Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

The crazed seizures that make you immortal.
Candomblé Priest
João, my son, Ifá, the god of divination, tells
me that no suffering in this life is for naught.
No tear is lost. Human life, João, is barely a
preparation for the true life. There is no tear
that God does not perceive, João. Who has
never cried a secret tear? God awaits each one
for eternity. And so, João, you will reap the
richness and greatness of your poems made
from pain and sorrow. Let the African gods,
João, give you the strength to face the hardships
you meet on the road of your life. Let
the benevolent forces bless you, my son. And
let Olorum bring you peace and tranquility on
your journeys. Axé.
[Cruz e Sousa
Tu és o louco da imortal loucura,/O louco da
loucura mais suprema./A Terra é sempre a tua
negra algema,/Prende-te nela a extrema
Desventura./Tu és o Poeta, o grande
Assinalado/Que povoas o mundo despovoado,/De
belezas eternas, pouco a pouco./Na
Natureza prodigiosa e rica/Toda a audácia dos
nervos justifica/Os teus espasmos imortais de
louco!
Babalorixá
João, meu filho, o babalaô falou através de
Ifá (adivinho), que nenhum sofrimento nesta
vida é vão. Nenhuma lágrima se perde. A
vida humana, João, é apenas uma preparação
para a verdadeira vida. Não há uma lágrima
que Deus não veja, João. Quem não chora a
sua lágrima secreta? Deus as guarda por toda
a eternidade. Assim, João, tirarás da dor e do
sofrimento a riqueza e a grandeza de teus
poemas. Que os orixás, João, te dêem forças
pelas provações e pela tua caminhada nesta
vida. Que todas as forças benéficas te
abençoem, meu filho. E que Olorum te dê
paz e tranqüilidade nos teus caminhos. Axé.]
The prerequisite, of course, for a film understood
as a kind of xirê, a celebration by means of
visitation and possession, is the padê, the invocation
of Exú, the messenger, who informs the gods that it
is Cruz e Sousa himself, not Kadu Carneiro, sitting
in a trance on celluloid ground with sacred leaves in
a terreiro (candomblé temple) that pulses with the
rhythms of the atabaques (sacred drums) and collective
singing. I came to understand Exú, in this sense,
as the orixá (god) of translators, a messenger
between the Portuguese and English languages.
Exú represents the dynamic continuum between
total incomprehension and complete revelation
(which resembles, perhaps, the two poles of translation
embodied in the aftermath of Babel at one end
of the spectrum and the Pentecostal tongues of
flame at the other). Without Exú, how can the translator
struggle with the linguistic forces of permanence
and change? How can communication exist?
How can language retain its boundary-transforming
powers? As I worked on the translation, I saw Exú at
the crossroads of meaning, opening and closing the
way. Exú, I began to realize, facilitates the common
ground of disparate languages and the connections
between humanity’s diverse speech communities. In
short, what I found in Exú was a kind of translational
axé, a vital force, a transgressive harmony linked
to the swarm of rhymes and rhythms that I needed to
discover in English in order to reveal the music of
Cruz e Sousa’s poetry in Portuguese. Ultimately, my
role as a translator was to create the visual belief
system of subtitles so that an international audience
might move beyond a simple willing suspension of
disbelief and be utterly convinced by the poetry in
Sylvio Back’s film.
In a way, I had begun translating Cruz e Sousa
in 1993-94 by living in Desterro (Florianópolis) on a
sabbatical leave from St. Lawrence University,
where I had the chance to meet Zahidé de Muzart,
one of Cruz e Sousa’s most fervent contemporary
supporters, and to teach a course on translation with
Walter Carlos Costa at the Universidade Federal de
Santa Catarina. No doubt I already had started to
assimilate the landscape of the poet, the one that
appears in the film: I remember, for example, reading
Cruz e Sousa’s last sonnets one beautiful after-
Translation Review 31