Gonçalves Dias and the Episode of Sordello within Commedia

Abstract

It is known that Gonçalves Dias was preparing a volume with translated poems to which he would give the name Ecos de Além-Mar (LEAL, 1867; PEREIRA, 2018). Perhaps with such a purpose in mind he shedded  A noiva de Messina, by Friedrich Schiller, and some poems in French, Spanish, Italian and mainly  German. Beyond that project, it seems that he used to rewrite as a linguistic and poetic learning process, subsumed under that rubric, according to Leal (1867), may be a translation into Portuguese of part of canto VI (verses 58-87, 97, 100-108, 112-126, 136-147, 149-151) of the Divina Commedia, by Dante Alighieri, made in 1844 when he was studying Law at Coimbra. Those verses of canto VI tell when Dante and Virgílio met the Lombard poet Sordello, a scene in which there is a political invective. This article intended, on the one hand, to locate the time of the translation of that episode by the Brazilian poet from the Maranhão province and, on the other, to comment on the rewriting, and point out, when possible, likely motivations for translational choosing.