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FIRST of all, I’d like to thank Macau Ricci Institute for granting me such an opportunity to share with you my translation experience. It has been about 20 years since I first became engaged in translation. During this period, I have translated works of different literary forms, including novels, essays and also general official documents. But it is translation of poetry that has brought me real happiness. Translation of poetry is translation of joy, and translation of your favourite poets is, all the more, of exceeding joy. Translation of works by Eugénio de Andrade, a contemporary Portuguese poet, has indeed brought me such happiness, a happiness that is everlasting and, in my mediocre life, some of his lines often sparkle in front of my very eyes.
Poems by Eugénio de Andrade are a kind of extremely pure lyrics, with Iberian Peninsual characterisitcs: sensible, passionate, limpid, and lucid, fully laden with such words and expressions as ocean, soil, sunshine, rock, wind, bird, trees, lime wall, etc., and at the same time, permeated with Portugese stylish sentimentality. His poem can easily call to mind the Spanish poet Lorca. In fact, Lorca is one of his most favoured poets and the other is Camilo Pessanha, a Porgugese symbolist poet. His poetry anthology entitled “Clepsidra” was written in Macau. For Chinese readers, Andrade’s poems are strange and yet so close to us at the same time. Perhaps, it is precisely the strangeness and yet familiarity of his poems that make him easily welcome by our Chinese readers.
The theme of Andrade’s poems is the object that our lives most depend upon, for instance: soil. Andrade is a poet who bends his body towards mother earth; he has searched and found this closeness to mother earth and, with it, established conscious poetry relations, including mire, dust, sand, stones, etc. Only in the order of nature can a poet feel its harmony. In this harmony, a soul can discover its full value and ruled tranquility, and can also escape from the earthborn vanity and bewilderment.
Aside from soil, water also often appears in his works. They form a kind of mutual complementary relationship. Water gives birth to life and cultivates sensitivity; it is the impulse of love and the surge of youth; its cyclic and continuous movement contains creation. Andrade’s poems are imbued with the wetness and surge of water; water, including ocean, river, lake, raindrops, spring, and tears, converges into an integral poetic image, infused with memories of the stage of his growth. With water, the poet carries out his spiritual roaming, now diving into purity, perfection and stillness, and then is captured by the call of backwashes.
Fire and water don’t mix. But in Andrade’s poem, fire and water have come to an agreement. In his poetic text, words and expressions are often endowed with the original nature of fire, and people can easily discover two phrases that oppose but also complement each other: rays of light, flame, burning, glow, sun, and lime (white lime-coated buildings are seen everywhere in his hometown). These words and expressions are brimmed over with enthusiasm, happiness, and praise, identifications with what are resplendent. And yet, at the back of the splendid words and expressions are ashes, darkness, coldness, and scars. This is the foreordination of fire and also of life. The mission of a poet is to burn and the poet lights up himself using himself, because no one can live on his behalf.
Aside from nature, the image that often appears in his poems is body. Body is discovered and dug out in other bodies, and becomes the valve connecting the “I” and other basic objects. Body can be water, flowing, and may also be like fire, burning; the collision and combination of both may bring vehement results, conforming to the combination of two bodies. Basic elements, such as earth, fire, and water, are the beginning that constitutes the world, and all these elements have established compact relations with the body of the poet. Thus, seeking identification with nature through the basic instinct of sex constitutes one of the characteristics of Andrade’s poems. He opens up the body with syllables and perceives with all organs. He lets the body approach the world and the world the body. The body separates the external world and the internal world, and then connects them intimately. As one of the principal entities of his poem, body is both a desire and a heartthrob. In a word, the universe of the poet is conceived as a body, becoming the conglomeration of love and being loved. Love is, forever, a theme, and a desire per se, fermented by soul and manifested by body.
Before reading, all characters are asleep on the white paper and they may be awoken only through reading. But what kind of readers should there be? And how many factors should they be subject to during the time of awakening? Cultural cultivation, aesthetic sentiments, language standard and even psychological emotions of the reader at the very moment—all these can affect the process of reading. If the reader encounters a group of characters he favours, he will then attempt to change his relationship with these characters, viz., to change the relationship between the “I” as a reader and the “other” as the text. The “I”, at this time, will no longer be content with the status as an ordinary reader, but read in-depth and become the bosom buddy of these characters. Translation is, without doubt, the best approach to become a bosom buddy.
Therefore, my translation of Andrade is fully for the purpose of becoming a bosom buddy of these poems. But I know that my words can approach only as much as possible rather than substitute. What I want to say here is that my words can serve only as an actor for Andrade’s poems and the translator has the role of director. Walter Benjamin thus wrote in The Task of the Translator: “The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it echo of the original”. He also believes that authentic translation is lucid, for it does not blot out the original work, nor block off the lustre of the original text; rather, it boosts up the “pure language” on account of its own medium and shines more completely upon the original work. However, there are, after all, only a few translators who can see and dig out the “pure language”. Therefore, with the lapse of time, some works become classics, while a great majority of translations disappear along with time, and in the new era, classics will call for brand-new translations...
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Yao Jingming after his undergraduate studies in the Portuguese language from Beijing Foreign Studies University, is currently assistant professor in the Portuguese Department, University of Macao. He has published many poems and essays under the penname of Yao Feng. His poetry collections include Nas Asas do Vento Cego, 1991 [Written on the Wings of Blind Wind]; Confluência, 1997 [One Horizon, Two Scenes];《瞬间的旅行》, 2001 [Instant Travel]; A Noite Deita-se Comigo, 2002 [Night Lying Down with Me];《远方之歌》, 2006 [Distant Songs] and《当鱼闭上眼睛》, 2007 [When the Fish Closes Its Eyes]. He has published several poetry collections, like Selecta de Poetas Portugueses, 1992 [Selected Modern Portuguese Poets], Antologia de Poetas de Macau, 1999 [Selected Macao Poems in Chinese and Portuguese Languages],《安德拉德诗选》, 2005 [Selected Poems by Eugénio de Andrade] and《中国当代十诗人选》, 2007 [Selected Poems by Ten Contemporary Chinese Poets]. He was awarded the 14th Rou Gang Poetry Prize and distinguished with the Portuguese honorific medal of Santíago da Espada. |
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| Issue 6.3 |
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Remembering—
A Shared Duty
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