2015 Pessoa Award: Rui Chafes

(@Gonçalo Rosa da Silva in Expresso 11/12/2015)

Today I was taken by surprised. Rui Chafes, my favourite sculptor won the 2015 Pessoa Prize, the most important artistic award in Portugal.

This quote epitomizes what Chafes means to me:

"Sou um mero artesão dessas vozes superiores que me dizem para fazer formas que não entendo"

In Expresso Newspaper, 12/12/2015.

(I am a mere craftsman of those higher voices telling me to make shapes that I do not understand)

“Was Soll ich tun wenn du nicht da bist? Rui Chafes, 2004, Iron, Germany, Museum Folkwang Essen)

His interest in German culture, pervades not only on his visual work but also other areas as well. His translation, for example, of the "Fragments of Novalis" is still one of my most precious discoveries translation-from-the-German-wise. Just one of the fragments:

Welten bauen genügt nicht dem tiefer langenden Sinne.

Aber ein liebendes Herz sättigt den strebenden Geist.

(Construir mundos não basta ao espírito que vai ao fundo das coisas.

Mas um coração enamorado sacia o espírito nostálgico, translation in “Fragmentos de Novalis” by Rui Chafes)

For the benefit of my English-speaking friends, here goes my paraphrased translation:

"Building worlds does not satisfy the spirit that looks for the deeper meaning in things.

But a loving heart quenches the nostalgic spirit."

His work, i.e., translations from and into German and the work with iron, lead me into a nostalgic, romantic, lyrical and sublime universe. This universe, which is of German romanticism is embedded in a classical culture. Chafes’ work fights against our own lack of spirituality in the world we experience in our everyday lives. I ask for nothing more.

Red Poetry: "Praça da Canção" by Manuel Alegre, José Rodrigues (drawings), Paula Morão (introduction)

Published 2007.

Trova do vento que passa

Pergunto ao vento que passa

Notícias do meu país

E o vento cala e desgraça

O vento nada me diz.

Pergunto aos rios que levam

Tanto sonho à flor das águas

E os rios não me sossegam

Levam sonhos deixam mágoas.

Levam sonhos deixam mágoas

Ai rios do meu país.

Minha pátria à flor das águas

Para onde vais? Ninguém diz.

Se o verde trevo desfolhas

Pede notícias e diz

Ao trevo de quatro folhas

Que morro por meu país.

Pergunto à gente que passa

Por que vai de olhos no chão.

Silêncio – é tudo o que tem

Quem vive na servidão.

Vi florir os verdes ramos

Direitos e ao céu voltados.

E a quem gosta de ter amos

Vi sempre os ombros curvados.

My attempt at translating the first 6 stanzas into German:

Kleines Lied vom vorüberwehenden Wind

Ich bitte den vorüberwehenden Wind

Um Nachricht vom meinem Land.

Der Wind verschweigt das Unglück,

Der Wind verrät mir nichts.

Ich frage die Flüsse, auf denen

So viele Träume treiben.

Die Flüsse beruhigen mich nicht,

Sie nehmen meine Träume, lassen mir den Schmerz.

Sie nehmen meine Träume, lassen mir den Schmerz,

Ihr Flüsse meines Landes,

Ach, mein Heimatland am Saum des Wassers.

Wohin du treibst, das sagt mir keiner.

Wenn du den grünen Klee entblätterst,

So bitte ihn um Nachricht.

Dem vierblättrigen Klee gibt zu verstehen,

Ich sterbe für mein Land.

Ich frage die, die mir begegnen,

Warum sie ihre Augen senken.

Sie schweigen, das ist alles, was dem bleibst,

Der in der Knechschaft lebt.

Ich sah die grünen Zweige blühen

Dem hImmel zugewandt und ganz gerade.

Jedoch, wer Herren über sich erträgt

Den sah ich immer mit gebeugten Schultern.

Translation has always been a passion.

As I was translating this poem from Portuguese into German, Novalis came to mind. For him there are three types of translation: grammatical, mythical, and modifier. The grammatical translations would be the translations in the usual sense. They have pots of erudition, but only discursive capacities are at stake. Mythical translations are the ones requiring a style at its most elevated level, and they present us with the most perfect character of the work at hand. They don’t give us the perfect work of art, but rather its ideal. On the other hand, with the modifying translations we have, when authentic, the supreme depiction of the poetical spirit. In fact, the translator using this type of translation must be a poet as well, in order to be able to give us the idea of the whole in several forms, i.e., the poet-translator must be the Poet of the Poet, and simultaneously be able to let the alter-ego speak according to his or her own idea, as well as portraying the idea of the poet in translation.

I’ve never been either a Poet or a translator. That pretension is not mine. This was a translation by an Engineer, not by a writer. For me translation is something I do to be able to get closer to the Thing I’m reading. It’s one of the techniques I use when I’m close-reading something. The higher the degree of inter-penetration between me and the work of the author, the more I’m able to write about it. That’s the reason a lot of my book reviewing is interspersed with translations.

In this aspect I feel closer to German than English. I see my time rendering one language into another as hours out of the world, alone with fascination with language, with the German language, and the author at hand. With English I’m not able to do that. I’ve always thought German is the ideal language to express thought. My paradigm is the beauty of the diction by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, or Andreas Scholl. Of course when one goes to the German of Austria, what I hear around me not always matches the paradigm of absolute perfection...

NB: "Praça da Canção" = Song Square.