"The raven", by Machado de Assis

Abstract

The Brazilian critic José Guilherme Merquior once claimed that Machado de Assis's translation of "The Raven" should not be considered inferior to the well known translation of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. 1 Unfortunately Merquior does not seem to find necessary to give reasons for this evaluation. And yet even the most cursory reading of the two translations will show that some sort of explanation is necessary because Machado and Pessoa are obviously doing something radically different with Poe's poem. Consider, for example, the two renderings of the first stanza in relation to Poe's original: