The Poetry of Vitorino Nemesio: ABilingual Anthology

Translations by Kelly Washbourne

Statennent by the Translator

My criteria for the selection of Vitorino Nemesio’s poetry' for translation fol-

lowed amethodical hierarchy of considerations: 1) the greatness or fame of

the poem; 2) its potential effect in English; 3) its representativity within his

oeuvre; 4) its intertextual or generational place in Portuguese letters; 4)

chronological variety; and 5) the balance of poem lengths, forms, and the-

matics. Methods are always impositions, however; Iconfess my personal

afhnity for Nemesio’s Aspera Vida sequence, for example, and so it is amply

represented. Some poems are simply prohibitive for atranslation project

(e.g., “Cantigas AIlha Terceira. .from Festa Redondo), in part because their

portnguesidade \^ tied so intimately to the mode of expression; their poetry lies

in the word rather than resulting from it. In the case of the Heideggerian

“Casa Do Ser” (from OVerbo EAMorte), amajor poem that might have been

included, several drafts simply failed, appearing labored where the Portuguese

is spontaneous, and it is my belief that even when translation is of the so-

called overt VMVty, in which awork calls attention to its own status as atrans-

lation, atranslator should take pains not to sound deliberate or mechanical.

This holds especially for Nemesios poetry—poetry of dynamic, tidal, trans-

formations. In the selections below, Iabove all strove to represent afull

palette of Nemesio’s tonalities—oceanic ode, moody threnody, metapoetic

ars, searching epic; the literary and the oral, the intimate and the declama-

tory, the mythic and the local. When he Is at his most vigorous is when he

Portuguese Literary &Cultural Studies 11(2007): 353-419.

©University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.