaborado não a partir da perspectiva

submissa e reconciliada do “bom selvagem” (idealizado sob o modelo das virtudes euro-
peias no Romantismo brasileiro de tipo nativista, em Gonçalves Dias e José de Alencar,
por exemplo), mas segundo o ponto de vista desabusado do “mau selvagem,” devorador
de brancos, antropófago. Ela não envolve uma submissão (uma catequese), mas uma
transculturação; melhor ainda, uma “transvaloracão:” uma visão crítica da história como
função negativa (no sentido de Nietzsche), capaz tanto de apropriação como de expro-
priação, desierarquização, descontrução. Todo passado que nos é “outro” merece ser
negado. Vale dizer: merece ser comido, devorado. Com esta especificação elucidativa:
o canibal era um “polemista” (do grego pólemos = luta, combate), mas também um
“antologista:” só devorava os inimigos que considerava bravos, para deles tirar proteína e
tutano para o robustecimento e a renovação de suas próprias forças naturais…
(De Campos 1980: 234–245)

[a critical devouring of the universal, cultural legacy, produced not from the submissive
and reconciliatory perspective of the “noble savage” (idealized under the model of the
European virtues in nativist Brazilian Romanticism, in Gonçalves Días and José de
Alencar, for example), but rather according to the insolent point of view of the “ignoble
savage,” devourer of white men, anthropophagus. It does not involve submissiveness
(a catechism), but rather transculturation; or, even better, a “transvaluation:” a critical
vision of history as a negative function (in the Nietzsche sense of the phrase), which is
capable of appropriation as well as expropriation, de-hierarchization, deconstruction.

104
 The Library of Haroldo de Campos

Everything past that is “other” to us deserves to be denied. It can be said: it deserves

to be eaten, devoured. With this clarifying specification: the cannibal was a polemicist
(from the Greek pólemos = fight, combat), but also an “anthologist:” only devouring the
enemies they considered valiant, to extract the protein and marrow to bolster and renew
their own natural strength].

As Oswald de Andrade said in his 1928 Manifiesto antropófago: “Tupi or not tupi, that is the
question.” Alliteration, differential identity: a celebration of the ignoble savage who invites
the foreigner to his table (in this case, Shakespeare) to devour him.
The same can be said for the library: for all the books it contains, and for how varied and
diverse this Library of Babel may be, at its heart is Haroldo, chewing over and over on the
Western legacy. That transculturation in which codes and cultures mix is tied to the act of
reading and a general idea of translation, since at stake in reading is a rewriting process that
Haroldo has considered a translation process since the 1980s.
For Haroldo, translation has two meanings: the first is restrictive (insofar as conceiving of
translation as a transference process of a text from one language to another) and the second,
much broader, encompasses any cultural operation under the model of translation. Now, in
Haroldo’s work, the first meaning is always running through the second, for he arrives at the
theory of translation through a lengthy practice of poetic translation. Thus, when he refers to
translation in its broader sense (as a general cultural apparatus), he never fails to include the
experience of poetic translation—a paradigm for him—which makes his perspective quite
different from that of authors such as Rebecca Walkowitz (Born translated, 2015). The often
monolingual, homogeneous space of World Literature, then, has nothing in common with the
multilingualism and heterolingualism running through the multiple, heterogenous spaces of
Haroldo’s Brazilian Weltliteratur. In fact, the library is the sediment of a politics of literature
based on cosmopolitanism and the defense of a “world literature” quite different from the
one upheld by Pascale Casanova and Franco Moretti. Where those authors project a homoge-
neous, uniform space in which the literary hierarchy is ultimately subordinate to a political,
economic, and military hierarchy presided over by the logic of debt, Haroldo introduces a
foundational violence marked by the absence of origin. In that regard, it is symptomatic that
Haroldo, one of Brazil’s primary agents of cosmopolitanism and “world literature,” is com-
pletely absent from Casanova’s map (Hidalgo Nácher, “Modelos y problemas”).
That other Haroldian Weltliteratur would be a fractured space built on translations in
which cultural mediations can now be understood as translation processes. In that way, Har-
oldo reclaimed a cosmopolitanism of difference that is diametrically opposed to Casanova’s
universalist cosmopolitanism, a cosmopolitanism that is tied to a theory of translation that
he created by drawing on Ezra Pound and the texts of Max Bense, and, beginning in 1967,
Walter Benjamin, Roman Jakobson, and Jacques Derrida. It is clear that they are all invited
to the anthropophagic feast in which, from his library in São Paulo, Haroldo assembles and
reassembles the cultural fragments by introducing Brazilian and Latin American difference.
Thus, beginning in the 1980s, Haroldo would begin to build a theory of transculturation,
through the lens of his cosmopolitanism, no longer opposing nationalism and universalism
(as if these were two rivals), but rather modal nationalism and ontological nationalism (De
Campos 1980: 237). Thus, the question will no longer be whether to establish contact with
foreign texts or not, but rather how to do so: through servitude (like the noble savage) or
insubordination (like the ignoble, anthropophagic savage who invites the foreigner to his
banquet…to eat him). So, it will be a matter of practicing a critical devouring that will make
Latin American difference emerge in the very act of translation.

105
Max Hidalgo Nácher

Networks, Voyages, Textual Galaxies

That cosmopolitanism of difference is materially woven through a network of alliances and
elective affinities. Going back to the body of the library (where magazines have significant
value, both in number and quality, given that they make up approximately one-quarter of
all volumes in the library) and the dedications written in some of the volumes (as is the case
with the books of Max Bense, Roman Jakobson, Henri Meschonnic, and Antoine Berman,
among others), as well as Haroldo’s epistolary correspondence, may contribute to recon-
structing those intellectual networks, woven at length through a certain practice of travel
(Hidalgo Nácher, “Redes intelectuais”). As the Spanish writer Julián Ríos recalled, Harol-
do’s trips were marked by exchanges:

En la era digital y de la instantaneidad de nuestros días, no resulta a veces evidente

que las peregrinaciones de Haroldo a Europa no eran en el fondo muy diferentes de las
de los monjes y eruditos en siglos anteriores en busca de manuscritos y contactos con
otros sabios desperdigados por el mundo. Haroldo llegaba a Europa para difundir libros
brasileños, que llenaban sus maletas, además de regalos como, por ejemplo, pesados ce-
niceros hechos de trozos de árboles fosilizados, y se volvía a Brasil con las maletas aún
más atiborradas de libros regalados y comprados. El Amazonas reposado y repasado de
Haroldo no era el Amazon a un click de ahora.
(Ríos 2018)

[In the digital age and the instantaneousness of our times, it is sometimes not obvious
that Haroldo’s pilgrimages to Europe were at their heart not so different from those
of nuns and scholars in previous centuries searching for manuscripts and contact with
other wise people scattered throughout the world. Haroldo would arrive in Europe to
circulate Brazilian books, his luggage filled with them, in addition to gifts such as, for
example, heavy ash trays made from pieces of fossilized wood, and he would return to
Brazil with his luggage stuffed even more with books that he bought and was gifted.
Haroldo’s Amazon of relaxation and revisitation was not the Amazon we can access in
a click today].

In Brazil, Leyla Perrone corroborated in an interview what Derrida had said a few years
before:

O Haroldo esteve sempre em toda parte, antes de todo mundo—eu digo antes dos uni-
versitários porque ele não era universitário na época. Ele tinha conhecimento do for-
malismo russo, tinha contatos antes de mim com o grupo Tel quel, com o grupo Change.
Aliás, ele ficou mais próximo do Change, do Jean-Pierre Faye, do que do Sollers. Foi
o primeiro que entrou em contato com o Todorov, com a Kristeva, com todo mundo.
(Wolff 2016: 151)

[Haroldo was always everywhere before everyone—what I mean is before those from
the universities, because he wasn’t yet part of the university at that time. He knew Rus-
sian formalism, he was in contact with the Tel quel group before I was, with the Change
group. In fact, he ended up getting closer to the Change group, with Jean-Pierre Faye,
than with Sollers’s group. He was the first to have contact with Todorov, Kristeva, with
everyone].

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 The Library of Haroldo de Campos

Along the same line, Jacques Derrida has said in a beautiful text in homage to Haroldo:

Tout ce qui a pu signifier la loi, le désir aussi, l’urgence, mais l’urgence la plus aventureuse
et la plus audacieuse pour moi, dans l’ordre de la pensée, de l’écriture, de la poésie – «
unique source » – dans l’horizon de la littérature, et avant tout dans l’intimité de la
langue des langues, chaque fois tant de langues dans toute langue, je sais que Haroldo y
aura eu accès comme moi avant moi, mieux que moi.
(Derrida 2015: 17–18)

[Everything that has been able to signify the law, also the desire, the urgency—but
the most adventurous and bold of the urgencies for me—within thought, writing,
poetry—“unique source”—literature, and most of all within the intimacy of the lan-
guage of languages, every time so many languages in every language, I know that Har-
oldo must have accessed all that before I did, better than I did].

On November 17, 1968, Haroldo wrote to Jakobson, shortly after his trip to Brazil, and men-
tioned to him that he needed to travel to write Galáxias (1984), a book of poems that tells of Har-
oldo’s passion for travel whose first excerpts date back to 1963.1 The book presents, in fifty poems,
what is—in the words of Augusto de Campos, poet and translator who deserves a separate study
for the enormous work he has done in translation to date—an authentic linguaviagem [languagevoy-
age] which is, at the same time, a viagem via linguagem [voyage via language] in which the languages
become enjambed. A permutative game that immediately demonstrates the problem with trans-
lation and what is lost by wanting to translate the “content” of a poem or any poetic prose. Canto
36 of Galaxias reads: “I see all and I translate into writing […] all this is a translation a translating
into a visible mode” (De Campos 2022, tr. Cisneros). As Haroldo writes in a note in the book,

as the textual journey unfolds, the mothertongue (this dead tongue this ill-starred luck
the umbilicord that stuck you to the door) begins to display all of its capacity for met-
aphor and metamorphosis, even through the appropriation and expropriation of other
languages, through transgression and transcreation, hurling itself into an ‘even more
excessive excess’
(De Campos 2022, tr. Cisneros)

The collection of poems is not a book about voyages because it is, in and of itself, a mobile
creation, a permutable work, constantly shifting, “the play of moveable pages, interchange-
able in their reading” (De Campos 2022, tr. Cisneros). As stated in the eighth poem, dated
August 2, 1964, “this is not a travel book because travel is not a book of travel” (De Campos
2022, tr. Cisneros). Haroldo mentions this book in a letter to Leyla Perrone on June 30, 1974,
referring to an out of joint transitoriness:

É preciso ter uma paciência beneditina para se fazer algo nesta maldita língua morta.
Enquanto isto, vejo que todo mundo publica em ritmo de coelho nessa Lutécia velha mas
sempreviva. Daqui a pouco, pela demora que ainda prevejo para a publicação das minhas
GALÁXIAS estampadas no nº de 64 de INVENÇAO (falo da 1a sequência, iniciada em
63), ficarei eu mesmo com a impressão borgiana de que o último Sollers (que finalmente
descobriu Joyce e Rabelais) é que andou me influenciando por algum fenômeno de re-
encarnação às avessas na máquina do tempo!
(Letter from Haroldo de Campos to Leyla Perrone, São Paulo, June 30, 1974)

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Max Hidalgo Nácher

[One must have Benedictine patience to do something in this damned dead language.
Meanwhile, I see everyone publishing like rabbits in that old, ever-vibrant Lutetia. Soon,
due to the delay I still anticipate for the publication of GALÁXIAS printed in number
64 of INVENÇAO (I’m talking about the first sequence that started in 63), I myself will
have the Borgesian impression that the last [Phillipe] Sollers (who has finally discovered
Joyce and Rabelais) is the one who influenced me through some phenomenon of retro-
spective reincarnation in a time machine!].

Additionally, it is worth noting how themes and methods circulate in a work that resists
staying shut away in siloed departments. Canto 23 of Galáxias reads:

schiller’s laughter explodes between goethe and voss and your word is tinted
red either the man is insane or pretends to be voss writes it was during
a dinner party chez goethe you should have seen the way schiller laughed and then i
suggested that phrase as a contribution to the farbenlehre theory ismene saying
du scheinst ein rotes wort zu faerben through the voice of sophocles through the voice
of hölderlin schiller laughing goethe smiling illustrious company he must have been crazy
herr hölderlin or he pretended to be because sophocles only meant
you seem worried about something ismene to antigone through the voice of sophocles
one of the most laughable products of pedantry that red-tinted word
of mr hölderlin’s and still in the meantime in the midtime in the intension the sea purpled
in kalkháinous’ epos polypurple sea of fury polycrimson warrior sea

This poem, in fact, revisits his article “A Palavra Vermelha de Hoelderlin” [The red
word of Hölderlin] (1967), where Haroldo refers to the Hölderlinian translation of Sopho-
cles’s Antigone (De Mello 2018: 123–128) and, concretely, to a Greek expression that the
German poet translated, “erroneously,” as “du scheinst ein rotes wort zu faerben” (canto
23), which is to say as the syntagma “the red word” (when it is a figurative expression that
can be translated as “being concerned”). Haroldo transforms this literalizing translation,
which made Goethe, Schiller, and Voss laugh, into a deconstruction strategy of language’s
monolingual action, which tends to subject the source text to the parameters of the target
text while making the work of the translator invisible. The criticism continues in a retrans-
lation that explains a proposal made by Túa Blesa, a Spanish professor of Literary Theory
and Comparative Literature, when he says that “translation is translation(s)” (Blesa 2016).
The understanding of writing as rewriting goes hand in hand with the conviction that
translating is not copying an original in a subservient way, but rather creating something
new, not necessarily worse than what was translated—and that idea is what authorizes
Haroldo to retranslate Hölderlin’s text into Portuguese (which was, in turn, a translation
of Sophocles).
In this turn to Hölderlin—but also in many other aspects of Haroldo’s work, such as his re-
flection on the crisis of genres (De Campos 2013b)—it is worth noting how Haroldo becomes
a part of a long tradition that emerges with the first German Romanticism (Seligmann-Silva
2018: 106–107). That is where Haroldo would also align with Henri Meschonnic—there are
many books with dedications from him preserved in Haroldo’s library—who liked to say
that translators had chosen the wrong patron for themselves: they should not have chosen
Saint Jerome, but rather Charone, because, well, most of the time they are transporting dead

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 The Library of Haroldo de Campos

bodies (Meschonnic 1999: 17). Or, in Benjaminian terms, they are devoted to imprecisely
conveying inessential content (De Campos 2013c: 212).

Toward a Poetics of Translation

Haroldo’s theory of poetic translation stems from his own translation practice and the critical
and creative incorporation of specific aspects of the work of some authors with whom he di-
alogued: Ezra Pound, Max Bense, Roman Jakobson, Walter Benjamin, and Jacques Derrida.
It becomes possible, in fact, to reconstruct Haroldo’s dialogue with Jakobson and, with it,
Haroldo’s evolution, by going back to Jakobson’s archive, preserved at MIT.
Beginning in 1966, Jakobson was a fundamental reference for Haroldo, both at a theoret-
ical and institutional level, as he saw him as a philosopher of language and poetry, a tireless
linguist for whom nothing linguistic was foreign, a poet at the vanguard who moved through
the century, the continents, and the disciplines with a passion that went beyond every type
of border. His work and perspective served as models in crossing disciplinary borders and in
the protean interest for the most varied artistic practices through an approach that involved
a critical relationship between theory and creation. For Jakobson, it was about reciprocally
planting the seed of thought and creation, bearing in mind both the “grammaire de la poésie”
and the “poésie de la grammaire” ( Jakobson 1960: 219–233).
The study of his correspondence attests to a friendship in the language—a friendship that
begins in 1966 and lasts until Jakobson’s death in 1982. In that way, Jakobson was a privi-
leged contact with whom Haroldo formed a productive relationship that would allow him
to become a part of newly forming theoretical networks in the second-half of the 1970s and
renew his theory of poetic translation.
Their first exchange, preserved in Jakobson’s archive, is the article “Maiakóvski em por-
tuguês: roteiro de uma tradução” (1961), which Haroldo sent to Jakobson in January 1966.
In the article, Haroldo reconstructs his first translations from Russian. Haroldo had already
been studying German since approximately 1950, Japanese since 1956, and Chinese since
1957, and he started studying Russian in 1961 to translate Mayakovsky and the Russian poets
at the vanguard. The first poem he translated—after little more than three months of study-
ing Russian—was “Sierguéiu Iessiêninu.” The possible limitations of having only incipient
knowledge of a new language must have been offset by a poetic theory that privileged creation
over literal transcription. He wrote: “Traduzir poesia há de ser criar sob pena de esterilização
e petrificação, o que é pior do que a alternativa de trair” [Poetry translation must be creation
under penalty of sterilization and petrification, which is worse than the alternative of betrayal]
(1961: 23). To defend these ideas, he took refuge in the example of Pound, who translated
Chinese poems and Japanese Noh theatrical plays “numa época em que não se tinha ainda ini-
ciado no estudo do ideograma, ou em que estaria numa fase rudimentaríssima dêsse estudo”
[at a time when he had not yet begun studying the ideograms, or was still at a very rudimen-
tary stage in his studies] (1961: 23). Those translations by Pound, which greatly exceeded those
of the “competente sinólogo e niponista Arthur Waley” [competent sinologist and Japanese
scholar Arthur Waley] served as a paradigm for Haroldo from which he derived “toda uma
didática” [an entire teaching]. Just as Pound leaned on Fenollosa, Haroldo would make use
of two translations (one in Spanish and another in German) to propose his recreation. It is
also possible to immediately observe in the article how the choice of the poem—which was
always crucial for Haroldo—would stem from what he considered “uma das mais importantes
realizações de Maiakóvski” [one of Mayakovsky’s most important achievements] (1961: 23).

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Max Hidalgo Nácher

Jakobson appears not only in Haroldo’s poem “meninos eu vi” (1998), but also in two oth-
ers: “o.p. octogenário” (2006: 130–132), dedicated to Octavio Paz, and the “Ode (explícita)
em defesa da poesia no dia de são lukács,” where it reads:

e jákobson roman [and jakobson roman

(amor/roma) (love/rome)
octogenário plusquesexappealgenário octogenarian plusquesexappealgenarian
acaricia com delícia caresses with delightedness
tuas metáforas e metonímias your metaphors and metonymies
enquanto abres de gozo while you open in pleasure
as alas de crisoprásio de tuas paronomásias the chrysoprase wings of your paronomasias
e ele ri do embaraço austero dos savants and he laughs at the austere embarrassment of
(1999: 48) the savants]

In the poem, Haroldo contrasts vibrant reflection with the discomfort of the “savants,”
and brings up paronomasia (the phonetic similarity between two or more words that are only
differentiated by one vowel or consonant), which Jakobson refers to in his famed 1959 text
on translation “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” Haroldo’s poem illustrates the re-
source of paronomasia by playing with Jakobson’s name and its inversion: Roman, roma,
amor [Roman, rome, love]. Paronomasia is fundamental in Haroldo’s work. In April 1977, he
sent Jakobson La operación del texto [The operation of the text], a book in which—Haroldo
wrote to him—“the presence of your poetics is a constant, along with my concern with the
practice of poetic translation” (De Campos 1977 [MIT, B48 F10]). Furthermore, Haroldo’s
library preserves publications with dedications from Jakobson and Krystyna Pomorska. In the
dedication of A Bibliography of His Writings (1971) it reads:

For Haroldo
de Campos,
magician
of
concrete poetry
and
miraculous poetic
translation
from his
devoted friend
Roman Jakobson ( Jakobson, 1971 [AHC, archivo 8366])

In July of 1966, Haroldo shared his first article on translation theory with Jakobson: “Da
tradução como criação e como crítica” [On translation as creation and criticism], a text-
manifesto written in 1962 and published in 1963. The text proposed building a theory of po-
etic translation at the service of creation. Bense was the theoretical model, and Pound was the
poetic model. Bense differentiated between three types of “information:” documentary, se-
mantic, and aesthetic. When up against the first two, which are characterized by their ability
to be codified and conveyed in different ways, aesthetic information would be fragile, given

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 The Library of Haroldo de Campos

that it is associated with the very way in which it is conveyed (“a informação estética não
pode ser codificada senão pela forma em que foi transmitida pelo artista” [aesthetic informa-
tion can only be codified by the way in which it was conveyed by the artist] [De Campos
2013a: 166]). In principle, from where would this hypothesis of an aesthetic text’s untrans-
latability be drawn? With that inversion, Haroldo proposed a project: “Admitida a tese da
impossibilidade em princípio da tradução de textos criativos, parece-nos que esta engendra
o corolário da possibilidade, também em princípio, da recriação dêsses textos” [Accepting
the thesis of the theoretical impossibility of translating creative texts, it seems to us that
this engenders the corollary of possibility, also in principle, of recreating those texts] (167).
Translating aesthetic messages would be associated both with translating semantic content
and recreating its form: building an “relação de isomorfia” [isomorphic relationship]. Thus,
“para nós, tradução de textos criativos será sempre recriação, ou criação paralela, autônoma
porém recíproca. Quanto mais inçado de dificuldades esse texto, mais recriável, mais sedutor
enquanto possibilidade aberta de recriação” [for us, translating creative texts will always be
recreation, or parallel, autonomous, nevertheless reciprocal creation. The more packed a text
is with difficulties, the more recreatable it will be, the more seductive in regard to the open
possibility of recreation] (167).
Haroldo found the paradigm of that type of translation-recreation in Pound, who
maintained that the task of the translator was the formation of an active tradition in the
present:

Os móveis primeiros do tradutor, que seja também poeta ou prosador, são a configuração
de uma tradição ativa (daí não ser indiferente a escolha do texto a traduzir, mas sempre
extremadamente reveladora), um exercício de intelecção e, a través dêle, uma operação
de crítica ao vivo
[The primary motive of a translator, provided they are a poet or prose writer, is to
form an active tradition (which is why the choice of text to translate not only matters,
it is extremely relevant), an exercise of intellection and, through it, a critical operation
in real time].
(176)

Here, Haroldo referred to his conviction

da impossibilidade do ensino de literatura, em especial de poesia (e de prosa a ela

equiparável pela pesquisa formal), sem que se coloque o problema da amostragem e
da crítica via tradução. Sendo universal o patrimônio literário, não se poderá pensar
no ensino estanque duma literatura. Ora, nenhum trabalho teórico sobre problemas
de poesia, nenhuma estética da poesia será válida como pedagogia ativa se não exibir
imediatamente os materiais a que se refere, os padrões criativos (textos) que tem em
mira.
(178)

[of the impossibility of teaching literature, especially poetry (and prose comparable to
poetry through formal research), without bringing up the problem of sampling and
criticism via translation. As literary heritage is universal, teaching literature cannot be
siloed. Now, no theoretical work on the issues of poetry, no aesthetic of poetry will be
valid as active pedagogy if it does not immediately lay out the materials it references, the
creative patterns (texts) in its sights].

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Max Hidalgo Nácher

To conclude his article, in 1962, Haroldo argues the impossibility of studying literature
without studying creative translation, a conviction that served as a foundation for a col-
laborative project between poets and linguists that would need to be carried out in a
laboratory of texts, thus placing criticism at the service of creation. Having said that, his
1966 meeting with Jakobson would signify a shift and a deepening of his theory of poetics
and translation.

Transcreation and Transculturation: Uses of the Library

Haroldo’s theory of translation can be tied to his theory of reading. In so doing it becomes
possible to interpret how he used the library since, for Haroldo, reading was choosing and
translating was rewriting.
Thus, Haroldo constructed a series of concepts and neologisms to talk about the speci-
ficity of poetic translation (a type of translation that, with Haroldo’s tendency to expand,
would end up incorporating prose and even some excerpts from Hegel’s philosophy, all of
them considered Dichtung, meaning “artistic use of language” as defined in the first German
Romanticism [De Campos 1972]). Out of the impossibility of translation grew the possi-
bility of “recriação” [recreation]; “transcriação” [transcreation]; “reimaginação” [reimagi-
nation], with Chinese poetry; “transtextualização” [transtextualization]; “transparadisação
(ou transluminação)” [transparadization (or translumination)], for the six cantos of Dante’s
Paradise; “transluciferação” [transluciferation], for Goethe’s Faust—where the importance of
friction with the various bodies of work in the successive renamings of the task of the trans-
lator are apparent. That process also involved a shift from an “isomorphic” understanding of
translation, defended in 1962, to a “paramorphic” theory beginning in 1967. Haroldo himself
referred to those concepts:

Essa cadeia de neologismos exprimia, desde logo, uma insatisfação com a ideia ‘nat-
uralizada’ de tradução, ligada aos pressupostos ideológicos de restituição da verdade
(fidelidade) e literalidade (subserviência da tradução a um presumido “significado tran-
scendental” do original)—ideia que subjaz a definições usuais, mais ‘neutras’ (tradução
‘literal’), ou mais pejorativas (tradução ‘servil’), da operação tradutora.
(1985: 79)

[Naturally, this series of neologisms expressed a dissatisfaction with the ‘naturalized’ idea
of translation, tied to the ideological presuppositions of recovering truth (fidelity) and
literalness (subordination of the translation to an alleged “transcendental meaning” of
the original)—an idea that lies beneath the common, more ‘neutral’ definitions (‘literal’
translation), or the more pejorative (‘servile’ translation), of the translation operation].

As Haroldo wrote, “o que se entende, geralmente, por tradução é uma atividade neutral-
izadora: trata-se de rasurar a forma significante—suprimir o corpo—para dela extrair um pre-
suntivo ‘conteúdo’, uma assim desincorporada ou desencorpada ‘mensagem referencial’”
[what is generally understood by translation is that it is a neutralizing activity: it is about
crossing out the signifier—suppressing the body—to extract supposed ‘content’ from it, thus
an unembodied and disembodied ‘referential message’] (De Campos 1988: 104).
The first, opening gesture was to problematize that natural or naturalized idea of trans-
lation: to shift from translation as a servile copy of an original (denied in the impossibility

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of translation) to the possibility of a new creation (signaled by the prefix “re” in “recreação”
[recreation] and “reimaginação” [reimagination]), a translation theory complemented by a
theory of reading as rewriting. Thus, the ways to conceive of reading, translation, and the
uses of the library are intimately connected. In the three cases, the supposed “original” (the
work read, translated, or deposited in the library, understood through the lens of their unity
and isolation) loses its uniqueness and referential value in order to transform itself based on
its use. In fact, in 1980, Haroldo would begin to conceive of the theory of translation as “o
capítulo por excelência de toda possível teoria literária (e literatura comparada nela fundada)”
[the chapter par excellence of any possible literary theory (and comparative literature based
on it)] (De Campos 1981: 76).
Theoretically, it would be a matter of shifting from a mimetic operation that transposes
the formal structures of the original (“isomorfismo” [isomorphism]) to a differential oper-
ation that would produce a new mimesis, thanks to difference (“paramorfismo” [paramor-
phism]), thus the original would be modified by the translation. In that sense, the books in
Haroldo’s library would therefore be modified through reading. As Haroldo writes in “Da
razão antropofágica: diálogo e diferença na cultura brasileira” [On anthropophagic reason:
dialogue and difference in Brazilian culture] (1980),

[a] um certo momento, com Borges pelo menos, o europeu descobriu que não podia
escrever a sua prosa do mundo sem o contributo cada vez mais avassalador da dif-
erença aportada pelos vorazes bárbaros alexandrinos. Os livros que lia já não podiam
ser os mesmos, depois de manducados e digeridos pelo cego homeríada de Bue-
nos Aires, que ousara até mesmo reescrever o Quijote, sob o pseudônimo de Pierre
Menard…
(1980: 253–254)

[[at] a certain point, at least with Borges, the European discovered that they could not
write their worldly prose without the increasingly overwhelming contribution of differ-
ence provided by the voracious Alexandrian barbarians. The books that they would read
could no longer be the same, after being gobbled and digested by the blind Homerian
of Buenos Aires, who even dared to rewrite el Quijote, under the pseudonym of Pierre
Menard…].

Likewise, it would be a matter of shifting from a literary theory founded on a metaphysics

of the presence of a theory both textual (“transtextualilização” [transtextualization]) and
cultural (“transculturação” [transculturation]) in which the very idea of passage (“trans”)
and the crisis of siloed identities would be at stake in affirming a theory of difference. And
this would bring about a clear awareness of the value of the body of work. As has already
been seen, contact with Chinese poetry would give way to “reimaginação” [reimagination];
Dantes’s Paradise, to “transparadisação” [transparadization]; and Goethe’s Faust, to mephis-
tofaustian “transluciferação” [transluciferation]. Or, said differently: there is no possibility
of establishing a poetic or translation theory without bearing in mind the specificity of the
corpora with which one works. Goethe is not translated the same way as the Bible. Each
work stirs up issues and opens possibilities for different strategies. For that reason, the value
of the corpus thus refers to the value of the library: any library would already be criticism,
given that it presents itself as a selection of culture. And any translation would imply a critical
decision tied, from the start, to a choice.

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Max Hidalgo Nácher

Translation as a Parodic Space

That gesture is evident in Haroldo’s translation proposal for the following Chinese poem (De
Campos 2000: 69–72):

For reasons previously discussed, Haroldo dismisses the referential translation (which in
English would be something like “Sun rises (in the) East”). As Haroldo points out, that
translation would not acknowledge the textual work in the code that the poem carries out
through the triple repetition of the solar ideogram, which repeats in the three characters that
make up the poem. Now, instead of proposing a new translation, and precisely to highlight
that visual character of the Chinese poetry, Haroldo proposes a multiplicity of possible trans-
lations that connect it with texts that already exist in the literary tradition. Thus, the poem
could be translated as the following phrase from Sousândrade’s Guesa: “O Sol ao pôr-do-sol
(triste soslaio!)” [the Sun in the sun-set (unhappy sideslung!)], which, in addition to making
the sequence sol [sun] repeat three times and containing other phonic plays studied by the
author, in Portuguese has eight occurrences of o which, visually, fulfills the function of the
solar icon. Haroldo would go on to offer another possible translation using these verses from
Oswald de Andrade: “América do Sul /América do Sol /América do Sal” [South America /
Sun America /Salt America]. And why not, using Dante’s Paradise, translate that same poem
as “e fissi li occhi al sole oltre nostr’uso” (And sunward fixed mine eyes beyond our wont, tr.
Longfellow) or even “e di subito parve giorno a giorno /essere aggiunto, come quei che puote /
avesse il ciel d’um altro sole adorno” (And suddenly it seemed that day to day/Was added, as
if He who has the power /Had with another sun the heaven adorned, tr. Longfellow)?
By arranging the previous excerpts side by side, they go about opening a space of parodic
meaning in which the texts build relationships between themselves. This makes it clear that
translation is a phenomenon of contact that, more than being an exact transfer of a text or
a communication of content, serves as a reading apparatus that brings heterology to the

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surface, “tant de langues dans toute langue” [so many languages in every language] (2015:
18). Therefore, the transcreated Chinese poem allows readers to see with new eyes the ex-
cerpts from Sousândrade, Oswald de Andrade, and Dante proposed by its side, thus insisting
on the synchronous dimension of literature and the transformative potential of reading and
translation.

Conclusion
Haroldo de Campos’s literary project thus appears as a proposal to devour the universal
legacy that would at the same time bring Brazilian difference to the surface. It is not simply
about passively importing poetry from other languages, but rather transforming it in the very
gesture of translation, which sets in motion the most advanced of the repertoire in available
poetic techniques. Doing so transforms the Western poetic legacy while incorporating it into
Brazilian poetry. Thus, translation presents itself as an anthropophagic act of appropriation in
which the body of the other proceeds to be metabolized by the translator, who in this way in-
troduces into their own blood something of a strange, foreign blood. And this ritual—which
would not have been possible without correspondence and voyages—takes place at the desk.
A desk where the library volumes are available, side by side, building changing constellations
driven by the power of reading. And translation, transcreation. For that reason, perhaps it
will no longer be possible to approach reading the same books in the same way after having
undergone this transformative experience of moving through that excessive space, which is
the Alexandrian Library of the Barbarian Haroldo de Campos.
Translated from Spanish by Michelle Mirabella

Note
1 Thank you Odile Cisneros for sending the excerpts of Galáxias in English, forthcoming with Ugly
Duckling Press in September 2022, to be published here.

Works Cited
Blesa, Túa. “Traducción es traducciones.” Puentes de crítica literaria y cultural, no. 5, 2016, pp. 16–21,
http://www.puentesdecritica.es/uploads/1/2/2/8/122805272/puentes5.pdf 2016.
De Campos, Haroldo. “Maiakóvski em português: roteiro de uma tradução.” Revista do libro, no. 23–
24, 1961, pp. 23–50.
———. “A palavra vermelha de Holderlin.” A arte no horizonte do provável. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1967,
pp. 93–108.
———. “O poeta da linguística.” Lingüística. Poética. Cinema. Roman Jakobson no Brasil, edited by Ro-
man Jakobson. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1970, pp. 183–194.
———. “Superación de los lenguajes exclusivos.” América Latina en su literatura, edited by César Fernán-
dez Moreno. Paris: Siglo XXI, 1972, pp. 279–300.
———. Letter from Haroldo de Campos to Leyla Perrone. 30 June 1974.
———. Correspondence. Cambridge: Archivo Roman Jakobson, Institute Archives MIT, 1977, B48
F10.
———. “Da razão antropofágica: dialogo e diferença na cultura brasileira.” Metalinguagem & outras
metas. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1980, pp. 231–255.
———. Deus e o diabo no Fausto de Goethe. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1981.
———. “Da transcriação. Poética e semiótica da operação tradutora.” Haroldo de Campos. Transcriação,
edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médici Nóbrega. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1985, pp. 77–104.
———. “A esquina da esquina.” Haroldo de Campos. Transcriação, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma
Médici Nóbrega. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1988, pp. 105–107.

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———. “Poesia e modernidade: da morte do verso à constelação. O poema pós-utópico.” O arco-íris

branco. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1997, pp. 243–269.
———. “Meninos eu vi.” Crisantempo no espaço curvo nasce um. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1998.
———. “Ode (explícita) em defesa da poesia no dia de sao lukács.” Galaxia concreta, edited by Gonzalo
Aguilar. México D.F.: Universidad Iberoamericana/Artes de México, 1999, pp. 42–51.
———. Ideograma. Lógica poesia linguagem. São Paulo: EdUSP, 2000.
———. “o.p. octogenário.” Crisantiempo (en el espacio curvo nace un). Translated by Andrés Sánchez
Robayna, bilingual ed. Barcelona: Acantilado, 2006, pp. 130–132.
———. “Da tradução como criação e como crítica.” Haroldo de Campos. Transcriação, edited by Marcelo
Tápia and Thelma Médici Nóbrega. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2013a, pp. 1–18.
———. “Ruptura dos gêneros na literatura latino-americana.” A reoperação do texto. São Paulo: Per-
spectiva, 2013b, pp. 161–198.
———. “Tradução da parte inicial de ‘A tarefa do tradutor’, de Walter Benjamin.” Haroldo de Campos.
Transcriação, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médici Nóbrega. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2013c,
pp. 211–213.
———. Galaxias. Translated by Odile Cisneros and contributions by Suzanne Jill Levine, Charles
Perrone, and Christopher Middleton. New York: Ugly Duckling Press, 2022.
De Mello, Simone Homem. “Similitude alheia: a poesia alemã como fio condutor da teoria
poético-tradutória de Haroldo de Campos.” Roteiros de palavras, sons, imagens. Os diálogos transcriativos
de Haroldo de Campos, edited by Jasmin Wrobel. Frankfurt: TFM, 2018, pp. 115–132.
Derrida, Jacques. “Chaque fois, c’est-a-dire, et pourtant, Haroldo…” Cisma, vol. 4, 2015, pp. 16–18,
A written homage to Haroldo.
Hidalgo Nácher, Max. “O dispositivo de leitura de Haroldo de Campos e os usos da biblioteca.” 452ºF,
vol. 18, 2018, pp. 216–231.
———. “Modelos y problemas en el estudio de la circulación de la teoría literaria (I): Candido (1959),
Haroldo de Campos (1989) y el secuestro del Barroco.” Landa, vol. 7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 219–222.
———. “Redes intelectuais e constelações textuais: a biblioteca de Haroldo de Campos como espaço
de crítica e de criação.” Circuladô, vol. 9, 2019, pp. 36–53.
Jakobson, Roman. “Aspects linguistiques de la traduction.” Essais de linguistique générale. Paris: Minuit,
[1959] 1964.
———. Roman Jakobson: A Bibliography of His Writings. The Hague: Mouton, 1971. Acervo Haroldo de
Campo, archive 8366.
———.“Poésie de la grammaire et grammaire de la poésie.” Questions de poétique. Paris: Seuil, [1960]
1973, pp. 2019–233.
Meschonnic, Henri. Poétique du traduire. Paris: Verdier, 1999.
Ríos, Julián. Electronic personal communication of Julián Ríos. 29 June 2018.
Seligmann-Silva, Márcio. “Poema pós-histórico: poesia como exercício de tradução e encontro entre
línguas e linguagens. O caso das Galáxias de Haroldo de Campos.” Roteiros de palavras, sons, ima-
gens—Os diálogos transcriativos de Haroldo de Campos, edited by Jasmin Wrobel, Frankfurt: Instituto
Ibero-Americano (Biblioteca Luso-Brasileira), 2018, pp. 95–114.
Walkowitz, Rebecca. Born Translated. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Wolff, Jorge. Telquelismos latino-americanos: a teoria crítica francesa no entre-lugar dos trópicos. Rio de Janeiro:
Papéis Selvagens, 2016.

Further Readings
Aguilar, Gonzalo. Poesía concreta brasileña: las vanguardias en la encrucijada modernista. Rosario: Beatriz
Viterbo, 2003.
Detailed and critical study of the Brazilian concrete poetry movement led by Haroldo de Campos, Augusto
de Campos, and Décio Pignatari beginning in the mid-1950s. This essay revisits the history, the phases, and
the strategies of the concrete movement, which include rereading and translating a certain paideuma.
Hidalgo Nácher, Max. “La traducción como dispositivo general de la cultura: galaxias y corresponden-
cias desde la biblioteca de Haroldo de Campos y el archivo de Roman Jakobson (1966–1981).” Meta,
vol. 66, no. 1, April 2021, pp. 154–177. https://doi.org/10.7202/1079325ar.
A reconstruction of some aspects of Haroldo de Campos’s theory and practice of translation using as a launch
point his library, relationship with Roman Jakobson, and the documents contained in Jakobson’s archives. The

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article emphasizes the importance of translation theory and practice, for Haroldo de Campos, concerning the
creation of a literary theory and a cultural theory.
Jackson, Kenneth David, editor. Haroldo de Campos: A Dialogue with the Brazilian Concrete Poet. Oxford:
Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford, 2005.
A pluralistic presentation of Haroldo de Campos stemming from a compilation of writings by K. David
Jackson, Gonzalo Aguilar, Leyla Perrone-Moisés, Nelson Ascher, Horácio Costa, Craig Dworkin, João Alex-
andre Barbosa, Wladimir Krysinski, Inês Oseki-Dépré, Luiz Costa Lima, Marjorie Perloff, Willard Bohn,
Elizabeth Walther-Bense, Piero Boitani, Andrés Sánchez Robayna, Umberto Eco, Jorge Schwartz, Gonzalo
Aguilar, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and Lello Voce, as well as some texts from Haroldo de Campos himself.
Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médici Nóbrega, editors. Haroldo de Campos. Transcriação. São Paulo: Per-
spectiva, 2013.
A compilation of Haroldo de Campos’s principle articles on translation and transcreation.

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