Haroldo de Campos

Haroldo de Campos (1929–2003) was the tireless “Locomotive of São Paulo” who propelled Brazilian literature into the heart of the international avant-garde. As a co-founder of the Concrete Poetry movement, he revolutionized the written word by treating language as a physical, multi-dimensional material. A master of “transcreation,” he viewed translation as a radical act of “cannibalizing” world classics—from Homer and Dante to Joyce and the Bible—to create vibrant, original works in Portuguese. His epic work Galáxias remains a landmark of polyglot experimentalism, bridging the gap between poetry and prose with unmatched vision and verve. Discover the life of the scholar-poet whom Umberto Eco called “the best Dante translator in the world”.