It is very significant that the first one who translate “Half of life” on Brasil was Manuel Bandeira. This poem is very connected to his work and it is published on “Estrela da vida inteira”. In “Half of life” the idea of a round poem appears, like Bessie described Heidelberg. We want to read it again and again and that makes the poem sound a little different each time although it is still the same. But I think these two poems make no concessions to extremes although both lead us to the limit through contrasts. I think Holdelin achieves this through prosody by this round and no sharp sound and rhythm. Contrasts with no real edge (aresta).

When I found what I wrote before I realize it was not enough to understand the connection I made between Bandeira and Hölderlin. And it is probably a silly idea to associate the simplicity in Bandeira’s poetry with all those styles Hölderlin wants to achieve, but perhaps it could be seen as a synthetic way to get to the audience just like Hölderlin intended. At the same time, I was trying to remember poems on which I could see this influence and all that come to my mind was those famous ironic or mocking poems. Anyway there is a gesture towards life that is really something on Bandeira poetry maybe there it is what they have in common. He frequently says about something lacking on life, something absent, but he can still see on daily life the beauty presence of flags on the wind as on “Momento num café”. So this similarity can be thematic more than prosodic. I fear that do really say something about Hölderling’s prosody and compare to any other I should learn german. Bandeira spend long time in hospitals dealing with the tuberculosis. During this time he translated many European authors an elaborated some of his poems trying to be different of those romantic poets who talked about how life was melancholic and so on. He had a life drive and plays a lot with his own illness so the biographic issue is blurred. But it is interesting that this time could be also seen as a time he learned and trained a repertoire he uses on his metalinguistic texts. I would say the translations helped him to do that in the sense that poetry translation is a useful exercise (and also a way to critique) to deal with the complexity of choices, including prosody, syntax and so forth. It is weird because I did not pay attention to these before. Actually I did not pay much attention to Manuel Bandeira who was always considered a minor poet although always present on school textbooks.As we were talking about reception last class maybe I can tell you what I found about Hölderlin in Brasil. Nowadays, one of the most dedicated readers of Hölderlin poetry is Antonio Cicero. Sometimes he posts a translation of a poem or a commentary on his blog.We have some books with selected poems such as the one translated by José Paulo Paes and published by Cia das Letras and also some isolated poems published in reviews etc. The bilingual version available (the one I was thinking to buy when we started the seminar) was published in Portugal and translated by Paulo Quintela and we can find it in some old books stores. It is funny because I found “Half of life” translated by Manuel Bandeira and “Bread and wine” translated by José Paulo Paes (who is a poet and a translator

which I admire a lot) but I could not find the first group of poems we were reading in Portuguese. Translation in Brasil is not a systematic work and probably Paes, Bandeira or any other just translated what they like and whenever had an opportunity they had it published. Is has never been a project “lets now have the complete work of…”. We often find the commentaries about someone’s work translated but not the workpiece itself, just like we have the translation of Adorno and Heidegger essays on Hölderlin. (Maybe that is an heritage of Claude Lévi Strauss and his gang on USP.)