Chris Daniels on Fernando Pessoa and the art of translation

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener. - Walter Benjamin


If art, like science, is a cognition of life, then it behooves artists to be curious about how other people make art elsewhere in the world, and, even more, to try to understand different peoples and their cultures through their arts, but not only through their arts, of course. [...] Poets have a unique opportunity to engage with another culture through an art made with the greatest human invention of them all. Our languages, as Benjamin teaches us, are kin, just as all people are kin, regardless of the artificial boundaries foisted upon us by the owners of the world’s wealth. Monoglots have no idea what they’re missing. To tell the truth, I feel a little sorry for poets who never translate, or who translate without really understanding the implications of what they’re doing.

My motto is “Translation fights cultural narcissism.” I don’t think I have to explain what that means, but I’m trying to work it out in full on my blog: http://nftseries.blogspot.com

The quotations above are taken from a recent interview, in the latest issue of Jacket, of Chris Daniels, translator & artist, by Kent Johnson, a poet & translator.

Daniels translates mostly Brazilian poetry though the interview begins with his recent & ongoing work with the poetries of Fernando Pessoa, in my opinion one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Anyone interested in poetry, translation, Portuguese or related subjects, would do well to check out the interview.