Marta Pacheco PINTO (University of Lisbon, Portugal)

Cancioneiro chinês: The first Portuguese anthology of classical Chinese poetry


Referred to as a collection of (indirect) translations or lyrical adaptations, António Feijó’s Cancioneiro chinês (1890), literally the Book of Chinese Songs, is the first anthology of classical Chinese poetry into Portuguese. It was translated from Judith Gautier’s Le Livre de jade which, since its publication in 1867, has been reprinted five times (1902, 1908, 1928, 1933, and 2004). Widely popular among the late nineteenth-century French audience, Le Livre de jade, which recent research has shown to collect mostly pseudotranslations, combines a selection of what Judith Gautier considered to mirror China’s best poetry with her own notion of an oriental aesthetics. This book was extensively translated into other European languages: in Portugal the poet António Feijó (1859-1917) took up this challenge.
Briefly turning to the Orient in search of new poetic possibilities, António Feijó never visited the East, which did not prevent his Cancioneiro chinês from achieving national success. In 1903 he decided to publish a revised edition of the Cancioneiro (still based on the first edition of Le Livre de jade) – the only work to be republished during his lifetime. Yet the press was almost totally silent, most of the books having been ordered by and sent to Brazil. This collection allowed the poet to keep pace with French modern literary culture and introduced Portuguese audiences to new poetic material, thus fulfilling an informative, didactic goal. While it was influenced by the Parnassian aesthetics of prosodic perfection, pictorial and visual effects, and the cult of beauty, it allowed him enough leeway for poetic experimentation.
Based on José Lambert’s and Van Gorp’s model for translation description, our study will set out from a two-tiered textual approach: one concerning paratextual information (or preliminary data) and another developing a macro-level comparative analysis (special focus on text division and selection). Both analyses will permit us to understand the criteria for organizing the collections, which are particularly linked to a certain conception of the oriental canon. Since Cancioneiro chinês constitutes a milestone of orientalism in Portugal – albeit imported from French culture and literature –, the question arises as to what does the chinoiserie contained in the translated anthology tell us about the expectations of Feijó’s readers? Further, how to explain the critics’ silence after its second edition? Has the oriental topos suddenly become displaced? Does this anthology contribute to the target culture’s literary openness to the Other? Our paper will attempt to answer these and other relevant questions.