3.2 The method
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.
3 RE-CREATING LEAVES OF GRASS INTO PORTUGUESE
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
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]
2.5.5 Calamus, Carpus, aulos or ‘reed singers’
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:
2.5.4 Calamus: the political meaning
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:
2.5.3 After the death of Carpus
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”:
2.5.2 Two other elements in the myth: water and swimmers
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).
2.5.1 The myth of calamus
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:
