Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese | Poetry
March, 2020The young Brazilian poet Yasmin Nigri’s critically acclaimed debut collection Bigornas ("Anvils") features 70 short and long poems from different moments in her career. The book is divided into four sections: “Yesterday’s Street,” “Receipts,” “Malevich Woman,” and “Anvils.” The first section, drawing on Rilke, comprises longer confessional poems that are both witty and anguished. “Receipts” is about writers and artists who impacted Nigri, including Angélica Freitas, Ana Martins Marques, and Alejandra Pizarnik; the section’s closing poem, “Death,” depicts the author’s mother, their childhoods, and their conversations. “Malevich Woman” is composed of poems that describe a love relationship between two women. The final section, “Anvils,” is composed of 20 hard-hitting short poems. The translations featured here are from the third section, “Malevich Woman.” The poems in this section range from lyrical to erotic, interweaving humor, antithesis, internet memes, and literary citations (the long line in “I Like the Desert,” for instance, was taken from the experimental Portuguese poet Herberto Helder) with social and ecological issues. In selecting and translating these five poems, I have tried to provide a brief window into the beauty and diversity of Nigri’s work.
- Robert Smith
Biography (excerpt) | Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese
September, 2019Marighella: O guerrilheiro que incendiou o mundo is a biography of one of the most controversial and divisive figures in 20th-century Brazil. A communist activist from a young age, an elected state representative, and the founder of the largest armed organization opposing the ruling military dictatorship, this mixed-race poet raised in poverty in Salvador, Bahia would be declared public enemy number one by the country's political police.
The incident described in the excerpt featured here, Margihella's arrest in a Tijuca movie theater roughly one month after the military seized power in 1964, dominated the nation's headlines, shocking the general public for the details of wanton violence and repression. It would turn out to be a mere inkling of the grim future awaiting Brazil under military rule.
Brazil is a nation that has failed to adequately come to terms with this chapter in its history, having opted for sweeping amnesty rather than prosecuting those responsible for human rights violations. The lack of condemnation or a clear resolution has led, in the wake of recent corruption charges against elected officials, to a mood of dangerous nostalgia among many Brazilians currently disillusioned by the failures of democracy. This dangerous nostalgia is partially responsible for the outcome of last year's presidential election, when Brazilian voters chose a far-right candidate who favors torture as a law-enforcement tactic, praises the dictatorship's strong men for their brutal effectiveness, and calls for a return to the good old days when might was right, protest was outlawed, dissidents were exiled and executed, and elections were non-existent.
Written by veteran journalist Mário Magalhães (currently of The Intercept Brasil), Marighella: O guerrilheiro que incendiou o mundo is equal parts historical nonfiction and political thriller, meticulously researched and rich in context, surveying the country's social and political evolution from the World War I era through to the late 1960s. Published in Portuguese by Companhia das Letras in 2012 and winner of the Prêmio Jabuti for biography, the book served as the basis for Wagner Moura's biopic Marighella, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February of this year.
- Matthew Rinaldi
Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese | Short Fiction
November, 2018I first experienced the weird joy of Cidinha da Silva’s fiction in 2015, in a survey of Brazilian prose I audited at Rice University. Da Silva’s writing called out to me, as it will call out to any reader, urgently and without apology. In spite of its buoyancy, though, the joy in writing so evident in the prose, da Silva’s fiction is loudest where it is silent. In her “Dublê de Ogum,” she tells the story of an adolescent boy’s trip to a psychologist. In this psychologist’s office, in the contours of dreams, are the illegible answers to questions never asked. Is fantasy an escape from reality, or an alternative to it? What does it mean to be insane in an insane world? Finally, what does it mean to be black in contemporary Brazil?
“The Stunt Double” demands of its reader some familiarity with Afro-Brazilian culture, especially the Candomblé spiritual tradition. Like Santería in Cuba, Candomblé fused elements of Catholicism with Yoruba and other spiritual traditions governed by the worship of divinities known as orixas. Above (and perhaps beyond) this story’s action stands Ogum, the Candomblé orixa of iron and war who, legend has it, slaughtered disrespectful subjects with a broadsword. It is this narrative tradition, obscure to an American audience but totally familiar to anybody living in da Silva’s Salvador, which makes the story’s title almost impossible to translate. The “dublê” in “Dublê de Ogum” signifies not only a “stunt double,” but a virtual doubling: an embodiment, that is, a literal possession. The boy at the center of this story is split—between New and Old, between cartoon heroes and blacksmith gods—and da Silva’s brilliant language bridges the gap between his two worlds. Similarly untranslatable is the diagnosis with which the story concludes: Filho de Ogum, a Son of Ogum, a sort of elaborate shorthand meaning hot-tempered yet fun-loving, impulsive yet logical, brave yet a bit selfish. In short, this is a story of contradictions.
- JP Gritton
Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese | Poetry
November, 2018These short poems from Clarissa Macedo’s award-winning collection Na pata do cavalo há sete abismos (Rio de Janeiro: 7Letras, 2014) present a number of fascinating dilemmas. A literal translation would sacrifice the vitality of the verses, which, notwithstanding their lightness and intensity, contain a striking lyrical sadness. Yet to take excessive semantic liberties or change word order arbitrarily would deprive the reader of the stimulation inspired by Macedo’s unusual and often surprising choices.
In these translations, priority was given to structural elements and sound, focusing not on how long the verses would be in print but on their size and value in terms of breath. Rather than counting syllables, I tried to create lines that adhered to the originals’ weight, rhythm, and duration in order to suggest the successions of moods I found in the originals, which move agilely between pensive and galloping. In crossing the bridge, I tried to concentrate not on reproducing individual phonemes but on building holistic relationships between sounds that created similar sensations in English that the originals create in Portuguese.
- Robert Smith
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
July, 2018To conclude the 100 Refutations series, we offer you a final essay by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the fourteenth and final week (plus two days) of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the fourteenth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese | Poetry
June, 2018Adelaide Ivánova is a Brazilian journalist and activist working with poetry, photography, translation, and publishing. She is the author of several books, exhibitions, and other creative works and is currently editing the anarchist-feminist zine MAIS PORNÔ, PVFR!. She splits her time between Cologne and Berlin.
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the thirteenth week of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the thirteenth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Brazil | Brazilian Portuguese | Poetry
June, 2018Marília Floôr Kosby is the author of three poetry collections: Mugido [ou diário de uma doula] (Coletivo Garupa, 2017), Os baobás do fim do mundo (Novitas, 2011; Après-Coup, 2015), and Siete colores e Um pote cheio de acasos (Flor De Tuna, 2013). A scholar of social anthropology, she was the recipient of both the Prêmio Açorianos de Literatura 2016 and the Prêmio Boas Práticas de Salvaguarda do Patrimônio Imaterial IPHAN/2015 for the essay “Nós cultuamos todas as doçuras: a religiões de matriz africana e a tradição doceira de Pelotas” (Après-Coup, 2015).
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the twelfth week of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the twelfth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).