The poet as a clandestine: Translation, style and poetry in Emilio Villa

Abstract

Roland Barthes (2004) designates style as the writer's splendor and prison: his loneliness. This paper intends to reflect on this barthesian thought of style in the work of the italian poet, art critic and translator Emilio Villa, based on plurilingual or translated poems into Brasilian Portuguese by the italian poet himself and some of his pictorial works. The concept of translation becomes central to analysing Emilio Villa's work, through reading Walter Benjamin, Henri Meschonnic and other theorists, and also through the various translations he made: the Odyssey, parts of Genesis, a selection of Mesopotamian tablets. Villa wrote not only in Italian, but his plurilingualism was confirmed in texts written in Latin, Greek, French and other languages.

Keywords
Emilio Villa; poetry; style; visual poetry; translation