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Fernando Pessoa, poet-translator, ‘overwriting’ Poe and Whitman

2020; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13556509.2020.1856760

1757-0409

Margarida Vale de Gato,

Literature, Culture, and Criticism

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of Pessoa's incorporation of English language and literature in his own writing, looking specifically at his relationship with the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. The focus will be on the Portuguese poet's borrowings from models derived from both, namely a sort of translation of prosody and tropes – what I call 'overwriting' – that fuelled his 'oceanic' impetus. This impetus surfaces in a few related modernist concepts that Pessoa sought to poeticise – sensacionismo, vertiginismo, dynamismo, atlantismo – for which the wave stood as metaphor and prosodic unit. Starting from the observation that poets engage in translational operations in order to assert and/or project themselves, I follow Nikolaou's assumption of 'autobiographical arcs' in 'instances of literary ventriloquism' (2006 Nikolaou, P. 2006. "Notes on Translating the Self." In Translation and Creativity: Perspectives on Creative Writing and Translation Studies, edited by M. Perteghella and E. Loffredo, 19–32. London and New York: Continuum. [Google Scholar], 23) to explore Pessoa's repeated return to compositions such as Poe's 'The Bells' or Whitman's 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'.*