Translating Débarcadères (1922) by Jules Supervielle into Portuguese: problems, solutions and horizons

Abstract

Jules Supervielle (Montevideo, 1884 – Paris, 1960), a French-Uruguayan writer, published most of his work in the first half of the 20th century. He lived moving between South America and Europe, recording in his books this journey from north to south, along with other dichotomies. The poems of Débarcadères (1922) are an example of this, portraying multicultural landscapes and multilingual structures. They also mark a turning point in his work, blending the influence of modern aesthetics with classical paradigms that had previously characterized his writing. In this article, we report on the ongoing translation of Débarcadères into Portuguese, a project that stems from our doctoral dissertation. We discuss, in particular, three challenges and their provisional solutions: the use of inversion as a rhetorical device; the Spanish alexandrine; and the word that gives the collection its title.