“The Poet Is a Man Who Feigns”

[Caiero]

https://daily.jstor.org/the-poet-is-a-man-who-feigns/

[dang]

Pessoa on HN (so far):

Fernando Pessoa’s Unselving - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37367896 - Sept 2023 (13 comments)

The literary life of Pessoa’s alter ego (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34253952 - Jan 2023 (2 comments)

The Literary Games of Fernando Pessoa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32111909 - July 2022 (10 comments)

I haven’t been I: On Fernando Pessoa (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120732 - Jan 2022 (8 comments)

The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29908996 - Jan 2022 (6 comments)

Fernando Pessoa: Office Worker, Occultist, Galaxy of Writers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28191843 - Aug 2021 (16 comments)

The Politics of Fernando Pessoa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27768795 - July 2021 (17 comments)

A Little Fellow with a Big Head: On Fernando Pessoa - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23983483 - July 2020 (7 comments)

Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23894466 - July 2020 (46 comments)

[sasaf5]

The poet is a faker

Who's so good at his act

He even fakes the pain

Of pain he feels in fact.

[kybernetikos → sasaf5]

The article has

    The poet is a man who feigns
    And feigns so thoroughly, at last
    He manages to feign as pain
    The pain he really feels

Looks like it's different translations of the first stanza of the Portuguese original, the poem Autopsicografia

    O poeta é um fingidor
    Finge tão completamente
    Que chega a fingir que é dor
    A dor que deveras sente.

[velcrovan → kybernetikos]

These are good examples of the “live sparrow” vs the “stuffed eagle” modes of translating poetry: https://thelocalyarn.com/article/the-live-sparrow

[kybernetikos → velcrovan]

The original has an ABAB rhyme scheme. Interestingly both translations have tried to retain one of the rhyming pairs, but they chose different lines. In one we have feign/pain (ABAC) and in the other we have act/fact (ABCB).

Given how difficult translating poetry is, I think the Edouard Roditi translation (feign/pain) is really good (he even manages to rhyme two words that rhyme in the original and get the number of syllables close to the same), but the Richard Zenith translation (act/fact) has so much more energy.

[sasaf5 → kybernetikos]

Why not:

    The poet is a man who feigns
    Who's so good at his act
    He manages to feign as pain
    The pain he feels in fact.

[jorl17 → sasaf5]

I always feel that the original has a very implied period at the end of the first verse.

My attempts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37629946

[sasaf5 → kybernetikos]

And of course, both translations have to do without the "fingidor/finge dor" wordplay.

[jorl17 → kybernetikos]

This is my take at translating the original. Punctuation is my own but I think it reflects the original poem.

    The poet is a faker.
    He fakes so thoroughly
    that he even fakes as pain
    the pain he feels truly.

Or for a more liberal translation (aches=pain) that manages ABAB:

    The poet is a man who fakes.
    He fakes aches so completely
    that he even fakes as aches
    the aches he feels truly.

[jorl17 → jorl17]

Replying to myself, can't edit (again).

I eventually decided that in my previous comment we could replace "truly" with "sincerely" and it is, in my opinion, _miles_ better.

I eventually also thought of a third one:

    The poet is a man who feigns.
    He feigns so thoroughly
    that he even feigns as pains
    the pains he feels sincerely.

(If one has a problem with "man"/"he", this also works:)

    The poet is one who feigns.
    They feign so thoroughly
    that they even feign as pains
    the pains they feel sincerely.

[alberto_ol → sasaf5]

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic."

OscarWilde

[m463 → sasaf5]

"Art is what you can get away with" - Andy Warhol

[diego_moita → m463]

My favourite example of this bullshit is Duchamp's "The Fountain".

In 1917 the "artist" Marcel Duchamp purchased an urinal in a New York store and submitted it as a work of art to an exhibition. And he got away with it, big time.

The urinal became considered by specialists one of the most influential works of art of the 20th century and went to be on permanent exhibition at the Georges Pompidou centre, in Paris.

In 2008 another "artist", Pierre Pinoncelli, went to that centre with an hammer and damaged Duchamp's "art". He claimed that his vandalism was also a work of art because Duchamp's urinal had lost it's subversive value.

For some, Pinoncelli also got away with it. It would be fun if the center would put his hammer in exhibition, close to the urinal.

[AnimalMuppet → diego_moita]

And, if I understand correctly, Duchamp was offended when someone called it "pretty". The point was to subvert the definition of art. (Or perhaps to expose that the definition of art had already been destroyed.)

[maxbond → m463]

So if you deliver an empty canvas to a museum, and a court orders you to return your commission[1], I suppose it wasn't art.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/topstories/danish-artist-tur...

[bloak → maxbond]

In this version of the story (with less advertising) it says the artist only had to return the money provided for inclusion in the art works, not the "fee":

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/18/danish-artist-...

[m463 → maxbond]

sfmoma has an "artwork" on the wall that is just a large, white canvas.

https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.308.A-C/essay/white-painti...

They also have something that looks like a collapsed black garbage bag (don't recall the name of it)

[HerculePoirot → sasaf5]

> Fernando Pessoa channeled a grand, glorious chorus of writers

> “Portugal had enjoyed an ‘Age of Pericles’ in the early twentieth century and produced a number of outstanding poets with different styles who devoted their works to the plurality of the gods”

Channeled ?

https://pastes.io/9olmpsncuy

[rikroots → sasaf5]

My poor attempt ...

The poet is a deceiver

One who pretends so completely

The pain he affects in stanzas

Is torment he know entirely

[ellarix]

‘I have tended to create around me a fictious world, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who never existed’