The mixed iambic dodecasyllable: a proposal for the adaptation of the english epic blank verse into portuguese

Abstract

The translation of epic blank verse usually takes two forms: formal adherence to syllabic counting as recreation of the pentameter as decasyllables, or semantic fidelity as adaptative transposition in free verse. Both modes cause detriment to the particular effects of the original form by not transposing to the target language the essential qualities of the English blank verse: the steady and constant rhythm and the tension between metric rhythm and the syntactic-semantic rhythm. In our essay we intended to study the qualities and effects that make epic blank verse distinct from other metrical forms, exploring the mechanisms of the iambic pentameter, its limits and mutations within the English tradition, and how this verse operates in unrhymed compositions of narrative and meditative character, in which the differences between prose and poetry becomes more subtle and the metric takes a character at the same time less marked and more fundamental. After this survey we propose a new variation of the blank verse in portuguese, the mixed dodecasyllable, composed of iambic rhythm, formed by the alternation between unstressed and stressed or half-stressed syllables, and headless dodecasyllables when the preceding verse possesses a feminine ending. We illustrate our study of the blank verse with excerpts from The Prelude, by William Wordsworth, and translate passages from the same work according to our metrical measure in order to determine its effectiveness. As a result we perceived that our adapted form appears to be capable of accomodating those qualities considered essential to the blank verse, reformulating in Portuguese poetic effects frequently lost during the process of translating English works, like the regular iambic rhythm and the reading momentuum poured integrally from one verse to the next. We thus concluded that a nontraditional approach toward the metrical potentialities of Portuguese, in dialogue with the forms of English poetry, is capable of opening new perspectives of translation for Portuguese language researchers, and bringing to light qualities of different metrical traditions that can offer new tools to their translators.