Haroldo de Campos in Conversation (review)

K. David Jackson

The Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Volume 87, Number 7, 2010, pp. 895-896
(Article)

Published by Liverpool University Press

DOI: 10.1353/bhs.2010.0010

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bhs/summary/v087/87.7.jackson.html

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bhs, 87 (2010)
the contemporary visual art in Brazil (Tunga
and Arthur Omar) and Mexico (Gerardo Suter,
Silvia Gruner and Maris Bustamante) that
engages with the modernist legacy.
Gabara’s work is richly researched and
mercurial in its argumentation. Issues
arise, nonetheless. While Mexico and Brazil
demand comparison and Gabara’s proposal
to ‘imagine Mexico and Brazil as the receding
point of the idea of Latin America, domi-
nating any definition of the region yet produc-
tively, errantly never quite fitting in’ (19) is
a sound one, the author at times conflates
rather than juxtaposes the two countries.
An example is when she writes ‘as much as
photographers sought to make the camera
see differently, writers attempted to make
the colonizer’s languages of Spanish and
Portuguese achieve national expression, even
while millions of people around them spoke
indigenous languages’ (4). Today significantly
less than one per cent of the Brazilian popu-
lation speaks an indigenous language, and
the figure would not have been considerably
higher in Mário de Andrade’s era. Though
similar to that of Mexico, Brazil’s struggle for
a national expression to reflect its non-Euro-
pean element was different in crucial ways
that such conflations obscure. Other sticking
points are smaller in scale. Through the book
Gabara pays close and consistently illumi-
nating attention to questions of race and
gender. Yet, in her discussion of Andrade, on
the one hand, the author takes his presumed
homosexuality as granted, dismissing any
possibility of a more complex position on
the scale of sexual orientation, and, on the
other, when discussing Andrade’s ironic
portrayal of race in a portrait, Gabara refers
to the ‘admittedly white face’ (112) of the in
fact mixed-race intellectual. The lapses with
regard to the particularities of Brazil, together
with the narrow focus on its representative
Andrade, as opposed to wide discussions of
the Mexicans Salvador Novo, Arquelles Vela,
Torres Bodet and Álvarez Bravo in the second
half of the book, also makes Errant Modernism
appear weighted towards Mexico.
This imbalance aside, it is undeniable
that Errant Modernism achieves its stated aim,
to operate a rack focus from the industrial
and cultural mainstream of modernity to
the richly ‘errant’ archive, photographic
and otherwise, of Mexican and Brazilian
modernism, which ‘exceeds the purity of the
Reviews of Books 895
art object, the limitations of elite culture, and
the European centre that for so long tried to
hold an exclusive claim to it’ (260). Gabara’s
double exposure of Brazilian and Mexican
modernism and their Janus-faced engage-
ment with the ontological ambivalences of
the photograph will stimulate all scholars
interested in the regions in question, the
modernist period and its artistic currents,
and the medium of photography.
PAUL MELO E CASTRO
University of Leeds
BERNARD MCGUIRK and ELSE R. P. VIEIRA
(eds.), Haroldo de Campos in Conversation.
London: Zoilus Press. 2009. 343 pp. ISBN
978 1 902878 98 1 pb. ISBN 978 1 902878
94 2 hb.
Haroldo de Campos in Conversation is the latest
of four books dedicated to the memory of the
dynamic and internationally renowned poet,
translator, essayist, and founder of Brazilian
concrete poetry, Haroldo de Campos (1929–
2003). The first was Lisa Block de Behar’s
Haroldo de Campos, don de poesía: ensayos críticos
sobre su obra (Lima: Fondo Editorial UCSS;
Embajada del Brasil en Lima, 2004; rev. ed.
Montevideo: Linardi & Risso; Fondo Editorial
UCSS; Embajada del Brasil en Montevideo,
2009). This volume in Spanish was followed
by the magnificently illustrated Céu acima:
Para um ‘tombeau’ de Haroldo de Campos, orga-
nized by Leda Tenório da Motta in São Paulo
(Editora Perspectiva, 2005) and by my own
Haroldo de Campos: A Dialogue with the Brazilian
Concrete Poet (Oxford: Centre for Brazilian
Studies, 2005). All these books are antho-
logical and, except for the Brazilian, refer to
academic conferences featuring Haroldo de
Campos, his thought, poetics and criticism.
Block de Behar’s project references a confer-
ence in Salta, Uruguay, in 1991, while the two
volumes published in England spring from a
joint Oxford/Yale conference in 1999, marking
Haroldo’s 70th birthday. All three volumes
draw on many earlier materials, whether
theoretical essays on concrete poetry, descrip-
tions of his work by distinguished critics and
authors, or elegiac remembrances of Harol-
do’s poetical magic. Papers presented at the
core academic events to which the books
refer are few in the context of many-sided
descriptions of and writings by the author
896 Reviews of Books
contained in each book: the current volume
includes, for example, introductions to one
of the major if neglected creative writers in
Latin America, examples of his work trans-
lated into English, interpretive essays, inter-
views bringing his voice to life, Haroldo’s
own combative and provocative challenges
on the topics of aesthetics and the role of
the artist in ‘underdeveloped’ countries, and
special evocations of the man and his genius
by notable figures.
While some content is common to the
four books, each has an individuality of focus
and editorial presentation that makes them
complementary and even essential volumes
for a library or personal collection on Haroldo
de Campos. Again with the exception of Céu
acima, all are limited editions: Haroldo de
Campos in Conversation is so presented, in
100 hardback and 100 paperback numbered
copies. Block de Behar’s 2004 edition is sold
out, and the Oxford 2005 and Montevideo
2009 volumes are of limited number and no
longer in print. Their editorial situation turns
these books into even more poignant evoca-
tions of the creative figure whom so many
of us read and remember as an inspiring
creator and mover of arts, letters, and ideas
from his native São Paulo to the world. These
volumes reassure us that our own impres-
sions and devotion are shared by such major
literary and intellectual figures as Umberto
Eco, Jacques Derrida, Severo Sarduy, Octavio
Paz, and others who interacted with Haroldo.
The original contributions in Haroldo de
Campos in Conversation consist of the preface
by Ambassador João Almino, the intro-
ductory ‘Woven Memory’ by the editors,
the ‘Post(trans)Scriptum’ by McGuirk, and
seven pieces drawn from the 1999 Oxford
conference. These include two interviews
that justify the volume’s title: ‘Haroldo de
bhs, 87 (2010)
Campos in Dialogue with Jacques Roubaud
and Helder Macedo’ and ‘Haroldo de Campos
in Conference with Nicholas Zurburgg, João
Almino, Else R. P. Vieira, Bernard McGuirk,
and Luiz Costa Lima’. There follow Haroldo’s
two original essays from the conference,
‘The Ex-Centric Viewpoint’ (translated by the
author with Stella Tagnin) and ‘A Word in
Response to the Debate on Cultural Depen-
dency in Brazil’ (their only sources in any
language), along with two essays appearing for
the first time, Nicholas Zurbrugg’s ‘Program-
ming Paradise: HC, Concrete Poetry and the
Multimedia Avant-Garde’ and McGuirk’s
‘Laughin’ Again He’s Awake: Haroldo de
Campos à l’oreille de l’autre celte’. All the
other essays had appeared in earlier publi-
cations, whatever the language, although
some are again translated into English, such
as Haroldo’s ‘On Mephistofaustic Translucif-
eration’ and ‘On Translation as Creation and
Criticism’ or Sarduy’s ‘En Route to Concre-
tude’, while others are simply reproduced
in their earlier published translations (‘The
Rule of Anthropophagy’). McGuirk adds his
own translation of three of Haroldo’s poems
as a coda to the volume. No single one of
these books would be enough to convey a full
idea of Haroldo de Campos and his writings,
yet they converge as four telling portraits.
Carrying Haroldo’s penetrating glance in
a photo-sketch on the cover and with the
intelligent evocations and selections by the
editors, Haroldo de Campos in Conversation is a
desirable addition to the reading of anyone
interested in contemporary creative litera-
ture and poetics in Brazil and to Haroldo de
Campos’s wider world of reference. It is a gift
to its 200 lucky owners.
K. DAVID JACKSON
Yale University