Translating Pessoa: agency, creativity, refraction

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the ways in which translations of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa into Italian enable us to rethink notions of the agency and creativity of the translator. It suggests that Pessoa is a writer in and of translation, a refracted writer who embodies the potential of translation to become a creative act. It focuses on the ways in which Pessoa is multiply refracted by the translator and writer Antonio Tabucchi through translation, scholarly essays and fictional reconstructions, suggesting that the way in which Tabucchi brings these multiple refractions into dialogue is especially important in highlighting the agency of the translator to (re)construct the reader’s notion of author and text. It thus highlights the agency of the translator and their ability produce an image of the source text and author in a creative process which is in dialogue with other texts and agendas. This article argues that the fragmentary, multilingual and polyphonic nature of Pessoa’s work renders Pessoa a writer who is especially open to being creatively re-written and re-constructed through translation.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• creativity
• agency
• Pessoa
• Tabucchi

Notes

1. I will use the term ‘heteronym’ to refer to Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos, and ‘fictitious author’ to refer to the other identities.

2. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule pieno di gente: Scritti su Fernando Pessoa (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2000), p. 28. Where published English translations exist, I try to use the translated text to facilitate reading. Where there is no published translation, I include the source text and my own back translation.

3. André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (London: Routledge, 1992).

4. Roman Jakobson, ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 2^nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 138–43 (p. 139).

5. For a discussion of the fictional turn, see Else Vieira, ‘(In)visibilidades na tradução: Troca de olhares teóricos e ficcionais’, Com Textos 6 (1995), pp. 50–58; and Adriana Pagano, ‘Translation as Testimony: On Official Histories and Subversive Pedagogies in Cortázar’, in Translation and Power, ed. by Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), pp. 80–98.

6. See http://bibliotecaparticular.casafernandopessoa.pt/index/assinaturas.htm for an outline of Pessoa’s personal library, in which some books are signed by Alexander Search, a brother of the fictitious author Charles James Search.

7. Susan Bassnett, ‘Writing and Translation’, in The Translator as Writer, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 173–83 (p. 174).

8. Clive Scott, ‘Translating the Literary: Genetic Criticism, Text Theory, and Poetry’, in The Translator as Writer, ed. by Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 106–18 (p. 106).

9. André Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting, and The Manipulation of Literary Fame, p.1.

10. For a fuller discussion of Pessoa’s ability to move between languages and cultures see: Gianluca Miraglia, ‘“É um dos pontos negros da biografia que não tive”: Reflexões acerca de um texto autobiográfico de Fernando Pessoa com uma digressão sobre um erro na Ode Marítima que as edições críticas não emendaram’, Estudos Italianos en Portugal (2007), https://doi.org/10.14195/0870-8584_2_16 [accessed 13/07/20]; Patrícia Ferreira, ‘Entre duas pátrias: o bilinguismo de Fernando Pessoa’, (2014). Pessoa Plural – A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies (2014). Brown Digital Repository https://doi.org/10.7301/Z06W98JS [accessed 13/07/20].

11. Paul Buck, Lisbon: A Cultural and Literary Companion (New York: Interlink, 2002), p. 76.

12. Antonio Tabucchi, in Alberto Albasino, Italo Calvino, Andrea Camilleri, Umberto Eco, Mario Luzi, Claudio Magris, Dacia Maraini, Antonio Tabucchi raccontano se stessi, ed. by Alberto Scarponi (Rome: Gangemi, 2002), p. 123.

13. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule pieno di gente, p. 114.

14. Antonio Tabucchi, ‘Alvaro de Campos e Zeno Cosini: Due coscienze parallele’, Studi filologici e letterari dell’Istituto di filologia romanza e ispanistica dell’Università di Genova (Genova: Bozzi, 1978), 151–62 (p. 154).

15. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule, p. 35.

16. Antonio Tabucchi, La nostalgie, l’automobile et l’infini: Lectures de Fernando Pessoa (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1994), pp. 24–25.

17. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule, pp. 48–52.

18. Nicolás Barbosa López, ‘“The Student of Salamanca”: An English translation’, Pessoa Plural – A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies (2016) Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z07P8WKJ [accessed 27 February 2020]. On Pessoa as translator and self-translator see also Arnaldo Saraiva, Fernando Pessoa: poeta-tradutor de poetas (Porto: Lello, 1996); Claudia J. Fischer, ‘Auto-tradução e experimentação interlinguística na génese d’O Marinheiro de Fernando Pessoa’, Pessoa Plural – A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies (2012), Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library, https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0B56GZH [accessed 13/07/20].

19. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule, p. 52

20. Anna M. Klobucka and Mark Sabine, ‘Pessoa’s Bodies’, in Embodying Pessoa: Corporeality, Gender, Sexuality, ed. by Anna M. Klobucka and Mark Sabine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 3–36. The two scholars also note Pessoa attributed discussions of homosexuality to Álvaro de Campos.

21. Klobucka and Sabine, p. 3.

22. Jerónimo Pizzaro and Steffen Dix, ‘Introduction’, Pessoa: The Future of the ‘Arcas’, Portuguese Studies, 24 (2) (2008), 6–12.

23. Pizzaro and Dix, ‘Introduction’, p. 6.

24. Richard Zenith, ‘Notes on the Text and Translation’, in Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, trans. by Richard Zenith (London: Penguin, 2002), pp. xxvi-xxxi (p. xxix).

25. Lefevere, Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, p. 9.

26. André Lefevere, ‘Translation: Its Genealogy in the West’, in Translation, History, and Culture, ed. by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (London: Cassell, 1990), pp. 14–27 (p. 27); Lefevere, ‘Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, System and Refraction in a Theory of Literature’, in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 2^nd edn (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 239–55 (p. 253).

27. For a fuller discussion of Tabucchi’s role in popularising Pessoa in Italy, see Elisa Alberini, ‘Esboço de um percurso quase secular de Fernando Pessoa em Itália: do papel das primeiras traduções à transfiguração de Pessoa em mito contemporâneo’, Pessoa Plural – A Journal of Fernando Pessoa Studies (2019), Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library, https://doi.org/10.26300/gksm-j308 [accessed 13/07/20]. The first translation of Pessoa into Italian was by Enzio di Poppa Volture in 1942. For a discussion of this and subsequent translations into Italian see Gianluca Miraglia, ‘Le traduzioni italiane di Álvaro de Campos’, Del tradurre 1 (1992), 161–76 and Roberto Mulinacci, ‘Translation Revisited: Ritorno alle traduzioni italiane della poesia di Pessoa’, Estudos Italiano Portugal 7 (2012), 103–26. Miraglia also compares and contrasts different Italian translations of Álvaros de Campos’ poetry, including some by Tabucchi.

28. Jacques Fressard, ‘Entretien avec Tabucchi’, La Quinzaine Littéraire, 16–30 April 1993, pp. 15–16.

29. Antonio Tabucchi, ‘Nota introduttiva di Antonio Tabucchi’, in Fernando Pessoa, Una sola moltitudine. Volume secondo, ed. by Antonio Tabucchi, trans. by Maria José de Lancastre, Kathleen Norris, Flavio Vasselli, Antonio Tabucchi (Milan: Adelphi, 1984), pp. 9–16 (p. 11). C. Pacheco is not considered a heteronym anymore.

30. Fernando Pessoa, Una sola moltitudine. Volume primo, ed. by Antonio Tabucchi and trans. by Rita Desti, Maria José de Lancastre, Antonio Tabucchi (Milan: Adelphi, 1979); Fernando Pessoa, Poesie di Fernando Pessoa, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi and Maria José de Lancastre (Milan: Adelphi, 2013).

31. Fernando Pessoa, Il libro dell’inquietudine di Bernardo Soares, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi and Maria Jose de Lancastre (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1986); Fernando Pessoa, Il poeta è un fingitore: Duecento citazioni scelte da Antonio Tabucchi, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1988); Fernando Pessoa, Lettere alla fidanzata, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi (Milan: Adelphi, 1988); Fernando Pessoa, Il marinaio, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi (Milan: Einaudi, 1988); Fernando Pessoa, Nove poesie di Álvaro de Campos e sette poesie ortonime, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi (Bologna: Baskerville, 1988); Fernando Pessoa, Poesie di Álvaro de Campos, trans. by Antonio Tabucchi and Maria José de Lancastre (Milan: Adelphi, 1993).

32. Antonio Tabucchi and Maria José de Lancastre, ‘Nota dei traduttori’, in Fernando Pessoa, Il libro dell’inquietudine di Bernardo Soares, pp. 19–20 (p. 19).

33. Monica Jansen, ‘Tabucchi e Pirandello: Un caso di eteronomia? A proposito de Il Signor Pirandello è desiderato al telefono’, in Pirandello e le metamorfosi del testo, ed. by Bart Van den Bossche, Franco Musarra, Isabelle Melis (Florence: Cesati, 2009), pp. 127–40.

34. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule pieno di gente. Other important works include Antonio Tabucchi, La parola interdetta: Poeti surrealisti portoghesi (Turin: Einaudi, 1970); Antonio Tabucchi, Pessoa mínima (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa de Moeda, 1985).

35. Antonio Tabucchi, La nostalgie, l’automobile et l’infini. Lectures de Pessoa (Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1994). The collection was later translated into Italian (though not by Tabucchi himself) as L’automobile, la nostalgia et l’infinito: Su Fernando Pessoa, trans. by Clelia Bettini and Valentina Parlato (Palermo: Sellerio, 2015). Tabucchi had died in 2012, three years before publication of the volume, so the reasons for not self-translating may have been different from those he stated in the case of Requiem, where he felt unable to translate his own work (see below).

36. Antonio Tabucchi, La nostalgie, l’automobile, et l’infini, pp. 8–9.

37. I term such self-referencing interchanges ‘hybrid refractions’ in Liz Wren-Owens, In, On, and Through Translation: Tabucchi’s Travelling Texts (Bern: Peter Lang, 2018), pp. 128–52.

38. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule pieno di gente, pp. 125–37.

39. Antonio Tabucchi, Un baule pieno di gente, pp. 11–40.

40. Antonio Tabucchi, La nostalgie, l’automobile et l’infini, p. 113.

41. Antonio Tabucchi, Gli ultimi tre giorni di Fernando Pessoa (Palermo: Sellerio, 1994); Antonio Tabucchi, Dreams of Dreams and The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa, trans. by Nancy J. Peters (San Francisco: City Lights, 1999).

42. Antonio Tabucchi, The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa, p. 92.

43. For a discussion of the processes of resolution in the text, see Liz Wren-Owens, ‘Absent and Real Bodies in Tabucchi: From Dissatisfaction to Resolution’, in In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy, ed, by Loredana Polezzi and Charlotte Ross (Madison, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), pp. 228–241.

44. José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, ed. by and trans. by Giovanni Ponteiro, (London: Harvill, 1992).

45. Giovanni Pontiero, ‘Introduction’, in José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, pp. vii–xv (p. viii).

46. Antonio Tabucchi, Requiem: Uma Alucinação (Lisbon: Quetzal, 1991).

47. Jo Ann Canon, ‘Requiem and the Poetics of Antonio Tabucchi’, Forum Italicum 35, 1 (Spring 2001), 100–109.

48. Louise Sheehan, ‘Tabucchi’s Portugal’, in Cross-Cultural Travel: Papers from the Royal Irish Symposium on Literature and Travel, ed. by Jane Conroy (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 285–95.

49. Anna Botta, ‘Antonio Tabucchi’s Requiem: Mourning Modernism’, Spunti e ricerche 12 (1996/7),143–57.

50. Antonio Tabucchi, Requiem: A Hallucination, trans. by Margaret Jull Costa (New York: New Directions, 1994), p. 99.

51. Walter Benjamin, The Task of the Translator’, in The Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 2^nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 71–83.

52. Scott, ‘Translating the Literary’, p.10’.

53. For a discussion of the genesis of Requiem, see Antonio Tabucchi, Autobiographie altrui: Poetiche a posteriori (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2003).

54. Joseph Francese, Socially Symbolic Acts: The Historicizing Fictions of Umberto Eco, Vicenzo Consolo and Antonio Tabucchi (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2006).

55. For a discussion of socio-political commitment across Tabucchi’s writing, see Liz Wren-Owen, Postmodern Ethics: The Re-appropriation of Socio-Political Engagement in the Works of Leonardo Sciascia and Antonio Tabucchi (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2007).

56. Antonio Tabucchi, Sostiene Pereira: Una testimonianza (Milan:Feltrinelli, 1994); Antonio Tabucchi, Declares Pereira: A True Account, trans. by Patrick Creagh (London: Harvill, 1995).

57. Bassnett, ‘Writing and Translating’, p. 174.

58. Pizzaro and Dix, ‘Introduction’, p. 9.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liz Wren-Owens

Dr Liz Wren-Owens is Reader in Italian and Translation Studies at Cardiff University.