"The Hazard of Modern Poetry": a didactic translation

Abstract

Introductory note: This text by Erich Heller was originally an oral communication on the BBC in London. Thus, it is devoid of footnotes, whether indicative, informative or explanatory. For this translation, the translators preferred to include footnotes to help those unfamiliar with writers, artists, and composers as well as historical, philosophical and, above all, aesthetic and literary situations cited, mentioned and discussed by Heller. In his great erudition, the essayist and critic sometimes makes his text very dense and demanding, not making its reading easier. We hope, therefore, to help readers who read Erich Heller for the first time. We also consider this to be “a didactic translation,” not in relation to translation theories, of course (though partly as a practice of a certain type of translation), but as to rendering Erich Heller’s text readable. It is this understanding that justifies incorporating our numerous footnotes into the text, even if some better informed reader will consider some of them unnecessary (“But perhaps we ought be more scholarly,” Heller invites in his essay). We used, throughout the essay, when they existed and could be found, translations into Portuguese of poems of poets quoted by Heller; they are all indicated in the footnotes. When not indicated, our literal translations are presented, as well as are those of all the quoted excerpts in prose. In addition, whenever possible, we have tried to include in the footnotes bibliographic indications that we consider useful for the localization of texts quoted by Heller. Some, unidentified, were left without their corresponding footnotes. The translators are grateful for contributions they may receive for such identifications.