Speaking in tongues: the multiple personalities of Maria Gabriela Llansol.

Williams, Claire

In English, as in Portuguese, the symbolism and significance of the tongue is patent in the number of idiomatic expressions in which it appears: it can be silver, lost, found, held, bitten, wagged, tied or twisted, sharp or forked, civil or uncivil; we make slips of the tongue, speak tongue in cheek, have things on the tip of our tongues, and negotiate between foreign tongues and our mother tongue. You can wag your own tongue, or set tongues wagging, or the cat may get your tongue. In Portuguese your tongue can be 'viva', 'morta', 'de prata', 'de trapos', 'comprida', 'de fogo', 'afiada', 'presa', 'solta'; one can 'ter ou nao ter papas na lyngua', 'meter a lyngua num saco', 'dar a lyngua', 'por pimenta na lyngua', 'ter algo debaixo da lyngua', 'dar com a lyngua nos dentes', the list goes on and on.

Birds', lambs' and cows' tongues are gastronomic delicacies in many cultures, and in mythology too the tongue has symbolic importance. In Book VI of Ovid's Metamorphoses, there is a particularly gruesome instance: Philomela's tongue was cut out by her brother-in-law after he had raped her, to stem her accusations and insults, and to prevent her from denouncing his crime. (1) The girl cunningly wove a tapestry which illustrated her sad story, since she could not voice it, and she smuggled it to her sister, thus communicating with her by images. Their revenge was to feed the scoundrel the cooked body of his own son. To escape his ensuing wrath the gods turned the sisters into birds and Philomela was metamorphosed into a silver-tongued nightingale, at last able to vocalize again.

Most importantly, there is a split between reference to the fleshy and flexible organ both of taste, which allows humans to savour a variety of flavours, and of speech, whose movements against the palate and teeth permit us to articulate sounds, which in conjunction form an intelligible system which we call language; and the more abstract metonymic use of the word 'tongue' to represent that system, in terms such as lyngua franca or 'mother tongue'.

Particularly relevant here is the phenomenon of speaking in tongues or, in technical terms, 'glossolalia'. In the Bible it is referred to paradoxically as both miraculous intelligibility and unintelligibility. Illustrative of the first definition is the miracle of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit spoke through the Apostles and they were understood by people of all nations (in contrast to the division of one unifying into multiple discordant languages at the Tower of Babel, divine punishment for mortal pride):

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language. (Acts 2. 1) (2)

The reaction to the Apostles' supernatural behaviour at Pentecost was initially scepticism and then mockery: 'These men are full of new wine' (Acts 2. 13).

The second aspect is described in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians where he explains that 'he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeith in the spirit he speaketh mysteries' (1 Corinthians 14. 2) and suggests that because a prophetic message that no one understands is of no use, a person who speaks in tongues should always have an interpreter present to translate the news. This description is closer to the contemporary understanding of 'speaking in tongues' which may occur in Evangelist worship, or among shamans or witchdoctors possessed by spirits. It represents an ecstatic, prophetic, spiritual experience, in which the subject is a channel for an external force, rendered in a language inaccessible to others. (3)

One further consideration of language and the tongue is the approach taken in alchemy, entailing the belief in a primordial, natural language used by Adam and Eve, developed through communication with nature, which was split into myriad languages at the Tower of Babel. Just as the alchemists searched for the components of metals and materials, so they tried to return to the constituent language either through patterns of phonetics or through natural phenomena such as birdsong (or the 'language of birds'). (4) The suggestion is that a language exists which can be intimated by anyone, no matter which their mother tongue may be, from nature and the environment. The Portuguese writer Maria Gabriela Llansol plays on this idea in her understanding of the communication between humans and animals, plants, furniture, water and other objects and also in her use of familiar (or unfamiliar) historical figures who are divested of their historical contexts and presented in their essence. (5) Indeed, Antonio Guerreiro has described Llansol's writing practice as 'a procura de uma linguagem universal e absoluta', (6) which will lead to universal communi(cati) on and truth, even if its lowest common denominator is silence: 'eu desejaria fazer atravessar esta lyngua todas as lynguas ate torna-la, finalmente, sombra e silencio'. (7)

Her reference to the dictionary (in general) as 'um livro abismo onde dormem todas as possibilidades [...] massa inicial antes do big-bang', (8) her punning, especially with names (Temia, from the verb 'temer', Comuns/ Camoes, Aosse/Pessoa), and her frequent coining of neologisms through manipulation or word-blending (such as legente, metanoite, ruah), and use of Latin terms (viator, faber) can be compared to the alchemical figura etymologica: 'the reinterpretation of the meaning of words according to their supposed etymology' which links in with the idea of tracing a path back to one original language. (9) These concepts provide us with some interpretative tools with which to encounter the texts of Maria Gabriela Llansol: the tongue (as organ), language, the universally intelligible and the translation of the unintelligible.

The tongue appears frequently in Llansol's work in both its incarnations: the organ of taste and speech, and language itself. She writes about looking at one's tongue in the mirror, (10) the lolling tongue in a dog's or a human's mouth, (11) the possession or growth of a second tongue, (12) and she morbidly describes attempts to destroy or mutilate the tongue. (13) One frequently mentioned and intrusive effect is the 'impostura da lyngua', understood as the act of imposing one language, and by implication a code of conduct and way of life, upon an individual or a nation, and the defensive strategies deployed to avoid or counteract this.

Her two sets of trilogies, Geografia de rebeldes (comprising O Livro das Comunidades, A Restante Vida and A Casa de Julho e Agosto) and O Litoral do mundo (comprising Causa Amante, Contos do Mal Errante and Do Sebe ao Ser) contain nomadic figures who have wandered far and wide and been drawn to settled collective communities such as monasteries or beguinages. (14) They have to adapt to new surroundings and learn new languages in which they feel themselves to be strangers. And for those who live in a country where their mother tongue is not commonly spoken, that tongue becomes transparent and detached from any particular territory. (15) References to travellers and their experiences with language appear frequently in A Casa de Julho e Agosto and Causa Amante:

Luis M. dizia 'o exylio levou-nos a falar a lyngua por dentro, e a olha-la por fora' [...] Foi estranho. E raro. Nessa noite aprendemos, com todos os sentidos, essa lyngua. Caiu do ceu, propagou-se no ar. Cresceu connosco, e sem que soubessemos, apareceu unida a' nossa infancia. Exprimia as nossas recordaco es, estava presente nas nossas conversas e segredos mais yntimos com uma aparencia de tempo insondavel. [...]

 Era uma lyngua pura e agreste,
 com ressonancias de caminho,
 um poco obscuro ao fundo,
 um animal deitado na agua [...]

era uma lyngua em que fazia ainda tao cedo e tao perfeitamente claro que nela me pus a pensar o que, de futuro, vos escrevo. (16)

Here, Llansol brings up the question of the construction of language: where it comes from, how comfortable people feel when speaking different languages, how a language spreads and is taught to or imposed upon those who do not speak it, and about its possibilities for organic growth: 'podendo ter a lyngua uma das suas origens na cor, a minha vontade de falar teve origem num arbusto, que foi meu primeiro horizonte de expressao. [...] estou hoje intrigada por uma palavra: marfolho. Encontreia no tesouro vegetal da lyngua'. (17)

Born and raised in Lisbon, Llansol knows what it is like to live far from her homeland, unable to communicate freely in her mother tongue. She moved to Belgium in the mid-1960s with her husband to avoid both his conscription into the forces being sent to Africa to fight the Colonial Wars and the other restrictions of the Estado Novo. They lived in Brabant, the French-speaking region of Belgium, but were very aware of the linguistic tensions of a country which speaks French, Dutch, Flemish and German, and is host to the headquarters of the many-tongued European Union. She became so used to French that large passages in the second volume of her diary (Finita) are written in that language and translated in a glossary at the end of the book. Indeed, she says in Finita that there are certain things about her experiences in Belgium that could only be related in the language she was speaking at the time: (18)

Quando escrevo em frances avanco para alem da gramatica, guiada pelo ouvido e pela voz, pela escuta de vozes que ouvi durante estes dez anos. Vozes de criancas, de livros, as minhas conversas com Augusto quando sentiamos a necessidade de fazer repousar a nossa lyngua habitual e de comecar a falar do interior da peregrinacao. (19)

Although fluent in French, her mother tongue became part of her national identity as a foreigner living abroad: 'sei que essa lyngua se tinha tornado o meu unico ponto firme--a minha ancora: o meu real; o no de certeza do meu corpo com o mundo. O meu orgao de conviccao'. (20) Her recent translations of Verlaine, Rilke, Rimbaud, St There'se de Lisieux and Apollinaire, and forthcoming translation of Eluard, prove her familiarity and dexterity with French, but she writes her own fiction in Portuguese, because 'foi nessa lyngua que eu nasci, e so nas palavras dessa lyngua irrompem os meus textos. E estranho porque, no interior dessa lyngua, nao havia uma cultura para os receber'. (21)

Llansol's dense poetic language is interspersed with devices which edge it towards incoherence and unintelligibility. This occurs not only in her fictional texts (two trilogies, two collections of short stories and eight other works), but also in her three diaries, prefaces, published letters and occasional critical articles, in a career which spans almost forty years (her first book was published in 1962; the latest, the translation of Apollinaire, in 2001). Her paragraphs are not always neatly arranged rectangles--justified, indented and evenly spaced on the page--but instead the language appears to have been taken apart and put together again in an order which defies logic, some words getting lost in the process and others being added. The conventional rules of punctuation are suspended. The surface of the language is disturbed with glee, in a process the author has referred to as '[brincando] seriamente com a escrita'. (22) Words are interspersed with gaps, dashes and underlined spaces; words are unexpectedly highlighted in bold type, italics, capital letters; sentences are fragmented into blank verse or long strings of words which look like poetry; paragraphs are shifted to the centre or right-hand side of the page. The reader's expectations of what a narrative text should look like are confounded. The sense of the text too, naturally, is disrupted because sentences start in media res, end suddenly and are peppered with gaps, breaks and hurdles. Are these gaps and spaces slips of the tongue? Words on the tip of Llansol's tongue? In the words of Cristina Robalo Cordeiro, such (typo)graphic techniques 'poem em relevo a materialidade do significante, jogando com a motivacao da linguagem, problematizando o binomio transparencia/opacidade; o trabalho de desconstrucao e aqui por vezes levado a tal extremo que chega a atingir o limite da ilegibilidade (e da incomunicabilidade) pelo aniquilamento do proprio texto atraves de um processo de literal apagamento tipografico'. (23)

Certainly Llansol's work has been received with bewilderment and scepticism at this apparent complication of language, as if she, like the apostles, were 'full of new wine', although Augusto Joaquim, author of several essays on her work, says that it is part of the effect of 'o novo' which appears 'num rompante de transfiguracao [...] uma iluminacao', that demands a patient, open reading: 'nao fala, mas comunica. Comunica por sinais. E um comunicante. O seu proprio modo de se insinuar indica que nos vai dar tempo. Tempo, nao para pensar, porque o pensar nao entende o que desconhece, mas para aprender uma lyngua nova'. (24)

Llansol has explained her idiosyncratic style in terms of a rupture with narrativity (by which she means traditional realist, figurative, linear narrative) and an embracing of textuality (experimental, intuitive, fragmented narrative), saying:

E a minha conviccao que, se se puder deslocar o centro nevralgico do romance, descentra-lo do humano consumidor de social e de poder, operar uma mutacao da narratividade e faze-la deslizar para a textualidade um acesso ao novo, ao vivo, ao fulgor, | nos e possyvel. [... A textualidade] permite-nos, | a cada um por sua conta, risco e alegria, abordar a forca, o real que ha-de vir ao nosso corpo de afectos. (25)

This indicates her search for a way to reach what lies beyond the restrictions of the text into the 'novo', 'vivo', 'fulgor'. This search for the authentic representation of impressions, opinions and experiences, makes for a text structured (or de-structured) like a stream of consciousness, swerving first one way then another, often unexpectedly and without warning as the mind follows different thoughts (she often uses images of hunting, either with a falcon or a hound chasing after elusive word-prey). Suddenly a memory or recollection is triggered, or the text shows the marks of other texts, either ones that the author is composing simultaneously or ones that she is reading or translating in parallel.

The voices of characters blend with the quoted voices of other authors and with the voice of the narrator/Llansol herself. The reader can never be sure who the subjective 'I', 'me' or 'we' of the text is, often because there is an unmarked shift from one voice to another and only later do we realize that a different character has started speaking. This absence of one clear guiding narrative voice is unsettling for the reader, who feels the ground slipping away beneath his or her feet. The author is aware of the challenge her work sets, saying: 'Muitos dos que me leem tem dificuldade em ajustarse ao pacto de leitura que os meus textos supoem: o de saberem quem esta enunciando'. (26) She gives the example:

'Uma parte da minha vida ajustou-se ao patio.'

Quando escrevi esta frase, eu estou a ver o patio, mas quem nao le, nao sabe de quem e a vida que se ajustou ao espaco do patio. Poderia ser de Infausta, de Hadewijch, de Ana de Penalosa, e podia tambem ser minha. (27)

Here the identity of the speaker is not revealed. The authority of the author is called into question as different voices speak through her and interrupt the linear flow of the text. Characters appear and disappear or blend or metamorphose from one into another, or each is made up of 'tantas mutaco es', 'mil sombras' or 'varias imagens' of themselves. (28) In the first trilogy there are several characters writing books, and their various texts overlap or complement each other. San Juan de la Cruz is conjured up when his text is copied, or when Ana de Penalosa dreams about him, yet he is also absorbed into the page, and other writers' texts appear within his: (29) when the character Nietzsche tries to write Thus Spake Zarathustra the words of San Juan's Cantico Espiritual come from his mouth. (30) The voices being transmitted cause interference in each others' discourses, making for a composite polyphonic text, signals difficult to distinguish between and decipher.

Llansol's characters are named after real historical figures: mystics, philosophers, prophets, poets, heretics, all of whom can be seen to have rebelled against the norms and conventions of their age. Like Llansol today, they were misunderstood by their contemporaries for voicing unusual ideas or expressing them in unorthodox ways that questioned the established way of life. One voice claims the name of Gabriela, or sometimes Gabi, inserting the 'author' into the text. The reader assumes that the diaries are written by Maria Gabriela Llansol, but voices intervene in them, confusing the issue. In Onde Vais, Drama-Poesia, the narrator does identify herself at one point: 'eu, Maria Gabriela Llansol, sou responsavel pelo texto que dou a ler', but elsewhere in the text poems the reader initially believed to be hers are in fact attributed to a mysterious inheritance of documents written by someone called Rosa W. Christinna, who has already figured in the narrative, once again leaving us unsure of who is at the helm of the text. (31) Similarly, the short text 'Cantileno' distinguishes between the 'eu' presumed to be the author and 'a voz estranha que me escreve', re-attributing authorial agency to a 'strange' external power. (32)

Characters appear as if by magic, in dreams, walking past the author's window, wandering into the garden or into her house, and she converses with them unperturbed. She is visited by muses, angels and daimons who influence the way she writes: (33) 'Mudam todos os dias os querubins que aparecem dancando na cena do texto'. (34)

The characters she creates function almost as heteronyms, incarnations of the author or alternate selves, coming to her in visions or materializing spontaneously in front of her when their work is read, or when summoned:

Procuro uma mulher, uma nova figura feminina [...] Encontro o que procurava, sempre esquecida. A figura percorre seu corpo e diz que me visita sem finalidade, a' beira de calar-se e de exprimir-se. [...] Estou vestida de branco e la, para purificar-me [...] Diz-me que se chama Infausta, / que e muralha, / e eu o guardo na ultima linha da voz. [...] Uma figura feminina que quer entrar, / Infausta [...] Infausta e o heteronimo feminino de Aosse (35)--a chave da porta; e eu tenho a sensacao de que o que eu escrever rola sobre uma densidade muito mais medonha e vasta do que o meu proprio eu pessoal. (36)

This recalls Fernando Pessoa's experience of the almost spiritual possession that caused him to write in the voice of a different personality or heteronym, the metempsychosis he describes so triumphantly in his famous letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro:

I wrote thirty-odd poems in one go, in a kind of trance whose nature I cannot define. [...] What followed was the appearance of someone in me, to whom I at once gave the name Alberto Caeiro. [...] It seemed that it all happened independently of me. [...] I see in front of me, in the colourless but real space of dreams, the faces, the gestures of Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and A lvaro de Campos. [...] How do I write in the name of these three? ... Caeiro out of pure and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I am about to write. Ricardo Reis after abstract deliberation, suddenly given substance in an ode. Campos when I feel a sudden urge to write, and I know not what. (37)

The sensation echoes throughout his poetry in images of masks, disguise and discovery. Likewise, Llansol 'receives' Infausta and other presences like Ursula, Psalmodia and Ana de Penalosa, who are her, but are not her; they are some of the stages through which her narrating personality evolves. At one point in her diary she states:

Eu, Gabriela, chamo-a, a ela, U rsula, um dos meus corpos,

que depus na mesa de trabalho--ou no parapeito da janela--sem ser meu somente. [...] Um dos meus corpos me atinge. (38)

As if experiencing a mystical visitation she is compelled to write by a mysterious guiding force, the text which is ready to be written and needs a medium through which to express itself:

Eu propria nunca escolho sozinha sobre quem vou escrever, e nao e o ouvido, nem a visao, nem a minha voz, que participam comigo nessa amizade electiva. Creio que e o texto anterior tornando ser. O seu efeito e fazer desaparecer a lembranca de si pro prio, de desligar-se da vida que possuo. (39)

This process echoes the testimonies of mystics through the ages who have claimed that God or the Virgin Mary guides their pen: Hadewijch, St Therese and San Juan de la Cruz, all important figures in Llansol's works.

The discourses of the characters flow into one another, combining with those of authors whom Llansol is reading at the time of writing. She works simultaneously on several projects at once, as can be seen from her diaries which refer to the ongoing construction of her books. She describes the way she records ideas, impressions and inspirations in notebooks which she carries with her at all times, and she dates and locates almost every diary entry. All these different voices, personalities and quotations work a dense intertextual web of words, which overlap and interweave.

Leio um texto e vou-o cobrindo com o meu proprio texto ... (40)

estava a traduzir Rimbaud [...] quando se tornou quase impossyvel continuar a traduzir pois o meu proprio texto--outro texto--, vacilava por entre as linhas e, substituindo provisoriamente o de Rimbaud (e ate revoltado contra ele), queria subir a' maquina de escrever. (41)

The process of translation is a mediating exercise par excellence: how one transmits an author's voice faithfully and objectively into another language and culture, retaining its idiosyncrasies but making it accessible to foreign readers. (42) The bilingual Pessoa, who wrote a considerable amount of poetry and also criticism in English (even his last words were reputedly in English), supplemented his income with translations into Portuguese. His various comments on the practice of translation can be elaborated into a veritable methodology underlining a respect for the author of the original, profound knowledge of both languages, and access to the 'estado de espyrito' or 'momento de alma' represented by the literary work. (43)

O tradutor concebido por Pessoa nao pode ter complexos a respeito dos supostos deficits, ou perdas, ou meras duplicacoes da traducao, nem sentir-se em posicao subalterna em relacao ao autor traduzido. Se a partida o texto a traduzir se lhe impoe como modelo, logo ele o remodela ou modeliza e o anula como modelo, o seu, de que aquele pode passar tambem a depender como de um investimento. O bom tradutor nao copia para outra lyngua, porque cria ou recria noutra lyngua. (44)

Pessoa felt that perfect translation is impossible, for it cannot help but adulterate the original, able to recapture the body, but not the soul. (45) Walter Benjamin considered the translator to be one who elicits a language nearer to the primal unity of speech than either the original text or the tongue into which he is translating (the translation should serve the original writer and not be tailored to the reader). (46) Llansol too feels the brutality of fitting a round language into a square one, so to speak:

Sinto-o no rumor que se levanta, 'eu era justamente assim', diz-me o Anjo de Rainer Maria Rilke, 'mas aqui, no teu idioma, nao posso mais ser. Ser exactamente como era'. [...] Atravessar portas, e ficar iluminado por uma veste igual, e impossyvel. (47)

She uses the original as a model, listening to the voice of the poet, and creating a text which is her own, but also that of the original author, a symbiotic collaboration. She does not attempt to rhyme the poems in Portuguese, although she often maintains their rhythm. Llansol's idiosyncratic punctuation means that the poems may well be altered in terms of format, whilst retaining the essential message or meaning. This occurs particularly in her translations of the poetry of There'se Martin, also known as St Therese of Lisieux. (48) In the translations, the rhythm is marked by the dashes characteristic of Llansol's writing, and often the original verse format is modified into blank verse or straightforward prose. She also replaces There'se's 'Dieu' with 'D--', interpreting the saint's term with a more open, unfinished word, because the notion of a monolithic God is problematic for her. This can be seen in the plurality and subjectivity achieved by removing the 'd' from the word elsewhere: 'Decido, nesta altura natalycia, tirar o d de deus, e chamar eus ao que for a diferenca que o prive de ser a sua vontade'. (49) Such tinkering may seem to contradict Benjamin's notion of the translation serving the writer and not the reader, because Llansol's translations are so creative they distort the words to reach the sense. Although her writing sometimes appears elliptical, her priority is to transmit the poet's intentions, even if that means changing the original words.

She refers to the process of translation in her diaries and makes more specific comments in the introductions to the books of poetry translations she has published (Rilke, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Martin, Apollinaire). Again, the idea of empathy bordering on identification with the poet along with the sense of his/her presence, is what drives the translations. The introductions to the first four translations are excerpts from her diaries so her reflections on the process of translation and the voices of poets and characters are interspersed with comments on daily events:

Tinham acabado de abater mais arvores para 'limpar' as casas da possibilidade da investida dos ratos, e das lynguas de fogo. E eu perguntava a mim pro pria, ja com o poema na mesa--ou ouvia a voz dele--'mas por que e que as casas nao se mudam?' (50)

In this case the plight of the trees in her street becomes inextricably linked with the translation of Verlaine, just as the 'jardim do Logos' and the 'Tapada de Mafra' introduce the translation of Rilke; the over-zealous landscaping going on nearby simultaneously distorts and deforms the street, the text and the poem by Rimbaud being translated; (51) and the fig and olive trees which figured largely in Llansol's childhood holidays are linked with her first encounter with St Therese. She describes the translation process in terms of a direct connection with the poet:

a liberdade por que optei traduz-se na liberdade de ir no rasto do poema ate encontrar o autor sentado proximo do texto, e falando para mim. [...] Eu sei que o que estou a dizer e apenas uma perspectiva, contestavel, certamente, mas e o lado pelo qual Verlaine entrou na minha reflexao, e na minha mesa de trabalho [...] falava para mim, um leitor tao humano quanto atento. (52)

Rimbaud was difficult to translate objectively, 'Nao verte-lo, mas da-lo', because of external (the landscaping) and internal interference: 'Havia, quase sempre, uma voz a murmurar por detras de outra voz. Uma melodia antiga--uma rengaine--a percorrer a forma moderna do poema. A agulha de outra metrica, uma espinha, um resto'. (53) Translating St Therese, on the other hand, is described as a game between two girls, a game no one else understands but in which they are both engrossed: 'Teresa lancava imagens, e Temia ia busca-las'. (54) The text reminds Llansol of when her pious grandmother made her pray to St Therese, and thus recalls the beginnings of her questioning of religious faith and the existence of God. She remembers listening to music sung in languages she could not understand and the words of her father: '"a menina nao precisa de saber", referia-se as letras. "A mu sica chega"', the message, despite its apparent unintelligibility, getting through. (55) She relates this to the idea that St Therese's spirit and emotion were impeded by the social and literary constraints and conventions of her day, her situation and limited experience of the world. The poems were written 'como mandam os manuais' and with due respect to illustrious Romantic poets, but Llansol senses that Therese was using words she did not understand, 'estranhos de passagem', which hid what she really meant because that could never be expressed in such a way: 'os Musset, Chateaubriand e Lamartine nao disseram o que te ia na alma. Nem por instantes acreditariam no que teus olhos viam'. (56) Now, through translation, which is also a reading of and an opening up of the text, Llansol believes she allows the true nature of the poems to shine through and Therese's voice to sing out; hence the name of the collection: 'o alto voo/voz da cotovia'. Once again, in the introduction to her translations of Apollinaire she admits the impossibility of her task, for linguistic reasons as well as geographical ones: 'E so a impressao do poeta que traduzo. Este poema nao e dele, e meu. E talvez um falso efeito. E, de certeza, o efeito estranho que ele me causa. Ha ainda outro. O ritmo do poema "Le Pont Mirabeau" tao difycil de "dar em portugues". As palavras que fluem na lyngua que escrevo sao outras. Nao tenho uma cidade de pontes, nem de amores fugazes'. (57)

The communion, friendship and loving relationships established between Llansol and the voices which populate her texts, who are not really alter egos, but more like heteronyms, personalities speaking through the author, in her own, and hybrid, foreign, forked tongues, combine to produce a polyphonic, even stereophonic text. The reader must listen hard to distinguish what lies behind the voices, beneath the surface, beyond the words, and to build up her/his own dialogue with the text, the characters and the author. (58)

University of Liverpool

(1) Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by Mary M. Innes (London: Penguin, 1955), pp. 146-53.

(2) The phenomenon occurs in Llansol's writing: the term 'lynguas de fogo', or the concept of divine inspiration, occurs like a light bulb over Bach's head, 'a lyngua de fogo vai colocar-se sobre o cerebro do musico como lamparina celeste guardando na sombra, onde esperam, as formas essenciais da mu sica. [...] A lyngua de fogo, a' escuta, esplandece, e atrai. Atrai o olhar do musico para a mesa de trabalho onde, sobre a partitura virgem, um amor unitivo se inscreve em branco, esperando que as maos musicais talentosas o facam existir': Llansol, Lisboaleipzig 2 (Lisbon: Rolim, 1994), pp. 122-23. Candles and candlelight accompany scenes of creation or communication in Llansol's works (especially in the first trilogy) and also her life, according to Augusto Joaquim: 'Muitas vezes, a Maria Gabriela acendia velas pela casa'. Afterword in Causa Amante (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1996), pp. 167-211 (p. 167).

(3) A similar phenomenon occurred in heresy trials in the Middle Ages: 'The inquisitor will report or the heretic profess the use of a secret, magical idiom impenetrable to the outsider. The orthodox investigators [...] assign a Satanic origin to the hidden words. The initiate [...] claims angelic inspiration or a direct Pentecostal visitation'. George Steiner, After Babel, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 199-200.

(4) Llansol describes the language of the little-known Portuguese modernist Sousa Viterbo as 'a linguagem dos passaros' in the title of her afterword to his novella O fantasma do lago (Lisbon: Rolim, 1986): 'O topos de Viterbo esconde um texto, como se falasse, em termos de alquimia, a linguagem dos passaros (aqui feita de correspondencias, e nao de consonancias foneticas) que acabei por ouvir na figura de Elisa--coisa desprovida de qualquer psicologia mas animada, todavia, por um autentico logos'.

(5) Antonio Guerreiro, ' "Na Casa de Julho e Agosto": o livro da sabedoria', Jornal de Letras, 5 February 1985, pp. 4-5 (p. 4).

(6) Guerreiro, p. 4.

(7) A Casa de Julho e Agosto (Porto: Afrontamento, 1984), p. 130.

(8) Inquerito a's Quatro Confidencias (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1997), p. 130.

(9) Steiner quotes this practice in relation to the poetry of Holderlin, who figures coincidentally as a character in several of Llansol's texts and most obviously in Holder, de Holderlin (Colares: Colares, 1993), p. 341.

(10) For example Depois dos Pregos na Erva (Porto: Afrontamento, 1973), p. 166; Ardente Texto Joshua (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1998), p. 85.

(11) For example A Restante Vida (Porto: Afrontamento, 1983), pp. 23 and 36; Inquerito ..., p. 135.

(12) For example A Restante Vida, p. 59; Um Beijo Dado Mais Tarde (Lisbon: Rolim, 1990), p. 7.

(13) For example Depois ..., p. 166; Um Beijo ..., p. 7; Causa Amante, pp. 95 and 102.

(14) The beguines were groups of women in the Low Countries who 'chose to live a life of apostolic poverty and contemplation without taking vows as nuns. This movement came into being toward the end of the twelfth century, originating largely among women of noble and patrician families': 'Introduction', Hadewijch: The CompleteWorks, trans. by Mother Columba Hart, OSB (London: SPCK, 1981), pp. 1-42 (p. 3). Several beguinages still exist, in Amsterdam and Bruges for example.

(15) For example Lisboaleipzig 1 (Lisbon: Rolim, 1994), p. 29.

(16) A Casa ..., pp. 19, 117-18.

(17) Causa Amante, pp. 103, 110, 111.

(18) Compare the different 'mediary worlds' of different languages conceived by Trier, in Steiner, p. 90.

(19) Finita (Lisbon: Rolim, 1987), p. 97.

(20) Lisboaleipzig 1, p. 126.

(21) Lisboaleipzig 1, p. 96. Eduardo Lourenco echoes this idea when he states, with regard to Llansol's work: 'Que Cultura corresponde a um tal Texto nao e facil dize-lo. Ou melhor: e impossyvel. [...] Hemos visto algo nuevo. Saboreemo-lo e maravilhemo-nos, antes que o nosso devastador "exercycio crytico", o converta em algo viejo' (1979), 'Contexto Cultural e Novo Texto Portugues', O Canto do Signo (Lisbon: Presenca, 1994), pp. 280-83 (p. 283).

(22) Um Falcao no Punho (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1997), p. 126.

(23) 'Os Limites do Romanesco', Coloquio Letras, 143 (199), 111-33 (p. 126).

(24) Afterword, in Causa Amante, pp. 167-211 (pp. 172, 174-75).

(25) Lisboaleipzig 1, pp. 120-21.

(26) Lisboaleipzig 1, pp. 11-12.

(27) Lisboaleipzig 1, p. 11.

(28) A Restante ..., pp. 59, 78, 60.

(29) O Livro das Comunidades (Porto: Afrontamento, 1977), pp. 12, 25, 34.

(30) A Restante ..., p. 49.

(31) Onde Vais, Drama-Poesia? (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 2000), pp. 187 and 153.

(32) 'Cantileno', in Cantileno (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 2000), p. 11.

(33) See Augusto Joaquim's comment in the Preface to Causa Amante: 'Quando a Maria Gabriela inicia a escrita, ha diversos sinais que se espalham pela casa, sobretudo um murmu rio audyvel. Os gregos consideravam que havia daymons silentes e sonoros. [...] Todos os daymons possuem a sua elegancia pro pria, mas so os sonoros tem o condao de elevar para a beleza', p. 170.

(34) Inquerito ..., p. 78.

(35) Pessoa did have a female heteronym: Maria Jose. See Antonio Apolinario Lourenco, 'Fernando Pessoa-Maria Jose: alteridade e discurso feminino', Discursos: estudos de lyngua e cultura portuguesa, 5 (1993), 81-114.

(36) Um Falcao ..., pp. 109, 110, 112. Compare Joaquim: 'Seja qual for o nome que se de a' coisa, ha uma presenca que se manifesta, como um cao, um vizinho, um outro que canta, murmura ou vocifera, que pede ou exige, e conforme, para ser acolhido e esposado pelo corpo e pela mente de quem escreve. Imagino que escrever e viabilizar esta presenca, e que fazer uma obra e fruto da virtu com que se acolhe, na vontade constante [...] esse insistente murmu rio', p. 171.

(37) Fernando Pessoa, excerpt from letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, 13 January 1935, trans. by Maria Manuel Lisboa and Bernard McGuirk in A Centenary Pessoa, ed. by Eugenio Lisboa (Manchester: Carcanet, 1995), pp. 215, 216, 217.

(38) Inquerito ..., p. 104.

(39) Um Falcao ..., p. 77.

(40) O Livro ..., p. 65.

(41) Inquerito ..., p. 38.

(42) Susan Bassnett quotes Theo Hermans on the subject: 'The translator has been described over the years in a variety of metaphorical guises, "as following in the footsteps of the original author, borrowing garments, reflecting light, even searching for jewels in a casket". By the eighteenth century, dominant metaphors are of the translation as a mirror or as a portrait, the depicted or artificial held up against the real, whilst in the nineteenth century the dominant metaphors involve property and class relations. It is worth noting that in the 1980s a number of women working in the field began to discuss translation in figurative terms involving infidelity, unfaithfulness and reformed marriage. Brazilian translators have introduced a new metaphor [...] the image of the translator as cannibal, devouring the source text in a ritual that results in the creation of something completely new'. 'Preface to the Revised Edition', Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. xi-xix (pp. xiii-xiv).

(43) Arnaldo Saraiva, Fernando Pessoa: Poeta--Tradutor de Poetas (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1999), p. 45.

(44) Saraiva, p. 46. See also Pessoa's comments on translating poetry: 'The translation of a poem should [...] conform absolutely (1) to the idea or emotion which constitutes the poem, (2) to the verbal rhythm in which that idea or emotion is expressed; it should conform relatively to the inner or visual rhythm, keeping to the images themselves when it can, but keeping always to the type of image', in A Centenary Pessoa, p. 236.

(45) Steiner, p. 255.

(46) 'All purposeful manifestations of life, including their very purposiveness, in the final analysis have their end not in life, but in the expression of its nature, in the representation of its significance. Translation thus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the central reciprocal relationship between languages': 'The Task of the Translator', in Illuminations, trans. by Harry Zohn, ed. by Hannah Arendt (London: Fontana, 1992), pp. 70-82 (p. 73).

(47) 'Introducao', in Rainer Maria Rilke, Frutos e Apontamentos--Dyvida de Coracao a' Franca, trans. by Maria Gabriela Llansol (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1996), pp. 7-11 (p. 8).

(48) The character Teresa who appears in Ardente Texto Joshua is related to the prose written by St There'se rather than the poetry, and she reflects certain biographical details of the saint.

(49) Um Falcao ..., p. 16.

(50) 'Acompanhando Verlaine--', in Paul Verlaine, Sageza, trans. by Maria Gabriela Llansol (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1995), pp. 7-10 (p. 7).

(51) 'Introducao: um fragmento do Diario de M. G. Llansol (1 de Novembro de 1996/sexta)', in Rimbaud, O Rapaz Raro: iluminacoes e poemas, trans. by Maria Gabriela Llansol (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1998), pp. 7-13.

(52) 'Acompanhando ...', pp. 8, 9, 10. In the introduction to her translations of Apollinaire, she visualizes the poet composing and singing in the bath, '--Que me esperasses', in Mais Novembro do que Septembro, trans. by Maria Gabriela Llansol (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 2001), pp. 7-14.

(53) 'Introducao: um fragmento ...', p. 10.

(54) Llansol, ' Um jardim entre oliveiras', introduction to There'se Martin de Lisieux, O Alto Voo da Cotovia, trans. by Maria Gabriela Llansol (Lisbon: Relogio d'A gua, 1999), pp. 7-16 (p. 9).

(55) 'Um jardim ...', pp. 9-10.

(56) 'Um jardim ...', pp. 12-13.

(57) '--Que me esperasses', pp. 8-9.

(58) A version of this essay was presented at the conference on 'Lusophone History, Literature and Culture' at the University of California at Santa Barbara, 14 April 2000. Research on Maria Gabriela Llansol was supported by a grant from the Instituto Camoes. Attendance at the conference was made possible thanks to a travel grant from the British Academy.