Revista de Letras - Utad

250 Karen C. Sherwood Sotelino
Gomes also points to the functioning of the fruit as an erotic object, working
both semantically and phonetically (Gomes 2005: 180-185). Analyzing this
small poem in translation reveals that there is not a lot of play, there is not a lot
of leeway in the rendering. The lexical items match each other almost word per
word semantically, 5 except for the addition, in English, of the plural possessive
“their” in the last line. Could it be that Albano Martins, poet/translator indeed
approaches the essence of language?
Two of the poets whom Albano Martins has said influenced his work are
Mallarmé – who translated Edgar Allen Poe – and one of Fernando Pessoa’s
heteronyms, Álvaro de Campos. 6 Fernando Pessoa had intimate knowledge of
English so, like Albano Martins, he had the advantage Bakhtin described as
essential to gaining awareness of one’s native language – that is, to know a
foreign language intimately. 7 Mallarmé described his own poetry as drawing
from the soul of man states, glowing lights, of such absolute purity that, well
sung and well lighted, they become the jewels of man. 8 Álvaro de Campos is the
most emotive among Pessoa’s poets. In his “Tabacaria” he claims to not even
exist beyond his dreams.
Tabacaria
Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
I'm nothing.
I'll always be nothing.
I can't want to be anything.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
– Álvaro de Campos
5 Line 1 - subject, verb, prepositional phase as adverb; Line 2 – Portuguese verb, direct
object, prepositional phrase as adverb; English empty subject, verb, subject,
prepositional phrase as adverb; Line 3 Portuguese Noun, adjective, prepositional phrase;
English Subject noun phrase (omitted verb), adjective, prepositional phrase.
6 Álvaro Campos, an engineer, represents in the spirit of Walt Whitman the ecstasy of
experience; he writes in free verse. Ricardo Reis is an epicurean doctor with a classical
education; he writes in meters and stanzas that recall Horace. Alberto Caeiro, a shepherd,
is against all sentimentality, and writes in colloquial free verse. http://www.kirjasto.
sci.fi/pessoa.htm.
7 “Languages throw light on each other: one language can, after all, see itself only in the
light of another language.” (Bakhtin 1981: 12) “After all, it is possible to objectivize
one’s own particular language, its internal form, the peculiarities of its world view, its
specific linguistic habitus, only in light of another language belonging to someone else,
which is almost as much ‘one’s own’ as one’s native language” (Bakhtin 1981: 62).
8 Jules Huret: Enquete sur l'évolution littéraire (Paris: Fasquelle, 1913), 55-65. The
interviews first appeared in L'Echo de Paris, March 3-July 5, 1891.