Paratextos das traduções brasileiras da Kalevala e do Popol Vuh ao longo do espaço e do tempo

Abstract

The Finnish Kalevala and the Guatemalan Popol Vuh have countless and surprising similarities, as well as a somewhat equal amount of remarkable differences. Some matters, however, must be highlighted: their oral origins, transfigured into a written world in moments of crisis; their numerous retranslations and the extensive prefaces, postfaces and introductions written by theorist-translators specialized on the books, containing information about the source-text and its context, the process of translation, besides data regarding the peoples and territories where the narratives originated. Such paratexts constitute ―zones of transaction‖ (GENETTE, 2009), in which negotiations of meaning between past translators, present versions, publishing houses and universities become visible amid the translating activity, moving the works in their literary and cultural polysystems. The Brazilian point on entry in this process is recent, with the translation of the Popol Vuh by Sérgio Medeiros (Iluminuras, 2007) e of the Kalevala by José Bizerril and Álvaro Faleiros (Ateliê Editorial, 2009). In these Brazilian editions, the most recurrent themes in the international versions are also made present, i.e., history and translation, both forms of knowledge facing the past, which contribute greatly to the construction of a concept of space. We detailed, therefore, the works and their paratexts so that we could, then, dedicate ourselves to the study of history and translation on the axes of time and space, choosing, whenever possible, to contemplate authors who discussed both fields, especially Walter Benjamin, Paul Ricoeur and Itamar Even-Zohar. We concluded that literature and translation are polysystems, that is, relational and hierarchical gatherings eternally building connections, developed and renewed as time passes. The paratexts, as hybrid as the texts they aim to present, are part of the great intercultural, political and literary negotiations operated by translation, which is the reason why we proposed the notion of the prism, so as to offer a possibility of interpretation that demonstrated the discourses run through the Kalevala and the Popol Vuh, and in which manner the works are configured both and symbolic goods and as producers of meaning.