Clodomir Viana Moog (1906-1988)
He was a Brazilian whom I never met in Brazil. Rather I met him through his best-selling book, Bandeirantes and Pioneers. It was a comparison of the national character types in Brazil and the U.S. “National character” refers to the (now somewhat discredited) attempt to capture in a few words the personality of another people—such as Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword for the Japanese.
TMoog focused on the bandeirantes (or “pathfinders”) of colonial São Paulo who explored the interior of the otherwise little-known land and the pioneers who opened up the American west. This (somewhat) simple-minded contrast appealed to me as a young scholar trying to understand how the tropics figured into my home country.
I read the book in the States and I decided to translate it because I thought that it would jumpstart my career (faulty logic). To my dismay I discovered that another translation existed. Fortunately it was way below standard (masses of false cognates, for example). I went to work.
Translating is very tedious work: there is an Italian phrase to the effect that “to translate is to betray” (it alliterates in Italian).
Anyway, I did it, corrected several inferiorities in the original (foolish idea). A month’s work of a finished manuscript later, I submitted it to an editor at a publisher recommended by Professor William Taylor, a good friend and office mate at Harvard. I awaited the reply from the editor. It was not favorable. He had submitted my translation to the author, who rejected it flat out.
“It may be a fine book, but it’s not mine,” he said. “Of course,” I might have said (but didn’t), “that’s the whole point.”
Ok, Skidmore, write your own damn book.
Some years later I was asked to join a panel of three judges to select a winner among applicants for a book prize sponsored by the Pan American Union.
We met and the other judges were Moog and a delightful Colombian author.
Moog was civil and so was I.
Further Readings
Moog, Clodomir Vianna. Bandeirantes and Pioneers. New York: G. Braziller, 1964.
Moog, Clodomir Vianna. Um rio imita o Reno: romance. 9a. ed. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1987.
Pinheiro, José, and Viana Moog. Anais da província de São Pedro: história da colonização alema no Rio Grande do Sul. 4th ed. Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes, 1978.
Clodomir Viana Moog was born in São Leopoldo, Rio Grande do Sul. In 1925, he worked as an interim guard involved in the suppression of smuggling in Porto Alegre. Five years later, he joined the Liberal Alliance and later participated in the Revolution of 1932 against Vargas. He was subsequently arrested and sent to Amazonas, before returning to Rio Grande do Sul in 1934. He served as representative of the Brazilian government in the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations. In 1945, he became a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.