The Literatures of the World in Herberto Helder

December 9, 2024

đŸ‘€Author

Name: Sergio Das NEVES
Affiliation: Institute for the Study of Traditional Literature (IELT), School of Social and Human Sciences of the NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal
Contact: sergioneves@campus.ul.pt

📄Article

Citation Recommendation: Das Neves, SĂ©rgio. ‟The Literatures of the World in Herberto Helder”. Synthesis, 3 / 2024: 68-80.
Pages: 68-80
Language: English
URL:https://synthesis.ro/pdf/2024/3/4_das_Neves.pdf

Abstract

The essay reflects on the translations crafted by the Portuguese poet Herberto Helder, exploring potential relations and reconfigurations of the Goethean concept of Weltliteratur. The study will primarily focus on the preface of the book O bebedor nocturno, the poet’s first book devoted to translating texts from various times, spaces, and cultures into Portuguese. The poet, unfamiliar with the original languages of these texts, modifies his mother tongue in order to translate the essence of the poem, in a gesture of love towards it. By examining his creation of a poetic language through translation and his somewhat unsystematized idea of translation, we aim to contrast the image of the polyglot translator with that of the poet translator, akin to a circus acrobat. In this way, we advance that Helder’s approach to altering poems enhances the Goethean concept, extracting vitality from the ancestral literatures of the world. Thus, he reveals the unity of everything, erasing space-time and linguistic boundaries, and dissolves the limits between world, being, and language.

Key-words: Weltliteratur; translation studies; metamorphosis; contemporary Portuguese poetry; Herberto Helder

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