Haroldo de Campos and the subject of monstrous translation

Abstract

Studies on Haroldo de Campos’s discourse on translation point out that the author, having the anthropophagy theory as a basis for his writing project, extends to translation this devouring practice. He, thus, turns the original text’s images into pretexts to elucidate translation in Brazilian literature (Souza, 1986; Bassnett, 1993; Vieira, 1994). These studies analize Haroldo’s metaphor of translation as vampirisation, in his Post-scriptum to Deus e o Diabo no Fausto de Goethe as related to the devouring of the other aimed at renewal. This work sets out to read vampirisation with an emphasis on the notion of monster, on the myth of  Faust and on the link between the themes of the vampire and Faust. Translation as vampirisation, or the translator as a vampire, are here analized as discursive constructions. On the one hand, these constructions can contribute to the translator’s visibility and his assertion as the subject of translation; on the other, they might represent ambiguity and contamination in intercultural communication. The monster as a discursive construction for the translator heralds a subject who is inevitably contaminated with the ambivalent desire of annihilation and revival of the text’s co-author.