Joyce in Joaquim
By Vitor Alevato do Amaral*
Joyce was born in Dublin; Joaquim in Curitiba. The writer Dalton Trevisan (1925) was its creator in 1946 and undertaker in 1948. What does Joaquim have to do with Joyce? The answer is simple: the first fragment of Ulysses ever to be translated and published in Brazil appeared in Joaquim.
First, a fragment of Carl Jung’s 1932 long review of Ulysses was published in the 3rd issue (July 1946, p. 16). Then, in the 4th issue of Joaquim (Sept. 1946, pp. 17-18), a fragment (U 10.718-798) of the tenth episode, “The Wandering Rocks” was published. The translation was made by Erasmo Pilotto, as Trevisan himself confirmed to Brazilian translator Caetano Galindo.
So far, this puts an end to a question: who was the first person to translate and publish any part of Ulysses in Brazil? Some people believed that the Brazilian Modernist writer Patrícia Galvão (1910-1962), known as Pagu, had been the first person to translate a passage (U 6.835-996) from Ulysses in Portuguese, in the newspaper O Diário de São Paulo, on 2nd February 1947. But her translation came after Pilotto’s, which was published in Joaquim in September 1946. Both Pilotto’s and Pagu’s translation were made indirectly: he translated from the 1945 Argentinian Ulises, and she from the 1929 French Ulysse.
It is worthy to note that Joaquim also published a fragment from Salas Subirat’s introduction to his 1945 translation (an introduction that mysteriously would never again appear in the following editions of the Argentine Ulises).
In the 21st issue of Joaquim, Trevisan started the short story “Ulysses in Curitiba”. It was “to be continued”, but Joaquim died, or rather was discontinued, unawares, after that issue.
*Professor at Fluminense Federal University, and translator: vitoramaral@id.uff.br
