Joaquín Arcadio Pagaza, traductor de Virgilio.

Abstract

Mexican poet Joaquín Arcadio Pagaza (1839-1918) translated the works of Virgil, both paraphrastically and literally. Finally, he convinced himself that it was better to do it literally. His literal translations of Eclogues, Georgics, and the first three books of the Aeneid, published in the early 20th Century, are very valuable indeed. Inspired by the poet from Mantua, Joaquín Arcadio Pegaza wrote poetry himself, referring to the Mexican nature. As Geraldo Holanda Cavalcanti points out with respect to the translator’s work, it went far beyond achieving linguistic correspondence, it constituted an identification process with the source author, whose texts were reconstructed and interpreted by the translator.