The Pleasure of Memory

Media Reviews The Pleasure of Memory María Angélica Hernández Stanford University Trans. Ana M. Rodríguez-Vivaldi It has been nearly one hundred and forty years since Baudelaire defined modernity as ephemeral, and described the artist who observed the transient images of his time as ?flâneur. Even ifwe recognize our times as postmodern, the proposal of the author oí Lesfleurs du mal is still valid, especially given the variable nature ofthe World Wide Web, where pages or sites are as itinerant as Ulysses in pursuit of Ithaca. For the untmngflâneur of the Web, the pleasure of retracing fortuitous pages could transform into disappointment. It's like returning to your old school and finding it in ruins, or even worse, finding in its place a sumptuous shopping center that disfigures completely the mental image that our memory had steadfastly retained. Notwithstanding the constant transformations in the appearance of the Web, there are certain sites that seem eternal due both to their excellent quality and also to the continuous effort invested in upgrading them. That is the case of the sitesJornal depoesía and Literatura Argentina contemporánea. Jornaldepoesía (http://www.secrel.com.br/jpoesia/poesia.html) Jornaldepoesía constitutes a veritable feast for theflâneurs within the wide reach ofthe Web, both for the generosity ofits exhibits as for the quality, organization, and permanent improvement of the site, providing one of the most complete anthologies in the Portuguese language, the like ofwhich is not known in the print world. The page contains samples of almost two thousand poets, mainly from Portugal and Brazil, but also including some from theAzores, Angola, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Macau, Mozambique, San Tomé, Príncipe and Timor Oriental. This impressive initiative is the work ofFrancisco José Soares Feitosa, a Brazilian who started in his youth as a journalist, then worked as a traveling salesman, bank clerk and civil servant until, in 1993 at almost 50 years ofage, he wrote his first poem and found himselfsubmerged in the captivating world ofliterature. That is how he also found himselfon the Web, following the trail ofthose he considered masters in the art ofwriting poetry. He found only disappointment when he verified that the great names of Camöes, Gonçalves Dias and Augusto dos Anjos, SPRING 1998 «ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 69 among others, were just great voids that he, in a vehement desire, decided to fill. Soares admits that this was a quixotic feat but not impossible, as any dream that is worth dreaming. What began in May 1996 as an ambitious project to include almost a thousand poets ofPortuguese, has grown in just two years to almost two thousand, an effort that has extended into the more than twenty sections that comprise the page today: Muito mais de 1000 poetas da Lingua Portuguesa, Crítica Literaria & Estudos, Poesía dosJovens, Intercambio dospoetas, Canudos &Antonio Conselheiro, Correio do Leitor, Livrarias Virtuais, Noticias do Mundo Lusófono, Leitores?procura, Conheça o Poeta, Augusto dosAnjos, A Poesía deLingua Portuguesa para oMundo,JornaldePoesía, A GrandePoesía Universal, Poesía Popular &Cordel do Nordeste do Brasil, Links da Literatura Universal, Academia Cearense de Letras, Novidades da Semana, Novos Críticos, Novos Poetas, De Cara NovayAtualizaçâo. The sections on criticism and new critics include essays concerning specific authors, Augustodos Anjos for example, or about literary movements such as Brazilian Concretismo of the '40s. Intercambio dospoetas includes an alphabetical index ofBrazilian publications dedicated to poetry, as well as a list ofpoets who collaborate with the page, providing their addresses for the benefit ofWeb users who may want to contact them directly. Canudos &Antonio Conselheiro offers studies about two fundamental works of Brazilian narrative: Os sertöes, by Euclides da Cunha, and Casa-Grande & Senzala, by Gilberto Freyre. A Poesía de Lingua Portuguesapara o Mundo presents Brazilian and Portuguese works translated into Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, and Esperanto; and A Grande Poesía Universal offers a selection of poems by Bashó and Edgar Allan Poe, among others, translated into Portuguese by authors of worldwide renown such as Manuel Bandeira. One of the most attractive sections, due to its intended audience, is...