Published 2014.
Disclaimer:
As I’ve stated elsewhere,
classics-wise, my literary heroes have always been Camoens, Pessoa,
Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, Celan, Hölderlin, Rilke,
way too many to enumerate here. Read the following review/essay at your own
peril.
This is
one of the most beautifully designed book I've ever had the pleasure of holding
in my hands. For the visual learners, creative thinkers, and arty types among
you, who need a kick in the pants to get motivated and express themselves to
the fullest, this book is for you. Unfortunately only available in Portuguese.
It's
because of books like these that books in print will never die. I'm all for
visceral takes on things, and holding a book in my hands is one of those
things. I've always said there's something wonderfully weird about holding a
book in one's hands (and smelling it: the scent of physical books, the
paper, the ink, the glue...Book sniffing is still a major kick for me. I just
love to crack open a book and catch a whiff of the pages.)
I don't
know. There's something about books stacked everywhere that gets to me every
time. Going to a bookshop I immediately feel a sense of nostalgia. It's good
for the soul... This visceral act of physically turning a page that, for me at
least, can't be matched with pixels on a screen. For me the need to possess the
physical copy of a book like this one, and not merely an electronic version of
it, is something akin to a sacred object (maybe I'll do a post about it one of
these days if I'm in the mood...)
I don’t
know again. Maybe my favourite books define me in some unfathomable way, and
e-Books don't seem to convey connections that are quite as meaningful
synapses-wise.
Once
again VGM (Vasco Graça Moura) shows his erudition. What were Camoens first
portraits? How did they get to us? How authentic are they? VGM wrote this
little monography in order to help in discovering Camoens' vera effigies.
Camoens could have said of
Shakespeare (and vice-versa):
. .. and glad to
find a kindred mind
who with my spells I might entwine,
no earthbound soul who's words extol
the beauty of my off'ring.
What we
think is in fact an illusion. That's what Camoens, and Shakespeare embody as
far as I'm concerned.
Being
Portuguese, I’ve always been intrigued by the similitude between Shakespeare
and Camoens. What's with Camoens and Shakespeare? Camoens' lyrical poetry has
also a double fascination for me. First, before Shakespeare he was writing
lines like "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun",
thus also creating poems of wonderfully lucid wit and beauty like Shakespeare.
Second, the lyrics show us his progress towards being the poet who would write
"The Lusiads" later on.
Thinking
about Shakespeare and Camoens always leads me down the path of the limits of
translatability. Translating Shakespeare's metaphors is a very difficult
subject. I'm also working on translating Shakespeare into Portuguese, and
Camoens into German, and I'm tackling problems left and right. For starters, I
think that primary conceptual/original metaphors tend to remain intact across
translations whereas complex conceptual metaphors tend to be replaced by
different complex metaphors specific to the era and cultural background of the
respective translators (in my case Portuguese).
I
believe that metaphor is translatable. In my view, translating Shakespeare's
and Camoens’ original metaphors poses three types of problems: wrong choice of
diction, mistranslation, and deletion. On the other hand, translating
Shakespeare's and Camoens’ cultural metaphors poses cultural problems resulting
from the use of references to a tale that the target audience may not be
familiar with. When all these hurdles I chose the cognitive approach
translation-wise, because it is modern, actual and more complex than the
others. Modern cognitive linguistics regards metaphor as a basic mental
operations as a way of knowledge, structure and explanation of the world. Man
does not only express his thoughts through metaphors, but also thinks in
metaphors, thus creating a world in which he lives. Cognitive approach is the
most promising direction, because the study of knowledge transfer mechanism is
the main problem in the methodology of acquiring knowledge. Having read a ton
of literature concerning this question my ultimate goal is to create my own
algorithm of translating conceptual metaphors. With the help of this method and
some handcraft algorithms developed in Python I improved the translation of
Shakespeare's and Camoens’ metaphors and thus the understanding of their
respective works. Maybe one day I’ll post a technical something regarding
this fascinating topic.
Camoens,
for me, has always been a vehicle instead of a destination. It’s a vehicle that
allows me to understand all the complex texts that I may have to encounter in
my world in the future. But the basic movement through a text, a movement
through a complex text, a language that is 400 years removed from our own; if I
can do that, I can read law books, I can read medical journals, I can interact
with my child’s pediatrician, I can do any number of things, and that, to me,
is what Camoens is really for. Becoming reacquainted with him through Vasco
Graça Moura’s latest book is always a bonus in itself (he wasn’t among us long
enough to see it in print).
What
VGM attempts here is an historical study of Camoens’ portraits, identifying the
ones which may have been made during Camoens’ lifetime, and the ones derived
from the mental image we have of him. As with Shakespeare, we don’t a definite
portrait of Camoens:
To my German-speaking friends I cannot resist
showing an exercise in translation I did a long time ago when I dared translate it into
German. I only chose his most famous stanzas (foolish of me…):
“Amor é um fogo que arde sem se
ver,
É ferida que dói, e não se sente,
É um contentamento descontente,
É dor que desatina sem doer.
É um não querer mais que bem
querer,
É um andar solitário entre a
gente,
É um nunca contentar-se de
contente,
É um cuidar que ganha em se
perder."
(Liebe ist eine Feuersbrunst, die man nicht
sieht,
Ist eine tief Wunde, die man doch nicht fühlt,
Ist unbefriedigtes Zufriedensein,
Ist ein verrücketer Schmerz, der doch nicht
qäult,
Liebe heißt nichts zu wünschen als zu lieben,
Heißt unter allen Menschen einsam sein,
Heißt nie sich zu begnügen, zu bescheiden,
Heißt glauben, man gewinnt trozt allen Plagen.)
Richard Zenith also did a wonderful translation
into English which I’ll reproduce here for the benefit of my English-speaking
audience (taken from my copy of “The World’s Favourite Love Poems”
edited by Suheil Bushrui):
Love is a fire that burns unseen,
A wound that aches yet isn't felt,
An always discontent contentment,
A pain that rages without hurting,
A longing for nothing but to long,
A loneliness in the midst of people,
A never feeling pleased when pleased,
A passion that gains when lost in thought.
NB: “Retratos
de Camões” in addition to VGM’s text, is also comprised of contemporary
portraits of Camoens by some of the most internationally renowned visual and
plastic artists: Júlio Pomar, José de Guimarães, João Cutileiro, and José
Aurélio.
NB2: Luís Vaz de Camões (1524 –
1580)
