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New Translations Explore Brazil’s ‘Endless and Unfinished’ Character
Mário de Andrade’s novel
“Macunaíma: The Hero With No Character”
follows a shape-shifting, rule-flouting, race-
switching trickster as he roams the vast nation of
[5] Brazil, meeting historical characters, folkloric
figures, and outrageously satirized stereotypes
along the way.
Rich with words and references from
Indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures, the
[10] modernist novel was hailed as a classic upon its
publication in 1928, and has long been seen as an
allegory for Brazil’s unique cultural blend. Faced
with criticism of the book’s uncredited reliance on
anthropological research, Andrade offered up, in
[15] an open letter, a typically insouciant response: “I
copied Brazil.”
Some scholars have deemed the book’s
complexity virtually untranslatable — but this
week, New Directions published a new translation
[20] of “Macunaíma” by Katrina Dodson that aims to
transport Andrade’s idiosyncratic prose into
English. Over six years of research, Dodson
familiarized herself with every aspect of the
novel. She chased down obscure flora and fauna
[25] on two trips to the Amazon, waded through
reams of critical commentary, immersed herself
in Andrade’s archives in São Paulo and discussed
the book’s continued relevance with
contemporary Brazilians. While she found that for
[30] some readers the book continues to represent
the “endless and unfinished” national spirit of
Brazil, she also met many Afro-Brazilian and
Indigenous artists who have set out to reclaim the
folkloric roots that Andrade drew on.
[35] Inspired by her research, Dodson hopes
that her new translation will emphasize just how
deeply personal, and multifaceted, the concept of
Brazil was for Andrade. “He had African heritage
on both sides. Once you know more about him
[40] and more about the context of how he wrote this
book, you understand that there are a lot of very
sincere and serious questions at the heart of it.”
The notion that the book and its main
character are a stand-in for the country and its
[45] “amalgamation of different races and ethnicities”
has helped establish “Macunaíma” as a canonical
novel, read in every classroom devoted to
Brazilian literature, said Pedro Meira Monteiro,
chair of Spanish and Portuguese at Princeton
[50] University. But it would be a mistake to read it as
a nationalist project, he said. “Mário is so
profoundly charmed by the endless and
unfinished character of Brazil,” he said, referring
to the author by his first name, with the
[55] familiarity common to Andrade’s readers in
Brazil.“ He is seeing something that he recognizes
as his and at the same time not,” he said. “There’s
a problematic sense of belonging in his work that
is profound.”
[60] A more personal register is on full
display in “The Apprentice Tourist,” the first
translation of another Andrade book by Flora
Thomson-DeVeaux that was also published this
week by Penguin Classics. Compiled from notes
[65] Andrade made during his first trip to the Amazon
shortly before “Macunaíma” was released, “The
Apprentice Tourist” shows Andrade’s fascination
with Amazonian cultures — and his utter
boredom with the government officials and elites
[70] who welcomed the group of travelers along the
way.
Andrade was born in São Paulo, the
country’s industrial capital, in 1893. He enrolled
in São Paulo’s Dramatic and Musical Conservatory
[75] at age 11 to train as a concert pianist, taught
himself French and became enamored with the
poetry of the Symbolists. By his mid-20s he was
traveling throughout Brazil, publishing poetry and
essays on folklore along the way.
[80] Andrade’s fascination with the
multiplicities of Brazilian culture placed him at the
center of the modernist movements that were
sweeping the country in the 1920s. “Macunaíma”
was first excerpted in the Revista de
[85] Antropofagia, the journal edited by Oswald de
Andrade (no relation), whose 1928 manifesto
proclaimed that Brazilian thinkers needed to
reject European artifice and “cannibalize” native
forms of storytelling to produce a new Brazilian
[90] art. Antropofagia, or anthropophagy in English,
refers to the eating of human flesh.
The book found an admiring readership
among the Brazilian intelligentsia, but even they
were struck by its incongruities. One critic, João
[95] Ribeiro — a prominent folklorist himself — called
it “voluntarily barbarous, primeval, an assortment
of disconnected fragments put together by a
commentator incapable of any coordination.”
Dodson approached the book because
[100] she felt the existing English translation, E.A.
Goodland’s 1984 version for Random House, had
smoothed over the “joy and poetry of the
language, and the cultural politics of the
particular mix of languages.”
[105] Take the book’s first line, which half a
dozen Brazilian artists and scholars interviewed
by The New York Times quoted, unprompted,
from memory: “No fundo do mato-virgem nasceu
Macunaíma, herói da nossa gente.” Goodland’s
[110] translation of the first line ignores Andrade’s
sentence structure. It starts: “In a far corner of
Northern Brazil” — words that do not exist in the
original — then continues, “at an hour when so
deep a hush had fallen on the virgin forest….”
[115] Goodland, a retired technical director for a sugar
company in Guyana, was “well-versed in all of the
natural history foundation of the book,” Dodson
said, “but he completely missed the spirit of what
the book is trying to do.”
[120] Dodson decided to essentially
transliterate the line, despite the grammatical
awkwardness it introduces in English: “In the
depths of the virgin-forest was born Macunaíma,
hero of our people.” The importance of the line,
[125] she said, is not in establishing where the action is
taking place, as Goodland had done, but in
bringing the reader into the fold of the people at
hand. “Macunaíma is our hero,” she said.
As her knowledge of the book
[130] deepened, Dodson said, she found herself
walking back some of her own interventions to
maintain the “music” of the original. “A lot of the
words in the book are not in the regular Brazilian
Portuguese dictionaries,” Dodson noted. “Or if
[135] they are, the meanings are ambiguous. My goal
was to make you feel the joy of language in the
book, to be carried along by all the humor and
the colloquial ways in which people speak, but
also by the beautiful sounds of the Indigenous
[140] words.”
For the Brazilian artists behind the
book’s many adaptations into film, theater, and
art, Andrade’s insistence on maintaining the
complex vernacular that he overheard on his
[145] travels is precisely what makes the book so vital.
“The book’s difficulty is its genius,” said Iara
Rennó, a São Paulo-based musician. Shortly after
reading the book for the first time and becoming
enamored by its musicality, Rennó began writing
[150] her 2008 album, “Macunaíma Ópera Tupi.”
“‘Macunaíma’ puts the reader, who is used to so
called ‘well-written’ Portuguese, into a state of
transgression,” she said. “And that transgression
is so important. It feeds culture.”
[155] Some scholars have compared
“Macunaíma” to James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” another
totemic modernist novel from the 1920s whose
allusive, wide-ranging play with language is as
central to its identity as its plot. “The elites in
[160] Brazil love to think of themselves as dislocated
Europeans,” said Caetano Galindo, whose
innovative 2012 translation of “Ulysses” into
Brazilian Portuguese won the prestigious Jabuti
prize. Andrade, he added, “had a huge role in
[165] facing the fact that this is not a true monolingual
country.”
Nearly a century after its publication,
many of the novel’s Brazilian admirers are unsure
of how it will be received in the United States.
[170] “Macunaíma is always on the verge of being
canceled,” said Meira Monteiro, the Princeton
professor.
Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07
As a translator, Dodson emphasized that her goal was to make the reader feel, among other aspects, the
