Novas Haroldo de Campos COPYRIGHT © BY JUAN ESTEVES Novas Selected Writings Haroldo de Campos edited and with an introduction by antonio sergio bessa and odile cisneros foreword by roland greene Northwestern University Press Evanston Illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu English translation copyright © 2007 by Northwestern University Press Published 2007 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 10 isbn-13: 978-0-8101-2029-7 (cloth) isbn-10: 0-8101-2029-1 (cloth) isbn-13: 978-0-8101-2030-3 (paper) isbn-10: 0-8101-2030-5 (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Campos, Haroldo de [Selections English 2007] Novas : selected writings of Haroldo de Campos / edited and with an introduction by A S Bessa and Odile Cisneros ; foreword by Roland Greene p cm — (Avant-garde and modernism collection) Includes bibliographical references isbn 978-0-8101-2030-3 (pbk : alk paper) — isbn 978-08101-2029-7 (cloth : alk paper) Campos, Haroldo de—Translations into English Campos, Haroldo de—Criticism and interpretation I Bessa, A S II Cisneros, Odile III Title pq9697.c2448a2 2007 869.8'4209—dc22 2006102081 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1992 Contents Foreword Interessantíssimo, vii Acknowledgments, ix A Note on This Edition, xi Introduction, xiii I: Poetry From Xadrez de estrelas [Star Chess] (1949–1974), From Invenỗóo [Invention], year 6, no (1967), 65 From Signantia: quasi coelum (Signância: quase céu) [Paradisiacal Signifiers] (1979), 69 From A educaỗóo dos cinco sentidos [The Education of the Five Senses] (1985), 93 From Galáxias [Galaxies] (1963–1976, 1984), 121 From Finismundo: A última viagem [Finismundo: The Last Voyage] (1990), 131 From Crisantempo: no espaỗo curvo nasce um [Chrysantempo: In Curved Space Is Born A] (1998), 139 II: Essays Reinventing Tradition, 155 Anthropophagous Reason: Dialogue and Difference in Brazilian Culture, 157 Disappearance of the Baroque in Brazilian Literature: The Case of Gregório de Matos, 178 The Trans-American Pilgrimage of Sousândrade’s Guesa, 194 An Oswald de Andrade Triptych, 201 The Concrete Moment, 215 Pilot Plan for Concrete Poetry, 217 The Open Work of Art, 220 The Informational Temperature of the Text, 223 Concrete Poetry–Language–Communication, 235 A Laboratory of Texts, 247 Brazilian and German Avant-Garde Poetry, 249 The Ghost in the Text (Saussure and the Anagrams), 276 Poetic Function and Ideogram/The Sinological Argument, 287 Translation as Creation and Criticism, 312 Hölderlin’s Red Word, 327 Eucalypse: The Beautiful Occultation, 334 Light: Paradisiacal Writing, 349 Notes, 359 Bibliography of Works by Haroldo de Campos, 391 Index of Poem Titles, 395 Foreword Interessantíssimo Haroldo de Campos’s collection of poems entitled Excrituras, published in the retrospective volume of the mid-1970s Xadrez de estrelas, contains a suite of lyrics—atoms of wordplay, really—that include several variations on the following terms: o poema nada fazou quase se pouco [a poemnothing self if made much] The elements of these micropoems rehearse the issues that run across de Campos’s work, both his poetry and his criticism, from the start of his career in the 1950s to his death in 2003 And true to the spirit of both his inventive poetry and his wide-ranging criticism, they can be rearranged into alternative statements and made to undermine or ironize their own assertions Should a poem be built on a principle of copiousness or scarcity? Is the poem about its world or about itself? Where is the border between sense and nonsense? De Campos addressed each of these questions in multiple ways, often with different answers And the essential de Campos is a figure as constructivist as these poems: a poet, critic, translator, archival scholar—in all, a protagonist of the first importance in Brazilian and international avant-garde letters This volume, called Novas, reintroduces Haroldo de Campos by giving readers of English a generous overview of his intellectual and aesthetic program That program, we see here, is formidable With his brother Augusto de Campos and their collaborator Décio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos in the 1950s introduced a renovative program for concreteness or materiality into vii Brazilian poetry This group, which called itself Noigandres after a nonce word in one of Ezra Pound’s Cantos, became a force in Latin American and world poetry in the 1960s and after, their poetry and manifestos serving as demonstrations of each other While they were enormously controversial in Brazil during their heyday, the Noigandres group has become an inescapable fact of the poetic scene in more recent times, so that certain contemporary poets think of themselves as “postconcrete,” and every poet in Brazil with a claim to self-awareness must have a position about the Noigandres legacy When the group was discovered by North American vanguardists (including the language poets) in the early 1990s, their currency throughout the Americas was ensured De Campos himself accumulated a body of achievements that drove but also transcended the Noigandres movement: with his brother, he rediscovered the fascinating Brazilian Romantic poet Joaquim de Sousa Andrade (or Sousândrade); he wrote a number of influential theoretical and critical essays; and he was responsible for some of the most influential postconcrete poetry, including the masterpiece Galáxias To sketch his significance, one would have to say that his essays represent a link between international formalism, structuralism as well as poststructuralism, and the postcolonial, all of which are visible in his thought, while his poems are contemporaneous and cognate with the Beats on the one hand and the language poets on the other As a figure who provoked an intense critical conversation—and participated in it himself, attempting perhaps too strenuously to define the terms on which his own achievement would be understood—de Campos is due for a reassessment based in the work itself, which can now be seen in historical and theoretical perspective Novas makes that project not only possible but probable Roland Greene viii Foreword Interessantíssimo Acknowledgments We wish to express our gratitude to those whose contribution and support made this book possible Richard Sieburth, from the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University, first envisioned the possibility of this book and generously gave us his time and expertise, not to mention encouragement throughout this entire process Without his friendship and guidance, this volume would not have been possible Eliot Weinberger, a personal friend of Haroldo de Campos since the 1970s, kindly opened his library to provide us with many of the original texts His focused criticism and suggestions on the content and structure of this book were immensely appreciated Marjorie Perloff, director of the Avant-Garde and Modernism series at Northwestern University Press, embraced the project with passion and stood firmly behind it at all points Without her commitment and diligence, this book would exist only as an idea We were humbled by the warmth and enthusiasm with which two distinguished scholars read our manuscript for Northwestern University Press, and we profited a great deal from their suggestions and advice Many friends and scholars who have followed and supported Haroldo de Campos’s career throughout the years also offered their hand and facilitated our task by putting us in contact with each other: Thanks to Roland Greene, Pierre Joris, K David Jackson, and Kenneth Goldsmith We are immensely grateful to Susan Betz and Rachel Delaney, former editors at Northwestern University Press, who patiently guided us through the intricacies of editing and copyright We were fortunate to count on a number of exceptionally gifted scholars willing to double as translators Their names are listed individually in connection with their translated pieces Above all, we would like to thank Haroldo de Campos himself, who generously endorsed this venture, guiding us, providing materials, and responding with patience and care to all queries that came up in the process of editing this volume We regret that he did not live to see it in print; he passed away in the summer of 2003 while the book was in production We also offer our gratitude to his widow, Carmen de Arruda Campos And finally, we want to thank our families and friends for their love and support ix ... Haroldo siempre trae regalos,” in Homenagem, 20–21 —editors ‡ Haroldo de Campos, De uma cosmopoesia,” in Depoimento de oficina (São Paulo: Unimarco Editoria, 2002), 59–70 —editors § These details... (paper) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Campos, Haroldo de [Selections English 2007] Novas : selected writings of Haroldo de Campos / edited and with an introduction by A S Bessa... baroque poets Gregório de Matos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Juan Caviedes to modern New World cannibals like Sousândrade, Oswald de Andrade, and Cabral de Melo Neto As a result of repeated mastication,