On “Psychology of a Loser”

In Brazil there’s a famous legend regarding Augusto dos Anjos. It is said that he composed all his poems by declaiming them aloud, either swinging in his hammock or sat in a lawn chair in his backyard. His shouting is said to have been so loud and frenzied that at times dos Anjos’s neighbors questioned his sanity. According to the anecdote, dos Anjos recited his poems over and over, refining them and retuning them, until he found the right series of alliterative sounds and rhymes to satisfy him. Only when a poem was completed orally did he put pencil to paper. He never composed a poem with a pencil, or so the legend goes. One of the notable features of dos Anjos’s poetry is that nearly every poem he wrote ends with an exclamation mark, and he never wrote a poem without including one. One sonnet in particular, “Terra Fúnebre,” contains seven exclamation marks within its fourteen lines. One can only imagine how dos Anjos’s neighbors reacted as he composed that poem! Such pervasive use of exclamatory punctuation certainly lends credence to the legend. And it was with this legend in mind that I decided to translate his work into prose poems. Firstly, I wanted to preserve the rhetorical and declamatory style that distinguishes dos Anjos’s poetry. Secondly, and more importantly, I wanted to preserve his tone. Any attempt to replicate or construct a rhyme scheme in an English translation would inevitably lead to sacrificing one or the other.