3.2 The method

Haroldo[1] de Campos, one of the most distinguished Brazilian poet translators, who, along with Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari, launched the Concrete Poetry Movement in Brazil in the 1950’s, states, referring to information conveyed through texts, that while “documentary and semantic information” or denotative information on things and events can be conveyed in various grammatical ways when translated.  Since the focus is on the meaning and not its forms, “aesthetic information” can only be transmitted in the form created by the artist[2]. In this manner, unlike denotative subject matter, “aesthetic information is equal to its original codification,”[3] which includes gesture, atmosphere, attunement (to bring into harmony with), and feelings related to lived contexts. Therefore, the “fragility of aesthetic information is […] highest” (CAMPOS, 1992, p.33), as it depends entirely on the particular form conceived by the artist and can not be arranged in any other way without a significant loss of beauty. As the “aesthetic information is inseparable from its realization“, it can not be disconnected from its original medium, which is, in this case, the specific language the literary work of art was written in.

The problem then appears when a translator needs to render a poetic text from one language into another. In order to be faithful to the meaning of the original, a translator must betray its original form, which is untranslatable, given the syntactical and morphological differences between languages. Thus, the more we are faithful to meaning, the less we are to form, which means that, in the case of poetry, beauty as it is produced by the form of the original will be lost in translation. This does not mean that everything will be lost, because sometimes a literal translation provides a perfect verse in the other language; but most of the time the poetic elements are not re-created. In this sense, from the point of view of literal translation, poetry is quite untranslatable, or at least its form. It occurs to us that this process is like transporting the soul of a poet to a foreign land without his body. It becomes a ghost, because we know that his spirit is there in the text, but we do not know where. So, when the reader is enjoying a great text in translation, the reader may experience the feeling that something is missing. Due to this, the translator, guided by the meaning or content of the original text, becomes a performer of tasks, for where the content points he must follow its tracks, providing means for the sense to manifest itself in another language. With regard to literal translation, this is what has to be done.

However, in this kind of work, when we take creativity into consideration, the translator’s work amounts to almost nothing. He might have an incredibly creative text on his hands, but he will be oppressed by its semantic information. In the sense that he might have something poetically beautiful, but at the same time he will have to express it in a long array of terms that will destroy the beauty as it is seen in the original language, especially when the text is in verse. Sometimes it can be metaphors that he will have to explain rather than re-create, or rhymes or rhythm. This happens even in prose. From our experience, literal translation means basically reading the original and writing down the text in the target language. Consequently, this type of translation involves little imagination and creativity. The translator does not have to create anything, for the task requires basically reading and interpreting. It is similar to translating technical texts, which involves research on specific jargon, such as Law or Medicine. Consequently, the purely literary aspect of the language does not have any effect in this part of the work. And the translator is overwhelmed by the original, for it allows him at most to be a good reader and linguistic researcher, or a scrivener, who copies a text into another language.

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3 RE-CREATING LEAVES OF GRASS INTO PORTUGUESE

3.1 Our purpose

A method is not only a means of accomplishing an end; it is the procedures and techniques that are followed in order to achieve that end. A method is also the path after having learned it, a journey. As such, it can only be described in retrospect. In this manner, we will expound here the method we have used, or the path we have taken, to translate Leaves of Grass, explaining its basic features and their origins. In addition, we will give a brief account of the career of the Leaves in Brazil up to now with examples from the existing editions. We will also provide samples from the work we have already performed, which includes a detailed description of how we achieved this re-creative translation.

2.5.6 “Language is fossil poetry”: poetic function, Emerson, Blake, mediums, Adam

In this chapter we are discussing themes in or related to Leaves of Grass. We shall address now the following subjects: the “poetic function” of the language, which is part of the “Scheme of verbal communication” (discussed in the next chapter, in section 3.2, “The method”); how this function relates to Emerson’s idea of poetry, and how his conception will lead us to another poet, William Blake, and then to religiousness and the mythical figure of Adam, as well as the connection between these topics and Whitman. The fact is that the poetic function has a preponderating position in poetry or in creative prose, such as James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, because this is the function where the language is turned upon itself, where the writer searches for the most beautiful or precise configuration possible to express an emotion or an idea. On the other hand, we can not deny the apparently opposite factor, by which we mean the appearance or existence of poetic constructions that show up in a given language, which is inherent to Emerson’s idea that “Language is fossil poetry”, or the creation of proto-poets long forgotten, as we will see in a quotation below. In both cases, modern poetry and “fossil poetry”, the poetic function is the primary linguistic factor under focus. So, this idea of poetry appearing naturally in common speech had been expressed by Whitman’s Master[1], Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American poet and essayist (1803–82), who was born in Boston and attended Harvard College and Divinity School.[2]

Before we present some of Emerson’s ideas, let us take a brief look at his life and works. Through his essays, poems, and lectures, the “Sage of Concord” (he later lived in Concord, Massachusetts) established himself as a spokesman of transcendentalism and as a major figure in American literature. Transcendentalism was a philosophical and literary movement that thrived in New England from 1836 to 1860. It originated among a group of intellectuals who developed their own faith centering on the divinity of humanity and the natural world. They were inspired by Kant and English authors such as Carlyle, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Emerson believed that the “moral law” was the “transcendental law, through which man discovers the nature of god, a living spirit.” The ideas of transcendentalism were expressed by Emerson in essays such as “Nature” (1836), “Self-Reliance,” “The Poet” and “The Over-Soul” (1841), and by Henry David Thoreau in his book Walden (1854), “the revelation of the simplicity and divine unity of nature”. The movement began with the meetings of a group of friends in Boston and Concord to discuss philosophy, literature, and religion. Thoreau, like Emerson, lived in Concord and attended Harvard College, which they paid by doing chores, given their scarce livelihood. Later, both became lecturers. Both, too, were the first persons to recognize Whitman’s poetic genius from the beginning. Thoreau is also the author of “Civil Disobedience”, “the origin of the modern concept of pacific resistance”.

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2.5.5 Calamus, Carpus, aulos or ‘reed singers’

Going a little further to explore the multiple meanings of calamus or sweet flag, the description of the plant below shows us why it was indicated by the Lord in the Bible as a spice to make the “holy oyntment”: it is a medicinal plant. The following passage gives us an extensive and accurate description of its various uses:

Sweet flag [which grows in Europe, Asia and N. America] has a very long history of medicinal use in many herbal traditions. It is widely employed in modern herbal medicine as an aromatic stimulant and mild tonic. In Ayurveda [Hindu science of health and medicine] it is highly valued as a rejuvenator for the brain and nervous system and as a remedy for digestive disorders. […] The root is anodyne, aphrodisiac, aromatic, […] expectorant, febrifuge, hallucinogenic, hypotensive, sedative, stimulant, stomachic, mildly tonic and vermifuge. It is used internally in the treatment of digestive complaints, bronchitis, sinusitis, etc. It is said to have wonderfully tonic powers of stimulating and normalizing the appetite. In small doses it reduces stomach acidity whilst larger doses increase stomach secretions and it is, therefore, recommended in the treatment of anorexia nervosa. […] Sweet flag is also used externally to treat skin eruptions, rheumatic pains and neuralgia. An infusion of the root can bring about an abortion whilst chewing the root alleviates toothache. It is a folk remedy for arthritis, cancer, convulsions, diarrhoea, dyspepsia, epilepsy etc. Chewing the root is said to kill the taste for tobacco. […] It is used in the treatment of flatulence, dyspepsia, anorexia and disorders of the gall bladder.[1]

Although the sweet flag is present in the USA and in many other countries, especially all over Europe and Asia, in Leaves of Grass it sounds completely American given the symbolism it acquires when used by Whitman to represent comradeship as the basis for democracy[2]. The wide range of products made from calamus demonstrates its high potential for symbolic use; one type of calamus, the common reed, which grows throughout the world, is shown below in its multiplicity of purposes:

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2.5.4 Calamus: the political meaning

After this discussion about water, swimmers and relationships, let us again look at the reed, which is the result of the metamorphosis of Calamus after he dies. Although Whitman does not explicitly sing the myth of Calamus and Carpus, verses such as these, from the poem “Italian Music in Dakota” (“Autumn Rivulets”), show that this natural connection is possible in his poetry:

While Nature, sovereign of this gnarl’d realm,

Lurking in hidden barbaric grim recesses,

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2.5.3 After the death of Carpus

There is a poem on this theme of nonphysical love, love beyond the flesh, or intangible love, which is really love between souls, as opposed to carnal, worldly or earthly love, which can be termed “romance” in worldly language, an attachment or involvement between people that is basically emotional and material (or concerned with the physical as distinct from the intellectual or spiritual, or immaterial, as Whitman himself liked to call it). The poem is “Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd”, from “Children of Adam”:

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,

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2.5.2 Two other elements in the myth: water and swimmers

The myth of calamus, as quoted in section 2.5.1 above, brings up other features that are present in the Leaves, besides the reed, which is really a central symbol in Leaves of Grass. They are water and swimmers. Water appears in many poems and sections of the book; however, the poet has an important relationship with the sea. The following poems address this symbolism of water: “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” and “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life”, both from the cluster “SEA-DRIFT”, which was compiled in 1881, even though these poems had been actually written in 1859.  “Out of the Cradle…” depicts the poet’s awakening as a bard, when he is wishing to receive a clue from the sea, so that he can have a confirmation of his intuition. “As I Ebb’d…”, which was originally titled “Bardic Symbols”, describes the hard times the poet is undergoing, when he speaks to his “fierce old mother”, the sea, about his not understanding any thing at all and his oppression for having dared to open his mouth. In this sense, in “Out of the Cradle…” the poet receives the answer he was asking for in “As I Ebb’d…” Speaking of these emotionally oscillating but highly creative times of Whitman’s, Canby states in his “Study in Biography” of the American bard: “So he writes a poem [“As I Ebb’d…”] made entirely out of symbols of the ebbing and flowing sea which he knew so well, and the shores on which are flotsam and jetsam […]” (1943, p.181). “Flotsam and jetsam” are objects washed ashore, wreckage or remains from ships left floating, which is similar to the “trail of drift and debris”, a metaphor that the poet uses to describe himself in “As I Ebb’d…” (WHITMAN, 1996, p.395).

As the two poems are closely related, we will add some comments on them. The following lines from the end of “Out of the Cradle…” show both the moment of awakening and the “clew”, the “word” (Death) he needed to hear from the sea to confirm his “Premonition”[1] about his own future, after he had sung about his own reminiscences as a child on that shore, where he saw a suffering he-bird that had lost his mate and was there singing sadly:

Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)

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2.5.1 The myth of calamus

There is a network of interconnections in Leaves of Grass around the word calamus, or reed. It points to several myths, meanings and details that lead us to many directions; however, they are all related in some way to this plant. It is as though the reed were a tree with various branches. We shall seek here to try and follow these branches to find the   flowers and fruits they might give us. First, it is necessary to go back in time to the account of the myth of calamus (or kalamos, in Greek), which will take us to the Greek mythological figure that bears this name:

Calamus, the son of the river-god Meander, his name means ‘reed’. He was in love with a youth named Carpus [Karpos, in Greek]. One day they were both bathing in the Meander and Calamus wanted to show his friend that he was the better swimmer, but in the competition that ensued Carpus was drowned. In his grief Calamus withered to such extent that he became a reed by the river bank. (GRIMAL, 1991, p.80)

From the start, we have an allusion both to male love and antiquity, that is, to a mythological past, the past that Whitman did not want to “repel”, as he stated in the first sentence of his Preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass. We can see in this very brief record of the myth the summary of what the poet wanted to express by the “Calamus” cluster: manly attachment, comradeship, “unphysical” or disembodied love between men, union, nationality. Certainly the title of this cluster was not chosen at random, for Whitman was an expert on inventing titles for poems and books. As indicated by the manly attachment of the myth, the “Calamus” poems are widely recognized as homage to male love, as is stated by Canby (1943, p.176) in his Walt Whitman, An American, “A Study in Biography” of the America bard:

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2.5 Addressing some themes in Leaves of Grass

This section comprises the following subdivisions: 2.5.1, on the myth of Calamus and Carpus; 2.5.2, on two other elements in the myth, water and swimmers; 2.5.3, on what happens after the death of Carpus; 2.5.4, on the political meaning of Calamus; 2.5.5, on Calamus, Carpus, aulos or ‘reed singers’; and 2.5.6, which discusses about “Language [as] fossil poetry”, the poetic function, Emerson, Blake, mediums, and Adam.

2.3 What we have done and what we intend to do

We have re-created a series of poems from Leaves of Grass into Portuguese and we are re-creating another group of poems now. Re-creating here means the artistic translation of poetry, which is different from literal translation in the sense that we want to reconstruct poetic elements, such as rhythm and sound, and their close relationship with their meaning (methodology and examples are provided for in chapter 3). After we accomplished the re-creation[1] of three books that are part of the Leaves, “Song of Myself”, “Children of Adam” and “Calamus”, in our Master’s thesis, a study completed in 1995 and available at the UFRGS library, we resumed our task of bringing Whitman’s poetry into our language. We have chosen the following books and poems to work on this time: “Inscriptions”; “Starting from Paumanok”; “Salut au Monde!”; “Song of the Open Road”; “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”; “Song of the Answerer”; “Our Old Feuillage”; “A Song of Joys”; “Song of the Broad-Axe”; “Song of the Exposition”; “Song of the Redwood-Tree”; “SEA-DRIFT” (“Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”); and “Passage to India”. We intend to include more  poems in our project, which are: “A Song for Occupations”; “A Song of the Rolling Earth”; “Youth, Day, Old Age and Night”; “Birds of Passage”; “Memories of President Lincoln”; “By Blue Ontario’s Shore”; “Proud Music of the Storm”; “Prayer of Columbus” and “The Sleepers”. In numbers, this means something around 99 pages of poetry done in our previous work and 188 pages of the projected work now, from a total of 491 pages of poetic texts. We are using Whitman poetry and prose (1996) as our source, which contains the 1991-92 authorized edition, the one recommended by the poet himself. In chapter 5 we will explain if and what we have achieved of this projected work, how we have done it and whether the result is according to what we have proposed to do.