Notas

[1]. Em italiano no original: “Intanto se vuoi vincere/ Un bel ternone al Lotto,/ Giuoca il sette e il sedici,/ Uniti al cinquantotto”. (n. t.)

[2]. Novela de Charles Dickens. (n. e.)

[3]. “Esse homem do Império, habituado ao gênero imperial, devia ignorar completamente as formas de amor moderno, os novos escrúpulos, as diversas conversas inventadas depois de 1830, em que a ‘pobre e frágil mulher’ acaba por se considerar vítima dos desejos de seu amante, como uma irmã de caridade que trata feridas, como um anjo devotado. Essa nova arte de amar consome grande quantidade de palavras evangélicas em honra ao diabo. A paixão é um martírio. Aspira-se ao ideal, ao infinito de ambas as partes; quer-se aperfeiçoar através do amor. Todas essas belas frases são um pretexto para insuflar ainda mais ardor à prática, mais fúria à correnteza do que no passado. Essa hipocrisia, característica do nosso tempo, gangrenou a galanteria.” (n. e.)

[4]. The Holy Ghost comes sliding down/ On Ilford, Golders Green and Penge./ His hosts infect him as they rot;/ The victims take their just revenge.// For if of old the sons of squires/ And livery stable keepers turned/ To flowers and hope, to Greece and God,/ We in our later age have learned/ That we are native where we walk/ Through the dim streets of Camden Town./ But hopeful still through twice-breathed air/ The Holy Ghost comes shining down.

[5]. Cony no original. (n. t.)

[6]. Rilbbit no original. (n. t.)

[7]. These like remorse inveterate memories,/ Being of cabbage, are prophetic too/ Of future feast when Mrs. Cloudesley Shove/ Will still recall lamented Cloudesley./ Still/ Among the moonlit cedars Philomel/ Calls back to mind, again, again,/ The ancient pain, the everlasting pain;/ And still inveterately the haunted air Remembers and foretells that roses were/ Red and tomorrow will again be red,/ But ‘Cloudesley, Cloudesley!’ Philomel in vain/ Sobs on the night; for Cloudesley Shove is dead...

[8]. Antiga dança folclórica inglesa em que os figurantes geralmente representavam figuras lendárias. (n. t.)

[9]. Oh lark, how you do fly/ Right up into the sky./ How loud he sings/ And quickly wags his wings./ The sun does shine,/ The weather is fine./ Father says, Hark,/ Do you hear the lark?

[10] . Prow after prow the floating ships/ Bridge the blue gulph; the road is laid./ And Caesar on a piebald horse/ Prances with all his cavalcade.// Drunk with their own quick blood they go./ The waves flash as with seeing eyes;/ The tumbling cliffs mimic their speed,/ And they have filled the vacant skies// With waltzing Gods and Virtues, set/ The Sea Winds singing with their shout,/ Made Vesta’s temple on the headland/ Spin like a twinkling roundabout.// The twined caduceus in his hand,/ And having golden wings for spurs,/ Young Caesar dressed as God looks on/ And cheers his jolly mariners;// Cheers as they heave from off the bridge/ The trippers from the seaside town;/ Laughs as they bang the bobbing heads/ And shove them bubbling down to drown.// There sweeps a spiral whirl of gesture/ From the allegoric sky:/ Beauty, like conscious lightning, runs/ Through Jove’s ribbed trunk and Juno’s thigh,// Slides down the flank of Mars and takes/ From Virtue’s rump a dizzier twist,/ Licks round a cloud and whirling stoops/ Earthwards to Caesar’s lifted fist.// A burgess tumbles from the bridge/ Headlong, and hurrying Beauty slips/ From Caesar through the plunging legs/ To the blue sea between the ships.

[11] . Dark stirrings in the perfumed air/ Touch your cheeks, lift your hair./ With softer fingers I caress,/ Sporus, all your loveliness./ Round as a fruit, tree-tangled, shines/ The moon; and fire-flies in the vines,/ Like stars in a delirious sky,/ Gleam and go out. Unceasingly/ The fountains foll, the nightingales/ Sing. But time flows and love avails/ Nothing. The Christians smoulder red;/ Their brave blue-hearted flames are dead./ And you, sweet Sporus, you and I,/ We too must die, we too must die.

[12] . Antigo jogo atlético grego que consistia no salto em distância levando pesos nas mãos. (n. t.)

[13] . The Christians by whose muddy light/ Dimly, dimly I divine/ Your eyes and see your pallid beauty/ Like a pale night-primrose shine// Colourless in the dark, revere/ A God who slowly died that they/ Might suffer the less; who bore the pain/ Of all time in a single day,// The pain of all men in a single/ Wounded body and sad heart.// The yellow mable smooth as water/ Builds me a Golden House; and there/ The mar ble gods sleep in their strength/ And the white Parian girls are fair.// Roses and waxen oleanders,/ Green grape bunches and the flushed peach, —/ All beautiful things I taste, touch, see,/ Knowing, loving, becoming each.// The ship went down, my mother swam:/ I wedded and myself was wed;/ Old Claudius died of emperor-bane:/ Old Seneca too slowly bled.// The wild beast and the victim both,/ The ravisher and the wincing bride;/ King of the world and fi slave’s slave,/ Terror-haunted, deified —// An artist, O sweet Sporus, an artist,/ All these I am and needs must be./ Is the tune Lydian? I have loved you./ And you have heard my symphony// Of wailing voices and clashed brass,/ With long shrill flutings that suspend/ Pain o’er a muttering gulf of terrors,/ And piercing breathless joys that end// In agony —could I have made/ My song of Furies were the bane/ Still sap within the hemlock stalk,/ The red swords virgin bright again?// Or take a child’s love that is all/ Worship, all tenderness and trust,/ A dawn-web, dewy and fragile —take/ And with the violence of lust// Tear and defile it. You shal1 hear/ The breaking dumbness and the thin/ Harsh crying that is the very music/ Of shame and the remorse of sin.// Christ died; the artist lives for all;/ Loves, and his naked marbles stand/ Pure as a column on the sky,/ Whose lips, whose breast and thighs demand// Not our humiliation, not/ The shuddering of an after shame;/ And of his agonies men know/ Only the beauty born of them.// Christ died, but living Nero turns/ Your mute remorse to song; he gives/ To idiot fate eyes like a lover’s,/ And while his music plays, God lives.

[14] . Hour after hour the stars/ Move, and the moon towards remoter night/ Averts her cheek./ Blind now, these gardens yet remember/ That there were crimson petals glossy with light,/ And their remembrance is this scent of roses./ Hour after hour the stars march slowly on,/ And year by year mysteriously the flowers/ Unfold the same bright pattern towards the sky.// Incurious under the streaming stars,/ Breathing this new yet immemorial perfume/ Unmoved, I lie along the tumbled bed;/ And the two women who are my bedfellows;/ Whose breath is sour with wine and their soft bodies/ Still hot and rank, sleep drunkenly at my side.

[15] . There is no future, there is no more past;/ Nor roots, nor fruits, but momentary flowers./ Lie still, only lie still and night will last/ Silent and dark, not for a space of hours,/ But everlastingly. Let me forget/ All but your perfume, every night but this,/ The shame, the fruitless weeping, the regret./ Only lie still; this faint and quiet bliss/ Shall flower upon the brink of sleep and spread/ Till there is nothing else but you and I/ Clasped in a timeless silence. But like one/ Who, doomed to die, at morning will be dead,/ I know, though night seem dateless, that the sky/ Must brighten soon before to-morrow’s sun.

[16] . But when the next full moon invites/ New bugaboos and fly-by-nights,/ Let us seek out some deep alcove,/ Some immemorial haunt of love./ There we’ll retire with cakes and wine/ And dare the imbecile to shine...

[17] . Em italiano no original: “Como enganar estes enfadonhos e lentos/ Dias de vida, aos quais tão longo tédio/ E insuportável fastio se unem/ Doravante eu te ensinarei”. (n. t.)

[18] . Through the pale skeleton of woods/ Orion walks. The north wind lays/ Its cold lips to the twin steel flutes/ That are his gun and plays.// Knee-deep he goes where, penny wiser/ Than all his kind who steal and hoard,/ Year after year, some sylvan miser/ His copper wealth has stored.// The Queen of Love and Beauty lays/ In neighbouring beechen aisles her baits —/ Bread-crumbs and the golden maize./ Patiently she waits.// And when the unwary pheasant comes/ To fill his painted maw with crumbs,/ Accurately the sporting Queen/ Takes aim. The bird has been.// Secure, Orion walks her way./ The Cyprian loads, presents, makes fire./ He falls. ‘Tis Venus all entire/ Attached to her recumbent prey.

[19] . Um dos primeiros princípios telêmicos: “Faça o que quiseres”. (n. e.)

[20] . I have been in love, in debt and in drink/ This many and many a year;/ And these are three evils too great, one would think,/ For one poor mortal lo bear./ ‘Twas love that first drove me to drinking,/ And drinking first drove me to debt,/ And though I have struggled and struggled and strove,/ I cannot get out of them yet./ There’s nothing but money can cure me/ And ease me of all my pain;/ ‘Twill pay all my debts and remove all my lets,/ And my mistress who cannot endure me/ Will turn to and love me again,/ Will turn to and love me again.

[21] . Em italiano no original: “Da nossa vida, no meio da jornada,/ Achei-me numa selva tenebrosa,/ cujo lado direito era seco./ Tendo perdido a minha estrada”. Dante Alighieri, A divina comédia. (n. t.)

[22] . Em italiano no original: “Talvez possam dar-me alguma indicação”. (n. t.)

[23] . Em italiano no original: “Fez-me Siena, desfez-me a marema”. Dante Alighieri, A divina comédia. (n. t.)

[24] . Espécie de jogo de xadrez. (n. e.)

[25] . “Cerveja no frasco de um saxão.” (n. t.)

[26] . Na Inglaterra, o dia 5 de novembro, quando se costuma queimar um boneco, uma espécie de Judas. (n. t.)

[27] . Personagem da obra de mesmo nome de Sinclair Lewis. (n. t.)