Apologetics and poetics: a translator’s reflections on Judith Teixeira’s use of her own poetry in the public lecture de mim
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/va.i2.208813Keywords:
Judith Teixeira, literary apologia, Portuguese modernist poetry, futurism, literature of SodomAbstract
This article is structured around my translation into English of two of Judith Teixeira’s most iconic poems. When she published De mim in
1926 in defense of her work and aesthetics, she chose two of her own poems to exemplify and elucidate her poetics and, implicitly, her sexual politics. I begin by briefly contextualizing De mim, which was written in the style of a literary apologia and intended to be given as a public lecture. The poems are then described in a bilingual format. Based upon the experience of translating these poems, I conclude by assessing how well they support Teixeira’s call for artists to be allowed to create unencumbered by hypocritical bourgeois moralization.
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