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© Hartwig Klappert
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Paulo Henriques Britto
Brazil
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Paulo Henriques Britto was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1951. He
began studying Film at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972 and
moved back to Rio de Janeiro the following year to study Linguistics.
Passionate about the rock legends Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, Britto
began translating poetry and pop lyrics as a student in the USA. He has
translated work by Byron, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, and Thomas
Pynchon, among many others, and is now one of Brazil's most
distinguished translators. Britto teaches Literature, Literary
Translation and Creative Writing at the Pontifícia Universidade
Católica (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro.
The author's literary work is in
the tradition of Emily Dickinson. When he began to write in the
seventies, Britto found the literary scene in Brazil in a state of
polarisation: »You opted for either Chico Buarque or Caetano Veloso. I
always liked both. That was a problem.« Britto has also a fondness for
metalanguage, methodology and rigorous literary forms and this links
him to concrete poetry, while staying close to the »Generation
Mimeography« (Geração Mimeógrafo) where content is concerned. This
generation of writers advocated literary spontaneity and the use of
slang as a way of emphasising everyday life as a theme. Similar to the
»Beat Generation«, it is marked by the rock music of the sixties and
seventies, above all, though, by the Brazilian »música popular« and its
representatives, such as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto
Gil.
Britto, who writes at most four to six poems a year,
published his first collection of poems, »Liturgia da matéria« (1982;
t: Liturgy of matter), in 1982. After that came »Mínima lírica« (1989;
t: Minimal Lyricism), »Trovar claro« (1997; t: Composing in clarity),
and the volume »Macau« (2003), for which the author received the Prêmio
Portugal Telecom de Literatura Brasileira in 2004. The idea of Macau –
the former Portuguese colony in China – stands metaphorically for
Britto's own art and existential situation. The book has made him a
cult poet in Brazil. After a thirty-year gestation period, the author
published his first volume of short stories, »Paraísos artificiais«
(2004; t: Artificial Paradises), for which he was nominated for the
Prêmio Jabuti in 2005. Britto lives in Rio de Janeiro.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Liturgia da matéria
Civilização Brasileira
Rio de Janeiro, 1982
Mínima lírica
Livraria Duas Cidades
Sao Paulo, 1989
Trovar claro
Companhia das Letras
Sao Paulo, 1997
Macau
Companhia das Letras
Sao Paulo, 2003
Paraísos artificiais
Companhia das Letras
Sao Paulo, 2004 |
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