"Estátua" de Camilo Pessanha

I'm in the midst of reading Paulo Franchetti's O Essencial sobre Camilo Pessanha, which dissects most of the myths surrounding the man, e.g., his reasons for leaving Portugal, his supposed unwillingness to write down his poems, his terrible personal hygiene, the level of his knowledge of Chinese, his relationship with his son and the concubine he had in place of a wife, and so on. Franchetti argues, based on available evidence, that for various reasons some of the people charged (often by themselves) with guarding Pessanha's legacy saw fit to distort the truth and give posterity the image of a heartbroken man who lived in squalor among the Chinese, ignored the mores of Portuguese colonial society, and had little time for anything but opium. Of course, it's never that simple.

Franchetti also delves into the literary aspects of Pessanha's work, which is where I am now. I'm sure it, along with the criticism in Rui Cascais' book, will give me more to think about when I next sit down to read and translate Pessanha's poems. I recommend Franchetti's book to anyone who, like me, not only enjoys Pessanha's poetry but finds the man himself fascinating. You'll have to read it in Portuguese, though; não há uma tradução inglês.

Anyway, here's another poem from Clepsydra for you to enjoy. Like all the others I've translated, I'm not completely happy with the results, but that's how it goes, isn't it?

Oh, and here's another estátua de Camilo Pessanha.

Adeus, dudes.

---


Estátua

Cansei-me de tentar o teu segredo:
No teu olhar sem cor, — frio escalpelo,
O meu olhar quebrei, a debatê-lo,
Como a onda na crista dum rochedo.

Segredo dessa alma e meu degredo
E minha obsessão! Para bebê-lo
Fui teu lábio oscular, num pesadelo,
Por noites de pavor, cheio de medo.

E o meu ósculo ardente, alucinado,
Esfriou sobre o mármore correcto
Desse entreaberto lábio gelado...

Desse lábio de mármore, discreto,
Severo como um túmulo fechado,
Sereno como um pélago quieto.

 ***

Statue

I tired of trying to expose your secret:
Under your colorless gaze, — a cold scalpel,
My look crumbled, debating it,
Like the wave on the crest of a cliff.

Secret of this soul and my exile
And my obsession! To drink it,
Was to kiss your lips, in a nightmare,
In nights of terror, full of fear.

And my burning kiss, hallucinating,
Went cold on the marble proper,
These half-open frozen lips...

These marble lips, discreet,
Severe as a sealed tomb,
Serene as a quiet sea.

Mais poesia de Camilo Pessanha, e outras coisas

Last month I had the good fortune to return to Hong Kong and Macau, this time in the company of my brother. He'd never been to either city, and I'd been itching to go back, especially since I'd learned a veritable shitload about the history of Macau over the past year and a half. We had a great time, and I'm glad I finally got to travel with Scott. As I've said before, I'd live in Hong Kong, and even Macau, for a while without much in the way of reservations; maybe especially Macau, since there I could improve my Portuguese and learn Cantonese to boot.

I spent a couple days in Macau on my own before Scott arrived in Hong Kong. There was a lengthy list of things I wanted to see and do, and I saw and did most of them, since Macau isn't very big and I got to follow my own schedule. (To a point, that is, since a lot of places in Macau don't open until 11 AM or so.) Among my goals were visits to the Livraria Portuguesa and the Arquivo Histórico de Macau, both of which I accomplished. I signed up for my cartão de leitor for the Archive in advance, and spent a couple hours there reading random books, primarily those by Padre Manuel Teixeira, who ranks with Camilo Pessanha as one of the most fascinating figures of 20th-century Macau in my book. Speaking of books and Padre Teixeira, at the Livraria Portuguesa I picked up the only thing of his I found there, the two-volume, 1200-page Toponímia de Macau, after reading some of it at the Archive. That's a lot of pages dedicated to the street names of a small city, dudes.

Books were pretty much the only souvenirs I brought home, apart from some rolls of film I shot with my Holga. (Unsurprisingly, the photos didn't come out particularly well.) That was the plan all along, though. I was excited to find several books on Camilo Pessanha, including one that might be the only extant work on the man's poetry in English. I didn't buy everything I could, as I didn't have room in my rucksack, but it's a start.

I'll ruminate more on Macau and HK another time, but for now I wanted to post another translation of a Pessanha poem. Due to the differences between various editions of his work, titles and exact wording differ, but the text below comes from an online edition of Clepsydra which matches that used in In A Country Lost: the Poetry of Camilo Pessanha, the aforementioned English translation I bought in Macau. The only exception is that the online version uses the title "Caminho", whereas the same poem In A Country Lost has no title at all.

Thanks to Rui Cascais for providing English translations against which to compare mine, and learn more about the Portuguese language in the process. Muito obrigado!

---
Caminho

I.

Tenho sonhos cruéis; n’alma doente
Sinto um vago receio prematuro.
Vou a medo na aresta do futuro,
Embebido em saudades do presente...

Saudades desta dor que em vão procuro
Do peito afugentar bem rudemente,
Devendo, ao desmaiar sobre o poente,
Cobrir-me o coração dum véu escuro!...

Porque a dor, esta falta d’harmonia,
Toda a luz desgrenhada que alumia
As almas doidamente, o céu d’agora,

Sem ela o coração é quase nada:
Um sol onde expirasse a madrugada,
Porque é só madrugada quando chora.


II.

Encontraste-me um dia no caminho
Em procura de quê, nem eu o sei.
— Bom dia, companheiro — te saudei,
Que a jornada é maior indo sozinho

É longe, é muito longe, há muito espinho!
Paraste a repousar, eu descansei...
Na venda em que poisaste, onde poisei,
Bebemos cada um do mesmo vinho.

É no monte escabroso, solitário.
Corta os pés como a rocha dum calvário,
E queima como a areia!... Foi no entanto

Que chorámos a dor de cada um...
E o vinho em que choraste era comum:
Tivemos que beber do mesmo pranto.


III.

Fez-nos bem, muito bem, esta demora:
Enrijou a coragem fatigada...
Eis os nossos bordões da caminhada,
Vai já rompendo o sol: vamos embora.

Este vinho, mais virgem do que a aurora,
Tão virgem não o temos na jornada...
Enchamos as cabaças: pela estrada,
Daqui inda este néctar avigora!...

Cada um por seu lado!... Eu vou sozinho,
Eu quero arrostar só todo o caminho,
Eu posso resistir à grande calma!...

Deixai-me chorar mais e beber mais,
Perseguir doidamente os meus ideais,
E ter fé e sonhar — encher a alma.

---
Path


I.

I have cruel dreams; in my diseased soul
I feel a vague, premature dread.
I go in fear along the edge of the future,
Absorbed in longing for the present...

Longing for this grief that in vain I seek
To rudely drive from my breast,
It must, at the fading above the sunset,
Cover my heart in a dark veil!...

Because of pain, this lack of harmony,
All the disheveled light that illuminates
Souls madly, the sky just now,

Without it the heart is almost nothing:
A sun where the dawn may pass away,
Because it is only dawn  when it weeps.


II.

You met me on the road one day
In search of what, not even I know.
—Good day, friend— I saluted you,
As the journey is longer going alone.

It is far, very far, and there are so many thorns!
You stopped to rest, I sat down...
In the tavern in which you halted, where I halted,
We each drank from the same wine.

It is on the rough mountain, solitary,
Cutting the feet like rocks on a Calvary mount,
And burning like sand!... It was, however,

That we wept with each other's pain...
And the wine in which you wept was shared:
We had to drink the same tears.


III.

It did us good, very good, this delay:
It fortified exhausted courage...
Here are our walking sticks,
The sun is already rising: let's go.

This wine, more virgin than the dawn,
We'll have nothing so pure on the journey...
Let's fill our gourds; down the road,
from here on this nectar invigorates!...

Each on his own side!... I go alone,
I want to face the whole road on my own,
I can bear the vast quiet!...

Let me weep more and drink more,
Madly chase my ideals,
And have faith and dream — fill up the soul.