Paulo Henriques Britto, self-translator

Abstract

This article aims to highlight an aspect Paulo Henriques Britto’s poetry that has yet to be explored, namely the way in which self-translation occupies a central place in his poetics, revealing a constant tension between the materiality of language and the emptying of meaning, which coincides with what he calls ‘forms of nothingness’ (Formas do nada). Based on an approach to the bilingual work of Samuel Beckett, a key figure in the studies on self-translation, the aim of this article is to propose a reading of Britto’s poetry that understands the self-translatory gesture not as mere rewriting, but as an inherent part of the lyrical subject construction, which coincides with “máscaras sem rosto” (self-translated as ‘vacuity’). Finally, the analysis of some self-translated poems from the books Formas do nada and Tarde, among others, shows how self-translation, in Paulo Henriques Britto, operates as a creative and aesthetic principle that highlights the insufficient nature of language and the “simulacros de sentido” (‘simulacra of meaning’) of this poetics that moves towards a confrontation with nothingness.