Portuguese Literature

[Manuel Cruz]

Hi I´m Portuguese, I´m 16 and I´ve recently found this forum, whose threads and discussions I´ve enjoyed reading. Anyways I´ve read many threads but I didn´t find any about portuguese literature or portuguese writers or books. So I´d like to know about your experience (if you had any) with portuguese literature and writers like José Saramago, Camões, Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queiroz, António Lobo Antunes, and what you think about them.
Oh and sorry for my english

[JCamilo]

They must be sorry for their english :D

There is some admirers of Fernando Pessoa around. One or another mention about Camões, Eça and Saramago. But not much beyond this. Perhaps Gil Vicente I think was mentioned here. But to think even spanish authors such Lope or Becquer are mostly absent here, this come as no surprise.

Right now, I am half way on Florbela Espanca poems (a complete edition). A bit too sentimental, but lyrical poetry in portuguese is considerable difficulty and she manages it quite well without seeming to be another Petrarca/Camões copycat. I am keeping Boccage translations of Ovid's Metamorphosis for latter and also what seems to be (or claim to) Camões's translations of Petrarca. (Do not put much faith there, however).

[kiki1982]

Here is a fan of Saramago!

I have not read much else from Portugal, but I'll get on it some time. :blush:

[cafolini]

I loved Saramago. One of the best writers of the 20th century. Well-deserved Nobel.

[Manuel Cruz]

Well, I would suggest you read Eça de Queiroz. Although probably the best portuguese novelist ever he´s not very well-known abroad, perhaps because there are not very good translations or because his books are critics of the portuguese society (in the XIX century, but remain true in the present) and don´t get foreigners interested that much. Anyways Saramago himself described Eça as the best portuguese writer ever.

[CarpeNixta]

The only one I'm familiar with (and love it ) it's Saramago. Someday I'll try another one as soon as I find them in a book store or library

[mortalterror]

Is The Gospel According to Jesus Christ Saramago's best work or just his most notorious?

[Manuel Cruz]

Saramago is the most famous abroad I guess because of the Nobel Prize. Hmm I would say his most notorious works are Memorial do Convento (I think the translation is Baltasar and Blimunda, which has nothing to do with the original name) and The Year of Death of Ricardo Reis. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is not his best work but it´s very notorious as well, by the time it was published it was very polemic. Its desaproval by the ministry of culture even led to Saramago moving to the spanish island of Lanzarote.

[kiki1982]

The Gospel according to Jesus Christ wasn't that bad. I can imagine it shocks real, hardline Christians because it addresses Christ as a man, but other than that it was quite endearing and much more interesting than the original gospel ;). It is interesting though how he deals with the so-called 'mysteries' like the immaculate conception and Jesus's 40-day test in the desert by the devil.

The City of the Blind and The City of the Seeing (I don't these titles are really correct. They are translations from the Dutch titles) are part of a trilogy, I thought. A film was made of The City of the Blind. I have read none of these, though, because they are so expensive in Dutch...

I should really get myself The City of the Blind as that is the last of the trilogy I still have to read, having read the two sequels...

[Manuel Cruz]

I didn´t mean it´s bad. It´s great but not his best bokk at all. And I don´t think Blindness and Seeing are trilogies(those are the translation names, although the originals are Ensaio sobre a Cegueira and Ensaio sobre a Lucidez). Anyway it couldn't be a trilogy because it´s two books. Actually I haven´t read those so I don´t know if they are better than Gospel according to Jesus Christ, but as I sad Baltasar and Blimunda, The Year of Death of Ricardo Reis and maybe Blindness are regarded generally as his best novels

[kiki1982]

Of course it was Blindness! How could I forget. Titles have been translated differently. So what does the Portuguese say exactly? I gather '[something] about [Blindness?]' and '[something] about [Seeing?]', but fort the rest I can't get any further i'm afraid... My knowledge of Portuguese goes through French and that very small vocab of Spanish I picked up watching SOS mi vida. ;)

I read that Blindness, All Names and The Cave were a trilogy about today's world/society. I haven't read Blindness, but I have read the two last ones. Very nice.

I wasn't actually addressing you, anyway, about The Gospel. My post was actually in answer to MortalTerror.

I should really read Ricardo Reis, but I don't seem to get to it. Mainly because it's always an agonising choice when I have the money and happen to have access to Dutch books...

[Manuel Cruz]

Ahah anyway Portuguese is a bit diferent from Spanish and a lot more from Frenche. In Portuguese it means Essay about Blindness and Essay about Seeing. I wouldn´t say Lucidez means exactly Seeing, there is even an english word which is Lucidity, so the translation could just have been Lucidity.

I didnt know those were a trilogy. I guess they´re kind of like Eça de Queiroz´s Os Maias, O Primo Basílio and O Crime do Padre Amaro, which altogether make a perfect trilogy about portuguese society in the XIX century, each of them with a diferent focus

[Mr.lucifer]

There have been some recent translations of De Queiroz in english. Zola said that he was a better writer than Flaubert.

[kiki1982]

Ahah anyway Portuguese is a bit diferent from Spanish and a lot more from Frenche. In Portuguese it means Essay about Blindness and Essay about Seeing. I wouldn´t say Lucidez means exactly Seeing, there is even an english word which is Lucidity, so the translation could just have been Lucidity.

I didnt know those were a trilogy. I guess they´re kind of like Eça de Queiroz´s Os Maias, O Primo Basílio and O Crime do Padre Amaro, which altogether make a perfect trilogy about portuguese society in the XIX century, each of them with a diferent focus

I was kind of thinking essay, but I didn't want to make a fool out of myself :D. Lucidez is indeed more than seeing. The same word exists in French: lucidité which can be about things, but also about the mind. That fits Saramago well :).

The fact that those novels are a trilogy comes from the back of the two that I have read, so guess that must be right.

[Manuel Cruz]

Kiki1982: You would have guessed right if you sad so it means essay and exactly that´s the diference from lucidity from seeing it can also be about the mind so the translation could have been better

Mr Lucifer: I´ve never read Flaubert( I must get to it someday) but Zola is probably right. Eça is a fabulous realist writer but not so well-known out of portugal, because the best about his books is his great style and use of the portuguese language, and with the translation that is lost. Believe me it´s such a pleasure to read it in portuguese

[mortalterror]

Kiki what's the name of the painting you are using for your new avatar? I like it.

[Mr.lucifer]

Kiki1982: You would have guessed right if you sad so it means essay and exactly that´s the diference from lucidity from seeing it can also be about the mind so the translation could have been better

Mr Lucifer: I´ve never read Flaubert( I must get to it someday) but Zola is probably right. Eça is a fabulous realist writer but not so well-known out of portugal, because the best about his books is his great style and use of the portuguese language, and with the translation that is lost. Believe me it´s such a pleasure to read it in portuguese

Translation is a necessary for people who want to experience from other countries, don't have the love on the tradition the writers come from to read the works in the original language.

I have a long to read list and it includes of writers from around the world.

[Manuel Cruz]

Most books I read are originally english or from other countries other than portugal. Sometimes I read them in english if they´re easier and other times in portuguese (most of them). Anyway there are good and bad translations. Sometimes translations are even better than the original, though that´s not clearly the case for Eça de Queiroz.

[JCamilo]

The problem of portuguese is the relative lack of translating tradition, which excludes some major names like Eça, Pessoa, Camões, Gil Vicente, Bocage, Drummond, Machado ou Guimarães Rosa from the overall reading. Portuguese language is marginal and those guys just werent.

[mortalterror]

I like Pessoa, though I feel too much is made of his heteronyms. Many writers use heteronyms to write in different styles and genres. There's nothing remarkable about this. The thing that raises Pessoa above the common run of heteronym users is how rich the quality of his writing was. Although the level of his writing tends to be very high, so few of the poems that I've seen stand out as something special. I did however enjoy his Salutation to Walt Whitman. There's a spot toward the beginning where he calls Whitman the "pansy of God" which gave me a chuckle or two. Tell me, what poems of his are taught in schools? What are his canonical works? I assume that Message is a key work but it doesn't appear to be translated into English yet.

As far as Eça de Queiroz goes, I read the introduction to his novel The Maias off Amazon and he definitely looks promising, although I wouldn't put him up with Balzac or Tolstoy just yet. I actually liked the little I've read by Machado de Assis better and that excerpt reminded me that I need to finish reading Dom Casmurro.

[CarpeNixta]

I checked my literature book from high school and there are 2 poems from Florbela de Alma da Conceiçâo Espanca in portugues and the spanish translation.

As we only studied portuguese for a month our teacher made us read mostly Saramago, Ensayo sobre la Ceguera took me a while, but Intermitencias de la Muerte was totally delicious.

[kiki1982]

Kiki what's the name of the painting you are using for your new avatar? I like it.

It's The Skeleton and the Shell by Paul Delvaux. Belgian surrealist painter. I actually put it on for Haloween, but I think I'll keep it for a while.

The problem with some literary translators is that they interpret wrongly. Firstly it is not your role to interpret, so if it is at all possible, you should consider all the possible interpretations that can be derived at first sight from such a word and then choose one in translation which is as polyvalent. All too often that doesn't happen.

The fact that the translation changes 'essay' into nothing I find quite dodgy. Though 'seeing' is kind of lucidity and it is a type of title that would be used for maybe essays, seeing only pertains to the mind, and not to things themselves. So essentially it takes one level away, so fundamentally one side of the story, if you will.

It is like the Dutch translation of La Caverna. You would think it is dead easy: The Cave which is reminiscent of Plato's thing about forms, which is probably related to the end of the novel. But no, the translator unwittingly changed the title to Het Schijnbestaan (something along the line of The Seeming Existence or maybe that would be translated better as The Reflection) which is also slightly reminiscent of it, but why change the original to something obscure?

What I see sometimes on Proz.com, a translators' website where you can go with your translation problems to supposedly knowledgeable people, is mind-boggling. Total disregard for historical content, for context of the book and writer even,... People would be proposing a possible translation only based on the sentence there. They are surely not all bad, bur questions like that make you squirm and wonder what translation you are reading if you are not so fortunate as to know the original language.

[JCamilo]

I like Pessoa, though I feel too much is made of his heteronyms. Many writers use heteronyms to write in different styles and genres. There's nothing remarkable about this. The thing that raises Pessoa above the common run of heteronym users is how rich the quality of his writing was. Although the level of his writing tends to be very high, so few of the poems that I've seen stand out as something special. I did however enjoy his Salutation to Walt Whitman. There's a spot toward the beginning where he calls Whitman the "pansy of God" which gave me a chuckle or two. Tell me, what poems of his are taught in schools? What are his canonical works? I assume that Message is a key work but it doesn't appear to be translated into English yet.

Well, yes. Having "personas" is not something special. And Pessoa always paid respect to Walt Whitman, specially about making up a writting persona. One thing, is how many heteronyms he has. Over 30. He kind made for himself a shakespeare play. But the special is indeed richness, each persona has a distinct style, voice, they have a deep dialogue. In a way, he found a form to write a novel in verses (of course, being a bit crazy to the point of beliving in some of those heteronyms helps) without writing it. He manages to change his style in prose too, and with time, as the "life" of the heteronyms go on. Considering he did it in small poems, it is quite a feat. And he does it to represent all poetry before him (mostly portuguese, the way he manages to finally end with Camões presence is amazing).

A canonical Pessoa is complicated, considering he spreed his stuff in many places, I would say you would have the modernists Odes like the Walt Whitman one, some of the lyric poetry like in Message, The Book of disquiet... meaning, a bit of each Heteronyms with himself (which is also a persona, but well).

No idea in portugal, but Pessoa (and no portuguese author) is taught in schools often. They are considered "Outsiders" and rarely they will be among the books listed. However, some texts books will present some of his most famous poem (perhaps the most famous one is "Navegar é preciso" or Autopsicografia), but often as support for grammar teaching, even because poetry is rather secundary here and Brazil has his modernists (Drummond, Bandeira, Andrade) which occupy the space. I am sure this change at university, even because Pessoa is pretty much the guy who challenges Camões better.




As far as Eça de Queiroz goes, I read the introduction to his novel The Maias off Amazon and he definitely looks promising, although I wouldn't put him up with Balzac or Tolstoy just yet. I actually liked the little I've read by Machado de Assis better and that excerpt reminded me that I need to finish reading Dom Casmurro.

Machado and Eça had a small rivalirity, but I would say Eça is a better novelist. Machado however goes well in every form (he was a very good poet too) and was like a writing machine. The thing both carry together is the Voltaire's irony. Zola is not the one that showed more pleasure towards Eça, Borges also considered him the better realist. (Borges didnt like brazilians much, if he knew Machado, he just ignored him, not a big fan of Tolstoy either, but he compared Eça to Flaubert. Of course, Eça was his mommy favorite, so you can figure...) Of course, those things do not matter, but I would say, Eça manages to be a better social critic than those guys, there is a bit of irony in his dramas that make him worth.

[Manuel Cruz]

I´m in the 11th form and I´m studying XIX century writers like romantic Almeida Garret ( with his dramatic book Frei Luis de Sousa) and will be studying realist Eça de Queiroz (Os Maias) later on. We only study XX century writers like Pessoa and Saramago (Memorial do Convento which is Baltasar and Blimunda in the translation, is Saramgo´s work studied at schools) in the next year. I don´t know which exact poems are studied but I think Pessoa is actually studied very intensively, as he is along with Camões, the best portuguese poet.
As for Eça, I can´t say who is better, him or Machado Assim. And that also goes for Balzac and Tolstoy as I haven´t read none of the others. I´m still young and have a lot to read, though I´m sure Eça will always be one of my favourite writers. He´s a master using irony and he uses it alot in his critics of society.

[Kyriakos]

I have read some works by Pessoa, including the Book of Disquiet. A great writer, although i think he was way too miserable to allow himself to produce even more impressive work. A bit like Kafka, although the two are very different in other respects.

[TheFifthElement]

I love Saramago :) He's quite a difficult read because his sentences all follow on like this and you've no idea who is talking is it me or is it you and there's no punctuation or speech marks so you find yourself reading these endless passages of dense text over and over to see if you have understood the gist of the conversation but then it's kind of nice because it is also like conversation where the words flit from one person to another and so on.

Phew.

I've read The Cave and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ which I thought was beautiful though I'm not a Christian (or not any more anyway) so I guess I couldn't find it offensive, and The Double which was fascinating and Death at Intervals which was the base line for the entire Torchwood Miracle Day series (which was kind of funny) and the one about Ricardo Reis which I can't remember the title off and which I think you might need to be Portuguese to fully understand. I would like to read all of his works. I've enjoyed them all. I just need to steel myself for those endless blocks of text before picking the next one up.

And I read some of the Book of Disquiet by Pessoa and it is beautiful but it made me kind of sad so I had to put it away for a cheerier day.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation of Eça de Queiroz who looks like an excellent writer (...adding to the wishlist :D)

[Heteronym]

Well, I would suggest you read Eça de Queiroz. Although probably the best portuguese novelist ever he´s not very well-known abroad, perhaps because there are not very good translations or because his books are critics of the portuguese society (in the XIX century, but remain true in the present) and don´t get foreigners interested that much. Anyways Saramago himself described Eça as the best portuguese writer ever.

Eça de Queiroz is one of the most translated Portuguese novelists: The Crime of Father Amaro, Cousin Bazilio, The Tragedy of the Street of Flowers, To The Capital, The Relic, The Maias, The Illustrious House of Ramires, The City and the Mountains, The Mandarin, The Yellow Sofa, Correspondence of Fradique Mendes, not to mention several short-stories are available. That's almost his entire fiction. And in recent years Margaret Jull Costa, the translator of Saramago, has been responsible for the translations, for Dedalus Press. So I'm sure there's no problem with their quality :)

But a person has to accept that it's hard for a 19th century writer who remained ignored for so long to suddenly become popular. There are great contemporary writers who have a hard time making themselves known, what chances does Eça have? The best people can do is to recommend him to others who haven't read him.

This blogger (http://wutheringexpectations.blogspot.com/) is currently reading and writing about Eça in his blog: I recommend giving it a look; he's managed to get other people reading him.

[JCamilo]

Eça is not exactly unknow, his reputation was pretty solid, he had ties and was well read by guys like Zola, Machado de Assis and Borges, to be honest.