ORÁCULOS CALDEUS: PROPOSTA DE TRADUÇÃO EM LÍNGUA PORTUGUESA

Abstract

This article aims to propose a method of translation into Portuguese of the remaining fragments of the Chaldean Oracles, with philological comments on philosophical, historical and linguistic aspects. Fundamental writings for the understanding of post-Plotinian Neoplatonic mysticism – to the point of having been considered ''the Bible of the Neoplatonists'' by a 20th century scholar – the Chaldean Oracles had a formative influence on many currents of thought in the history of Greco-Roman, Christian and Islamic cultural spheres. The Oracles are dispersed in fragments throughout the works of some late antique authors, especially Proclus and Damascius. The translation will be marked by a reordering of the fragments in relation to what was carried out by the French critical edition of É. des Places (1971), based not on an attempt, probably impossible without the discovery of new sources, to reconstitute the fragments according to their original order, but through the contextualization of their literary sources, as proposed by P. Athanassiadi (1999), a project that has not yet been carried out in any language. The translation and ordering of the fragments should be accompanied by a study of poetic, philosophical and historical aspects in the composition and reception of the Chaldean Oracles. The proposed study intends to focus on: 1) the ‘‘revelation’’ of the verses in view of the relationship between automatic poetry and revelation in the context of the ancient East and the Greco-Roman world; 2) the translational aspects of the text, taking into account its poetic form and its Platonic philosophical content; 3) the relationship between the religious doctrine outlined in the verses and the context of Roman Syria and 4) the influence and reception of the Chaldean Oracles in the history of Neoplatonism. The aim here is to present to the academic public a reference proposal for the study of the Chaldean Oracles and their historical, philosophical and literary resonances.