Presentation: Jorge Lúzio – the Orient in the New World

Fan Fan

Our men exchanged some varvels and other small things of little value which they had brought with them for some very large and beautiful red parrots and two small green ones, some caps of green feathers, and a cloth of many colours, also of feathers, a rather beautiful kind of material, as Your Majesty will see when you receive all these things, for the admiral says he is sending them to you. (Pêro Vaz de Caminha, As translated by C.D. Ley, 53-54)

 

En invernales horas, mirad a Carolina.
Medio apelotonada, descansa en el sillón,
envuelta con su abrigo de marta cibelina
y no lejos del fuego que brilla en el salón.

El fino angora blanco junto a ella se reclina,
rozando con su hocico la falda de Aleçón,
no lejos de las jarras de porcelana china
que medio oculta un biombo de seda del Japón.

– Rubén Darío, “De invierno”
Consider Carolina on winter days.
See how she sleeps curled up in the softest chair
All snug in her coat of sable there
Beside the fire that sets my salon ablaze.

The white angora’s beside her on the chaise,
Nuzzling its nose in the Alençón skirt, sans care,
Not far from the porcelain china jar’s chill glaze
And half-ensconced in the Japanese silk screen’s lair.

– Trans. by William Ruleman

 

Also see:

·      The Dream (Henri Rousseau, 1910)

·      Picasso’s African art period

·      Aleijadinho’s sculptures