This post was written by Fábio Paifer Cairolli, Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the Federal University of Paraná (Curitiba-PR-Brazil). He received his Ph.D. in Literature from the University of São Paulo in 2014. It has been translated from Portuguese into English by Adriana Vazquez (UCLA).
Cordel literature for sale in Rio de Janeiro. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons.
Aeneas on a Tightrope: Translating Latin Poetry into Cordel Literature
Translating ancient poetry is a praxis of singular importance for classical scholars. In Brazil, translation has a particular ethical significance, since the majority of Greco-Roman works have never been translated into Portuguese. The first translation of Virgil’s Aeneid into Portuguese dates to the 17th century; there are now almost ten complete poetic translations of his corpus. Yet these projects neglect two important aspects of the poem: its popular appeal and its oral qualities. Cordel literature, a traditional poetic genre of Ibero-American culture particularly characteristic of northeast Brazil, offers a uniquely Brazilian vehicle for capturing these elements of the original epic. Cordel is a poetic form primarily of an oral and popular nature, and circulates in print leaflets sold at popular fairs, displayed hanging on ropes (cordeis), from which the genre gets its name.
At first, my exploration into verse composition in the cordel form considered limited excerpts of hexametric poetry, as a kind of experimentation, extending beyond more than one genre and author. Thus, in addition to this initial foray into the Aeneid, I worked with the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Horace’s Satires, and the epigrams of Martial. Part of this exploration involved the material production of cordel booklets. The results of this first phase of experimentation, as well as its positive reception among the scholarly community, encouraged me to expand this work towards a more ambitious goal: a complete translation of the Aeneid into this literary form. At present, I have completed the translation halfway through Book 7.
The popular reception of the Aeneid is intrinsically tied to the rhythm of the meter of the text, which is difficult to preserve in translation. I therefore decided to experiment with an expanded roundel meter (redondilha maior), a verse form which, both in Portuguese and Spanish, better responds to the twin demands of orality and popular appeal. Among the various possibilities for the roundel in the Brazilian poetic tradition, the type found in cordel literature was especially interesting, since it could render the translation as domesticated as possible.
When translating the first verses of the Aeneid, for example, I chose to render the proem into a stanza of seven verses, called a septilha in cordel literature:
Canto as armas e o varão
Que de Troia se mandou,
Para a Itália e pro Lavino
O destino lhe arrastou,
Na água e em terra viu problema
Que o rancor da mão suprema
De uma deusa lhe causou. [1]
Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram
Each of the two hemistichs of the hexameter verse correspond to two roundels, whereby the alternating rhyme scheme reinforces the rhythmic subsections. At the same time, the irregularity of the strophe proves sufficient to disrupt the uniformity of the rhythm and to accommodate the many irregularities inherent in lengthy hexameter poems.
My experience translating and adapting Latin literature in cordel booklets, particularly the Aeneid, has led me to reflect on the aesthetic possibilities of popular language, which I will demonstrate with two further examples. One comes from the beginning of Aeneid 4, when Dido notices her growing passion for Aeneas:
Mas a rainha faz tempo,
De grave zelo atacada,
Nutre a ferida na veia,
Por fogo cego é tocada.
Muita virtude no home,
Na gente muito renome,
A coisa já tá assentada …[2]
At regina gravi iamdudum saucia cura
vulnus alit venis et caeco carpitur igni.
multa viri virtus animo multusque
recursat gentis honos;
The two underlined terms in my translation are not found in formal Portuguese, but rather reflect variants found in more informal settings: tá < está; home < homem. Home (‘man’), with a non-normative pronunciation, carries a series of meanings in the spoken register that are predominantly pejorative. In my interpretation, home, with its negative take on masculinity, capitalizes on the hero’s un-heroic treatment of Dido.
My second example comes from the end of Aeneid 6, when Aeneas meets his father, Anchises, in the Underworld. In this passage, Anchises describes his future offspring, the emperor Augustus (A. 6.791–794):
E esse é o cara, é ele, aquele
De quem sempre ouves promessas,
César Augusto, de estirpe
De um deus, que o tempo começa
De ouro, em que reina ao seu turno,
Como outrora, o deus Saturno,
Que ao chão do Lácio regressa.[3]
hic vir, hic est, tibi quem promitti saepius audis,
Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet
saecula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva
Saturno quondam,
Cara (‘face, countenance’) is a very familiar colloquial term in Brazilian Portuguese to refer to an individual, and to a man especially, and the expression esse é o cara is commonly used to celebrate someone’s accomplishments. Such a translation conveys the full sense of hic vir in the original, not only as a deictic reference to the emperor, but also as a reflection of the speaker’s admiration for Augustus.
These examples suggest just some of the rich possibilities the uniquely Brazilian genre of cordel literature, with its popular character and lively meters, offers for conveying the dynamism of the Aeneid to today’s readership. Those interested in further exploring my project can find excerpts of the translation at the following sites:
Article introducing the project in the journal Rónai:
https://doi.org/10.34019/2318-3446.2019.v7.27938
Excerpt of the translation of the second Book in the magazine Samizdat:
http://www.revistasamizdat.com/2021/04/eneias-enfrenta-androgeu-duas-esteticas.html
Recordings of lectures and oral presentations on my Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyf5RDOKDAKG-4z_iPDyd0A
Notes
[1] “I sing of arms and the man
who left Troy,
towards Italy and to Lavinium
fate dragged him,
on sea and on land he faced trouble
that the resentment of the supreme hand
of a goddess caused him.”
[2] “But for a long time the queen,
assaulted by a grave passion,
nourishes the wound in her vein,
by a hidden flame was she touched.
The great virtue in that man,
well-known among the people,
the matter is already decided …”
[3] “And this is the man, this is he, the one
whom you always heard promised,
Caesar Augustus, of divine
lineage, who will usher in the Golden Age,
during which he reigns in turn,
as formerly the god Saturn did,
who returned to the land of Latium.”