Beyond atlantic: the translation practice of Herberto Helder

• Autor(a) principal: Sedlmayer, Sabrina
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Cadernos de Tradução (Florianópolis. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/traducao/article/view/2175-7968.2014v3nespp198

Translation, in the work of writer Herberto Helder, performs a winding rewriting aimed at reenacting the voices of poets who, in different times and cultures, shared elements of a specific poetic knowledge. In the present study, I consider the hypothesis that the ways explored by the Portuguese poet to set up a dialogue with other texts are not restricted to the realm of a national memory nor to any sort of Portuguese mythic-imperialistic imaginary. As a translator, Helder keeps his attention on the Amerindian poetry – from the Aztec, Quechua, Yuma, Sioux, Omaha, Navajo, and Rocky Mountain peoples – as well as on the Eskimo, Tartar, Japanese, Indonesian, Arabic-Andalusian and Mexican Nahuatl poetic traditions. His translation practice seems to refuse the notion of literature as a discourse historically delimited in time and space, once he ignores a considerable part of European civilization modern poetry, and does not choose poets and poems for their belonging to a utopic only Portuguese language, rather preferring voices that heterodoxically mix raving and lucidity.