The translator is a faker: Fernando Pessoa in Spain or the labyrinth of the heteronyms

Abstract

Since 1923, the year the first translation of a poem by Fernando Pessoa appeared in Spain, up to the present, with its plethora of titles, the editions of the poetic work of the Portuguese author that the Spanish reader can find are varied and very different. This is particularly the case of the numerous anthologies organised and translated into Spanish, under various principles and precepts, by some of the most prestigious translators of Portuguese literature in this country: from Rafael Santos Torroella, Ángel Crespo or José Antonio Llardent to the more recent contributions of Manuel Moya, Martín López-Vega, Eloísa Álvarez or Jerónimo Pizarro and Nicolás Barbosa, together with those of Miguel Ángel Viqueira, José Luis García Martín or Ángel Campos Pámpano, among many others. Taking as a reference point the main existing anthologies, the aim of this study is to analyse the multiplicity of expressions with which Pessoa’s poetry has reached the Spanish literary system through its different translators and mediators. By addressing the main paratextual differences between them, we will use some paradigmatic poems as representative of the growing universe of available translations. These force the reader to a permanent exercise of weighting and contextualisation of the historical and aesthetic principles to which they respond.