Tracing Exilience Through Literature and Translation: A Portuguese Gargantua in Paris (1848)

1 Introduction

The present article aims to explore an episode in which popular literature in translation arguably served as a means of bearing testimony to the experience of “exilience” (Nouss, 2017) endured by anonymous Portuguese-language migrants in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. As will be shown, Paris became the destination for generations of Portuguese citizens who sought a safe haven from the Inquisition (in force in Portugal until 1821), the Napoleonic Wars (1807–1810), Brazil’s independence (1822), and the political turmoil that led to the Portuguese Civil War (1828–1834), which pitted the “Liberals” (supporters of King Dom Pedro IV and the Constitutional Monarchy) against the “Absolutists” (supporters of King Dom Miguel I and the Ancien Régime), resulting in the exile of the defeated party. Alongside these refugees and exiles, other Portuguese and Brazilian citizens migrated to Paris in search of professional opportunities or, particularly, to pursue studies.

More specifically, this article examines how these sequential migrant movements may have influenced the Parisian landscape, as well as how the exile experience of many encompassed a longing for a utopian (and therefore mythical) version of Portugal. To explore this dual objective, we will analyze a particularly relevant (yet unstudied) Portuguese-language translation product: Historia jocosa do celebrado Pae-Pae cognominado o Gargantua Portuguez (The Playful Story of the Celebrated Pae-Pae Called the Portuguese Gargantua,^[1] hereafter referred to as Gargantua Portuguez). Published in 1848 in Paris, this work is a rewriting of François Rabelais’s sixteenth-century masterpiece La vie inestimable du grand Gargantua (The Inestimable Life of the Great Gargantua, hereafter Gargantua).

The article will be structured as follows: in the next section, the theoretical and methodological framework of the present research in Translation History will be discussed. The concept of “exilience” will be central (also referred to as the “exilic condition” by Alexis Nouss), which brings together different figures, types, legal statuses, and life stories of migrants and displaced people, highlighting the possible shared ground of their experiences. The second section will provide historical data and context regarding the various migrant movements from Portugal and, to a lesser extent, Brazil to Paris, as mentioned earlier. Each migrant episode will be illustrated by a biographical account of a Portuguese-language exile and will draw upon memoirs or other (auto)biographical accounts authored by the migrants or their acquaintances.

The third section will present the results of the paratextual and textual analysis of Gargantua Portuguez, which serves two purposes. First, it will argue that the paratext of this 1848 translation establishes a literary transactional space that, by issuing Portuguese-language versions of French literary classics, functions as a “contact zone.” Contact zones, as defined by Mary-Louise Pratt, are “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts characterized by highly asymmetrical power relations, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermath” (Pratt, 1991, p. 34). Second, Gargantua Portuguez rewrites Rabelais’s model in a way that presents a fictionalized account of Portugal as a physical, linguistic, and human space untouched by persecutions, wars, or exilience.

2 Theoretical and Methodological Framework

The concepts of “exilience” and “contact zones” will be utilized in the examination of the experiences of Portuguese-language migrant writers and translators in mid-nineteenth-century Paris. In a conference delivered in 2013, Nouss argued that studies on migration should focus on continuity rather than rupture. Nouss posited that continuity should be approached in two ways: by emphasizing what unites the different historical and social configurations of migrants and by conceptualizing the exile experience as a transhistorical phenomenon rather than organizing migrant histories as intervals or “crises.” Nouss’s revisionist impulse asks for a rethinking of the terminological and conceptual categories (still) used in scholarship:

De ‘migrant’ à ‘réfugié’, rupture ou continuité? Migrant: participe présent du verbe ‘migrer’. Le migrant migre. Or, le participe présent désigne en français une action en train de se faire et l’agent de cette action. Quand le migrant cesse de migrer, quand il est arrivé, il n’est donc plus migrant. Qu’est-il? Réfugié: vient de fugere latin qui signifie ‘fuir’, le préfixe indiquant non la répétition, mais l’intensité de l’action. Un réfugié fuit. Quand il cesse de fuir, qu’il n’est plus en fuite, il n’est plus réfugié. Qu’est-il alors? Pas un migrant, pas un réfugié. Qui sont-ils? Toute une question. Une masse anonyme, sans visage, sans nom, que le pluriel obscurcit encore davantage: les migrants, les réfugiés. Toutes origines confondues, sans continuité de destin avec leurs prédécesseurs. D’où l’intérêt de les nommer ‘exilés’ parce que l’exilé est un sujet, porté par une histoire et porteur d’une mémoire, un sujet en exil, un sujet de l’exil. Avec un récit à partager, une expérience à offrir et à transmettre, car l’exil est une catégorie fondatrice de la culture occidentale^[2] (Nouss, 2017, pp. 31–32).

The inadequacy of terms such as “refugee” or “migrant” to capture the experience of the displaced upon arrival reveals the abandonment that host countries or cities often subject them to. In contrast, Nouss’s notion of the exilic condition confers a right to those who seek it and encompasses the audible recognition of their “exilience.” Moreover, the field of the Humanities should endeavor to trace the continuous and ongoing history of exile as a fundamental aspect of Western culture, rather than viewing migration movements as crises that disrupt the natural progression of cultural histories within stable national borders and monolingual, mono-ethical settings.

Nouss defines “exilience” as the existential core that unites all forced mobilities (Nouss, 2017, p. 35), and Coutinho expands on this by stating: “aquilo que define uns e outros [deslocados] já não é tanto a viagem, voluntária ou forçada, mas o facto de serem ‘exilientes’, de estarem num lugar a que não podem e/ou não querem chamar seu.” (Coutinho, 2018, pp. 184–185) (what defines all of these [displaced people] is no longer so much the journey, voluntary or forced, but the fact of being “exilients,” of being in a place that they cannot and/or do not want to call their own.). Therefore, “exilience” encapsulates the challenges faced by dislocated and displaced individuals, where displacement is an intellectual, social, and emotional condition rather than merely a physical or geographical one.

Building upon Nouss’s work, Coutinho develops a methodology for investigating how spaces, both physical and mythical, are transformed by the exile phenomenon and explores the relationship between space and exilience (Coutinho, 2018, p. 193). Three arguments put forth by Coutinho are particularly relevant to the methodology employed in this paper. Firstly, a proper “geocriticism of exilience” should be situated within comparative studies. Secondly, it should prioritize literary texts, with a particular emphasis on fictional novels as objects of inquiry. Lastly, it should not overlook the role of marginal and confined spaces, such as suburbs and attics, in shaping the experience of the dislocated and its literary representation. Even though this article supports the argument that the experiences, actions, and transformations of exiles within places and lands (whether imaginary or real, home or foreign) constitute the social, physical, and emotional conditions of exile, it is advantageous, for the purpose of this research, to differentiate between two aspects encapsulated in the concept of exilience. From now on, exilience will be used to designate the indications of the presence and agency of Portuguese-language migrants in the target city (Paris) as well as the consequences of exile in the source city (Lisbon), while the exilic condition will refer to the emotions of yearning and loss that shape literary portrayals of the homeland.

This investigation aims to analyze the 1848 fictional novel Gargantua Portuguez as a testament to two spaces of exilience: nineteenth-century Paris as the host and Portugal as the homeland of Portuguese-language writers and translators. This research is situated within comparative studies, at the intersection between comparative literature and translation history.

Furthermore, this article contends that translation permeates the exilic condition. Salman Rushdie provides testimony of his experience as a British Indian writer using English as a vehicle to reflect on British Indian identity as a translation process that entails both gains and losses. Rushdie asserts: “The word ‘translation’ comes etymologically from the Latin for ‘bearing across’. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation, I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained” (Rushdie, 1992, p. 17).

Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands” lends support to the preference for terminological approaches that consider source and target texts, languages, and contexts, rather than relying on the categories of “original” and “translation.” The notion of a source text implies both the image of something originating from it, akin to water springing from a fountain, as well as the idea of influence, a point of origin that can be real or mythical, but in any case, fertile. Both the notions of a starting point and a muse-like place challenge the rigid categories of an exclusive, original text that is considered the first, authentic, and inventive work, and a translation seen as a derivative text and a mere copy. According to Rushdie, the exilic condition entails the painful acknowledgment that the original homeland ceases to exist at the moment of departure, even though it continues to serve as a source of inspiration and motivation for the writer:

It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge - which gives rise to profound uncertainties - that our physical alienation from India, almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages of the mind (Rushdie, 1992, p. 10).

As a result of the central role of translation in the experience of Portuguese-language exiles in Paris and, arguably, the importance of translation for migrant writers throughout history, the present article draws on the methodology of Translation History. Following Anthony Pym’s Method in Translation History, the article aims to answer all questions concerning translation archaeology: “who translated what, how, where, when, for whom, and with what effect?”; it also aims to provide an explanation as to “why archaeological artifacts occurred when and where they did, and how they were related to change” (Pym, 1998, pp. 5–6).

For the purposes of contextual history, particularly inquiring into the intended effect of publishing Gargantua Portuguez among other Portuguese-language target texts in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, the concept of “safe houses” by Pratt (1991) is key. Pratt presents the 1613 manuscript New Chronicle, written in Quechua and Spanish by the Andean Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, as featuring many elements constitutive of “The Arts of the Contact Zone”. The New Chronicle, written in a hybrid mixture of Quechua and Spanish, consists of a rewriting of Christian history with Andean elements, leading to the questioning and critique of official colonial accounts. It also reprocesses the literary models used by the rulers (a process defined as transculturation) to account for the reality in the margins and bears testimony to personal and ethnic stories that do not enter the official historiography.

Pratt concludes by sharing her experience in teaching the arts of the contact zone at Stanford University. She contends that by enabling students to “engage with suppressed aspects of history”, the classroom becomes a sort of “safe house”: “Where there are legacies of subordination, groups need places for healing and mutual recognition, safe houses in which to construct shared understandings, knowledges, claims on the world that they can then bring into the contact zone” (Pratt, 1991, p. 40).

3 Paris and Lisbon as Places of Exilience

Historia jocosa do celebrado Pae-Pae cognominado o Gargantua Portuguez [The Playful Story of the Celebrated Pae-Pae Called the Portuguese Gargantua], was published anonymously in Paris in 1848. It was written by a Portuguese-language agent. Although we do not have conclusive evidence about the nationality of this agent, the fact that this novel presents itself as offering a “Portuguese” version of the story and the character of Gargantua leads us to hypothesize that the author was Portuguese, rather than Brazilian. In fact, the plot is set in Portugal, and all the characters are presented as being born in Portugal. The setting of the story seems to be a central and primary feature of the plot. One example of this will suffice. The first chapter of the book, “Nascimento do Pae-pae; motivo porque lhe derão o nome de Gargantua Portuguez” (The birth of Pae-pae and why he was named the Portuguese Gargantua) opens with the following information: “Nasceu em Lisboa” (Born in Lisbon). Since the verbal forms in Portuguese convey information about the subject, the third-person pronoun “He” or the name “Pae-pae’” can be omitted. As a result, the first clause of this novel contains only one explicit noun, the name of the Portuguese capital: “Born in Lisbon.”

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, there were different episodes of Portuguese exiles in France, particularly in Paris. With the re-establishment of the Inquisition in the late eighteenth century, several intellectuals were prosecuted and convicted, because their readings and writings were considered offensive or heretical. The most well-known victim of these initial exiles was the poet and clergyman Francisco Manuel Nascimento (1734–1819), also known as Filinto Elísio. Filinto was convicted by the Inquisition for possessing and reading books that were banned by the institutionalized censorship. By the mid-eighteenth century, the works of French philosophers from the Encyclopedic movement, such as Voltaire and Rousseau, were among these forbidden books. The admirers and disseminators of the ideals of the French Enlightenment were accused of heresy and of being afrancesados, a derogatory term used to refer to partisans of French culture and pre-Revolutionary ideology. Filinto was convicted by the Inquisition because he was considered “frenchified,” and he fled to Paris in 1788, where he died in 1819, never to return home.

Filinto’s conviction and life in exile are well-documented by Moreira (2011). The documentation of Filinto’s trial mentions two forbidden books found in his possession: the novel Candide and the theater play Mahomet ou le Fanatisme (Mahomet or the Fanaticism) by Voltaire (Moreira, 2011, p. 67). Apart from the 4 years he spent working as a secretary in the Netherlands (1792–1797), he lived his entire life in Paris and its suburbs: “Choisiy-le-Roi, Versailles, Reuillu, S. Philippe du Roule” (p. 66). He struggled with financial problems that led him to work as a Portuguese-language teacher and, especially, as a literary translator. He had begun his career as a translator already in Portugal, influenced by French intellectuals who moved to Lisbon after the 1755 earthquake (p. 143). He continued while in exile, translating works such as Voltaire’s Zadig and Pucelle, and Rousseau’s La ceinture magique (The Magic Belt). In several of his writings, he advocated for the development of a richer and purer Portuguese language, closer to its Latin roots and, more importantly, free from French influence, which was the dominant literary language and scientific lingua franca at the time. Filinto’s commitment to the Portuguese language leads Moreira to comment: “Estamos perante uma situação original: enquanto Filinto tece loas à Pátria, reclama perante ela da sua desgraça e luta incessantemente pela valorização do seu idioma, as autoridades civis e religiosas vêem nele um perigoso ‘francês’” (p. 76) [We are faced with an original situation: while Filinto is singing the praises of the Homeland, complaining to it about his misfortune and ceaselessly fighting for the valorization of his language, the civil and religious authorities see in him a dangerous “Frenchman”].

Already in the early nineteenth century, Filinto came to be praised as a martyr of exile and a hero for Portuguese poetry and language. The French poet Alphonse de Lamartine dedicates the poem “La gloire (À un poète exilé)” [The Glory (To an Exiled Poet)] to Filinto, portraying him as a great poet whose genius originates from his misery. Moreira extensively demonstrates how Filinto uses his poetry to express and expand upon his nostalgia for his homeland. Following Dominque Lecroux’s previous work, Moreira (2011, p. 71) concludes that Filinto’s psychological pain is explained by an inability to cope with his exilic condition.

Soon after Filinto’s death in 1819, the impressive six-volume anthology of Portuguese poetry, Parnaso lusitano ou poesias selectas dos autores portuguezes antigos e modernos (1826–1834 [Lusitanian Parnassus or Selected Poems of Ancient and Modern Portuguese Authors]), is published in Paris by the bookseller Jean-Pierre Aillaud (1806–1852). It is edited by José da Fonseca (1787–1866) with an introductory essay by the canonical writer of Portuguese Romanticism, Almeida Garrett (1799–1854), entitled “Bosquejo da história da poesia e língua portuguesa” (A Brief History of Poetry and the Portuguese Language). Not only was Filinto’s poetry included in the Parnaso Lusitano, but he is also praised in the introductory essay as the emperor of Portuguese language poetry (Garrett, 1826, p. xvi), an extraordinary man (li), and an exile martyr: “Francisco Manuel. gemia no exílio, e de lá com os olhos fitos na pátria se preparava para lutar contra a enorme hidra cujas inúmeras cabeças eram o galicismo, a ignorância, a vaidade, todos os outros vícios que iam devorando a literatura nacional” (p. lix [Francisco Manuel. groaned in exile, and from there, with his eyes fixed on his homeland, he prepared himself to fight the enormous hydra whose innumerable heads were Gallicism, ignorance, vanity, and all the other vices that were devouring national literature]).

The Parnaso Lusitano, in fact, presents itself as a collection of the finest models of Portuguese literature. Upon reading Garrett’s introduction, it becomes evident that these Portuguese models aimed to serve as a counterbalance to French language domination. The introductory essay paints a historical picture of Portuguese as a literary language in need of emancipation from foreign dominance. According to Garrett, the Portuguese language lost its autonomy in two historical periods which impeded the Portuguese language to mature as a literary language. The first occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Portugal was under Spanish rule (1580–1640). With the loss of political independence came the adoption of Castilian as the literary lingua franca on the Iberian Peninsula. The second period began in the second half of the eighteenth century and was still ongoing at the time of the Parnaso Lusitano’s publication. This period is presented under the following heading: “Segunda decadencia da lingua e literatura; galicismo e traducções” (Garrett, 1826, p. xlviii [Second Decline of Language and Literature: Gallicism and Translations]). Garrett argues:

Mas de traduções estamos nós gafos: e com traduções levou o último golpe a literatura portuguesa; foi a estocada de morte que nos jogaram os estrangeiros. Traduzir livros de artes, de ciências é necessário, é indispensável; obras de gosto, de engenho, raras vezes convém; é quase impossível fazê-lo bem, é míngua e não riqueza para a literatura nacional. Esta casta de obras estuda-se, imita-se, não se traduz. Quem assim faz acomoda-as ao caracter nacional, dá-lhes cor de próprias, e não só veste um corpo estrangeiro de alfaias nacionais (como o tradutor), mas a esse corpo dá feições, gestos, modo e índole nacional: assim fizeram os Latinos que sempre imitaram os Gregos e nunca os traduziram; assim fizeram os nossos poetas de boa idade^[3] (Garrett, 1826, pp. lxi–lxii).

The implication here is that Filinto Elísio, Almeida Garrett, and other exiled writers denounced the corruption of the Portuguese literary language due to French influence, primarily through literary translations. Garrett goes on to argue that rather than merely translating foreign works, Portuguese-language writers should emulate them, bringing these models to national soil and nationalizing them.

The fact that these exiles were actively involved in preserving the autonomy of the Portuguese literary language against the encroachment of French influence is significant. This context may help explain the different reasons behind the publication of Gargantua Portuguez. On the other hand, the observation of the battle against French literary influence waged by displaced Portuguese-language writers in Paris is noteworthy and undoubtedly warrants further research and reflection. However, considering the aim of this present article is to showcase a literary work that exhibits traces of exilience in the paratext and a plot that may relate to an exilic condition, profiling the various agents involved in the publication of Parnaso Lusitano takes precedence.

The Portuguese-language agents involved in the issuance of Parnaso Lusitano may guide us through the further migrant movements from Portugal and, to a lesser extent, Brazil to Paris. Between 1807 and 1810, during the Napoleonic Wars led in Portugal by Junot, while the Portuguese Royal Family fled to Brazil, many aristocrats, intellectuals, and other people from the court followed suit, and numerous Portuguese citizens sought a safe haven in France. This was the case for the bookseller Jean-Pierre Aillaud, or João-Pedro Aillaud, who was born in Portugal to French parents. His parents had migrated from Briançon, France, and settled in Coimbra, Portugal (Maia, 2024). Following the Peninsular Wars, many French booksellers operating in Portugal, as well as their descendants, were persecuted. Aillaud fled to England and later to Paris, where he began working as a bookseller in 1820. He founded the “Livraria Portugueza” (Portuguese Bookshop) at Quai Voltaire, located in the city center of Paris, next to the Louvre. The bookshop served as a meeting point for Portuguese exiles, to the extent that it became the subject of police surveillance between in the 1820s.

The police surveillance reports on Aillaud took place between 1824 and 1827, during the period of the “Restoration” (1814–1830), and were published in 1829 in the book Le livre noir de messieurs Delavau et Franchet ou répertoire alphabétique de la police politique (The Black Book of Messieurs Delavau and Franchet or Alphabetical Directory of Political Police, hereafter Livre noir). The Restoration was a turbulent time in France following the Hundred Days of Napoleon I’s brief return, which ended in his defeat at Waterloo (1830–1848, Furet, 1988, p. 121). It was a period when the constitutional monarchy attempted to establish itself under Louis XVIII (king until 1824) but was constantly under the threat of the ultra-royalist faction. As the ascension of Charles X to the throne in 1825 approached, there was a trend toward reinstating certain practices and structures reminiscent of the Ancien Régime (Furet, 1988, pp. 16–17).

The constant threat of conspiracies, involving the Bonapartist, constitutional, or ultra-royalist parties, led, according to Karila-Cohen (2005, p. 732), to espionage practices becoming a defining feature of the first half of the nineteenth century in France. Examples of these “immoral” practices, aimed at preventing gatherings that could lead to plots, included home visits, such as those carried out at Aillaud’s residence and bookstore, according to the Livre noir. This book is presented in the same article by Karila-Cohen (2005, p. 752) as an example of denouncing arbitrary and abusive police practices.

In fact, the lengthy essay introducing the Livre noir states that the objective of this publication is to expose espionage practices classified as inquisitorial. Among other accusations, the editor Année argues that the French political police favored external causes sympathetic to the royalist movement, thus closely monitoring exiled supporters of a constitutional monarchy: “…M. Delavau mêlait la diplomatie à l’espionnage, prenait parti pour les Turcs contre les Grecs, pour Don Miguel contre Don Pedro, poursuivant dans les étudiants brésiliens les sujets de l’empereur constitutionnel…” (Année, 1829, p. LXXXII). […M. Delavau mixed diplomacy with espionage. and supported Don Miguel against Don Pedro, pursuing the subjects of the constitutional emperor among Brazilian students…]

In fact, until the 1830s, there were mainly supporters of King Dom Pedro who were exiled to Paris. This may explain the suspicions of the French political police. In a report published on November 8, 1824, the bookseller Aillaud is said to be hosting foreigners who had been previously flagged by the political police:

Le sieur Aillaud (Jean-Pierre)… demeure bien réellement quai Voltaire, n. 21, où il tient un magasin assez considérable de librairie; il a aussi une maison du même genre de commerce à Lisbonne. …

Quant à ses opinions politiques, elles sont à peu près nulles, s’il faut en croire la commune renommée. Cependant, ainsi que nous l’avons déjà consigné dans plusieurs de nos rapports, cet individu reçoit fréquemment les visites d’une foule d’étrangers mis à l’index^[4] (Année, 1829, p. 12).

It is the contention of this article that the above-quoted police report demonstrates exilience, as it provides insights into how Aillaud and other exiles influenced the Parisian landscape in the 1820s and 1830s. The wording is crucial: the bookshop is described as “considerable,” signifying that it drew considerable attention and was not easily ignored. Furthermore, the police sought the opinions of Parisian commoners, likely Aillaud’s neighbors, about his political convictions. This suggests that Aillaud had social interactions with other residents of the Parisian city center (Quai Voltaire faces the Louvre and the Seine) to the extent that he held a “general reputation.” Finally, the fact that a “foule” (a multitude or crowd) of foreigners visited the bookstore had been reported several times before, even though the Livre noir does not include these previous reports, and was viewed as potentially dangerous.

Brazil’s independence was proclaimed in 1822. Much to the dismay of the majority of the Portuguese people, the prince heir Dom Pedro remained in the former colony while his brother, Dom Miguel, usurped the Portuguese throne, establishing an Absolutist regime. Supporters of King Dom Pedro and the Constitutional Monarchy went into exile, including Almeida Garrett. After serving as Secretary for the Kingdom’s Affairs (1822) and Head of the Public Instruction Office (1823), Garrett had to flee to England and then to France. In 1834, after six years of civil war (1828–1834), Dom Pedro restored the Constitutional Monarchy in Portugal and opened new opportunities for intellectuals who were “on the right side of history.” Almeida Garrett subsequently became the Portuguese consul in Belgium (1834), director of the conservatory and general inspector of theaters (1834), deputy (1837 onwards), and chief chronicler of the kingdom (1840), among other positions (Santos, 1985, p. 343).

It should not come as a surprise that the winners of the Civil War, such as Almeida Garrett or Alexandre Herculano (1810–1877), author of a História de Portugal (History of Portugal [published in eight volumes between 1846 and 1853]), ascended to both protagonists and authors of Portuguese history. As noted by previous scholars, including Mónica, nineteenth-century Portuguese history is written about and by the Liberal party, while biographical data on the partisans of King Dom Miguel are scarce (Mónica, 1997, p. 13). In contrast, Nemésio devotes a 600-page monograph to the reconstruction of Herculano’s youth years in Lisbon and in exile, presenting this period as key to Herculano’s training to become a Liberal. This work includes valuable information about a certain “Lisboa pícara, contraditória e convulsa” (roguish, contradictory, and convulsed Lisbon [Nemésio, 2003, p. 125]), in which a revolution against the Marshal Beresford (commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army after the Napoleonic invasions) was secretly proclaimed in well-known restaurants, such as the Restaurant Isidro (p. 124). This restaurant will be mentioned once again in the following section.

On the contrary, this section aims to focus on the silenced Portuguese-language exiles in Paris, particularly those who arrived after the Civil War (1828–1834). Although biographical accounts of Portuguese and Brazilian citizens exiled for life are scarce, some literary translations published in Portuguese in post-1834 Paris, such as Gargantua Portuguez, might have been authored by exiles who had indeed ceased fleeing or migrating but still had to grapple with the condition of not wanting or being able to call Paris home.

However, a second disclaimer should be made. One should bear in mind that many individuals died in the Civil War or as a consequence of battles, exile, and imprisonment, and that sometimes intellectuals were persecuted for more than one reason. José Ferrão de Mendonça e Sousa (17–1834) is, like Filinto Elísio, a victim of his time and of exile, but in a different vein. According to Seabra:

[F]oi pároco de Nossa Senhora dos Anjos em Lisboa e ficou conhecido como “prior dos Anjos”. Desterrado em 1807 como liberal pelo Governo do príncipe D. João, regressou a Lisboa e à paróquia por ordem de Junot. Terminada a guerra, Beresford perseguiu-o, prendeu-o e deportou-o para os Açores (1810). Em 1821, foi eleito deputado às Constituintes. Durante o reinado de D. Miguel esteve preso em São Julião da Barra até à conquista de Lisboa pelas tropas liberais; libertado da prisão a 24/7/1833, uma semana depois, D. Pedro nomeava-o para a Comissão da Reforma Geral, donde transitou para a Junta de Exame. Exílios e prisões tinham-lhe desgastado a saúde, e morreu a 13/05/1834^[5] (Seabra, 2009, p. 397).

The story of José Ferrão de Mendonça e Sousa illustrates how exilience shapes both the source and target contexts. Known as the “prior dos Anjos,” he had become a well-known clergyman and intellectual figure in nineteenth-century Lisbon, with his presence expected at his parish, Anjos. Consequently, his exile was undoubtedly felt as a noticeable absence in the Lisbon landscape.

Archival research conducted thus far has identified various Portuguese-language agents operating in Paris by the end of the 1840s, during the issuance of Gargantua Portuguez. These individuals can be organized into three groups based on their profiles. First, there were high-ranking exiles who arrived in Paris around 1834. One example of this group is José Ignacio Roquette (1801–1877), who served as the royal preacher during the Ancien Régime. He was imprisoned during the Civil War and fled to Paris, where he stayed until 1857. Working for the bookseller Aillaud, he translated devotional books and wrote spelling manuals in Portuguese. These educational materials, such as Alphabeto portuguez: Novo methodo para aprender a ler (Portuguese Alphabet: New Method to Learn How to Read) (1836), targeted Portuguese-language students in Portugal, particularly those at the School of Fontenay-aux-Roses, located in the suburbs of Paris, where a Portuguese school with Portuguese teaching staff and Portuguese-speaking students operated between 1838 and 1843 (Maia, forthcoming).

The second group is represented by the abundance of anonymous popular novels published in Paris between 1838 and 1853, suggesting the presence of other Portuguese-language exiles in the city during that time. Among this group, only one individual signed his translations: José da Fonseca, the editor of the Párnaso Lusitano (Lusitanian Parnassus). Fonseca arrived in Paris around 1819 to study Arts and worked as a language teacher and translator. Working for Aillaud, he published Portuguese-language dictionaries and a Portuguese–French dictionary. He also translated various picaresque adventurous novels and adapted canonical works for young readers (Ramos, 1972). He died in Paris in 1860.

The third group consists of a younger generation of students. In addition to the Portuguese school at Fontenay-aux-Roses near Paris, the Dicionário Bibliográfico Português [The Portuguese Bibliographical Dictionary], an 11-volume dictionary initiated in 1858 that provides a comprehensive account of Portuguese-language authors, lists several university students, including future doctors, who studied in Paris during the 19th century and published their final dissertations (in French) there (Innocencio & Aranha, s.d.). These students may have also authored playful publications in Portuguese, such as Gargantua Portuguez, for leisure or read them in their spare time.

Findings suggest that the initial readership of Gargantua Portuguez was primarily located in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. This title was advertised in catalogues accompanying many other literary translations published in Paris. It could be purchased at Rue des Grands-Augustins, as announced in the 1851 catalog of “Portuguese Books” at the end of the Portuguese-language novels Don Severino Magriço (p. 195) and O Aventureiro Portuguez [The Portuguese Adventurer] (p. 172). In 1852, it was available for rent at the Fluminense library in Rio de Janeiro (p. 159).

Regarding Portugal, no evidence indicating its availability for purchase or rent in nineteenth-century Portugal was found. Today, the only copy of Gargantua Portuguez available for consultation in Portugal is at the University library in Coimbra. Since many books in this collection come from donations by former teachers, this may suggest that these popular novels published in Paris were indeed read among Portuguese-language students both in Paris and in Coimbra. However, further investigation is needed.

4 The Exilic Condition in Gargantua Portuguez

This final section will discuss the results of the reading of both the paratext and the text of Gargantua Portuguez. Considering that this target text is not a proper translation, the paratext will be examined to determine the intertextual relationship it establishes with Rabelais’ Gargantua.

In his already quoted Method in Translation History, Pym argues for the differentiation between translations and non-translated texts through paratextual analysis: “Basically, if a paratext distinguishes between a translator and an author, the corresponding text is presented as a translation” (Pym, 1998, p. 62). However, if the paratext presents the text as a different type of target text, such as an imitation, the researcher should analyze it accordingly (p. 62). When observing the 1848 cover of Portuguese Gargantua (Figure 1), the paratext does not mention the author or the translator by name. However, it arguably distinguishes both entities in the subtitle. The term “Gargantua” points to the source text and evokes information about its author. In fact, the absence of François Rabelais’ name can be seen as an indication of the insignificance of such information. Every reader would associate the name Rabelais with the paratext and understand that this is a story about a Portuguese character with an enormous appetite.

Figure 1

The cover page of Gargantua Portuguez.

Furthermore, the paratext arguably presents Gargantua Portuguez as a “proximization.” This concept, coined by Gérard Genette in Palimpsests, refers to a type of target text, or hypertext, that relies on changing the nationality of the main character of a successful source text, or hypotext, as Genette calls it. This change of citizenship entails a complete diegetic transposition:

[T]he habitual movement of diegetic transposition is a movement of proximization: the hypertext transposes the diegesis of its hypotext to bring it up to date and close to its own audience (in temporal, geographical and social terms). I know of no exception to this all-pervasive characteristic. True, one might conceivably entertain fantasies as to what would become of Emma Bovary if she were transferred to the Athens of Pericles or King Arthur’s court, but such a distancing effect would be manifestly contrary to the “natural” bent of diegetic transposition, which always consists of moving from remote to the proximate.

Spatial transposition is not always required by this process of proximization. When Thomas Mann modernized Faust’s story, he evidently did not need to Germanize him, since the original Faust was already German (Genette, 1997, p. 304).

From this lengthy quotation, several aspects should be highlighted. First, according to Genette, proximizations aim to make their readers identify with the protagonist by resembling them “in temporal, geographical, and social terms.” This suggests that proximizations can provide valuable insights into the intended readers’ profile. Second, proximizations are considered naturalizations as they bring a distant story that supposedly took place elsewhere and at another time to the present moment. In other words, proximizations are expected to construct a narrative time and location that are similar to the readers’ real-life experiences. Third, proximizations are always modernizations, even if they do not change the nationality of the hypotext’s protagonist. Genette acknowledges that all target texts bring the plot up to date.

The target text being analyzed can be classified as a proximization because it presents itself as a novel depicting the adventures of a Gargantua “born in Lisbon.” The paratext already announces a specific type of translation that involves the adaptation of a model.

However, there are reasons to doubt the actual intention of transplanting Gargantua to Portuguese soil. While the upper part of the cover (Figure 1) promises to grant Portuguese citizenship to Gargantua, the bottom part informs the reader that the target text was printed in Paris by French-language agents located at a specific address. In other words, the cover page reveals the exile experience in Paris through the juxtaposition of a Portuguese-language work with a French-language editorial setting. The boundaries of translation are even pushed further in the unsuccessful attempt to translate the printers’ names and addresses into Portuguese, resulting in a feeling of incomplete translation (“Paris/Pommeret e Moreau, Impressores/rua Mignon 2” [Paris/Pommeret et Moreau, Printers/Mignon street 2] reads too close to the same address in French: “Paris/Pommeret et Moreau, Imprimeurs/rue Mignon 2”).

Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the paratext displays and constructs a literary contact zone by showcasing the clash between two cultures and languages. It presents a Portuguese-language title that claims to be a rewriting of a French canonical literary text, written in Portuguese, and published in Paris by French-language agents. It is worth noting that the two languages and cultures in conflict here have vastly different power dynamics. On one side, there is the Portuguese language used by anonymous exiles, whose stories remain untold, and whose predecessors, namely Filinto Elísio and Almeida Garrett, fought against the corruption of the Portuguese language, aiming to return to a purer Latinized Portuguese free from French influence. On the other side, there is the French language spoken, written, and published in Paris, the capital of the nineteenth-century World Republic of Letters (Casanova, 2004). Considering the target text type and the power relations described, Genette’s concept of proximization appears to align closely with Pratt’s notion of “transculturation,” which “describes processes where members of marginalized or subordinate groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture” (Pratt, 1991, p. 36). Furthermore, transplanting foreign models and remaking them as Portuguese was presented, by Garrett, as a strategy to enrich the Portuguese language.

On the other hand, both the notions of proximization and transculturation result in the parody not only of the source text and culture but also, to some extent, the target side. The project of transplanting a foreign literary model to a new context often reveals the inadequacy of the source model in framing and depicting the target reality, highlighting the impossibility of complete translation and the perpetual experience of estrangement felt by the exile. Simultaneously, the source model – a canonical text, considered a complete, finished and untouchable classic or masterpiece – is manipulated and ridiculed. In the case of Gargantua Portuguez’s paratext, a third layer of parody seems to be initiated by the protagonist’s name, Historia Jocosa do Celebrado Pae-Pae (The Playful Story of the Celebrated Pae-Pae). “Pae-pae” is not a name or a noun in the Portuguese language. When pronounced, it sounds like an utterance from someone who speaks a barbaric language or lacks matured speaking skills. The choice of the Portuguese-language counterpart for Gargantua’s name playfully calls into question the literary abilities and aesthetic maturity of the Portuguese language

Moving on to the reading of the target text itself, Rabelais’ model is devoured, digested and recreated in this target text. In fact, the storyline of the target text coincides with that of other Portuguese-language picaresque novels published anonymously in Paris (Oliveira, 2013), rather than echoing the storyline of Rabelais’ Gargantua. However, four features from Rabelais’ Gargantua are replicated and re-elaborated in this proximization. First, the gigantic appetite of Pae-pae piques the curiosity of other characters who end up feeding him various Portuguese traditional dishes and delicacies. Second, there is the literary use of “the language of the market,” as observed by Bakhtin in Rabelais’ work (Bakhtin, 1971). Pae-pae, born in Alfama, a poor and characteristic neighborhood in Lisbon, visits the local market at Praça da Figueira, where female vendors try to entice him with their fruits and vegetables, using a low register and a low-class sociolect of Portuguese. Third, the account of Pae-pae’s studies, filled with irony, contributes to a more heteroglossic and polyphonic novel, incorporating other languages such as Latin and references to literary and scientific texts. Finally, the novel concludes with a mythical depiction of a place of wonders, justice, and beauty, similar to Rabelais’ description of Thelema Abbey, constructed by Grangousier (Gargantua’s father), as a place where freedom, love, happiness, and the arts thrive. In this anonymous proximization, the place of wonder consists of a mythical portrayal of Lisbon as a space devoid of any visible exilience.

After his adventures throughout Portugal, Pae-pae decides to return to Lisbon toward the end of the book. He starts by dining at the Restaurant Isidro, a well-known establishment at the beginning of the nineteenth century where students, plotters, and aspiring politicians would gather as mentioned in the previous section. Then, two characters, Francisco Manuel do Nascimento, i.e., Filinto Elísio and the Prior dos Anjos, play a prank on the Portuguese Gargantua, inviting him to a dinner where an enormous amount of food is prepared. The characters are introduced as follows: “Hum mez após essa jocosa aventura, aconteceu outra ao Pae-pae. O nosso grande lyrico Francisco Manuel do Nascimento mancomunado com o Prior dos Anjos, resolvêrão dar huma fartadella de maço e mona ao dito Pae-pae” (Gargantua Portuguez, p. 260 [One month after this jocular adventure, another happened to the Pae-pae. Our great lyricist Francisco Manuel do Nascimento, in conjunction with the Prior dos Anjos, decided to laugh very hard at Pae-pae]). Then, Pae-pae receives a letter to go to the house of Prior dos Anjos: “Elle conduziu-se logo logo a casa do Prior dos Anjos, subiu a escada, e achou em huma saleta, no primeiro andar, ao tal Prior e a Francisco Manuel que o aguardavão com lingua de palmo” (p. 261 [He immediately went to the house of the Prior dos Anjos, climbed the stairs, and found the Prior and Francisco Manuel waiting for him with wide open mouths]). Following this adventure, the plot concludes with Pae-pae’s death in a final chapter.

Gargantua Portuguez presents the return of two significant figures from the Portuguese exile experience, paying homage to Filinto and the Prior dos Anjos while communicating a sense of nostalgia for these figures and a longing for their shared homeland, felt by both the writer(s) and the readers of this text. Following the norms of the picaresque genre, the chapter titles inform readers of the main events that will unfold in each respective chapter. However, the appearance of Filinto and the Prior dos Anjos occurs toward the end of the second-to-last chapter, titled “O Pae-pae esgana a velha Andreza, foge do subterraneo, e chega a Alcobaça” (Pae-pae strangles the old woman Andreza, escapes from the underground, and reaches Alcobaça). Such episodes happen before the lunch at Isidro (Lisbon) and the encounter with Filinto and the Prior dos Anjos, creating a hidden final surprise for the lay reader, akin to an Easter-egg effect. The visit is to an imaginary Lisbon, devoid of traces of exilience, where everyone can feast at Isidro and pay a visit to Filinto and the Prior dos Anjos.

All in all, instead of situating its plot in mid-nineteenth-century Paris, where the translator resided, this text chose to place Gargantua in late eighteenth-century Portugal. The novel appears to have targeted lower-ranking anonymous exiles in Paris and Rio de Janeiro, potentially including teachers and students. Through its humor, Gargantua Portuguez offered readers the opportunity to wander through a Portugal that no longer existed while simultaneously yearning for it.

5 Conclusion

Departing from the assumption that translation pervades the experience of exile, this article aimed at researching traces of exilience in nineteenth-century Paris and inquiring about the role of translation in coping with the exilic condition. Nouss’s concept of exilience was adopted as it unites different experiences of displacement within one experiential common ground, comprising both a relation to space and an emotional condition that derives from it.

The examination of the biographies of different Portuguese-language exiles in Paris yields a threefold conclusion. First, it is evident that those who arrived in Paris prior to the author of Gargantua Portuguez also engaged in translation activities, notable figures being Filinto Elísio and José da Fonseca. Second, the biographies of these exiles underscore the emotional and material hardships they faced in their exile. Third, the translation endeavors of Portuguese-language exiles significantly influenced the landscape of Paris. On the one hand, Aillaud’s Livraria Portugueza (Portuguese Bookshop), with its wealth of Portuguese-language texts, stood out as a prominent location, drawing the attention of numerous foreign visitors to the heart of Paris, to the extent that it was perceived as a threat. On the other hand, French printers like Pommeret et Moreau began printing in Portuguese to cater to the burgeoning demand for Portuguese books in Paris. Additionally, Portuguese-language books were made available for purchase in different parts of the city, such as Rue de Grands-Augustins.

Furthermore, this article argues that Gargantua Portuguez acted as a safe house for a marginalized group of anonymous Portuguese-language exiles in Paris. These exiles were marginalized primarily by their own homeland. Not only were they compelled to leave, but they were also excluded from participating in Portuguese history as authors or actors. They likely resided on the outskirts of Paris, considering that their most esteemed predecessor lived in the suburbs and the Portuguese School operated in a suburban area as well. The only exception to this geography of exilience is Aillaud’s Portuguese bookstore, which, with its grandeur, opulence, and success in the heart of Paris, attracted suspicion from the authorities. Furthermore, the Portuguese language occupied a peripheral position in the World Republic of Letters dominated by French, and Portuguese literature was still striving to reclaim its place on the literary stage.

Gargantua Portuguez arguably aided its readers in coping with their exilic condition in multiple ways. First, it served as evidence of a contact zone where Portuguese-language writers and translators collaborated with French agents, thereby signifying their presence in a hybrid Paris – a sign of exilience. Second, it presented the language of the marginalized Portuguese community (replete with idiomatic expressions and a low sociolect) within a book that was published, sold, and purchased in Paris. Third, it parodied a French literary classic by translating it into a form of “barbaric” language. Lastly, it sought to restore justice by resurrecting two victims of exile and providing readers with solace for their nostalgia for a bygone Portugal.