MÁRIO CESARINY - 1923-2006 Na prisão - "Male Profile" and handwritten poem by William Morris in free translation wash and ink on paper deliberately blurred by the author, conveying the difficulty of translation signed Dimensões (altura x comprimento x largura) - 29,5 x 20,5 cm Notes: reproduced in BARBAS, Helena (prefaces and translation) - Os Pré-Rafaelitas, antologia poética. Lisbon: Assírio & Alvim, 2005, p. 15, where the author states: "The choice of poems and authors for this anthology has a story. It all began in 1995 when Mário Cesariny, who I became a neighbor of - by chance or feline interference - asked me to translate Christina Rossetti's "Gnome Market" and provide him with a draft that could inspire him to recreate William Morris' poem "In Prison". From his struggle with this last text came the drawing presented below. As a poet, Mário Cesariny conveyed with great ease the anger and drama of translation, giving an image to the paradoxes of theories while, simultaneously, in practice, displaying a new variant of the possible relationship between poetry and painting. The poet gave up on doing the translation, and entrusted me with the task, guiding the choice of texts by their particular relationship with the proposals defended, by the analogies between the “Sister Arts”. And the project grew, from two poems to six authors. For all these reasons, I consider that this book is by Mário Cesariny, who infected me with his taste for the Pre-Raphaelites, and to whom I owe many clues and suggestions. Helena Barbas"