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THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM, BY WALLACE STEVENS, AND ITS

TRANSLATION INTO PORTUGUESE, BY DCIO PIGNATARI: a comparison

Andr Domingos Dias Manoel

RESUMO

This paper aims at showing how translation is not an unbiased activity and that the job

of a translator is not only to find equivalents from the source language to the target one.

Palavras-chave: (03-05)

1. Introduction

This paper aims at showing how translation is not an unbiased activity and that

the job of a translator is not only to find equivalents from the source language to the

target one. The starting point for this paper is a conception of translation that

understands it as a work deeply connected with that of a critical interpretation of a text;

in other words, there are many possibilities of translation, because, when we read

especially when the object under analysis is literature , there is no such thing as a

stable meaning, thus the variation in our interpretation is going to be reflected on the

translations as well. Therefore, reading a translated text also means reading from the

perspective of the translator.

Bearing this in mind, we intend with this paper to think of the role of translators

and the status of translation when in comparison to the original, for it is very common to

think that the former is absolutely submitted to the latter, and when a translation does

not accomplish the expected outcomes of rendering good equivalents, it is usually

disregarded. In this sense, we also intend to present an analysis of the two poems The

emperor of ice cream, the original, by Wallace Stevens, and the translated version into

Portuguese, O rei do sorvete by Dcio Pignatari. It is important to refer to these two

pieces of writing as two poems themselves, as if each one had a life of their own,

because this is exactly what we want to show in this paper: the differences between one

work and the other, thinking of the translated version independently. Our purpose,


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however, is notpointing out differences, exclusively, as we also intend to see beyond

that. The guiding questions in this quest are: What is the meaning of this variation?

What do the discrepancies say about the translator and his work as a poet? What were

the possible intentions behind this new version and how do they contrast with the ones

in the original?

In order to shed some light on the analysis of both poems as well as to provide a

theoretical framework to follow, we resort to FULANO (year), BELTRANO (year), and

SICRANO (year).

This paper is divided in four main parts. The first one covers theories of

translation to give support to the analysis. The second one concerns in briefly presenting

the author, Wallace Stevens, and what critics say about his poetic work. The third part

focuses on the second author, Dcio Pignatari, and his contribution to Brazilian

Concrete Poetry the intention here is to make an effort as to conclude at the end of the

paper whether his background as a concrete poet influenced in some way his work on

this specific translation or not; is it possible to track down the features of this literary

movement on his version of The Emperor of Ice Cream?

In the final part we present the comparison between the two versions of the

poem, the original and the one in Portuguese, and what the translation brought in

addition to rewriting the original.

2. Language, reading and translation

The intention of this section is to establish the foundations for the critic we want

to formulate at the end of the article. As we aim at comparing the translated version of a

poem with its original one, this work seems to involve three different degrees of

conceptions which, in our understanding, are deeply connected with one another and

which are essential to start any discussion. First of all, as we are dealing with words or

linguistic signs, it is necessary to think of a conception of language and the relation

between the things in the world and their meaning. Based on this and as a direct

consequence, we also need to think of how we understand the process ofreading, which


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is deeply connected with the way we see the establishment of meaning. Finally, we are

also going to approach and set a conception for translation, which is another

consequence of what we think of language and of reading. This question is the guiding

point for all the arguments to be exposed here. For this purpose, we resort to some of

the works published by Brazilian scholar Rosemary Arrojo, for on her papers she

reflects upon the theoretical problems of translation such as the status of the original

text in relation to the translated version as to two different perspectives, the traditional

one, which has been spread in the common sense of the Western thought up to these

days and could be associated with the notion of logocentrism; the second one has its

foundations on the thoughts of Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure and the notion of

deconstruction, by Jacques Derrida.

First of all, the theories of language that are founded on logocentrism, according

to Arrojo1, understand the source-language text as a definite and frozen object, that

is, the meanings behind its perception are, according to this viewpoint, perfectly stable

and are usually identified with the intentions of the author. The origin of the meaning

here is extrinsic to the subject-reader (it does not depend on what people think, but it

exists independently) and could be found, supposedly, in two ways2: in the notion of

literal meaning, according to which there is a first, non-figurative and neutral sense that

is not associated with any interpretation and it does not depend on any context; the

second possibility projects on the author or on the sender of the message the role of

imposing the true meaning, as if the author had the right to say which interpretation of

his/her text is correct. In this sense, and following these theories of language, the direct

consequence for the concept of reading is exactly this one: understanding a written

message is limited to unraveling and recovering what the intentions of the sender of the

message were, since in this perspective it is the wish of the author that determines the

establishment of meaning3; as a result the signifier (the words, the text) is thought of as

capable of carrying the true meaning of the author throughout the times in whatever

circumstances it may be understood. As to the readers, they should only have a passive

role, respecting and protecting the intentional wishes of the author.

Inserted in these conceptions, Arrojo also points out to the fact that this kind of

thought on language and decoding of meanings leads to thinking of translation as a

simple act of transporting or transferring, in a protective manner, the supposedly

1 A que so fiis tradutores e crticos de traduo?, p. 162 A descontruo do logocentrismo e a origem do significado, Rosemary Arrojo, p.353 P.36


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stable meanings from the source to the target text, from one language into another. 4 (p.

16, our translation). Therefore, the more protective the work of the translator, in the

sense of preserving the original intentions, the closer the result is going to be to the

source text. As a consequence, the common thought when it comes to translation critic

usually shares the opinion that the translation should follow the ideas in the original in

their totality, or that the style on the translation should be exactly the same, presenting

the same fluency. The conception of language involved here is, then, that there is a

universal language that is not arbitrary and that does not depend on any interpretation,

as if each word had a fixed and unique meaning, free of ambiguities, regardless of the

context, and which in theory should be immediately decoded by any person. This is the

kind of rational thought that has been saying that critics, translators and readers in

general, should not interpret or go beyond the source text.

According to Arrojo, however, so far no theory of language, based on

logocentric conjectures, has managed to establish objective and unquestionable

distinctions between literal and figurative meanings, between ironic and non-ironic, or

between literary and non-literary as intrinsic textual properties5 (ARROJO, a

desconstruo do logocentrismo, p. 36). The same way, this traditional rational thought

has never managed to produce any unique and unarguable reading about a literary work

that would be accepted as such by everybody, despite the time and the place even the

classic texts tend to gain new interpretations after each generation or on different spaces

or even from person to person. The solution then for this problem of the status of the

original text seems to be the opposite of this logocentric view: thinking of different

possible interpretations, of unstable meanings that lie on the subject-reader and do not

depend on the author to be able to present themselves. Arrojo makes a parallel between

this opposing contemporary thought and the notion of deconstruction, by Jacques

Derrida, whose reflections, according to her, were influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche

and Sigmund Freud.

Nietzsches contribution, she says, was that he was able to unmask the great

illusion which is the basis of all the truths of our society, our philosophy, our sciences,

the thought that we call rational. According to Nietzsche, every established truth, at

the beginning, was only a nervous stimulus. Every sense that is for us literal was, at

4 ... traduzir transportar, transferir, de forma protetora, os significados que se imaginam estveis, deum texto para outro e de uma lngua para outra (A que so fiis tradutores e crticos de traduo? P.16)

5 ...nenhuma teoria da linguagem conseguiu at hoje estabelecer, a partir de pressupostos logocntricos,distines objetivas e indiscutveis entre o literal e o figurado, entre o irnico e o no irnico, ou entre o

literrio e o no literrio enquanto propriedades textuais intrnsecas


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the beginning, a metaphor and can only be a human creation, a reflex of their

circumstances; it was not the discovery of something extrinsic 6(ARROJO, p.17,

psicanlise).

In order to expand this notion, we resort to a quotation of Nietzsche:

first metaphor: a nervous stimulus transformed inperception. This

perception then coupled to a sound. When we speak of trees, colors,

snow and flowers, we believe we know something about the things

themselves, but we only have metaphors of these things, and these

metaphors do not correspond in any way to the essence of the

originals. In the same manner that sounds express themselves like an

ephemeral mask, the enigmatic X of the thing-in-itself has its origin

in a nervous stimulus, then it expresses itself as perception andfinally as sound. 7(p178 da p.17, ARROJO, psicanalise)

Thus, according to this perspective, people are not supposed to discover the

truths independently, but to a certain extent, they are meant to produce senses and

knowledge, for what we think is true is actually a fictional creation, a metaphor. This

notion, Arrojo says, finds a parallel on the reflections of Ferdinand de Saussure about

the arbitrary linguistic sign (p. 17). In his theorization about the sign, he admits that the

signifier is arbitrary in relation to the signified, which has no tie with reality, and

meanings could be understood then as attributed and non-immanent. The implication

here is that senses are not discovered, but rather produced by convention, and also that

they are going to change as society and its principles evolve. As a summary, Arrojo

thinks that the impulse that makes men search for the truth, to make science and

formulate theories, is nothing but an example of their insecurity for living in a world we

can hardly get to know and especially because we can hardly get to know ourselves

(p.18).

In this sense, complementary to this deconstruction of the status of truth and

of the rational subject, Arrojo also mentions that Freuds thoughts on unconsciousness

6 [Nietzsche] desmascara a grande iluso sobre a qual se aliceram nossas verdades, nossa filosofia,

nossas cincias, o pensamento que chamamos de racional. Segundo Nietzsche, toda verdadeestabelecida como tal foi, no incio, apenas um estmulo nervoso. Todo sentido que chamamos de

literal foi, no incio, metfora e somente pode ser uma criao humana (AROOJO, Psicanlise, p. 17)7 ... primeira metfora: um estmulo nervoso transformado em percepo. Essa percepo, ento,

acoplada a um som. Quando falamos em rvore, cores, neve e flores, acreditamos saber algo a respeitodas coisas em si, mas somente possumos metforas dessas coisas, e essas metforas no correspondem

de maneira alguma essncia do original. Da mesma forma que o som se manifesta como mscaraefmera, o enigmtico x da coisa-em-si tem sua origem num estmulo nervoso, depois se manifesta como

percepo e, finalmente, como som (p. 178, da p. 17, ARROJO, psicanlise)


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made an important contribution to the development of a new perspective on language,

reading and translation. According to her (p.15, A noo do inconsciente), his notion of

the subject split in id (instincts and wishes), ego (reason, consciousness, reality) and

superego (social) can help us see how the Western men are deluded with rationalism,

consciousness and the belief in grasping the truth without being contaminated by their

wishes (p.15). But the reality is that men are actually defined by the wishes they carry

with them, this is what shaped our view of the world, since there is no way to escape

from the ideologies of our time.

As not even the author can manage to be fully aware of his/her unconscious

intentions all the time and of all the variations in his/her production, the implication of

all these conceptions on readingis that the readers are always going to read carrying all

their inner and exterior features, both what constitute them as human beings and their

circumstances, such as the place and time in which they are inserted. All this process is

creative, productive; every meaning found is only a temporary interpretation.

The same can be applied to translation, which, to a certain extent, is also a

process of reading: no translation can be exactly faithful because there is no such thing

as an original stable source-text. As we can only have interpretations and as we can only

imagine what the author meant to say in his/her text, as a consequence, different

translations of the same material are going to be different among them, which leads one

into the conclusion that a translation says a lot about the translators themselves and the

paths they chose to follow according to their interpretations. These different choices that

are ahead of a translators job also leads one into thinking that translation is an act of

exercising ourcreativity and ourcriticism, two aspects that we intend to approach on

the following sections.

3. Linguistic relativity and translation as recreation

Rodrigo Tadeu Gonalves (2008), on his dissertation, attempts to propose a

history of linguistic relativity, a principle according to which the language we speak

influences in the way we see reality, in other words, the perception, the beliefs, the

concepts and the view of the world of different peoples vary according to the languages

they speak (p. 3). For example, the Eskimo people have many different ways to refer to

the word snow, and whereas this could be seen as a proof for linguistic relativity,

Gonalves (p.27) argues that this is not necessarily true. It could mean even the opposite


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not that the language influences our thought, but on the contrary, a reasonable

explanation could be that the Eskimo language received an influence from society and

the culture it is inserted in, that is, if they have many words forsnow, it is probably

because this reality is much more common and frequent for them than for other peoples.

Following this principle, but in a much more radical and extreme form, there is

also the concept of linguistic determinism, according to which language can also be a

prison or a cage for our thoughts in such a way that it is impossible to conceive ideas or

understand concepts that are not present in our own language ( p 3).

According to these two conceptions, linguistic relativity and its more extreme

form, linguistic determinism, we can think of two consequences for translation, a

positive and a negative one.

Starting with the latter, resulting from linguistic determinism and the thought

that it is impossible to conceive ideas present in other languages, translation then,

according to this viewpoint, would also be impossible. This conclusion, nevertheless,

does not seem to be very wise or practical, since translations are made all the time and

are absolutely necessary otherwise we would be imprisoned in our own cultural

production unless we learned all the languages whose productions we were interested in

reading.

A solution for this problematic of linguistic determinism is pointed out by

Gonalves at the conclusion of his thesis and it is based on the concept of creative

aspect of language, which can be understood, in general terms, in the sense that the

language we speak has resources for creating countless expressions (even completely

new ones) after limited material, by means of recursion, analogy, lexical borrowing,

influences among languages, individual creative use of language etc (p. 4). This

creative aspect of language enables it to be actively involved in the creation of ways to

overcome the linguistic and cultural barriers among languages and eliminates the

possibility of linguistic determinism. As to translation itself, this solution suits

perfectly, for the alleged impossibility of translation of concepts that only exist in other

cultures can also find a way out in translation through a creative use of language, so, for

instance, though there might not be any equivalent exact term for a specific Eskimo

word for snow, we can still translate it by using phrases to refer to the word. In this

sense, it seems to be very positive and productive to conclude that there is no term that

is impossible to translate, in view of the fact that one can create alternatives which,

though they might not embrace the totality of the original concept or intention, these


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alternative phrases or creative uses of words can still launch a new term in the language,

something that will only enrich it.

Still thinking about this impossibility of translation, Haroldo de Campos on his

essay Da traduo como criao e como crtica points out that the translation of

creative texts, such as literature, seems to be impossible due to the fact that one of their

main characteristics is having their basis on aesthetics more than on semantic

information. As an example, he uses the sentence: The spider spins the cobweb 8, a

sentence that could be uttered in other ways, such as The spider makes the cobweb or

The cobweb is made by the spider. In these sentences, Campos says, the aesthetic

information is much more fragile than the semantic one, since to a certain extent it only

exists in the way that the artist intended (the first sentence, The spider spins the

cobweb), and this is one of the reasons why we could think that translation is

impossible: even though it is possible, to a certain level, to translate the semantic

information from one language into another, the aesthetic one looks unattainable, since

the words in another language are going to be different ones.

On the one hand, when applied to creative texts, such as poetry or literary prose,

according to Haroldo de Campos (p. 34), this impossibility of translation seems to be

even more evident, because of the special treatment that writers give to their main

object of work, the words. On the other hand, as we have seen, there is no practical use

of thinking of translation as impossible, hence the role of creativity in helping us get

through this obstacle the same impossibility could be thought of as a trigger to a

different position towards translation: thinking of it as an act of recreation could be the

solution for the problem of impossibility and it also allows us to think of translation

in a totally different level from that other traditional point of view in which it was

submitted to the original text: now translation assumes a status of original text.

Whereas thinking of the impossibility of translation would be a negative

consequence of the aforesaid conceptions of linguistic relativity, on the other hand, a

positive one would be to think of their less radical and extreme viewpoint. If different

languages and language speakers have different ways to see and perceive the world, this

conclusion could allow us to get to a very practical and useful concept of translation, in

contrast with a negative idea according to which the job of a translator is to only find

equivalent terms and transport them from the original text. If we take into account a less

extreme side of the linguistic relativity and do not think that language is a cage of our

8 A aranha tece a teia (CAMPOS, Haroldo de. Da traduo como criao e como crtica p. 32)


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thoughts, these restrictive views on translation can be eliminated, given that they do not

seem to stand in a relative approach, in other words, languages influence the thoughts of

each culture, which are always going to be different in a way, therefore one cannot

demand of a translator that he/she should find equivalent terms when there are none

the language is different, the thoughts are also slightly different!

Thus, excluding the abovementioned concept of translation, we can think of it as

placing two different texts (the original and the new one) side by side and trying to

approach them in a way, as long as the product of this approach can preserve some

relation to the original. Of course one can ask: what is the measure of this approach? To

what extent a text is a translation of another one and not a new and completely detached

creation?

Haroldo de Campos seems to point out to a possible answer to this on his essay

Da traduo como criao e como crtica. According to him, the translation of

creative texts is always going to be recreation, or parallel creation, autonomous,

though reciprocal9 (CAMPOS, Haroldo de, p. 35, our emphasis). This sentence can

lead us into concluding that translation can be understood as a work of establishing and

balancing relations between two oeuvres, two languages, two cultures not through

finding equivalents, but through building this relation, which is going to be

representative of the critic view of the translator.

4. Translation and criticism

Antoine Berman, in Towards a translation criticism,

9 ...traduo de textos criativos ser sempre recriao, ou criao paralela, autnoma porm recproca


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(Draft of this final part):

The poem O Rei Do Sorvete deviates from The Emperor of Ice Cream, for

example, in the images created to represent sensuality. The first stanza of the poem, in

Wallace Stevens original, seems to point out to how pleasure can melt down, just like

the ice cream can. The words that represent sensuality, however, in Pignataris version,

are minimized. For instance, the muscular one turns into aquele dobrado, which, in

Portuguese, can either mean something doubled in size something big, manly and

sensual or it could mean something crooked and bent. This ambiguity was not present

in the original.

Other words from the first stanza that seem to take this same path are wenches

and dawdle. With the former, the process is just the opposite of the previous word:

now there is an ambiguity in the original that is lost in the translation: a wench could

either be a woman servant or a morally loose woman. The choice for gurias takes

away part of the sensuality of wench. With the latter, dawdle which means

spending more time than necessary in a place it happens something similar to

dobrado: zaranzem has other negative connotations related to confusion.

As these words belong to the first stanza, the one that points out to how fugitive

pleasure can be, in comparison to the original they seem to be less sensual. As a result,

the effect on the translation and the message that Pignatari seems to convey is that all

this pleasure can be put in perspective, as if it could never be fully pleasure or as if it

was contaminated even before it melted down like ice cream this contamination is

there, since the very beginning.

In this sense, the title chosen by Pignatari is key in understanding how the

translation differs from the original. There is a significant difference between an

emperor and a king (rei). Emperors rule over much broader territories than kings; they

have power over an entire empire, and the king, over a limited piece of land. Emperors

are usually conquerors and they usually expand their domain. The emperor of ice cream,


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as a representative of the fugacity of life, has a bigger force than a kings, who, on the

other hand,besides having a smaller territory, is usually not a conqueror, but someone

who inherits his piece of land.

The title O Rei do Sorvete, therefore, seems to put in perspective the very

notion of fugacity of life, because, for Pignatari, this seems to have less impact on his

poem. Just like a king who has the resignation of accepting his power by inheritance,

the force of time can also rule over peoples lives in the same way: in a more resigned

way, accepting all of this fugacity.

The poems:

The Emperor Of Ice-Cream

Call the roller of big cigars,

The muscular one, and bid him whip

In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

As they are used to wear, and let the boys

Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal.

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet


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On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

(Wallace Stevens)

O rei do sorvete

Chame o enrolador de grandes charutos,

Aquele dobrado, e diga-lhe que bata

Os coalhos concupiscentes nas xcaras da cozinha.

Que as gurias zaranzem nos vestidos

Habituais, e os rapazes tragam flores

Em cartuchos de jornais do ms passados.

Que ser seja o final de parecer.

S h um rei e esse o rei do sorvete.

Tire da cmoda de pinho,

Que j perdeu trs puxadores de vidro, aquele lenol

Que ela bordou um dia com caudas de pavo

E estenda-o de modo a cobrir-lhe o rosto.

Se um p unhudo sair para fora,

Para mostrar como ela est fria, como est muda.

Que a lmpada afixe o seu filete.

S h um rei e este o rei do sorvete.

(Dcio Pignatari)

Possible future references:

Toward a Translation Criticism: John Donne, Antoine Berman


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Metalinguagem e Outras Metras, Haroldo de Campos

O Significado da diferena: a dimenso crtica da noo de projeto de traduo

literria, Mauricio Mendona Cardozo

The chapter Wallace Stevens: A Linhagem Transcendental Harold Bloom, from the

book Poesia e Represso: O Revisionismo de Blake a Stevens

Wallace Stevens, William York Tindall

Teoria da Poesia Concreta, Augusto de Campos, Dcio Pignatari e Haroldo de

Campos

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