Carlos Drummond de Andrade is among the select group of genius writers. It wasn't enough to have offered readers the very best in 20th century Brazilian poetry, Drummond also offered his short stories to the public — the The short-story side is perhaps the least known facet of the writer — and chronicles, a genre that helped establish him as an indispensable name for literature Brazilian.
Drummond left a vast literary work, object of study and admiration almost thirty years after his death. While drawing his work, he collaborated with several newspapers, including the Jornal do Brasil, a carioca publication to which he contributed for fifteen years. The partnership began in 1969 and, until 1984, Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote three times a week for Caderno B, cultural supplement of the Jornal do Brasil. Approximately 2,300 chronicles were published, whose themes were always related to everyday life, such as football, music, individual memory and collective memory. In Drummond's texts it is possible to identify elements common to poetry, see the lyricism that the poet always lent to this genre that walks on the borders that separate journalism and literature.
“I was more of a chronicler, friend and breakfast companion than a writer. A man who recorded daily life and commented on it with the possible good humor so as not to increase people's sadness and restlessness. He considered the newspaper a repository of tremendous news. So, my corner of the newspaper was that corner where I tried to distract people from the evils, the annoyances, the anxieties of everyday life.”
(Carlos Drummond de Andrade)
On September 29, 1984, when the poet was already 81 years old, he published his last text in the pages of Caderno B do Jornal do Brasil. The chronicle gave the suggestive name of Ciao and in it he said goodbye definitively to the readers, his breakfast companions. Like all the others and despite the time, raw material for a chronicle, Ciao it has an inestimable literary and historical value, after all, it was Drummond, considered the greatest Brazilian poet of the 20th century, in his last act as a chronicler.
Brasil Escola is pleased to show you, dear reader, the last chronicle of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Ciao. We hope you have a good read, and we also hope that this is an invitation for you to learn a little more about the prose and poetry of this great writer.
Ciao was published on September 29, 1984, in Caderno B of Jornal do Brasil. It was Drummond's farewell to the chronicle genre
Ciao
64 years ago, a teenager fascinated by printed paper noticed that, on the ground floor of the building where he lived, a board displayed each morning the front page of a very modest newspaper, but a newspaper. There was no doubt. He entered and offered his services to the director, who was, alone, the entire staff of the editorial office. The man looked at him skeptically and asked:
- What do you want to write about?
- About everything. Cinema, literature, urban life, morals, things from this world and any other possible.
The director, realizing that someone, even inept, was willing to make the newspaper for him, practically for free, agreed. A chronicler was born there, in the old Belo Horizonte in the 1920s, who even today, with the grace of God and with or without the subject, commits his cronies.
Comete is the wrong tense of the verb. Better to say: committed. Well, the time has come for this habitual scribbler of letters to hang up his boots (which in practice he never wore) and say to readers a goodbye without melancholy, but opportune.
I believe he can boast of having a title not disputed by anyone: that of oldest Brazilian chronicler. He watched, sitting and writing, at the parade of 11 presidents of the Republic, more or less elected (one of them being a bishopric), not counting the high military ranks who attributed that title. He saw the Second World War from afar, but with a panting heart, followed the industrialization of Brazil, the movements frustrated but reborn popular isms, the avant-garde isms that aimed to forever reformulate the universal concept of poetry; he wrote down the catastrophes, the Moon visited, the women fighting hand to hand to be understood by men; the small joys of everyday life, open to anyone, which are certainly the best.
He saw all this, now smiling and now angry, for anger has its place even in the most watery of tempers. He tried to extract from each thing not a lesson, but a trait that moved or distracted the reader, making him smile, if not from the event, at least of the chronicler himself, who sometimes becomes a chronicler of his navel, mocking himself before others do it.
Chronicle has this advantage: it does not force the editorialist's jacket-and-tie, forced to define a correct position in the face of major problems; it does not require the reporter's jumping nervousness, responsible for ascertaining the fact at the very time it happens, from the person doing it; it dispenses with hard-earned specialization in economics, finance, national and international politics, sports, religion and as much as you can imagine. I know that there are political, sports, religious, economic, etc., but the chronicle I'm talking about is one that doesn't need to understand anything when talking about everything. The general chronicler is not required to provide accurate information or comments that we charge others. What we ask of you is a kind of mild madness, which develops a certain unorthodox point of view and non-trivial and awaken in us the inclination towards the game of fantasy, the absurd and the vagrancy of mind. Of course he must be a trustworthy guy, still on the ramble. It is not understood, or I do not understand, a factious chronicler, who serves a personal or group interest, because the chronicle is territory free of imagination, committed to circulating between the events of the day, without trying to influence on them. To do more than that would be an unreasonable pretense on his part. He knows that his term of action is limited: minutes at breakfast or waiting for the collective.
In this spirit, the task of the chronicler who debuted in the time of Epitácio Pessoa (some of you would have been born in the years a. Ç. of 1920? I doubt it) was not painful and earned him some sweetness. One of them having alleviated the bitterness of a mother who had lost her young daughter. On the other hand, some anonymous and unnamed people denounced him, as if saying: “It's so you don't get stuck, thinking that your comments will go down in history”. He knows they won't pass. And? Better to accept the praise and forget about the shoes.
That's what this once-boy did or tried to do for over six decades. At a certain time, he devoted more time to bureaucratic tasks than to journalism, but he never stopped being a newspaper man, reader relentless of newspapers, interested in following not only the unfolding of the news but the different ways of presenting it to the public. A well-designed page gave him aesthetic pleasure; the cartoon, the photo, the article, the well-crafted captions, the particular style of each diary or magazine were for him (and are) reasons for professional joy. He is proud to have belonged to two great houses of Brazilian journalism - the extinct Correio da Manhã, of valiant memory, and Jornal do Brasil, for its humanistic concept of the role of the Press in the world. Fifteen years of activity in the first and another 15, currently, in the second, will feed the best memories of the old journalist.
And it is by admitting this notion of the old man, consciously and happily, that he today says goodbye to the chronicle, without saying goodbye to the taste of handling the written word, under other modalities, since writing is his vital illness, now without periodicity and with a gentle laziness. Make room for the younger ones and go cultivate your garden, at least imaginary.
To readers, gratitude, that word-all.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
(Journal do Brasil, 29/09/1984)
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/ciao-ultima-cronica-carlos-drummond-andrade.htm
