Melted in the Crucible

  João Guimarães Rosa, Brazil's best writer ever, a genius. Virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, mainly on account of poor translations, "literal" renderings intended to please commercially-minded editors.  Want to have an inkling of what he would have sounded like in English? Read on. NONE João Guimarães Rosa Inside the farmhouse, found at random among several other resought far-off places, there came to be, in our minds, irreversible great facts—reflections, flashes of lightning and sparkles—stifled by darkness.  The mansion—strange, vanishing, behind mountains and ranges, ever, at the edge of the woods of some riverbank, which forbids imagining. Or perhaps it hasn't been on a farm, nor along the undiscovered path, nor that far? It is no longer possible to find out — nevermore. (...)  Only now sluggishly there dawns the demanding glimmer of reminiscence, at the end perhaps of an extremely long journey, striking his consciousness. (...) Plentymuch, howev...

This is my translation of an excerpt from the poem "Dia de São Tomé," by the talented Portuguese poet Matilde Campilho: I could write your name 70 times in a row But that wouldn't scare away this longing to utter your name through salt and teeth Or soothe the pain of your physical absence from the hollow specter sitting across from me at the restaurant every day at 11am From the passenger's seat as I drive  to the state tax agency the good old wasted state so vastly overrated Writing your name over and over from top to bottom then from left to right and diagonally like somebody hoping to win at four in a row some day... that's a poor substitute for the noise of water inside my mouth when the word You used to reverberate  between the palate and sea water against my teeth and ended up in the fissures of some rock Yes, your name between one dive and another Choking on your name and sea water and laughs Your name coming against your face at exactly the sam...