O divino e o terreno na transcriação de 「 羽衣 」: Hagoromo, o Manto de Plumas

Abstract

Product of the entertainments offered at Buddhist temple festivals and Shinto shrines in the Muromachi Period (1336-1573), Noh Theater is a classical Japanese theatrical art that harmoniously combines dance, music and poetry, whose structural organicity is an amalgamation of the precepts and practices of Shintoism and Buddhism. These religious matrices are evident in the Noh play Hagoromo (The Feathers Mantle), which features the meeting of the divine (Buddhist deity) and the earthly (human), in which the celestial maiden’s sacred mantle was stolen by a fisherman, causing the earthly corruption and spiritual impurity. As a theatrical ideogram, Hagoromo presents a poetic fabric composed of complex and diverse threads, inspired by sacred elements such as Buddhist sutras, the gestures of Shinto dance (kagura), and reinterpretation of mythological legends, among others. Featuring elements that are seemingly untranslatable, Hagoromo was transcreated by Haroldo de Campos, into a “poetically effective text, meticulously crafted, autonomous as a work of verbal art” (2006, p.16). Given that transcreation is a creative form of translation aimed not only at rendering poetic expression and content, but also at capturing the poem’s intent by (re)creating its significant forms, this thesis seeks, through a critical reading, to understand how is configured the encounter between the divine and the earthly, originating mainly from Buddhism and Shintoism, which are intrinsic to the architecture and materiality of Noh, in the translation of the Noh Theater play Hagoromo, o Manto de plumas by Haroldo de Campos (2006). Grounded in the theory of transcreation (CAMPOS, 2011) and the ideogramic method of composition (CAMPOS, 1977), we aim to comprehend the critical dialogue established beteen the transcribed text and the source text, focusing on extratextual elements, mainly, through the visual and metaphorical complexity of the ideogram.