It came, as you say, “out of the blue,” an expression that, in and of itself, defies translation. In my native Spanish, one would say “de la nada,” not out of nowhere, since that would be “de ningún lugar,” but out of nothingness. Nothingness is a word that frightens me.
It is similar to nothing, but with an added philosophical twist. Whenever I stumble upon it, I think of Fernando Pessoa: “Não sou nada. Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.” Rendered into a rough English from Portuguese: “I am nothing. I will never be anything. I couldn’t want to be nothing.
Besides that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.” But maybe the first line should be amended to “I am nothingness,” since Pessoa is talking about the condition of unimportance. But excuse the detour: your letter is anything but unimportant. Among many other things, you ask me about “impersonating” famous poets, referring to the poems I shared in class purportedly written by Akhmatova, Celan, Drummond de Andrade, and Hikmet.
You say you’re still thinking of them, in spite of all the time that has gone by. You ask why I compose poetry from someone else’s perspective. What if any of these “originals” is confused by readers with a true work by these authors?
My answer might not satisfy you. Or else, it might disgust you. Chanelling someone else’s voice is what translators do.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
