Poet, chronicler and translator. Paulo Mendes Campos he belonged to a generation of literary giants, but among his contemporaries, including Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, Rubem Braga and Fernando Sabino were the ones who best performed the job of writing chronicles, a genre in which he highlighted. Even though the present tense is the raw material of the chronicle, his texts resist time and offer the reader exact doses of lyricism, a characteristic also found in his poems.
THE poetry by Paulo Mendes Campos perhaps it was overshadowed by the genius of the chronicler, but it was in this genre that the writer began his literary life: the first book, the written word, was published in 1951. His poetic work also includes testament of brazil (1956), the blue sunday of the sea (1958), Pansy and Architecture Ballad (edited in volume poems, 1979)and other writings published in the press. Despite the appreciation for fixed forms, especially the sonnet, his poems explore the expressive possibilities of poetic language, a common concern of poets of
1945 generation, of which it was part.Form, thought and lyricism make up the triad that defines his poetic language. Paulo Mendes Campos' poetry mixes tradition with modernity and, therefore, is classic, but also contemporary. Time, memory, death and other issues related to metaphysics are constant themes in his work, which it also presents a discourse influenced by the critical conscience that connects the poet with the reality of his time. In order for you to know a little of the poetic work of one of the best poets of the 1945 generation, Brasil Escola selected five poems by Paulo Mendes Campos that synthesize his peculiar style and show the sensitive look that the poet cast on life. Good reading!
Love Condusse Noi Ad Nada
When the look guessing life
Clings to another creature's gaze
Space becomes the frame
Time is unreliable without measure
The hands that seek each other get stuck
Narrowed fingers resemble claws
From the bird of prey when it grabs
The meat of other helpless birds
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The skin meets the skin and shivers
The chest oppresses the chest that quivers
face to face challenges
The meat entering the meat is consumed
Sighs the whole body and faints
And sad returns to itself with thirst and hunger.
Time-Eternity
The moment is everything to me that is absent
the secret that the days chain
I sink into the song that shepherds
the infinite clouds of the present.
Poor weather I'm transparent
in the light of this song that surrounds me
as if the meat became someone else's
to our discontented opacity.
In my eyes time is blind
and my eternity a flag
open in solitudes blue sky.
No margins no destination no history
the time that is gone is my glory
and the scare of my soul without reasons.
the suicide
When the wounded light rose from the sea,
The strong shadow descended to the heart,
A sad man went to seek death
In the waves, flower of evil at the foot of life.
With lucidity trembled looking at everything
Like a hawk suddenly high
shudders feeling the start
Of the abyss that speaks to him because he is mute.
Sometimes I go there, I think
In the peace that you lacked and that I lack
And in the confused alarm of my end.
The infinite silence tells me –– “jump”,
While the breeze makes me breathe
The smoke of the city behind me.
Sun Watch
of all my exploits
the one that hurts me more slowly
is to feel it in my guts
my arbitrary heart
turning in the opposite direction
to the parable of the sunset.
three things
I can not understand
The time
The death
Your look
the time is too long
death is meaningless
your look makes me lost
I can't measure
The time
The death
Your look
Time, when does it end?
When does death begin?
Your look, when is it expressed?
I'm very scared
Of time
Of death
from your look
Time raises the wall.
Will death be the dark?
In your eyes I look for myself.
_____________________
*The image that illustrates the article was taken from the cover of the book Letter to Otto or a Heart in August, by Paulo Mendes Campos. Publication of the Moreira Salles Institute.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PEREZ, Luana Castro Alves. "Paulo Mendes Campos"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/paulo-mendes-campos.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
