Ferreira Gullar, immortal of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, is considered one of the most important poets in Brazil. Your poetry, very dynamic, presents from intimate aspects to critical aspects of the national political and social reality. Furthermore, dared as to the form, being one of the founders of çoncretism and of Neoconcretism. He also excelled in theatre, having written award-winning plays.
Read too: Lyrical genre – the literary genre in which Ferreira Gullar stood out the most
Ferreira Gullar Biography
Ferreira Gullar, pseudonym of José de Ribamar Ferreira, was born in São Luís, Maranhão, on September 10, 1930. His childhood was typical of any middle-class child: he studied and played in the street with his friends playing ball or accompanied them on fishing trips on the Bacanga River.
Much interested in poetry, at the age of 18, the young Gullar started to frequent the bars of Praça João Lisboa and the Grêmio Lítero Recreativo, where, on Sundays, there was poetry reading.
He was very interested in modern poetry
, whose main authors of the period were Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira, poets who read with enthusiasm. At first, scandalized by this modern aesthetic, he sought to study it and, shortly thereafter, adhered to it.Your first book, body fight, was published in 1954. The last poems in this work are considered the embryos of concrete poetry, a literary branch to which Ferreira Gullar was one of the followers.
![Ferreira Gullar, at the time of the Military Dictatorship, turned his literature into a weapon against authoritarianism. [1]](/f/41df7b2ff46b43b06b6e7592100675c7.jpg)
Dissatisfied with concrete poetry, the author from Maranhão was one of the pioneers, in 1959, of the literary and artistic movement noeoconcretism. Gullar wrote a manifesto and the “Theory of the Non-Object”, texts that are references for understanding this Brazilian artistic aesthetic.
Very bold, Gullar innovated Brazilian poetry by creating the “book-poem”, the “space poem” and the “buried poem”. This consists of a basement room accessed by a staircase; after penetrating the poem, he comes across a red cube; when this cube is raised, there is another one, green, and under it, there is another one, white, which has the word “rejuvenate” written on one of its sides.
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The “buried poem” was Gullar's last neoconcrete work, who moved away from this literary branch to join the political struggle. He joined the Communist Party and became part of the fight against Dheight Mmilitary of 1964. During this period, his poetry turned to political and social issues. Between 1962 and 1966, for example, he published three poems in the style of twine, in an attempt to more directly reach the most popular tier reader.
Due to its political performance, was prosecuted and arrested by the dictatorship. When released, he had to go underground and later had to go into exile in Moscow and then Santiago de Chile, Lima and Buenos Aires.
He returned to Brazil in 1977, when he was arrested and tortured by the military regime, only being released through strong international pressure. He worked in the press in Rio de Janeiro and, later, as a television scriptwriter, a role that allowed him to work with the playwright Days Gomes.
During exile in Buenos Aires, Ferreira Gullar he wrote what is considered his masterpiece: dirty poem, a long poem of nearly 100 pages. Very impressive, this work was translated into several languages.
In addition to poetry, the writer from Maranhão also dedicated himself to the theater, being one of the founders, after the military coup, of the Theater Opinion, which played an important role in the democratic resistance to authoritarianism at the time. During this period he wrote, with Oduvaldo Viana Filho, the plays If you run, the animal catches, if the animal stays it eats and The exit? Where is the exit? He is also the author of the play a ruby in the navel.
In 2002, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but was not contemplated. He passed away on December 4, 2016, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he resided.
Ferreira Gullar's literary characteristics
Intimate tone, present mainly in his initial poetic production and in At vertigin of dwas going (1980);
Exploring the spatial arrangement of lines on the page, characteristic of concretism;
Social themes and dialogue with popular culture through the creation of string poems;
Themes linked to political reflection, to the poet's experience in exile, as in into the fast night (1975);
Recalling childhood passages and descriptions of everyday scenes, as in dirty poem (1976).
See too: Mario Quintana – poet of simplicity, lightness and humor
Works by Ferreira Gullar
a little above the ground (1949)
the wrestling (1954)
poems (1958)
non-object theory (1959)
João Boa-Morte, goat marked to die (string) (1962)
Who killed Aparecida? (string) (1962)
culture called into question (1965)
The corporal fight and new poems (1966)
If the animal runs, it catches, if it stays the animal eats, with Oduvaldo Viana Filho (1966)
Story of a brave (string) (1966)
The exit? Where is the exit?, with Antônio Carlos Fontoura and Armando Costa (1967)
Dr. Getúlio, his life and his glory, with Dias Gomes (1968)
for you, for me (1968)
Vanguard and underdevelopment (1969)
into the fast night (1975)
dirty poem (1976)
a ruby in the navel (1978)
a light on the floor (1978)
in the vertigo of the day (1980)
about art (1982)
Stages of contemporary art: from cubism to neoconcrete art (1985)
Crime in flora or Order and progress (1986)
noises (1987)
the strange banal life (1989)
Today's inquiries (1989)
Anthill (1991)
Argument against the death of art (1993)
Nise da Silveira (1996)
Gammation (1996)
Invented cities (1997)
rocket tail (1998)
many voices (1999)
a cat called kitten (2000)
the boy and the rainbow (2001)
the king who lives at sea (2001)
the enchanted bull (2003)
Lightning (2003)
Dr. Vulture and other fables (2005)
Man as an invention of himself (2012)
Poems by Ferreira Gullar
blue sea
blue sea blue landmark
blue sea blue landmark blue boat
blue sea blue landmark blue boat blue bow blue
blue sea blue frame blue boat blue bow blue air blue
In this poem, the concrete characteristic is evident in the arrangement of words and verses on the page. Each sequence of verses includes a pair composed of a noun and an adjective, which have a sound approximation. At the end of the poem, there is a visual image that resembles an ocean wave.
In addition to the visual aspect, the sound aspect is also a feature of the poem, since the proximity of the words ‘"sea", "landmark", "boat" and “arc” creates a sound that, associated with the recurrence of the adjective “blue”, expands the meaning of the poem through figures of speech assonance and alliteration.
Song not to die
when you leave,
snow white girl,
take me.
in case you can't
carry me by the hand,
snow white girl,
take me in the heart.
If in the heart you can't
happen to take me,
dream and snow girl,
Take me on your remember.
And if you can't then either
for so much that it takes
already live in your thought,
snow white girl,
take me into oblivion.
(into the fast night, 1975)
In this poem, which has already been set to music by singer and composer Fagner, the presence of a intimate tone, in which the loving feeling of the lyrical voice is directed towards the exaltation of his beloved.
The sugar
The white sugar that will sweeten my coffee
this morning from Ipanema
was not produced by me
nor did it appear inside the sugar bowl by a miracle.
I see it pure
and affable to the palate
like a girl's kiss, water
on the skin, flower
which dissolves in the mouth. But this sugar
it wasn't made by me.
this sugar came
from the corner grocery store and Oliveira didn't do it either,
owner of the grocery store.
this sugar came
of a sugar mill in Pernambuco
or in the state of Rio
and neither did the owner of the plant.
This sugar was cane
and came from the extensive cane fields
that are not born by chance
in the lap of the valley.
In distant places where there is no hospital
nor school,
men who cannot read and starve
at 27 years old
planted and harvested the cane
that would turn into sugar.
In dark plants,
men of bitter life
and hard
produced this sugar
white and pure
how I sweeten my coffee this morning in Ipanema.
all poetry (1950/1980)
In this poem, the social criticism, one of the main characteristics of Ferreira Gullar's poetry, is evident. Throughout the verses, the lyrical voice, in the first person of the speech, triggers a reflection from the moment, in his apartment in Ipanema, he picks up the sugar bowl to sweeten his coffee. This reflection goes through the alienation recognition which pervades many, especially those from privileged urban strata, until the denunciation of the exploitation to which workers who are part of the beginning of the production chain of the sugar.
Read more: Lima Barreto – author pré-modernist who exposed several ailments of Brazilian society
Ferreira Gullar Awards
Molière Awards, 1966, with If you run, the animal catches, if the animal stays, it eats.
Jabuti Award for best fiction book of the year 2007, with Grumbling.
Camões Award, in 2010, for the work as a whole.
Doctor's Title honoris Çaus, in 2010, at the Faculty of Arts of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
Jabuti Award, in 2011, with the book of poetry nowhere.
Brazilian Academy of Letters
Seventh occupant of seat number 37, he was elected on October 9, 2014, having been received, on December 5, 2014, by Academic Antonio Carlos Secchin.
His chair has as patron the poet and inconfident from Minas Gerais, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga, having been previously occupied by:
Silva Ramos
Alcantara Ax
Getulio Vargas
Assis Chateaubriand
João Cabral de Melo Neto
Ivan Junqueira (friend of Ferreira Gullar)
Image credit
[1] Frontiers of Thought / commons
By Leandro Guimarães
Literature teacher