On the 100-year anniversary of Ulysses, let’s acknowledge some of the figures responsible for ensuring Joyce’s work was read, celebrated and debated internationally.
Brazilian poet, translator and writer Augusto de Campos (pictured) is perhaps, more than anyone, responsible for introducing Joyce to Brazil. Joyce is the most vigorously translated of Ireland’s great writers. Joyce strove for universality in his work, ‘seeing the particular in the universal’, and he owes a debt to the countless translators who have endeavoured to (and successfully I’m told) translate his sublimely untranslatable works.
Between ourselves, I have asked de Campos’ protégé, my friend the accomplished author and translator Victor Scatolin to introduce me to the legendary Joycean when I visit their hometown of Sao Paulo in March on a work trip. If I do get to meet him, I will of course have many questions to ask him. Most of all however, I will thank him.
Whether you like Ulysses or not, it revolutionaised literature and changed how we view language. The more people included in this debate and this experience the better. But most of all, he helped bring a little bit of Ireland to Brazil! He helped bring us closer, made us less foreign to each other. And that is one of literature’s most precious gifts.
Jeremy