ABSTRACT

Indirectly used as a theme and as a method, translation becomes a “contemporary metaphor” (Ribeiro, “A tradução”) in several Portuguese-language narratives of the 20th and 21st centuries and, particularly, in Ancient Tillage (2016 [1975]) by Raduan Nassar, the most important Brazilian writer of Lebanese origin. The narrative focuses on a family nucleus that, tensely, inherits Arab and Western influences, both characterized by moral rigidity. Appropriating a conservative interpretation of the Bible and of the Qur’an, the narrator refuses the idea of transparency that structures the imaginary and offers an unusual density to the Portuguese language. I will therefore analyze how the author, operating with instruments like those of the translator, inscribes the “other” as an antidote against autophagy, the untranslatable as a driver of reflection, betrayal as a practical alternative (Ricoeur, Sobre a tradução ), and creation as an expression of a desire (Berman, L’épreuve de l’étranger ).