últimas corrientes teóricas en los estudios de traducción - Gredos ...

JOANA MATOS FRIAS/PAULA RAMALHO ALMEIDA–TRANSLATING ALLEN GINSBERG
(1994: 34-35), stands as a perfect example of Ginsberg’s word wide web, which the translator
must untangle. It is, of course, highly stimulating for a Portuguese translator to be
confronted with a hommage paid to such an important Portuguese poet. Again, however,
caution is a most useful instrument: for Ginsberg’s text takes its title from one of Fernando
Pessoa’s heteronyms’ poems, which in turn is presented as a homage to Walt Whitman.
This means that the dialogue Ginsberg apparently establishes with the Portuguese writer is
mediated by the omnipresent author of Leaves of Grass, as we may conclude by reading the
verse “He entered Whitman so I enter Pessoa”. Furthermore, Ginsberg’s poem does not
reproduce the kind of evocation made by Álvaro de Campos, who addresses himself directly
to Whitman. The poetic subject of “Salutations to Fernando Pessoa”, on the contrary, speaks
of the Portuguese writer as an absent “him”, concentrating the speech in the two deictics “I”
and “he”. The intertextual act, whereby the transcendent text becomes immanent,
promotes interdiscoursive links ruled by quotation, allusion, transformation or distribution.
It implies both assimilation and metamorphosis, so that we must read the poetic discourse
at least as double (Carlos 1999: 177-226; Kristeva 1969: 146). This unfolding is obvious, for
instance, in “Malest Cornifici Tuo Catullo” (Ginsberg 1988: 123), written on reading
Catullus’ poem XXXVIII:
I’m happy, Kerouac, your madman Allen’s
finally made it: discovered a new young cat,
and my imagination of an eternal boy
walks on the streets of San Francisco,
handsome and meets me in cafeterias
and loves me. Ah don’t think I’m sickening.
You’re angry at me. For all of my lovers?
It’s hard to eat shit, without having visions;
when they have eyes for me it’s like Heaven.
Unlike Catullus’ hypotext, centered on suffering, this poem speaks of pure bliss. In
this particular case, hypertextuality is clearly a means not of harmony but of counterpoint.
Yet, the counterpoint remains within the bounds of the content-substance, based on contrary
emotions, whilst its form replicates Catullus’ structure. Therefore, the title-quotation
functions as a paratextual index of hipertextual links (Almeida 1999: 115-116). Here, as in
every Ginsberg poem, the translator must always travel between the lines.
Since translation is integrated in a historically determined process of reception, the
target-text, although directed towards the source-text, is also ruled by the reader’s historical,
ideological and literary predisposition. One major problem of translating Allen Ginsberg’s
poetry, more bound to one specific time, has to do with the expectations of readers for
poetry in Portuguese. As Reuben Brower has indicated referring to English poetry, the
average reader of a translation in Portuguese wants to find the kind of experience which
has become identified with “poetry” in his readings of Portuguese literature (Holmes 1988:
14). Now, 20 th century Portuguese poetry knows nothing similar, either aesthetically or
ethically, to the American Beat Generation Allen Ginsberg represents. This means, first of
all, that Ginsberg’s poetry confronts the Portuguese reader’s horizon of expectations, to
use Hans Robert Jauss’ phrase.
During the 50’s, the most important decade of beat production, Portuguese
literature and poetry are dominated by the aesthetic solipsism of late surrealism, and by a
rather metaphorical poetic discourse, anchored in an intimate, individualistic and mainly
lyrical expression. The following decade brings with it the prevalence of concrete poetry,
fundamentally anti-discoursive. It is not until the 70’s that Portuguese poetry follows the
example of earlier poets such as Álvaro de Campos, Jorge de Sena or Ruy Belo, turning to a
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