o conto insolúvel de Herberto Helder - Universidade do Minho

Herberto Helder:
uma ideia de poesia omnívora 1
abstract
HeLeNA CARVALHÃO BUeSCU
(Universidade de Lisboa)
The “versions” or “poems changed into Portuguese” by Herberto Helder,
which have been a constant poetic activity by Herberto Helder, include a number of
volumes that he assumes alongside with his own. From o bebedor nocturno (1966)
and As magias (1987) to the three volumes published in 1997 (ouolof, Poemas
Ameríndios, and doze nós numa corda), Herberto Helder insists on the fact that
poetry is “changeable”, and that it only becomes possible when an omnivorous
(or “anthropophagic”) gesture is assumed towards potentially every poetic text
that has been written. His choice of the extraordinary variety of texts, discourses,
poems, prayers, from which to draw for his “changed poems” range for instance
from Ancient egypt, eskimo and Tartar poems, Arab ones, materials from Central
Asia or Africa, Australia or Colombia, to the Old Testament, Ancient Greece, or
the Aztec and Maya cultures, alongside with some Western sources such as Blaise
Cendrars, Henri Michaux, Artaud, or Stephen Crane. Poetry is not conceivable
without this mixture, or even fusion, of a plurality of traditions that the poet must
incorporate to his or her own voice. An analogy is proposed between these volumes
of changed poems and his “ferociously partial” anthology of 1985 edoi lelia doura.
Antologia das Vozes comunicantes da Poesia moderna, seeing this anthology as a
crucial link between Herberto’s work as a writer and his activity of amplifying (and
making also his own) whatever text he deems as poetry.
1 este texto aproveita material por mim pesquisado para um texto depois escrito
a quatro mãos com João Ferreira Duarte, publicado em 2007. «Communicating voices:
Herberto Helder’s experiments in cross-cultural poetry», forum for modern language
studies, 43(2), pp. 173-186. A perspectiva ali adoptada é sobretudo a relativa aos
estudos de Tradução e à forma como o problema colocado pode iluminar alguns lugares
teóricos derivados do pensamento sobre o que é ou pode ser traduzir. A perspectiva é
aqui diferente, embora parta de um conjunto de reflexões comuns.
DIACRÍTICA, ciênciAs dA literAturA, n.º 23/3 (2009), 49-63