Translation of “The New Era” by Gibran Khalil Gibran

Abstract

This article presents the first Portuguese translation of Gibran Khalil Gibran's text "The New Age," accompanied by a critical reflection on the intellectual relations between authors of the North American and South American Arab diaspora. Based on the reception of Gibran's work by the authors who contributed to the Revista da Liga Andaluza de Letras Árabes (1935-1953), a periodical published in Brazil by Arab immigrants, it questions a certain consolidated interpretation that Arab authors who emigrated to South America maintained an irreducibly conservative stance, detached from the literary renewal project that took shape among part of the Arab intelligentsia from the mid-19th century onwards. Using editorials that discuss the renewing trends and constant references to authors from the North, it argues that a significant portion of South American intellectuals actively participated in debates on the aesthetic and literary renewal of Arabic literature. In this context, the translation of "The New Age" is taken not only as an exercise in translation, but as a document that sheds light on the literary flows and counterflows between different poles of the Arab diaspora in the Americas. Gibran's text, which uses sharp rhetorical elements to criticize aesthetic traditionalism, reveals tensions in a dispute akin to almost every literary system: the clash between tradition and renewal. Consequently, the text contributes to rethinking the role of the South American Arab diaspora in this process of intellectual and literary renewal.