THE TRANSLATOR TRANSLATED: FOREIGN VERSIONS OF HAROLDO DE CAMPOS’ TRANSCREATION THEORY[1]

EL TRADUCTOR TRADUCIDO: LAS VERSIONES EXTRANJERAS DE LA TEORÍA DE LA TRANSCREACIÓN DE HAROLDO DE CAMPOS

LE TRADUCTEUR TRADUIT: LES VERSIONS ETRANGERES DE LA THEORIE DE LA TRANSCREATION DE HAROLDO DE CAMPOS

Daniel Padilha Pacheco da Costa

University of São Paulo

daniel.padilha.costa@usp.br

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4947-1295

Fecha de recepción: 31/10/2024

Fecha de aceptación: 02/03/2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30827/tn.v8i2/31839

Abstract: Haroldo de Campos’ transcreation theory and practice have received significant attention in Brazil and abroad over the past decades. His incorporation of foreign poets via translation has been understood through the metaphor of “anthropophagy” used by Haroldo de Campos himself. However, not much energy has been put into understanding the extensive network of international translation agents he set forth to promote foreign versions of his own poems and essays. Learning from his American master, Ezra Pound, to be an “entrepreneur of the arts”, Haroldo de Campos tried to publicise foreign versions of his poems and essays in different languages, as evidenced by his continued effort to publish them in international journals and books. Based on a survey of foreign versions in six different languages (Spanish, English, French, German, Polish and Italian) of his 20 most significant essays on his transcreation theory, we seek to understand the extent of its dissemination abroad.

Keywords: Haroldo de Campos; Transcreation theory; Foreign versions; Translation Agents; Circulation.

Resumen: La teoría y la práctica de la transcreación de Haroldo de Campos han recibido, en las últimas décadas, enorme atención en Brasil y en el extranjero. Su incorporación de escritores extranjeros a través de la traducción fue interpretada a partir de la metáfora de la “antropofagia” utilizada por el propio Haroldo de Campos. Sin embargo, se dedicó poca energía a comprender el uso de su extensa red de agentes de traducción internacionales para promover versiones extranjeras de sus propios poemas y ensayos. Habiendo aprendido la importancia del intercambio cultural con su maestro Ezra Pound, Haroldo de Campos se esforzó en difundir en el extranjero versiones de sus poemas y ensayos en otros idiomas, como lo demuestra su continua preocupación por publicarlos en revistas y libros extranjeros. A partir de un estudio de las versiones extranjeras de sus 20 ensayos más significativos sobre la teoría de la transcreación en seis idiomas diferentes (español, inglés, francés, alemán, polaco e italiano), buscamos comprender el alcance de su diseminación en el extranjero.

Palabras clave: Haroldo de Campos; Teoría de la transcreación; Versiones extranjeras; Agentes de traducción; Circulación.

Résumé : La théorie et la pratique de la transcréation par Haroldo de Campos ont reçu une attention considérable au Brésil et à l’étranger au cours des dernières décennies. Son incorporation d’écrivains étrangers à travers la traduction a été comprise sur la base de la métaphore de <<l’anthropophagie>> utilisée par Haroldo de Campos lui-même. Cependant, peu d’énergie a été consacrée à comprendre l’usage de son vaste réseau d’agents de traduction internationaux pour promouvoir les versions étrangères de ses propres poèmes et essais. Ayant appris l’importance des échanges culturels avec son maître Ezra Pound, Haroldo de Campos s’est efforcé de diffuser des versions de ses poèmes et essais à l’étranger dans d’autres langues, comme en témoigne son souci constant de les publier dans des revues et des livres étrangers. À partir d’une recherche sur les versions étrangères de ses 20 essais les plus significatifs sur la théorie de la transcréation dans six langues différentes (espagnol, anglais, français, allemand, polonais et italien), nous cherchons à comprendre l’étendue de sa dissémination à l’étranger.

Mots-clés : Haroldo de Campos ; théorie de la transcréation ; versions étrangères ; agents de traduction ; Circulation.

“Import leads to production, naturally transitioning into export”

(Campos, “A poesia concreta e a realidade nacional” 85, our translation)

1. An Unfinished Project

As of the early 1980s, the poet and essayist Haroldo de Campos (1929-2003) began to announce the ongoing preparation of a work specially dedicated to the disclosure of his formulation on translation, as per the footnote in the essay “Tradução, Ideologia e História” [Translation, Ideology and History]: “This work is part of a forthcoming book, Poética da Tradução” [Poetics of Translation] (Campos, “Tradução, Ideologia e História” 64, our translation, emphasis in original). Although it has never been published, this project continued to be developed throughout his lifetime, twenty years past that footnote. His transcreation theory was carried out through conferences, research projects, newspaper and magazine articles (periodicals, academic or mainstream), annals and books, be they organised by him or others. The scattering of his publications regarding transcreation was heightened due to the various existing versions of the same text rendered into several different languages.

 Notedly, a collection of his essays on that theme would not be published in Portuguese until early 2010. Among his two posthumous collections of essays on translation published in Portuguese, the first —Da transcriação. Poética e Semiótica da operação tradutória— comprise eight essays, while the second —Transcriação— comprised twice as many, with the previous eight included. Neither was entitled “Poética da Tradução” [Poetics of Translation] —the more complete, for instance, adopted “Transcriação” [Transcreation] as its title. That is a neologism Haroldo de Campos started to use in the early 1980s in reference to his systematic theory on poetic translation. Haroldo de Campos worked on the essays gathered in these collections for nearly four decades, between 1962 and 1999. Among the 16 essays published in the more complete collection, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médice Nóbrega, only his earliest essay, “Da tradução como criação e crítica” [On Translation as Creation and Criticism] (1963), had been entirely published in a book by the author. The other 15 essays have been scatteredly published in newspapers, academic and specialised journals, annals, and books edited by others.

 We seek, in the following pages, to reconstitute the export of Haroldo de Campos’ “Poética da Tradução” [Poetics of Translation], which, since the late 1990s, has received significant recognition abroad, to the point that it has been referred to as the major Brazilian contribution to Translation Studies (Barbosa and Wyler). In that intent, we delved into the foreign versions of his 20 most significant essays on the theme. Besides the 16 essays in his most complete collection of essays on translation Transcriação [Transcreation] (2013), this number includes four other texts that already integrated the author’s published works —Metalinguagem [Metalanguage] (1967), A arte no horizonte do provável [Art on the Horizon of the Probable] (1969), Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe [God and the Devil in Goethe’s Faust] (1981) and O arco-íris branco: ensaios de literatura e cultura [The White Rainbow: Essays on Literature and Culture] (1997). We adopted the first edition of each one of those 20 essays on translation. The analyses of the foreign versions of those 20 essays sought to contemplate nine different languages: Spanish, English, French, German, Polish, Italian, Japanese, Hungarian, and Catalan. Nevertheless, we did not find any publications in these last three languages.

2. International Agents of Translation

Since the early 1970s, Haroldo de Campos’ essays on translation have been translated into several foreign languages despite the great difficulty of accessing them. The rendering of these essays followed the same logic as that of his works, which, alongside his theoretical essays, comprise poems, transcreations and criticism. As of the golden age of the Brazilian Concrete Poetry Movement in the mid-1950s, Haroldo endeavoured to publicise his poems, transcreations, and critical and theoretical essays in foreign languages. The very export of the concrete poetry movement relied on the shared efforts of the Noigandres group. The bilingual publishing of the fourth volume of the Noigandres journal (1958) attests to that. In this volume, the “plano-pilôto para poesia concreta” was collaboratively self-translated into English by its authors —the self-styled “autotridutores” Décio Pignatari, Augusto and Haroldo de Campos— as “pilot plan for concrete poetry” (Campos et al., Noigandres). It also included a so-called “word key”, which provided the English intratextual translation of each word and would serve as a guide to read the poems in Portuguese.

Due to the export of the concrete poetry movement, Haroldo de Campos was able to answer positively to the rhetorical question he had proposed, provocatively, in the beginning of his essay “A poesia concreta e a realidade nacional” [Concrete Poetry and National Reality]: “Can an underdeveloped country produce export literature?” (Campos, “A poesia concreta e a realidade nacional” 83). After group Noigandres’ major undertaking to publish its first poetic translation —Cantares by Ezra Pound (1960)—, translation theory and practice gained absolute centrality in Haroldo de Campos’ poetic and theoretical work. As the group’s main theoretician on translation, Haroldo de Campos initially sought to systematise the American poet’s translation practice. His first essay on translation (1963), published three years after that first collection (the translation of Ezra Pound’s Cantos), was not the sole consequence of his dialogue with the modernist poet. The American master, whose job as an “entrepreneur of the arts” (Campos, “Ezra Pound: ‘Nec Spe Nec Metu’” 17) was frequently praised by group Noigandres, also provided Haroldo de Campos with lessons on the importance of cultural exchange.

Haroldo de Campos tried to publicise foreign versions of his essays on translation in different languages, as evidenced by his continued effort to publish them in international journals and books. Notedly, some of his essays on the subject have been published only in foreign languages, never receiving any publication in Portuguese during the author’s lifetime. That is the case, for instance, of the essay “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad” [Tradition, Translation, Transculturation: Historiography and the Ex-centric Viewpoint] (1987), first published in its Spanish translation carried out by Néstor Perlongher. All the same, ten years passed, when that essay was published in the Brazilian Translation Studies journal Tradterm (1997), Haroldo de Campos opted for publishing the English version of that essay, translated by Stella E. O. Tagnin. Its Portuguese version was only published in posthumous collections.

Haroldo de Campos’ transcreation theory and practice have received significant attention in Brazil and abroad over the past decades. His incorporation of foreign poets via translation has been understood through the metaphor of “critical devouring” used by Haroldo de Campos himself (“Anthropophagous Reason” 159). However, not much energy has been put into understanding the extensive network of international translation agents he set forth to promote foreign versions of his own poetic, theoretical, translational and essayistic works. The main witnesses to that were the translators of those works: into Spanish, Andrés Sánchez Robayna (“Yûgen em Espanhol” [2019]), Reynaldo Jiménez (“Trânscrito Galáctico: Apontamentos em Torno de uma Versão de Galáxias” [2019]) and Roberto Echavarren (“Galáxias, Work in Progress Barroco” [2019]); into English, Antonio Sergio Bessa (“Aula de Samba: A Articulação da Modernidade no Finismundo de Haroldo de Campos” [2019]), Suzanne Jill Levine (“Algumas Palavras Sobre Galáxias n. 1” [2019]) and Odile Cisneros (“Desafios e Oportunidades na Tradução Inglesa das Galáxias de Haroldo de Campos” [2019]); into French, Inês Oseki-Dépré (Cartas de Haroldo de Campos a Inês Oseki-Dépré [2022]); and, into Italian, Daniela Ferioli (Zornetta, “‘Eu Era o Seu Dicionário Falante’: Entrevista a Daniela Ferioli” [2019]). Considering the different facets of Haroldo de Campos’ translational work, the role of transcreation extends far beyond the absorption of foreign poets into his Paideuma. Such absorption was always and inseparably accompanied by the reverse movement of export. In fact, the attention his theory and practice of transcreation received in Brazil and abroad would never have been possible without his promotion of foreign versions of his own work. From the 1950s on, he explored translation not only to incorporate alien works but also, at the same time, to export his own.

Although his first extensive essay regarding translation was published in 1963, one is likely to find Haroldo de Campos’ essays on the topic before that. However, they do not integrate this research, as we adopted the same criteria as his posthumous collections. Thus, we left out his essays on translation published during the concrete poetry movement, considered over with the publication of the fifth volume of the Noigandres journal (1962). Although they do not exhaust the set of his publications on the topic, the 20 essays selected to carry out this research can be considered the most significant on his transcreation theory. Table 1 below distinguishes the six vehicular languages of the foreign versions of Haroldo de Campos’ essays on translation, which this research contemplates:

Table 1. Vehicular languages of the foreign versions. Source: the author.

Until now, there have been no foreign translations of the latest and most complete collection of theoretical essays by Haroldo de Campos in Portuguese (Campos, Transcriação). However, six foreign collections exclusively focus on his work and comprise essays on translation, such as the Mexican collection De la razón antropofágica y Otros ensayos (1999), edited and translated by Rodolfo Mata; the American collection Novas: Selected Writings (2007), edited by Antônio Sergio Bessa and Odile Cisneros; the British collection Haroldo de Campos In Conversation (2008), edited by Bernard McGuirk and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira; the Uruguayan collection Galaxias (2010), edited by Reynaldo Jiménez; the Italian collection Traduzione, transcreazione, saggi (2016), edited and translated by Andrea Lombardi and Gaetano D’Itria; and the French collection De la raison anthropophage et autres textes (2018), edited and translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré.

Foreign versions of his theoretical essays on translation can also be found in chapters sparsely published: in Spanish, in Diseminario: la deconstrucción, otro descubrimiento de América (1987), edited by Rodríguez Monegal, and Literatura y traducción: caminos actuales (1996), edited by Paolo Valesio and Rafael José Díaz; and, in English, in Translation Studies: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (2009), edited by Mona Baker, and The Translator’s Word: Reflections on Translation by Brazilian Translators (2018), edited by Márcia do Amaral Peixoto Martins and Andréia Guerini. In total, 22 chapters on the topic of translation were published in either exclusive or sparse collections of essays by Haroldo de Campos, be they different translations or reissued versions.

More frequently, the foreign versions of these essays were published in Brazilian and international journals —usually academic or specialised: in Spanish, the journals Vuelta (Mexico City), Filología (Buenos Aires), Quimera (Barcelona), Torre (Puerto Rico), Espiral (Madrid), Letra Internacional (Madrid), Reflejos (Jerusalem) and Poesia (Valencia); in English, the journals 20th Century Studies (Canterbury), Dispositio (Ann Arbor), Latin American Literary Review (Waltham) and Tradterm (São Paulo); in French, the journals Change (Paris), Change International (Paris), Ex (Aix-en-Provence), Banana Split (Marseille), Lettre Internationale (Paris), Bulletin des Études Valéryennes (Montpellier) and Europe (Paris); in German, the journals Lettre International (Berlin) and Toledo (Berlin); in Italian, the journal Lettera Internazionale (Rome); and, in Polish, the journal Przekładaniec (Kraków). In total, 31 essays on translation by Haroldo de Campos were published in international journals, be they different translations or reissued versions.

The six essays in Spanish published in the journal Poesia (Valencia) and the essay in German published in Toledo (Berlin) are digital versions only. As per Table 1, in order to avoid duplicating the overall number of essays, only the columns of Papers and Chapters were considered in the final sum containing the total of rows and columns. Altogether, 53 essays on translation by Haroldo de Campos were published in the six languages this research contemplates, be they part of Brazilian or international books or journals. Haroldo de Campos has also contributed, as a translator, to three English rendering of his works: in the translation of “On Mephistofaustian Transluciferation (Contribution to the Semiotics of Poetic Translation)” (1982), collaborating with Gabriela Suzanna Wilder; in the translation of “Translation as Creation and Criticism” (2007), in collaboration with Diana Gibson; and in the translation of “The Ex-Centric Viewpoint: Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation” (2008), collaborating with Stella Esther Ortweiler Tagnin.

Table 2 below presents the number of foreign versions of each of the 20 essays translated into the following six languages: Spanish, English, French, German, Italian and Polish. In the last two lines of Table 2, the absolute total represents the sum of all foreign issues of the 20 essays. In contrast, the relative total describes the sum of different essays translated into foreign languages minus the repeated versions of the same essay—carried out by the same author or not. The title of each essay, presented in chronological order from oldest to most recent, integrate the caption that follows Table 2 (for the complete references of the essays, see at the end the Appendix 1 – First edition of the essays on translation).

Table 2. The foreign versions of Haroldo de Campos’ essays on translation. Source: the author.

Captions – Table 2[2]:

[1] “Da tradução como criação e crítica” [On Translation as Creation and Criticism] (1963)

[2] “O problema da tradução” [The Problem of Translation] (1967).

[3] “A palavra vermelha de Hölderlin” [Hölderlin’s Red Word] (1969).

[4] “A quadratura do círculo” [Squaring the Circle] (1969).

[5] “Da Razão Antropofágica: a Europa sob o signo da devoração” [Anthropophagous Reason: Europe under the Sign of Devoration] (1981).

[6] “A transcriação do Fausto” [The Transcreation of Goethe’s Faust] (1981).

[7] “Post Scriptum: Transluciferação mefistofáustica” [Post Scriptum: Mephistofaustian Transluciferation] (1981).

[8] “Fantasia e fingimento” [Fantasy and Faking] (1983).

[9] “Tradução, Ideologia e História” [Translation, Ideology and History] (1983).

[10] “Para além do princípio da saudade: a teoria benjaminiana da tradução” [Beyond the Nostalgia Principle: Walter Benjamin’s Translation Theory] (1984).

[11] “Paul Valéry e a poética da tradução” [Paul Valéry and the Poetics of Translation] (1985).

[12]“Tradução/ Transcriação/ Transculturação” [Translation/ Transcreation/ Transculturation] (1986).

[13] “Da transcriação: poética e semiótica da operação tradutora” [On Transcreation: Poetics and Semiotics of the Translation Agency] (1987).

[14] “Reflexões sobre a Poética da Tradução” [Reflections on the Poetics of Translation] (1987).

[15] “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad” [Tradition, Translation, Transculturation: Historiography and the Ex-centric Viewpoint] (1987).

[16] “À esquina da esquina” [On the Corner of the Corner] (1988).

[17] “O que é mais importante: a escrita ou o escrito? A teoria da linguagem em Walter Benjamin” [What is More Important: The Writing or the Writings? The Theory of Language in Walter Benjamin] (1992).

[18] “Das estruturas dissipatórias à constelação: a transcriação do ‘Lance de dados’ de Mallarmé” [From Dissipative Structures to the Constellation: Transcreation of Mallarmé’s “A Throw of the Dice”] (1996).

[19] “A ‘língua pura’ na teoria da tradução de Walter Benjamin” [The “Pure Language” in Walter Benjamin’s Translation Theory] (1997).

[20] “A tradução como instituição cultural” [Translation as a Cultural Institution] (2013).

3. The Foreign Versions of Haroldo de Campos’ Essays on Translation

To analyse the data presented in Table 2, the Spanish, English, French, German, Italian and Polish versions of his 20 main essays on translation were divided into the following four categories:

a. Five essays with no translation into any foreign language (12, 14, 16, 17, and 20);

b. Eight essays rendered into one single foreign language (2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 18, and 19);

c. Two essays rendered into two foreign languages (8 and 13);

d. Five essays rendered into more than two foreign languages (1, 3, 5, 7, and 15).

3.1. Essays with No Translation into Any Foreign Language

The essays without translation into other languages comprise numbers 12, 14, 16, 17 and 20. The first edition of these five essays in journals of limited circulation and restricted to the academic community prevented its access to, notedly, even Portuguese readers. That only changed as of their publication in the most complete posthumous collection, excepting essay number 12. Haroldo de Campos’ essay “Tradução/Transcriação/Transculturação” [Translation/Transcreation/Transculturation] (1986) was published in a newspaper called Porandubas, whose reach was restricted to the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), where Haroldo de Campos worked as a professor and researcher until retirement in 1989. Nevertheless, its two last paragraphs were not included in that posthumous edition in Portuguese, perhaps because they were not part of the manuscript used by that particular edition:

The creative translator is a transculturator: he expands the possibilities of his language in the clash with the foreign language and enriches the cultural heritage of his literature, integrating with it —be it through trans-created poems and which are inclined, at the limit, towards autonomy and erasure of the origin (on this point, I disagree with W. Benjamin)— great texts of World Literature. Think about Ezra Pound and Chinese poetry, for example.

Saint Jerome, great translator/transculturator, praised in modernity by Valéry Larbaud for turning Latin into Hebrew, beautifully recreating the celebrated chorus of Ecclesiastes (II.1), in Hebrew havel havalim/hakol havel, by using the alliteration Vanitas vanitatum/omnia vanitas, traditionally rendered into Portuguese as: “Vaidade das vaidades, tudo é vaidade” [vanity of vanities, all is vanity]. Vanitas, although etymologically stemming from vanus (vacant; empty), has become abstract as vanity. Some modern translators (Martin Buber, André Chouraqui, Henri Meschonnic) have sought to recover the concreteness of the Hebrew word (hével: vapour, as in water vapour, breath), looking for solutions in this line of reasoning; with words such as Dunst, in German; buée or fumée in French. In my rendering, seeking to conciliate the concrete force of the original and its phonemic and syntactic design, I opted for: Névoa de nadas. Tudo névoa-nada [Mist of naught. All is mist-naught] (Campos, “Tradução/Transcriação/Transculturação” 6, our translation, emphasis in original).

In this newspaper article, Haroldo de Campos associates, for the first time, “transcreation” with the concept of “transculturation”, whose importance is central for a post-colonial interpretation of the translation notion he puts forward, mainly considering its reception in English-speaking countries. Roughly one year past publishing this article, he developed this association between “transcreation” and “transculturation” in his essay number 15, first published in Spanish under the title “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad” [Tradition, Translation, Transculturation: Historiography and the Ex-centric Viewpoint] (1987). This essay was only published in Portuguese posthumously, but its different versions in English were instrumental in making Haroldo de Campos’ translation theory known in English-speaking countries.

Likewise, his essay number 16 is intrinsically connected with Haroldo de Campos’ academic duty at PUC-SP. Entitled “À esquina da esquina” [On the Corner of the Corner], this essay is the preface to Borges & Guimarães: na Esquina Rosada do Grande Sertão [Borges & Guimarães: On the Pink Corner in the Backlands] (1988), written by Vera Mascarenhas de Campos. In 1986, the manuscript that would be published as a book was submitted to the same university as a master’s dissertation, carried out under Haroldo de Campos’ supervision.

 His essay number 14 was published for the first time in the annals of the UFMG 1st and 2nd Symposium of Compared Literature under the title of “Reflexões sobre a Poética da Tradução” [Reflections on the Poetics of Translation] (1987) and, later, in the journal 34 Letras under the title of “Da tradução à transficcionalidade” [From Translation to Transfictionality] (1989) and, finally, as a chapter in the book Tradução: Teoria e Prática [Translation: Theory and Practice] (1991), edited by Malcolm Coulthard and Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard. In this essay, Haroldo de Campos describes “transcreation” as a “process of transfictionalization”, subsuming it into the notions of “transfictionality” and “transfaking” [transfingimento] (Campos, “Tradução e reconfiguração” 119, our translation, emphasis in original). Even though “transcreation” contemplates the field of fictio, Haroldo de Campos does not refrain from distinguishing between translation in its strict and broad sense since “the fictitious in translation is second-degree fictitious” (Campos, “Tradução e reconfiguração” 119, our translation). His essay number 17 was published in Revista USP under “O que é mais importante: a escrita ou o escrito? A teoria da linguagem em Walter Benjamin” [What Is More Important: The Writing or the Writings? The Theory of Language in Walter Benjamin] (1992). Essay number 20 was a research project entitled “Literary History Project” and submitted to Toronto University in 1997; it constitutes the only complete text that remained unpublished in Portuguese until his posthumous collection Transcriação (2013). These five essays are only accessible to Portuguese readers.

3.2. Essays Rendered into One Single Foreign Language

Essays translated into one language only include numbers 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 18 and 19. Essays number 2, 9 and 10 were translated into Spanish by Reynaldo Jiménez as “Texto literario y Traducción” (2019), “Traducción, Ideología e Historia” and “Más allá del principio de nostalgia: la teoría benjaminiana de la traducción”, respectively. Essay number 10 had already been translated into Spanish by Néstor Perlongher and published in Diseminario (1987) as “Más allá del principio de nostalgia (Sehnsucht)”. Essays 18 and 19 were translated into Spanish and published as chapters in the book Literatura y traducción (1996), edited by Paolo Valesio and Rafael José Díaz, as “De las ‘estructuras disipativas’ hacia la constelación. La transcreación de ‘Un golpe de dados’ / ‘Un coup de dés’ de Mallarmé” and as “‘Die reine Sprache’: la ‘lengua pura’ en la teoría de la traducción de Walter Benjamin”, respectively. These five essays are accessible only to Portuguese and Spanish readers.

Essay number 4 was translated into French by Inês Oseki-Dépré and published in the journal Change International as “La quadrature du cercle” (1984). Essay number 11 was rendered into French and published in the journal Bulletin des Études Valéryennes as “Paul Valéry et la poétique de la traduction” (1991). Essay 6 was translated by Juan Marey and published in the journal Europe as “La ‘trans-création’ du Faust de Goethe” (1997). This essay constitutes a brief version of essay number 7, in which Haroldo de Campos (1981) presents his systematic version of transcreation for the first time. This concept, associated with “mefistofaustian transluciferation”, polemises with Walter Benjamin’s “theory of ‘angelical’ translation” (Campos, “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation” 234). However, Juan Marey’s translation bears distortions, such as translating the term “transcriação” (transcréation) into “transcrição” (transcription) in the following passage (Campos, “La ‘trans-création’ du Faust de Goethe” 62):

Mon livre sur Goethe se compose de deux parties : la transcription [sic] des deux scènes finales du Second Faust (en version bilingue) et un essai sur le poème goethien (Faust I : “Le pacte méphistophélique” ; Faust II : “Bouffonnerie transcendantale”), complété par la digression sur le problème de la traduction, qui sert de point focal, rétrospectif, à tout le travail.

[My book on Goethe comprises two principal parts: a transcription [sic] of the final two scenes of Faust, Part II (presented in a bilingual format), and a critical essay on Goethe's poetic work —Faust, Part I: “The Mephistofaustic Pact”; Faust, Part II: “Transcendental Buffoonery”. This is further supplemented by a digression on the problem of translation, which serves as the retrospective focal point of the entire study] (our translation).

In its musical sense of arrangement for instruments other than those for which a composition was initially written, the word “transcrição” [transcription] was used by Brazilian modernist poet Guilherme de Almeida to define his poetic translation of the anthology Flores das “Flores do mal” [Flowers of “Flowers of Evil”] (1944), by Charles Baudelaire. In Portuguese, the concept of “transcriação” [transcreation] differs only by the addition of the letter “a” into “transcrição” [transcription]. Through this deliberate paronomasia, Haroldo de Campos introduces a significant change in the musical metaphor of one of the most celebrated poetic translators in Brazilian modernism and the so-called 1945 generation. Essays 4, 6 and 11 are only accessible to Portuguese and French readers.

3.3. Essays Rendered into Two Foreign Languages

Essays translated into two different languages include numbers 8 and 13. Essay number 8 was translated into French by Marie-Agnès Chauvel and published in the 16th issue of the journal Banana Split, dedicated to “Album Ezra Pound”. Due to this theme, the Portuguese title was changed to “Ezra Pound et la poétique de la traduction” (1986) in the French version. The same essay was also rendered into Spanish by Reynaldo Jiménez as “Traducción: fantasía y fingimiento” (2018), following the title of its first edition in Portuguese. This essay is only accessible to Portuguese, French, and Spanish readers.

The first edition of essay number 13 was published in the book Semiótica da Literatura [Semiotics of Literature] (1987), edited by Ana Cláudia Oliveira and Lúcia Santaella. In the second posthumous collection, this essay was reissued based on the “original typescripts” written for the conference in which it was first presented[3], receiving specific modifications and the addition of an entire paragraph (Campos, Transcriação 77). The essay “Da transcriação: poética e semiótica da operação tradutora” [On Transcreation: Poetics and Semiotics of the Translation Agency] (1987), which kept the title in his first posthumous collection, shall be considered a complete synthesis of his theory of transcreation. He approximates the concept of transcreation to Jakobson’s “creative transposition” (Jakobson 238) and Benjamin’s “Umdichtung”, translating the latter into Portuguese as “transpoetização” [transpoetization] (Campos, Transcriação 98). His dialogue with the Russian linguist and the German philosopher, his main theoretical references to the transcreation construct, allowed him to define “the physics and the metaphysics of translation” (Campos, Transcriaçao 86), respectively. Essay 13 was translated into German by Jasmin Wrobel as “Zur Transkreation. Poetik und Semiotik des Übersetzungsvorgangs” and into Spanish by Reynaldo Jiménez as “De la transcreación: poética y semiótica de la operación traductora” (2019). Despite being one of his most important theoretical works, essay 13 is only accessible to Portuguese, Spanish and German readers.

3.4. Essays Rendered into More Than Two Foreign Languages

Essays rendered in more than two different languages include numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, and 15. Written for a conference presented in 1962 at a congress in João Pessoa[4], essay number 1 was first published in the Brazilian journal Tempo Brasileiro (1963) as “Da tradução como criação e como crítica” [On Translation as Creation and Criticism]. This essay was the second most edited in the corpus, the second most translated, and the second in the number of languages, having received nine editions in eight different translations in French, in English, in Spanish, and in Italian. In addition, it has been included in five foreign collections: the American, the English, the Mexican, the French and the Italian. Published one decade after the original in Portuguese, the first version into a foreign language of an essay on translation by Haroldo de Campos was precisely its French version carried out by Inês Oseki-Dépré and published in the 14th issue of the journal Change, dedicated to the theme “Transformer traduire” (1973). Recently, the same translation was republished in his French collection.

There are three English translations of this same essay: the first was carried out by Diana Gibson and Haroldo de Campos himself and published in his American collection as “Translation as Creation and Criticism” (2007); the second was the retranslation carried out by Thomas Laborie Burns and published in his British collection as “On Translation as Creation and Criticism” (2008); and the third was the retranslation carried out by John Milton and included in the first volume of the manual Translation Studies: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (2009), which was edited by Mona Baker and contained essential essays in the area. There are three Spanish translations of the same essay: the first by Héctor Olea and published in the journal Quimera (1981); the second by Rodolfo Mata and published for the Mexican collection under the title “De la traducción como creación y crítica” (2000). The third was a retranslation by Reynaldo Jiménez, published as “De la traducción como creación y como crítica” (2018). There is also an Italian version of this essay by Andrea Lombardi and Gaetano D’Itria, published in the Italian collection as “Della traduzione come creazione e come critica” (2016). This essay is accessible only to Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian readers.

Essay number 3, originally published in his book A arte no horizonte do provável [Art on the Horizon of the Probable] (1969) as “A palavra vermelha de Hölderlin”, was entirely incorporated decades later into a lecture presented in 1996 in the city of Porto Alegre[5], This complete version remained unpublished until its publication in the collection Transcriação (2013) [Transcreation] under the title of “A clausura metafísica da teoria da tradução de Walter Benjamin, explicada através da Antígone de Hölderlin” [The Metaphysical Closure in Walter Benjamin’s Translation Theory, Explained Through Hölderlin’s Antigone]. Its original short version was translated into Spanish by Héctor Olea and published in the journal Espiral as “La palabra roja de Hoelderlin” (1976); it was also translated into French by Inês Oseki-Dépré and published in the journal Change about “La folie encerclée” as “Mots rouges: la palabre vermeille de Hölderlin” (1977). It was finally translated into English by Albert G. Bork as “Hölderlin’s Red Word”, being first published in the journal 20th Century Studies (1974) and later in the American collection Novas (2007), edited by Odile Cisneros and Antonio Sergio Bessa. This essay is accessible to Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English readers.

Essay number 7 constitutes the last chapter of the book Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe [God and the Devil in Goethe’s Faust] (1981). In his “Post Scriptum: Transluciferação mefistofáustica” [Post Scriptum: Mephistofaustic Transluciferation], Haroldo de Campos presents a commented translation of the two final scenes of Goethe’s Faust Part Two. Its first edition in Portuguese was written for a conference in 1981 in Mexico.[6] In this essay, Haroldo de Campos associates “transcreation” with the neologism “transluciferation”, referring to his critique of Walter Benjamin’s “metaphysics of translation” based on the “erasure of origin” produced by writing (Campos, “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation” 233). Following such understanding, the concept of transcreation covers the entire field of Aristotelian mimesis, which, reread in the light of the concept of différance —“differs from/defers (in the Derridean double meaning of divergence and delay)” (Campos, “Anthropophagous Reason” 162)—, was redefined as plagiotropy. Although never fully translated into other languages, this chapter has received short versions in Spanish, English and French.

There are two French editions of the same translation, which was rendered by Inês Oseki-Depré; the first was published in the journal Ex (1985), and the other integrates his French collection under the title of “Translucifération” (2018). Likewise, there are two editions in Spanish. Carried out by Jorge Schwartz and revised by Haroldo de Campos himself, this version was first published in the journal Acta poética (1982-1983) and, later, in his Uruguayan collection as “Transluciferación mefistofaustica: Contribución a la semiótica de la traducción poética” (2010).

As for English, there are three partial translations of essay number 7: the first carried out by Gabriela Suzanna Wilder and Haroldo de Campos himself and published in the journal Dispositio as “On Mephistofaustian Transluciferation (Contribution to the Semiotics of Poetic Translation)” (1982); the second was the retranslation carried out by Bernard McGuirk and published in his British collection as “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation” (2008); and the third was the retranslation carried out by Paulo Henriques Britto and published as “On Mephistofaustian Transluciferation (Excerpt)” (2018), in a bilingual collection of texts by Brazilian translators. The short version of this essay is accessible only to Portuguese, French, Spanish and English readers, and its complete version only to the former.

Essay number 5, entitled “Da Razão Antropofágica: a Europa sob o signo da devoração”, was written in 1980 and first published in Portuguese in 1981 in Lisbon. It was then republished in Brazil in the fourth revised and expanded edition of the essay collection Metalinguagem e outras metas [Metalanguage and Other Meta-goals] (1992) as “Da Razão Antropofágica: diálogo e diferença na cultura brasileira” [Anthropophagous Reason: Dialogue and Difference in Brazilian Culture]. This was the most edited essay in foreign versions, with a more significant number of different translations and a greater number of languages, having received 13 editions in 11 different translations in French, English, Spanish, Italian and German. In addition, it was included in four of his six foreign collections (American, English, Mexican and French), except for the Italian and Uruguayan. Essay number 5 is referred to by the title of his Mexican and French collections because it is considered his main essay.

There are four different translations of this essay into Spanish: the first by Eduardo Milán, published in the journal Vuelta (1982) and, later, in Vuelta Sudamericana (1986) as “De la razón antropofágica: diálogo y diferencia en la cultura brasileña”; the second was the retranslation by Mario Merlino, published in the journal Letra Internacional (1989) as “De la razón antropofágica: los devoradores de Europa”; the third was the retranslation published in the Puerto Rican journal Torre (1999) as “De la razón antropofágica: Europa bajo el signo de la devoración”; and the fourth was a retranslation by Rodolfo Mata, published in the Mexican collection De la razón antropofágica y otros ensayos (2000) with the same title as his first translation into Spanish.

Essay number 5 also has two different French versions by Ines Oseki-Depré: the first, shorter, was published in the journal Lettre Internationale as “De la raison anthropophage” (1989); and the second, complete, in his French collection as “De la raison anthropophage: dialogue et différence dans la culture brésilienne” (2018). There are two translations of this essay into English: the first by Odile Cisneros and published in his American collection as “Anthropophagous Reason: Dialogue and Difference in Brazilian Culture” (2007); and the second was the retranslation by María Tai Wolff entitled “The Rule of Anthropophagy: Europe under the Sign of Devoration”, first published in the journal Latin American Literary Review (1986) and, later, in his British collection (2008). There are two translations of this essay into German: the first by Maralde Meyer-Minnemann and published in the journal Lettre International (1990) as “Über kannibalische Vernunft. Europa unter dem Zeichen der Einverleibung”; and the second was the retranslation by Oliver Precht entitled “Von der anthropophagen Vernunft” (2016). Essay number 5 was translated into Italian and published in the “Acquerello Brasiliano” section of number 20 of the journal Lettera Internazionale (1989) as “La ragione antropofaga”. This essay is accessible only to Portuguese, French, Spanish, English, Italian and German readers.

Essay number 15 is an abbreviated version of the text “Da Razão Antropofágica: a Europa sob o signo da devoração” [Anthropophagous Reason: Europe under the Sign of Devoration] (1981). It was translated into Spanish, English and Polish. However, unlike the other 19 essays (all of which had authorised editions in Portuguese[7]), it only had authorised versions published in foreign languages, remaining unpublished in Portuguese until his posthumous collections. The first edition of essay 15 was published in the journal Filología, translated by Néstor Perlongher into Spanish and entitled “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad” (1987). This same Spanish translation was republished twice: the first (without crediting the translator) was published in the journal Reflejos (1994), but with a modification in the subtitle: “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: el punto de vista ex-céntrico”; the second was published in his Uruguayan collection (2010) and credited its translator, keeping the title of the first edition.

Essay number 15 was also translated into English by Stella E. O. Tagnin and published in the Brazilian journal Tradterm (1997) as “Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation: The Ex-centric’s Viewpoint” (this title follows the second edition of the Spanish translation). In the first posthumous collection (Da transcriação. Poética e Semiótica da operação tradutória), translator Aline S. de Oliveira back-translated this English version into Portuguese. Haroldo de Campos’ typewritten version in Portuguese was published in the second posthumous collection Transcriação (2013)[8], which served as the source text for the Polish translation, as explained in a footnote. It was translated into Polish by Gabriel Borowski and published in the journal Przekładaniec (2016) as “Tradycja, transkreacja, transkulturacja: eks-centryczny punkt widzenia”. This essay is accessible only to Portuguese, Spanish, English and Polish readers.

In 1999, the universities of Yale and Oxford dedicated an academic event to the debate and discussion of Haroldo de Campos’ work. The book Haroldo de Campos: A Dialogue with the Brazilian Concrete Poet (2005), edited by David Kenneth Jackson, consists mainly of the conferences that specialists, translators and researchers of his work presented at this event. Published after his death, the book also included posthumous tributes and a short anthology of his poems in English. The event and the publication of this book played an important role in the dissemination of Haroldo de Campos’ work among English-speaking countries, which, until then, had access to only four editions in English of his essays on translation. From then on, this number increased to fourteen editions in this language.

That book’s first chapter contains the conference Haroldo de Campos presented at the event, which later integrated a version of essay number 15 with the addition of a “Post Scriptum: Second Thoughts: The Dialectics of Subaltern and Overaltern Literary Models”. Besides the addition of this “Post Scriptum” to the English version published by Tradterm (1997), Haroldo de Campos reversed the order of title and subtitle, shifting the emphasis to “The Ex-Centric’s Viewpoint: Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation” (2005). The translation credits for this new version of essay 15 included Haroldo de Campos himself and the translator of the first English version, which was published for the first time in Tradterm.

The new version of essay number 15 was published in his British collection, but with revisions by the book’s editors, Bernard McGuirk and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, including its title —“The Ex-Centric Viewpoint: Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation” (2008). Moreover, the translators’ credit no longer included Haroldo de Campos, attributing the authorship of the essay’s first version in English to Professor Stella E. O. Tagnin.

The only two versions of essay number 15 accompanied by the “Post Scriptum” were published posthumously in the book edited by Kenneth David Jackson (2005) and in the British collection (2008). Thus, the Post Scriptum is absent from the editions of this essay in Portuguese, Spanish, and Polish. Therefore, there are two versions of essay number 15: its short version (without “Post Scriptum”) is accessible only to English, Spanish, Portuguese and Polish readers, while its complete version (with “Post Scriptum”) is only accessible to English readers.

4. Translation in Progress

In absolute numbers, 53 foreign versions of the 20 main Haroldo de Campos theoretical essays on translation have been published. In descending order, a larger number of editions were published in Spanish, English, French, Italian, German and Polish. In relative numbers, 30 different versions of these essays were published in foreign languages. In descending order, a larger number of editions of different essays were published in Spanish, French, English, German, Italian and Polish. Spanish comprises the highest absolute and relative number: 22 editions of 12 different essays. In absolute numbers, English ranks second and, in relative numbers, third: 14 editions of five different essays. In relative numbers, French ranks second and, in absolute numbers, third: 11 editions of 8 different essays. This alternation of positions between English and French is due to the repetition of the same essays in English —in particular, essays 1, 5, 7 and 15, which have each been translated or reissued three times each in that language. Although there are fewer editions in French, they comprise a more significant number of different essays. Italian and German coincide in relative numbers, and both have two different essays. Polish occupies the last position.

No essay has been rendered into the six foreign languages. Only essay 5 was published in five different foreign languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian and German. And only essay 1 was published in four different foreign languages: French, English, Spanish and Italian. Essays 7 and 15 were published in three different foreign languages each: the former in Spanish, English, and French, and the latter in Spanish, English, and Polish. Essay 5 was not published in Polish, but its abbreviated version (essay 15) was the only Polish version identified by the research. Thus, essays 5 and 15, which constitute the complete and abbreviated versions of the “Da Razão Antropofágica: a Europa sob o signo da devoração” [Anthropophagous Reason: Europe under the Sign of Devoration], have together 20 different editions, distributed in all six foreign languages: eight in Spanish, six in English, two in French, two in German, one in Italian, and one in Polish.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the anthropophagic (cannibal) metaphor, applied to the concept of transcreation by Haroldo de Campos in these two essays, has been considered as its hardcore by foreign reception, particularly in English-speaking countries (Vieira; Barbosa and Wyler; McGuirk and Vieira; Snell-Hornby; Gentzler; Suchet; Arrojo). However, Haroldo de Campos’ theory of transcreation, developed over more than four decades, is not even remotely reduced to the anthropophagic metaphor or the Postcolonial perspective of Translation Studies, as has been demonstrated by several researchers (Milton; Esteves; Tápia).

Despite the interest this theory has aroused in several countries, there is still a long way to go before Haroldo de Campos’ essays on translation are widely accessible in foreign versions and his construct becomes better known. Out of Haroldo de Campos’ top 20 essays on translation, five have no translation in any foreign language, eight have no Spanish translation, 12 have no French translation, 15 have no English translation, 18 have no Italian or German translation, and 19 have no Polish translation.

Since the early 1970s, Haroldo de Campos has mobilised his extensive network of international translation agents to export his theory of transcreation into different foreign languages. By his death in 2003, 28 foreign versions of these essays had been published. Over twenty years past his death, this export has not ceased to increase: thanks to the work of translators from various countries, these essays have received 25 more foreign versions. Among these posthumous versions, ten were made only in English, whose potential audience is perhaps more comprehensive than in any other language. There could be no better tribute to an author who dedicated himself so much to translation than to continue translating, retranslating, back-translating and, why not, transcreating him.

Translated by Edgar Rosa Vieira Filho and revised by the Author

Works Cited[9]

Arrojo, Rosemary. “The Power of Fiction as Theory: Some Exemplary Lessons on Translation from Borges’ Stories”. Transfiction: Research into the Realities of Translation Fiction, edited by Klaus Kaindl and Karlheinz Spitzl, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2014, pp. 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.110.03arr

Barbosa, Heloísa Gonçalves and Lia Wyler. “Brazilian Tradition”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, edited by Mona Baker, New York, Routledge, 1998, pp. 326-332.

Baudelaire, Charles. Flores das “Flores do mal”. Rio de Janeiro, José Olympio, 1944.

Bessa, Antonio Sergio. “Aula de Samba: A Articulação da Modernidade no Finismundo de Haroldo de Campos”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 230-254.

Campos, Augusto de. “Ezra Pound: ‘Nec Spe Nec Metu’”. Ezra Pound, Poesia, translated by Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, Mário Faustino and José Lino Grünewald, Brasília, Editora da UnB, 1985, pp. 13-40.

Campos, Haroldo de. “A poesia concreta e a realidade nacional”. Tendência, no. 2, 1962, pp. 83-94.

____. Metalinguagem. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1967.

____. A arte no horizonte do provável. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1969.

____. Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1981.

____. “Da Razão Antropofágica: diálogo e diferença na cultura brasileira”. Metalinguagem e outras metas. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1992, pp. 147-166.

____. O arco-íris branco: ensaios de literatura e cultura. Rio de Janeiro, Imago, 1997.

____. Da transcriação. Poética e Semiótica da operação tradutória. Belo Horizonte, FALE/UFMG, 2011.

____. “Tradução e reconfiguração: o tradutor como transfingidor”. Transcriação, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médice Nóbrega, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2013a, pp. 109-130.

____. Transcriação, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médice Nóbrega, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2013b.

Campos, Haroldo de, Augusto de Campos and Décio Pignatari. “Pilot plan for concrete poetry”, translated by the authors. Concrete Poetry: A World View, edited by Mary Ellen Solt, London, Indiana University Press, 1970a, pp. 71-72.

____. “Plano-pilôto para poesia concreta”. Concrete Poetry: A World View, edited by Mary Ellen Solt, London, Indiana University Press, 1970b, pp. 70-71.

Campos, Haroldo de, Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Ronaldo Azeredo, editors. Noigandres, no. 4, 1958.

Campos, Haroldo de, Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari, Ronaldo Azeredo and José Lino Grünewald, editors. Noigandres, no. 5, 1962.

Cisneros, Odile. “Desafios e Oportunidades na Tradução Inglesa das Galáxias de Haroldo de Campos”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 263-273.

Echavarren, Roberto. “Galáxias, Work in Progress Barroco”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 288-297.

Esteves, Lenita Rimoli. “Tradução, Ética e Pós-Colonialismo”. Tradução & Comunicação, no. 18, 2009, pp. 31-42.

Gentzler, Edwin. Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory. London, Routledge, 2008.

Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”. On Translation, edited by Reuben Brower, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1959, pp. 232-239.

Jiménez, Reynaldo. “Trânscrito Galáctico: Apontamentos em Torno de uma Versão de Galáxias”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 274-287.

Levine, Suzanne Jill. “Algumas Palavras Sobre Galáxias n. 1”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 298-300.

McGuirk, Bernard and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, editors. Haroldo de Campos in Conversation. London, Zoilus Press, 2008.

Milton, John. “Universals in Translation: A Look at the Asian Tradition”. Tradução & Comunicação, no. 18, 2008, pp. 95-104.

Oseki-Dépré, Inês, editor. Cartas de Haroldo de Campos a Inês Oseki-Dépré (1967-2003). Rio de Janeiro, EDUFRJ, 2022.

Pound, Ezra. Cantares, translated by Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos, Rio de Janeiro, Ministério da Educação, 1960.

Robayna, Andrés Sánchez. “Yûgen em Espanhol”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 227-229.

Snell-Hornby, Mary. The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigms or Shifting Viewpoints? Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2006.

Suchet, Myriam. Outils pour une traduction postcoloniale. Paris, Éditions des Archives, 2009.

Tápia, Marcelo. “Posfácio: o eco antropofágico”. Transcriação, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médice Nóbrega, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2013, pp. 215-232.

Vieira, Else Ribeiro Pires. “Liberating Calibans: Readings of Antropofagia and Haroldo de Campos’ Poetics of Transcreation”. Postcolonialism and Translation, edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, London, Routledge, 1999, pp. 95-113.

Zornetta, Katia. “‘Eu Era o Seu Dicionário Falante’”: Entrevista a Daniela Ferioli”. Haroldo de Campos: Tradutor e Traduzido, edited by Andreia Guerini, Walter Carlos Costa and Simone Homem de Mello, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2019, pp. 259-262.

Appendix 1 – First edition of the essays on translation

Campos, Haroldo de. “Da tradução como criação e crítica”. Tempo Brasileiro, no. 4-5, 1963, pp. 31-48. [1]

____. “O problema da tradução”. Correio da Manhã, 2 Apr 1967, p. 4. [2]

____. “A palavra vermelha de Hölderlin”. A arte no horizonte do provável. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1969, pp. 93-107. [3]

____. “A quadratura do círculo”. A arte no horizonte do provável. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1969, pp. 121-128. [4]

____. “Da Razão Antropofágica: a Europa sob o signo da devoração”. Colóquio Letras, no. 62, 1981, pp. 10-25. [5]

____. “A transcriação do Fausto”. O Estado de São Paulo, 16 Aug 1981, pp. 14-16. [6]

____. “Post Scriptum: Transluciferação mefistofáustica”. Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1981, pp. 179-209. [7]

____. “Fantasia e fingimento”. Folha de S. Paulo, 18 Sep 1983, pp. 6-7. [8]

____. “Tradução, Ideologia e História”. Cadernos do MAM, no. 1, 1983. pp. 58-64. [9]

____. “Para além do princípio da saudade: a teoria benjaminiana da tradução”. Folha de S. Paulo, 9 Dec 1984, pp. 6-8. [10]

____. “Paul Valéry e a poética da tradução”. Folha de S. Paulo, 27 Jan 1985, pp. 3-5. [11]

____. “Tradução/Transcriação/Transculturação”. Porandubas, 12 May 1986, p. 6. [12]

____. “Da transcriação: poética e semiótica da operação tradutora”. Semiótica da literatura, edited by Ana Cláudia de Oliveira and Lúcia Santaella, São Paulo, EDUC, 1987, pp. 53-74. [13]

____. “Reflexões sobre a Poética da Tradução”. Annals of the UFMG 1st and 2nd Symposium of Compared Literature, Belo Horizonte, Imprensa da UFMG, 1987, pp. 258-276. [14]

____. “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad”, translated by Nestor Perlongher. Filología, vol. 22, no. 2, 1987, pp. 45-53. [15]

____. “À esquina da esquina”. Vera Mascarenhas de Campos, Borges & Guimarães: na Esquina Rosada do Grande Sertão, São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1988, pp. 11-14. [16]

____. “O que é mais importante: a escrita ou o escrito? A teoria da linguagem em Walter Benjamin”. Revista USP, no. 15, 1992, pp. 77-84. [17]

____. “Das estruturas dissipatórias à constelação: a transcriação do ‘Lance de dados’ de Mallarmé”. Limites da traduzibilidade, edited by Luiz Angélico da Costa, Salvador, EDUFBA, 1996, pp. 29-39. [18]

____. “A ‘língua pura’ na teoria da tradução de Walter Benjamin”. Revista USP, no. 33, 1997, pp. 161-170. [19]

____. “A tradução como instituição cultural”. Transcriação, edited by Marcelo Tápia and Thelma Médice Nóbrega. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2013, pp. 207-210. [20]

Appendix 2 – Essays on translation in foreign languages

Campos, Haroldo de. “De la traduction comme création et comme critique”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. Change, no. 14, 1973, pp. 71-84.

____. “Hölderlin’s Red Word”, translated by Albert G. Bork. 20th Century Studies, no. 11, 1974, pp. 4-11.

____. “La palabra roja de Hoelderlin”, translated by Héctor Olea. Espiral, no. 1, 1976, pp. 73-86.

____. “Mots rouges: la palabre vermeille de Hölderlin”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. Change, no. 32-33, 1977, pp. 196-203.

____. “De la traducción como creación y crítica”, translated by Héctor Olea. Quimera, no. 9-10, 1981, pp. 30-37.

____. “On Mephistofaustian Transluciferation (Contribution to the Semiotics of Poetic Translation)”, translated by Gabriela Suzanna Wilder and the Author. Dispositio, vol. 7, no. 19-21, 1982, pp. 181-188.

____. “De la razón antropofágica: diálogo y diferencia en la cultura en la cultura brasileña”, translated by Eduardo Milán. Vuelta, vol. 6, no. 68, 1982, pp. 12-19.

____. “Transluciferación mefistofáustica: contribución a la semiótica de la traducción poética”, translated by Jorge Schwartz and revised by the Author. Acta poética, no. 4-5, 1982-1983, pp. 145-154.

____. “La quadrature du cercle”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. Change International, no. 2, 1984, pp. 96-98.

____. “Translucifération”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. Hapax Magazine, no. 4, 1985, pp. 3-9.

____. “Ezra Pound et la poétique de la traduction”, translated by Marie-Agnès Chauvel and revised by the Author. Banana Split, no. 16, 1985-1986, pp. 34-43.

____. “The Rule of Anthropophagy: Europe under the Sign of Devoration”, translated by María Tai Wolff. Latin American Literary Review, vol. 14, no. 27, 1986, pp. 42-60.

____. “De la razón antropofágica: diálogo y diferencia en la cultura brasileña”, translated by Eduardo Milán. Vuelta Sudamericana, no. 4, 1986, pp. 32-40.

____. “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad”, translated by Nestor Perlongher. Filología, vol. 22, no. 2, 1987, pp. 45-53.

____. “Más allá del principio de nostalgia (Sehnsucht)”, translated by Nestor Perlongher. Diseminario: la deconstrucción, otro descubrimiento de América, edited by Rodríguez Monegal, Montevideo, Editores XYZ, 1987, pp. 135-146.

____. “De la raison anthropophage”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. Lettre Internationale, no. 20, 1989, pp. 45-47.

____. “De la razón antropofágica: los devoradores de Europa”. Letra Internacional, no. 13, 1989, pp. 71-79.

____. “La ragione antropofaga”. Lettera Internazionale, vol. 5, no. 20, 1989.

____. “Über kannibalische Vernunft. Europa unter dem Zeichen der Einverleibung”, translated by Maralde Meyer-Minnemann. Lettre International, vol. 11, no. 2, 1990, pp. 39-45.

____. “Paul Valéry et la poétique de la traduction”. Bulletin des Études Valéryennes, vol. 18, no. 18, 1991, pp. 35-54.

____. “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: el punto de vista ex-céntrico”. Reflejos, no. 3, 1994, pp. 7-15.

____. “‘Die reine Sprache’: la ‘lengua pura’ en la teoría de la traducción de Walter Benjamin”. Literatura y traducción: caminos actuales, edited by Paolo Valesio and Rafael José Díaz, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Nueva Gráfica, 1996, pp. 137-147.

____. “De las ‘estructuras disipativas’ hacia la constelación. La transcreación de ‘Un golpe de dados’ / ‘Un coup de dés’ de Mallarmé”. Literatura y traducción: caminos actuales, edited by Paolo Valesio and Rafael José Díaz, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Nueva Gráfica, 1996, pp. 49-63.

____. “La ‘trans-création’ du Faust de Goethe”, translated by Juan Marey. Europe, vol. 75, no. 813-814, 1997, pp. 59-65.

____. “Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation: The Ex-centric’s Viewpoint”, translated by Stella E. O. Tagnin. Tradterm, vol. 4, no. 2, 1997, pp. 11-18.

____. “De la razón antropofágica: Europa bajo el signo de la devoración”. Torre, vol. 4, no. 12, 1999, pp. 235-258.

____. “De la razón antropofágica: diálogo y diferencia en la cultura brasileña”. De la razón antropofágica y otros ensayos, edited, translated and with an introduction by Rodolfo Mata, México, Siglo Veintiuno editores, 2000, pp. 1-23.

____. “De la traducción como creación y crítica”. De la razón antropofágica y otros ensayos, edited, translated and with an introduction by Rodolfo Mata, México, Siglo Veintiuno editores, 2000, pp. 185-204.

____. “The Ex-Centric’s Viewpoint: Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation”, translated by Stella E. O. Tagnin and Haroldo de Campos. Haroldo de Campos: A Dialogue with the Brazilian Concrete Poet, edited by K. David Jackson, Oxford, University of Oxford, 2005, pp. 3-16.

____. “Anthropophagous Reason: Dialogue and Difference in Brazilian Culture”, translated by Odile Cisneros. Novas: Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by Odile Cisneros and Antonio Sergio Bessa, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2007, pp. 157-177.

____. “Hölderlin’s Red Word”, translated by Albert G. Bork. Novas: Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by Odile Cisneros and Antonio Sergio Bessa, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2007, pp. 327-333.

____. “Translation as Creation and Criticism”, translated by Diana Gibson and Haroldo de Campos and revised by Antonio Sergio Bessa. Novas: Selected Writings, edited and with an introduction by Odile Cisneros and Antonio Sergio Bessa, Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press, 2007, pp. 312-326.

____. “On translation as creation and criticism”, translated by Thomas Laborie Burns. Haroldo de Campos in Conversation, edited by Bernard McGuirk and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, London, Zoilus Press, 2008, pp. 200-204.

____. “The Rule of Anthropophagy: Europe under the Sign of Devoration”, translated by María Tai Wolff. Haroldo de Campos in Conversation, edited by Bernard McGuirk and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, London, Zoilus Press, 2008, pp. 213-232.

____. “On Mephistofaustic Transluciferation”, translated by Bernard McGuirk. Haroldo de Campos in Conversation, edited by Bernard McGuirk and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, London, Zoilus Press, 2008, pp. 233-236.

____. “The Ex-Centric Viewpoint: Tradition, Transcreation, Transculturation”, translated by Stella E. O. Tagnin and revised by the Author and the editors. Haroldo de Campos in Conversation, edited by Bernard McGuirk and Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira, London, Zoilus Press, 2008, pp. 237-245.

____. “On Translation as Creation and as Criticism”, translated by John Milton. Translation Studies: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, vol. 1, edited by Mona Baker, London, Routledge, 2009.

____. “Transluciferación mefistofáustica: Contribución a la semiótica de la traducción poética”, translated by Jorge Schwartz and revised by the Author. Galaxias, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez, Montevideo, La Flauta Mágica, 2010, pp. 221-230.

____. “Tradición, traducción, transculturación: historiografía y ex-centricidad”, translated by Néstor Perlongher. Galaxias, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez, Montevideo, La Flauta Mágica, 2010, pp. 231-238.

____. “Von der anthropophagen Vernunft”. Oswald de Andrade. Manifeste, translated by Oliver Precht. Wien/Berlin, Turia + Kant, 2016, pp. 145-185.

____. “Della traduzione come creazione e come critica”. Traduzione, transcreazione, saggi, edited and translated by Andrea Lombardi and Gaetano D’Itria. Napoli, Oèdipus, 2016, pp. 27-45.

____. “Tradycja, transkreacja, transkulturacja: eks-centryczny punkt widzenia”, translated by Gabriel Borowski. Przekładaniec, no. 33, 2016, pp. 26-36.

____. “De la traduction comme création et comme critique”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. De la raison anthropophage et autres textes. Paris, Nous, 2018, pp. 17-38.

____. “De la raison anthropophage”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. De la raison anthropophage et autres textes. Paris, Nous, 2018, pp. 61-86.

____. “Translucifération”, translated by Inês Oseki-Dépré. De la raison anthropophage et autres textes. Paris, Nous, 2018, pp. 87-94.

____. “On Mephistofaustian Transluciferation (Excerpt)”, translated by Paulo Henriques Britto. The Translator’s Word. Reflections on Translation by Brazilian Translators / Palavra de tradutor: Reflexões sobre tradução por tradutores brasileiros, edited by Márcia do Amaral Peixoto Martins and Andréia Guerini, Florianópolis, UFSC, 2018, pp. 115-116.

____. “De la traducción como creación y como crítica”, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez. Poesia, 10 Jul 2018, https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/de-la-traduccion-como-creacion-y-como-critica/ 14 Apr 2025.

____. “Traducción: fantasía y fingimiento”, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez. Poesia, 20 Nov 2018, https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/traduccion-fantasia-y-fingimiento/ 14 Apr 2025.

____. “De la transcreación: poética y semiótica de la operación traductora”, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez. Poesia, 11 Apr 2019, https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/de-la-transcreacion-poetica-y-semiotica-de-la-operacion-traductora/ 14 Apr 2025.

____. “Texto literario y traducción”, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez. Poesia, 28 Jun 2019, https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/texto-literario-y-traduccion/ 14 Apr 2025.

____. “Traducción, Ideología e Historia”, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez. Poesia, 21 Oct 2019, https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/traduccion-ideologia-e-historia-2/ 14 Apr 2025.

____. “Más allá del principio de nostalgia: la teoría benjaminiana de la traducción”, translated by Reynaldo Jiménez. Poesia, 16 Dec 2019, https://poesia.uc.edu.ve/mas-alla-del-principio-de-nostalgia/ 14 Apr 2025.

____. “Zur Transkreation. Poetik und Semiotik des Übersetzungsvorgangs”. 1985. Translated by Jasmin Wrobel. Toledo, 2012, https://www.toledo-programm.de/cities_of_translators/1770/zur-transkreation-poetik-und-semiotik-des-ubersetzungsvorgangs-1985 14 Apr 2025.

[1] This text is an excerpt from broader research dedicated to foreign versions of Haroldo de Campos’ body of work, including his poems, transcreations and critical essays. This research had the indispensable contribution of the following professionals and institutions, whose support I would like to thank: Edgar Rosa Vieira Filho, the translator of this text; Álvaro Faleiros from the Graduate Program in Foreign Languages and Translation (LETRA) at the University of São Paulo (USP); Paulo Iumatti from the Centre de Recherches sur les Pays Lusophones (CREPAL) at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III); Max Hidalgo from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB); Júlio Mendonça, Márcio Kurossu and Maria José Coelho from the Haroldo de Campos archival collection at the Haroldo de Campos Reference Center at Casa das Rosas; Marlene Laky from the archival collection of Casa Guilherme de Almeida; Simone Homem de Mello from the Center for Literary Translation Studies at Casa Guilherme de Almeida museum; Marcelo Tápia Fernandes from Casa das Rosas, Casa Guilherme de Almeida and Casa Mário de Andrade museums; and those responsible for the respective collections of rare works of the Biblioteca Brasiliana Guita e José Mindlin, the library from the Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros and the library from the Florestan Fernandes, all of which part of the University of São Paulo.

[2] The order presented in Captions –Table 2 adopts as criterion the date of each essay’s first edition. Therefore, it is slightly different from that of the chapters in the posthumous collection Transcriação, which combines the two criteria: chronological order of its original publication or, in some cases, of its writing (Campos, Transcriação).

[3] Conference held at the 2nd Brazilian Congress of Semiotics in São Paulo from the 2nd to the 6th September 1985.

[4] Conference held at the 3rd Brazilian Congress of Criticism and Literary History, promoted by the Federal University of Paraíba in 1962.

[5] Lecture delivered at the International Colloquium: The Value of Interpretation, at UFRGS, Porto Alegre, in 1996.

[6] Conference held at the 3rd International Colloquium on Poetics and Semiology at the Poetics Seminar promoted by the Institute of Philological Investigations of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1981.

[7] By authorised edition, we mean those published by Haroldo de Campos himself during his lifetime. Essay 5 did not receive any authorised edition in Portuguese, as its only editions in Portuguese are posthumous.

[8] That information was not explicitly offered by the editors of the posthumous collection Transcriação (2013), but it was deduced from their editorial method.

[9] The bibliography was separated into three parts: the first was dedicated to the references cited in the article; the second (appendix 1) to the first edition of Haroldo de Campos’ theoretical essays on translation; and the third (appendix 2) to their respective versions in foreign languages.