Augusto Frederico Schmidt was one of the main representatives of second generation of Brazilian modernism. He was a poet of biblical inspiration and was part of the so-called “carioca catholic group”, a literary association that brought together renowned Catholic artists and intellectuals, including Jorge de Lima, Cecília Meireles, Murilo Mendes and Vinicius de Moraes. He was, in addition to being a poet, ambassador and financial adviser in the government of President Juscelino Kubitschek, to whom he was a right-hand man during the years of his mandate.
Schmidt was born on April 18, 1906 in the city of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to his literary and political career, he was a businessman: in 1930, he founded Schmidt Editora, responsible for launching big names in the Brazilian literature, including Graciliano Ramos, Rachel de Queiroz, Jorge Amado, Vinicius de Moraes, Lúcio Cardoso and Gilberto Freyre. Over the course of his career as a writer, he has written more than 30 books, as well as authoring memorable speeches for President JK. The central themes of his poetry, a genre in which he stood out, are death, loneliness, anguish and escape, always treated in an intense way, through a romantic and lyrical speech so typical of its anachronistic style, especially when compared to the style of the modernists heroics.
The writer died on February 8, 1965, at the age of 58, in Rio de Janeiro, the city where he was born and has consolidated itself as one of the most important names in literature, journalism and the class of entrepreneurs. In order for you to know a little more about the poetics of this great writer, Brasil Escola selected five poems by Augusto Frederico Schmidt that will show their romantic lyric and delivered to the impulse of the religious message. Good reading!
Apocalypse
Candles are open like lights.
The crisp waves sing because the wind has drowned them.
The stars hang from the sky and waver.
We will see them descend to the sea like tears.
The cold stars will fall from the sky
And they will float, their white hands inert, over the cold waters.
The stars will be dragged by the currents floating in the
[huge waters.
Your eyes will be closed sweetly
And your breasts will rise cold and huge
About the dark of time.
Poem
We'll find love after one of us leaves
the toys.
We'll find love after we've said goodbye
And walk the paths apart.
Then it will pass us,
And he will have the figure of an old shaky man,
Or even an abandoned dog,
Love is an illumination, and it is in us, contained in us,
And they are indifferent and close signals that wake them up from the
his sleep suddenly.
Elegy
The trees in bloom, all bent over,
They will decorate the ground you will walk on.
And the birds will happily sing
Very beautiful songs only in your praise.
Nature will be all affection
To receive you, my great love.
You will come in the afternoon, on a beautiful afternoon -
Aroma Holy Spring afternoon.
You will come when the bell in the distance
It announces the end of the day sadly.
I will miss you and wait for you
And you will ask me, amazed, smiling:
How could I guess when you arrived,
If it was a surprise, if you warned me of nothing?
Oh my love! It was the wind that brought your perfume
And it was this restlessness, this gentle joy
That took my lonely heart...
I see the dawn come
VI see the dawn appear in your eyes
Just so sad and gloomy.
I see the first morning lights
Born, little by little, in your big eyes!
I see the triumphant goddess arrive serenely,
I see her naked body, radiant and clear,
come growing in beauty and softness
In the far reaches of your eyes.
And I extend my sad and poor hands
To touch the mysterious image
From that day that comes, in you, dawning;
And feel my hands, O sweet beloved,
Wet by the dew that gnaws
From your look of strange clarity!
Poem (It was a big bird...)
It was a big bird. The wings were like a cross, open to the heavens.
Death, sudden, would have thrown him onto the wet sands.
I would be on a journey, in search of other, colder skies!
It was a great bird, which death had harshly mastered.
It was a large, dark bird, which the sudden cold wind had suffocated.
It was raining when I looked at it.
It was something tragic,
So dark, and so mysterious, in that wasteland.
It was something tragic. The wings, which the blue ones burned,
They looked like an open cross on the wet sand.
The great open beak held a lost and terrible scream.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/augusto-frederico-schmidt.htm
