Novas: Selected Writings (Avant-Garde & Modernism Collection)

437 Pages·2007·1.15 MB·English

by  Haroldo de Campos

Novas
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Haroldo de Campos
Novas
Selected Writings
Haroldo de Campos
edited and with an introduction
by antonio sergio bessa and
odile cisneros
foreword by roland greene
Northwestern
University Press
Evanston
Illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
English translation copyright © 2007by Northwestern University
Press. Published 2007.All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
isbn-13: 978-0-8101-2029-7(cloth)
isbn-10: 0-8101-2029-1(cloth)
isbn-13: 978-0-8101-2030-3(paper)
isbn-10: 0-8101-2030-5(paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campos, Haroldo de.
[Selections. English. 2007]
Novas : selected writings of Haroldo de Campos / edited and
with an introduction by A. S. Bessa and Odile Cisneros ; foreword
byRoland Greene.
p.cm. — (Avant-garde and modernism collection)
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn978-0-8101-2030-3(pbk. : alk. paper) — isbn978-0-
8101-2029-7(cloth : alk. paper)
1.Campos, Haroldo de—Translations into English. 2.Campos,
Haroldo de—Criticism and interpretation. I. Bessa, A. S. II.
Cisneros, Odile. III. Title.
pq9697.c2448a2 2007
869.8'4209—dc22
2006102081
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ansi z39.48-1992.
Contents
Foreword Interessantíssimo,vii
Acknowledgments, ix
ANote on This Edition, xi
Introduction, xiii
I: Poetry
From Xadrez de estrelas[Star Chess](1949–1974), 5
From Invenção[Invention], year 6,no. 5(1967), 65
From Signantia: quasi coelum(Signância: quase céu)
[Paradisiacal Signifiers](1979), 69
From Aeducação dos cinco sentidos[The Education of the Five
Senses](1985), 93
From Galáxias[Galaxies](1963–1976, 1984), 121
From Finismundo: A última viagem[Finismundo: The Last
Voyage](1990), 131
From Crisantempo: no espaço curvo nasce um[Chrysantempo:
In Curved Space Is Born A](1998), 139
II: Essays
Reinventing Tradition, 155
Anthropophagous Reason: Dialogue and Difference in Brazilian
Culture, 157
Disappearance of the Baroque in Brazilian Literature:
The Case of Gregório de Matos, 178
The Trans-American Pilgrimage of Sousândrade’s Guesa,194
An Oswald de Andrade Triptych, 201
The Concrete Moment, 215
Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry, 217
The Open Workof Art, 220
The Informational Temperature of the Text, 223
Concrete Poetry–Language–Communication, 235
ALaboratory of Texts, 247
Brazilian and German Avant-Garde Poetry, 249
The Ghost in the Text (Saussure and the Anagrams), 276
Poetic Function and Ideogram/The Sinological Argument, 287
Translation as Creation and Criticism, 312
Hölderlin’s Red Word, 327
Eucalypse: The Beautiful Occultation, 334
Light: Paradisiacal Writing, 349
Notes, 359
Bibliography of Works by Haroldo de Campos, 391
Index of Poem Titles,395
Foreword Interessantíssimo
Haroldo de Campos’s collection of poems entitled Excrituras,published in
the retrospective volume of the mid-1970s Xadrez de estrelas, contains a
suite of lyrics—atoms of wordplay, really—that include several variations
on the following terms:
opoema
nada
faz-
ou quase
se
pouco
[a poem-
nothing
self
if
made
much]
The elements of these micropoems rehearse the issues that run across de
Campos’s work, both his poetry and his criticism, from the start of his
career in the 1950sto his death in 2003.And true to the spirit of both his
inventive poetry and his wide-ranging criticism, they can be rearranged
into alternative statements and made to undermine or ironize their own
assertions. Should a poem be built on a principle of copiousness or scarcity?
Is the poem about its world or about itself? Where is the border between
sense and nonsense? De Campos addressed each of these questions in mul-
tiple ways, often with different answers. And the essential de Campos is a
figure as constructivist as these poems: a poet, critic, translator, archival
scholar—in all, a protagonist of the first importance in Brazilian and inter-
national avant-garde letters. This volume, called Novas, reintroduces
Haroldo de Campos by giving readers of English a generous overview of his
intellectual and aesthetic program.
That program, we see here, is formidable. With his brother Augusto de
Campos and their collaborator Décio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos in the
1950sintroduced a renovative program for concreteness or materiality into
vii
Brazilian poetry. This group, which called itself Noigandres after a nonce
word in one of Ezra Pound’s Cantos,became a force in Latin American and
world poetry in the 1960sand after, their poetry and manifestos serving as
demonstrations of each other. While they were enormously controversial in
Brazil during their heyday, the Noigandres group has become an
inescapable fact of the poetic scene in more recent times, so that certain
contemporary poets think of themselves as “postconcrete,” and every poet
in Brazil with a claim to self-awareness must have a position about the
Noigandres legacy. When the group was discovered by North American
vanguardists (including the language poets) in the early 1990s, their cur-
rency throughout the Americas was ensured. De Campos himself accumu-
lated a body of achievements that drove but also transcended the
Noigandres movement: with his brother, he rediscovered the fascinating
Brazilian Romantic poet Joaquim de Sousa Andrade (or Sousândrade); he
wrote a number of influential theoretical and critical essays; and he was
responsible for some of the most influential postconcrete poetry,including
the masterpiece Galáxias.To sketch his significance, one would have to say
that his essays represent a link between international formalism, structural-
ism as well as poststructuralism, and the postcolonial, all of which are vis-
ible in his thought, while his poems are contemporaneous and cognate
with the Beats on the one hand and the language poets on the other.
Asafigure who provoked an intense critical conversation—and partic-
ipated in it himself,attempting perhaps too strenuously to define the terms
on which his own achievement would be understood—de Campos is due
for a reassessment based in the work itself, which can now be seen in his-
torical and theoretical perspective. Novasmakes that project not only pos-
sible but probable.
Roland Greene
viii Foreword Interessantíssimo
Acknowledgments
We wish to express our gratitude to those whose contribution and support
made this book possible. Richard Sieburth, from the Department of Com-
parative Literature at New York University, first envisioned the possibility
of this book and generously gave us his time and expertise, not to mention
encouragement throughout this entire process. Without his friendship and
guidance, this volume would not have been possible. Eliot Weinberger, a
personal friend of Haroldo de Campos since the 1970s, kindly opened his
library to provide us with many of the original texts. His focused criticism
and suggestions on the content and structure of this book were immensely
appreciated. Marjorie Perloff, director of the Avant-Garde and Modernism
series at Northwestern University Press, embraced the project with passion
and stood firmly behind it at all points. Without her commitment and dili-
gence, this book would exist only as an idea. We were humbled by the
warmth and enthusiasm with which two distinguished scholars read our
manuscript for Northwestern University Press, and we profited a great deal
from their suggestions and advice. Many friends and scholars who have fol-
lowed and supported Haroldo de Campos’s career throughout the years
also offered their hand and facilitated our task by putting us in contact
with each other: Thanks to Roland Greene, Pierre Joris, K. David Jackson,
and Kenneth Goldsmith. We are immensely grateful to Susan Betz and
Rachel Delaney, former editors at Northwestern University Press, who
patiently guided us through the intricacies of editing and copyright. We
werefortunate to count on a number of exceptionally gifted scholars will-
ing to double as translators. Their names are listed individually in connec-
tion with their translated pieces. Above all, we would like to thank Haroldo
de Campos himself, who generously endorsed this venture, guiding us,
providing materials, and responding with patience and care to all queries
that came up in the process of editing this volume. We regret that he did
not live to see it in print; he passed away in the summer of 2003while the
book was in production. Wealso offer our gratitude to his widow, Carmen
de Arruda Campos. And finally, we want to thank our families and friends
for their love and support.
ix