To better understand Literature, it is essential to know a little more about literary genres and their subdivisions. Literary genres are grouped according to semantic, syntactic, phonological, contextual criteria, among others formal properties, elements that are responsible for organizing texts that present some kind of similarity.
Among literary genres, the lyric genre is the one that best explores subjectivity and musicality. Its main characteristic is the presence of a lyrical self, a poetic voice that manifests itself in a poem, which, in turn, can take different forms. The best known is the sonnet, but there are others, such as the elegy.
THE elegy it is a poetic genre characterized more by thematic than by a formal structure: its main subjects are the sadness of loves interrupted by death or infidelity. The first elegies had a specific meter, with the use of couplets formed from hexameter lines. However, the elegy can be developed in free verse, but it is always recognized because of its peculiar theme.
In the 16th century, elegy became one of the most popular poetic genres. Although Sá de Miranda was the first Portuguese writer of elegies, Luís de Camões was the main representative of the genre, author of four elegies considered the best written in the language Portuguese:
To the death of D. Miguel de Meneses, son of D. Henrique de Meneses, governor of the Civil House, who died in India:
What sad news they are, what new harm,
what unannounced ill uncertain sounds,
dyeing the human face with fear?
That I see the wet beaches of Goa
boil with stunned and clouded people
of the rumor that sounds from mouth to mouth.
It's dead D. Miguel – ah, raw sword! –
and part of the lustrous company
who embarked on the happy and sad armada,
and of burning shotgun and cold spear
passed through the vile and wicked arm
that in these high fames insults.
It didn't cost him a round or a steel chest,
nor inherited high Grandparents' spirit,
with which such space was defended;
not having oneself around all surrounded
of enemies' bodies, which exhaled
the black soul of the pierced body;
not with strong words, that flew
to cheer up the uncertain companions
who, strong, fall and timid turn.
(Fragment)
In Brazilian literature, Fagundes Varela, ultra-romantic poet, was the most important author of elegies. One of them, Canticle of Calvary, is considered his masterpiece, having as its theme the poet's suffering in face of the loss of his still small son. These are moving verses that are certainly among the saddest in our literature:
Canticle of Calvary
to the memory of my son
dead on December 1
of 1863.
You were the favorite dove in life
That over a sea of anguish led
The branch of hope. — You were the star
That among the mists of winter sparkled
Pointing the way to the pawnbroker.
You were the mess of a golden summer.
You were the idyll of sublime love.
You were the glory, — the inspiration, — the homeland,
Your father's future! — Ah! However,
Dove, — the arrow of fate pierced you!
Astro, — the northern storm swallowed you!
Ceiling, you fell! — Belief, you no longer live!
Run, run, oh! homesick tears,
Acerbic legacy of extinct adventure,
Dubious torches that tremble brighten
The cold slate of a dream that is dead!
(Fragment)
In the 20th century, other Brazilian poets rescued elegiac verses, appropriating more of their thematic content than of their meter. Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira they are among the poets who stood out in the production of elegies, evoking in their poems themes such as melancholy and nostalgia. From these two authors, we selected for you two poems that well represent this interesting poetic genre. Good reading!
Drummond and Bandeira took advantage of the elegy's thematic content to write poems with free verses *
Elegy 1938
You work without joy for a dead world,
where forms and actions contain no example.
You laboriously practice universal gestures,
you feel hot and cold, lack of money, hunger and sexual desire.
Heroes fill the city parks you crawl through,
and they advocate virtue, renunciation, cold-bloodedness, conception.
At night, if it's foggy, they open bronze umbrellas
or they retreat to the volumes of sinister libraries.
You love the night for the power of annihilation that ends
and you know that, sleeping, problems save you from dying.
But the terrible awakening proves the existence of the Great Machine
and restore you, little one, in the face of indecipherable palm trees.
You walk among the dead and talk with them
about things of the future tense and affairs of the spirit.
Literature has spoiled your best hours of love.
On the phone you lost a lot, a lot of time to sow.
Proud heart, you are in a hurry to confess your defeat
and postponing collective happiness for another century.
Do you accept rain, war, unemployment and unfair distribution
because you cannot, by yourself, blow up Manhattan Island.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Elegy for my mother
In this mountain ravine, whence the sea
It looks calm as in a creek's hollow,
Everything childish inside my soul bleeds
In the pain of having seen, O Mother, agonize!
Delivered to the evocative suggestion of the wilderness,
In remembrance weeping your slow matrimony
Even when you exhaled, in the burning light of a candle,
The soul that was in transition tied to the sick body.
I remember the thin face where death left
An astonished expression of astonishment
(What an image of such serious and prestigious charm
Has it already passed in your eyes a little bit?
I see your little feet... The fransina hand...
So musical... The low forehead... The bloodless mouth...
Two generations had already passed your blood,
- You were a grandmother - and dead you were a girl.
In the silence of that funeral night
I hear my father's voice calling your name.
But I can't think of you without taking me
All the fearful memory of your evil!
You whose heart was full of fears
- You feared the thunder, the telegram, the dark -
Ah, poor thing! a terrible end the hardest,
It's just that he smothered you with relentless fingers.
Now that breaks my heart
In every detail, and I relive it a hundred times,
And I cry right now the tears of three months
(During which I smile at your illusion!),
While seeking solitary cravings,
The sorrows without comfort, the broken wills,
It flies, diluting into the far distances,
The evening prayer in deep chimes!
Manuel Bandeira
*Image made from book covers of the cited authors.
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters