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INTRODUCTION Modern poetry in Brazil is no less
peculiar than the country itself. Brazil is a Latin American nation,
but this does not tell the whole truth. It might be more accurate to
say that Brazil is actually the other face of the South American subcontinent,
not so much hidden as it is unknown. The same might be said of the
country's literature in general and of poetry in particular.
The Iberian Baroque, Italian Arcadianism,
French Romanticism, Parnassianism and Symbolism:
all have held sway in Brazil at one time, each manifesting itself in
a highly original
way. Our history, however, begins around 1922, during
the centennial celebrations of Brazil's independence from Portugal.
That year, an
eclectic group of young writers, poets, artists and
musicians, most of them from São Paulo state's coffee-growing high bourgeoisie,
came together to promote a Modern Art Week at the São Paulo
Municipal Theater -- a fairly faithful copy of the Paris Opéra.
French influence prevailed -- Apollinaire and Cendrars
along with Cubism, with a few touches of Italian Futurism.
The event left two important legacies:
an ineradicable nonconformism in the face of provincial complacency,
which took as its main aim to disprove any necessary link between social-political-economic
underdevelopment and the status of the arts; and an increasingly fruitful
relationship between the various branches of the arts. This contact
was symbolically confirmed by the marriage of Oswald de Andrade, poet,
writer, pamphleteer, playwright, critic and theoretician of Brazilian
Modernism (not to be confused with the distinct movement of Hispanic
Modernism) to the painter Tarsila do Amaral.
In the 20's, Andrade wrote minimalist,
anti-poetic poems and avant-garde novels, starting
the Anthropophagic movement, whose aim was to swallow up foreign cultural
influence and
digest them Brazilian style. He also wrote a "Poesia Pau-Brasil" [Brazil-wood
Poetry], a residual epic which, by mingling excerpts from historical
chronicles and flashes of historical and geographical perception, redraws
Brazilian history as an anti-epic, less by what is said than by what
is insinuated between the lines. Andrade's concept of "anthropophagy" would
be taken up in an original manner by the pop music
of the 60's. However, let us not get ahead of history.
The initial movement of Modernism
in the 20's introduced into Brazilian poetry a global
attitude, incorporating broad cultural interests, irreverence, humor,
and free verse. In addition
to Oswald de Andrade, some pioneers included Mario
de Andrade, Raul Bopp and Luis Aranha. Modernism's great corpus, and
arguably Brazilian
poetry's finest hour, came in the 30's, with the
second wave of Modernists. The poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade,
Murilo Mendes, Vinícius
de Moraes and Manuel Bandeira, both individually
and as a group, was equal to the principal currents of Western Modernism.
The high quality
of these poets is matched only by their sheer bad
luck in having been confined to a readership, not only in their own
tongue, but also in
their own country, since they are exceedingly little
known even in Portugal, a country whose poetic sensibility has taken
paths substantially
different from our own.
The poetry of the 40's, today almost
entirely forgotten, was a response to Modernist principles.
One poet originating from that decade, however, proved durable: João
Cabral de Melo Neto. In addition to refining poetic
techniques, he provided a synthesis of the novel's most representative
trends and
concerns. Using a poetic art mostly inherited from
Drummond, Melo Neto incorporated traces of Northeastern themes common
to many novelists
of the period, particularly Graciliano Ramos. Of
course, his poetry was not limited to these concerns, and Melo Neto
applied his method
to a variety of issues, not least to a consideration
of poetry itself.
During the following decade, Vinícius
de Moraes, who had started his career as a poet nurturing
rather vague metaphysical speculations interspersed with an interest
in less universal,
more concrete themes, began to mingle his interests
with those of a new generation of popular music composers. Together
they started a
movement which would radically change the profile
of pop music: the Bossa Nova. This movement, a confluence of Modernist
diction with the
urbanization and gentrification of rhythms, promoted
a cooperation between so-called elite art (pero no mucho) and pop art
(ma non troppo).
This cooperation would last for a good quarter of
a century, reaching its peak in the musical movement of the 60's, Tropicalismo.
In a country where poetry is neither
widely read nor taught, the status of Brazilian pop music is very sound,
since every poet born since the 1950's not only stemmed from its roots
but also, consciously or not, felt its influence. Any poet under the
age of 45 who alleges otherwise is lying. That said, it should also
be noted that, during this period, Brazilian pop music not only played
a different role than pop music did in the English speaking countries
or in Hispanic America, but also constituted a substantial and diverse
entity of its own, whose more lasting influence would not be circumscribed
by political or sentimental manifestations, but would seek through
its lyrics a continuity with the tradition of poetry as such. More
recently, Brazilian pop music has lost its creative drive, and no longer
exercises a meaningful influence over poets.
The 50's saw another movement which
might be considered the third Modernist moment: Concretism.
Led by Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos and Décio Pignatari,
its major drive may have been its placing of the intuitive program
of '22
on clearer grounds hence the importance placed by
Concretists on critical and theoretical debate; on filling in any of
Modernism's lacunas, including
the restoration of published works, not least those
of Oswald de Andrade; and on updating and fine-tuning the continuing
international effects
of Modernism.
From the following decade on, Concrete
poets trod more individual paths. Haroldo de Campos
turned to poetic prose and to the so-called neo-Baroque. Décio Pignatari moved
between Oswaldian prose and poetry, both visual and verse, while Augusto
de Campos stayed faithful to the movement's origins, developing and
expanding its visual trends, Ferreira Gullar broke with these poets
to launch neo-Concretism, later to embark on the project of poetry
engagée which he soon abandoned. Among the independent poets,
one might mention Sebastião Uchoa Leite, who, without affiliating
himself with Concretism or later on, to Marginal poetry, left a significant
body of poems. These poems, almost all of them metalinguistic in nature,
combined the erudition of a Paul Valérie with comic strips and
American B movies, shot through with a nihilist critique of reality,
specifically Brazilian reality. We read: "they say/that life must
be defended/that's their message/but death/is so metaphorical/and sexy/it's
a surefire hard-on." Uchoa maintained an extended correspondence
with Régis Bonvicino. He engaged in dialogue with Leminski,
whom he admired, and with Duda Machado, one of the poets anthologized
here, who considers him one of the foremost living Brazilian poets.
In a certain sense, Ana Cristina César's work owes something
to him, as does that of Carlos Ávila.
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MODERNIST OR IMMATERIAL
This, then, is the background and
environment against which the poets discussed in
this text began their work. It is worth noting at this point that the
Concrete poets enriched
the language with translations not only of modern
poets (Pound, cummings, Mallarmé‚Laforgue, Corbière and the Russians) but
of earlier poetry (Provençal, dolce stil nuovo, the English
Metaphysicals, and Chinese and Japanese classics).
At least among poets, these influences ranked second only to those
of Brazilian pop music.
Through the work of these authors, the translation
of poetry reached maturity and entered into a direct dialogue with
living poets.
Contemporary Brazilian poetry stems
from these precursors without being circumscribed by them. Apart from
the distinct combination of influences that is inevitable for poets,
individual personality and talent also play an integral part in their
poetry.
Needless to say, during the three
modernist "moments" we have mentioned, and even afterwards,
much poetry was written which bore no resemblance to what we have just
described. The issue was not an exclusive or exclusivist lineage, but
simply whatever seems to have survived the test of time. Re-reading
poets who did not join the mainstream is as melancholy as contemplating
an outdated wardrobe. One example is the Marginal poetry of the 70's,
which, if it left us any legacy, did so in the work of Ana Cristina
César and of Francisco Alvim, whose trademark informality combines
with a consistent reading of more refined poets like Elizabeth Bishop,
Murilo Mendes, and Manuel Bandeira. Alvim, for example, practices a
colloquial poetry which, at times, enters into a dialogue with the
engaged poetry of Carlos Drummond, like "Revolution", which
thematizes the presence of the military dictatorship
in Brazilian life.
Indeed, one of the characteristics
of Brazilian poetry of this century is the extent to which the success
of individual talents has depended on their adhesion -- dazzled or
critical, playful or unwilling -- to a minimal list of Modernist proposals.
In fact, from '22 on, Brazilian poetry has fallen into one of two categories:
Modernist or immaterial. It is hard to say now whether this division
was fate or mere contingency: it is simply an empirical reality, verifiable
by literary criticism's essentially rational criteria. This is an issue
which neither theory nor the history of poetry has yet begun to examine.
For this reason, there is no common
program for the poets mentioned in this text, no explicit consensus
behind their writing. In fact, as opposed to the previous generation,
these poets have shown little inclination to the idea of belonging
to a movement or school. Torquato Neto, for example, participated in
Tropicalism, but soon afterwards abandoned it. In a very short span
of time, Paulo Leminski moved from the geometric poem, which he was
never to resume, to the exuberant prose of Catatau. The poets do have
in common a set of concerns and poetic devices, however: there is the
mainstream of an accepted tradition, as well as aims which, to a greater
or lesser degree, all of them share.
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PARADOXES
Paradoxically, poets from Brazilian
Modernism on are unknown, owing less to their failure than to their
success. Not only have they created many individual sets of poems (though
that is surely true): they have created a literary universe of their
own. Each one of them is, of course, connected with other universes,
including those of French, German, Russian and Anglo-American poetry,
but preferably acting through the whole.
There can be no Weltliteratur if
a whole set of concerns and debates are not universalized. Thus, we
are left in the odd position of having to define Brazilian poetry by
what it is not.
Leminski has one exemplary poem.
In the beginning, a seemingly banal statement: that
every poet starting his career thinks he will be the greatest, but
by the end comes to
little. So far, so good. But the key to the poem
is embedded in questions of address more subtle than those of vousvoyer
and tutoyer. In the
first, optimistic half of the poem, the subject is "we",
indicated only by the verb, apparently the common first-person plural,
but in fact the royal "we", symbol of the high rhetoric affected
by the provincial elite. The poets Leminski invokes, as arguable as
their sequence may be, only serve to illustrate the difference between "one" [a
gente] and "we"[nós]. In short, "one" is
a kind of "yo el supremo" in a revolutionary state, whereas "we" would
be the same figure in exile, after the military coup.
In contrast with the exuberance of
his prose and his personality, Leminski's poetry
is notably concise. This concision is associated with voice and with
the instantaneous
register of existence. This kind of concision, as
seen in the Concrete poems of the 50's, had turned toward radical definitions
of language,
giving little place to a more explicitly subjective
register. Concision in the poetry of Leminski and Torquato, as well
as in the poetry of
many poets anthologized here (Horácio Costa is one exception)
emerges as both a linguistic fact and as the possibility for a subjectivity.
If Oswald de Andrade was the inventor of the so-called minute-poem,
we might go so far as to say that Leminski has created the instant-poem,
mingling Oswaldian concretism with the anarchic-colloquial diction
of pop singer Caetano Veloso and the Tropicalism of Torquato Neto.
Concision. Exposing ideas in few words. Haiku. If in Leminski concision
is conveyed as brevity, originating from the pressures of existence,
in another poet of his generation, Duda Machado, concision is present
as accuracy, as precision. Machado and Leminski tread similar, but
inverted, paths, the former departing from Tropicália and song
lyrics towards a poetry of his own, completely different from that
of Brazilian pop music. Leminski, on the other hand, a scholar after
his fashion, continued to alternate between questions of high culture
and non-systematic incursions into the world of pop music. Concision.
The coincidence of three early deaths: Torquato, Ana Cristina César
and Leminski. Three suicides, the first two explicit,
Leminski's implicit in his daily consumption of alcohol and drugs.
Three journeys begun
during or after the war, three poets who produced
their main body of work during the military dictatorship, which only
ended in 1985, when
all three were dead or dying.
Concision within extension. After
all, there are haikus where words abound, where three
verses are three too many, as well as epic poems from which no word
can be subtracted
without harm. The poem between prose and poetry:
this is the case of Josely Vianna Baptista, translator of Lezama Lima's
Paradiso, whose
style could be considered Brazilian Baroque: exuberant
rhythms and images, fashioned by the "feeling for the measure",
in the words of William Carlos Williams.
Horácio Costa seems to be
an exception to this scenario, following more openly
the Hispanic discursive tradition, mediated through the American Beat
generation. It is not
surprising that Costa has lived in the United States
and currently lives in Mexico.
Arnaldo Antunes operates in Torquato's
and Veloso's paradigm, highly privileging orality and visuality, as
can be seen in his video-poem Nome (1994), which mingles pop music,
electronic music, poetry and video. In this anthology, he presents
texts which resume the instinctive-primitivist aspect of early Modernism.
Júlio Costañon Guimarães
also writes concise poetry in the Minas Gerais style: lean, based on
concrete facts and objects, often rough. This kind of roughness can
be felt in the poetry of another poet from Minas Gerais, Carlos Ávila.
Minas was the home state of Carlos Drummond and Murilo
Mendes: mountains, silence and iron ore. Age de Carvalho is the one,
among all the poets
here, who practices a poetry of a more abstract nature.
People and places are referred to fragmentarily; his imagination is
often quite
rhetorical, although his writings are short and sharp.
It is well worth mentioning that
nearly all the poets discussed here worked as publishers
or collaborators for alternative journals in the 70's and 80's, the
major ones being
Navilouca ( Torquato Neto), Pólen (Duda Machado), Qorpo Estranho
(Régis Bonvicino), I (Carlos Ávila), and Almanak 80 (Arnaldo
Antunes). These journals, along with Código, published in Bahia,
acted as a laboratory where the impacts of Concrete poetry and Tropicalism
were re-examined. At the same time, these publications served as a
shelter for work with no prospect for commercial publication at the
time. Another common feature to all the poets in this book: nearly
all of them are translators. Leminski has translated, among others,
Samuel Beckett, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Walt Whitman; Castañon,
Francis Ponge and Michel Butor; Duda Machado, Gustave Flaubert; Horácio
Costa, Elizabeth Bishop. These translations speak
to a need to enrich a poetry which, strangely enough, has nothing in
common with the poetry
from Portugal or Hispanic America. The latter, discursive
and deeply marked by Surrealism, never quite established its grip on
Brazilian
writers.
Once again, Elizabeth Bishop must
be mentioned. She was to organize one of two Brazilian
poetry anthologies for the Anglo-American world: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century
Brazilian
Poetry with Emanuel Brasil, published in 1972 by
Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, Connecticut). It included Oswald
de Andrade, Manuel
Bandeira, Mário de Andrade, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Murilo
Mendes, Cecília Meireles, Jorge de Lima, João Cabral
de Melo Neto, Vinícius de Moraes and Ferreira Gullar. Soon afterwards,
the same Emanuel Brasil oversaw the publishing of Brazilian Poety:
l950 --1980, also by Wesleyan, translating poets linked to Concretism,
such as Augusto de Campos, Décio Pignatari and Haroldo de Campos,
as well as some independent writers, including Mário Faustino
and Ferreira Gullar, the latter a leader of the neo-Concretist
movement.
Anthologies always run the risk of
excessive partiality or sperficiality. We hope to
have kept these evils at a distance. However, it should be clear that
other seletions can
and must be made. Among the young poets, there are
many other promising names not included in this book, among them Beatriz
Azevedo, Heitor
Ferraz, Guilherme Mansur, Antonio Moura and Mércia Pessoa.
This is only our reading of what
is most significant and representative in modern Brazilian poetry.
Nothing the sun could not explain!
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