Consecrated as one of the greatest names in Brazilian literature, João Cabral de Melo Neto from Pernambuco received important awards for his work. His best known work is the poem “Morte e Vida Severina”, one of the most expressive of the late 20th century in Brazil.
Born in Recife on January 9, 1920, Cabral came from a family with many distinguished names. He is the cousin of sociologist Gilberto Freire and writer Manuel Bandeira, as well as the brother of historian Evaldo Cabral de Melo.
Member of a wealthy family, owner of plantations in the cities of Moreno and São Lourenço da Mata, he always had access to reading and good schools, joining the Marista de Recife at the age of 10 years.
He started working in 1937 at the Pernambuco Commercial Association. Three years later, in 1940, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro with his family. During the trip, he met important poets, such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Murilo Mendes.
From that time on, his artistic activity began to become more expressive. In 1941 he participated in the First Congress of Poetry in Recife, presenting the booklet “Considerations on the Sleeping Poet”. The following year, he published his first book, the collection of poems “Pedra do Sono”.
He moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he worked in the Staff Recruitment and Selection Department between 1943 and 1944. Shortly thereafter, in 1945, came the second book, entitled “O Engenheiro”.
Two years later, through a public examination, Cabral enters a career as a diplomat, living in important cities around the world. He passed through London, Geneva, Barcelona, Dakar, Seville and many others.
Only in 1950 did he leave the surrealist style, which was characteristic until then, and start writing about social themes. Six years later, with the publication of his most illustrious poem, the play of Natal, “Morte e Vida Severina”, his work became popular, making him a renowned poet.
The regionalist work was known throughout the country. It has been adapted for theater, television, music, film, and even animation. In the poem, the author portrays, with great depth, the living conditions of the northeastern migrant.
João Cabral de Melo Neto was married twice. In the first, with Stella Maria Barbosa de Oliveira, he had five children. On Monday, he married the poetess, Marly de Oliveira.
The poet won important awards throughout his career. In 1968 he was elected as a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, where he took possession of chair no. 37 the following year. In 1992, he discovered progressive blindness, a condition that would lead to depression. He died in 1999, aged 79, a victim of a heart attack.
We made a list of the twelve best poems by João Cabral de Melo Neto. Check out a part of his vast work, which includes twenty books, published between 1942 and 1989.
Index
- The Dog Without Feathers
- The end of the world
- In a Monument to Aspirin
- One Blade Knife
- Seville at Home
- Death and Severe Life
- small mineral ode
- weaving the morning
- hard to be an employee
- An Architect's Fable
- pick beans
- The clock
The Dog Without Feathers
The city is passed by the river
like a street
is passed by a dog;
a fruit
by a sword.
the river now remembered
the smooth tongue of a dog
now the sad belly of a dog,
now the other river
of watery dirty cloth
of a dog's eyes.
that river
it was like a dog without feathers.
I knew nothing about the blue rain,
from the pink font,
of the water in the glass of water,
of the pitcher water,
of the water fish,
of the breeze on the water.
did you know about the crabs
of slime and rust.
knew about the mud
as from a mucosa.
You should know about the people.
surely knew
of the feverish woman who inhabits the oysters.
that river
never open to fish,
to shine,
to knife restlessness
that's in fish.
It never opens on fish.
The end of the world
at the end of a melancholy world
men read newspapers.
indifferent men to eat oranges
that burn like the sun.
gave me an apple to remember
the death. I know which cities telegraph
asking for kerosene. The veil I watched fly
fell in the desert.
The final poem no one will write
of that particular twelve-hour world.
Instead of doomsday I worry
the ultimate dream.
In a Monument to Aspirin
Clearly: the most practical of suns,
the sun from an aspirin tablet:
easy, portable and cheap to use,
compact of sun on the succinct headstone.
Mainly because, artificial sun,
that nothing limits it to running during the day,
that the night does not expel, each night,
sun immune to meteorological laws,
anytime you need it
get up and come (always on a clear day):
lights up, to dry the burlap of the soul,
to hold it, in midday linens…
One Blade Knife
just like a bullet
buried in the body,
making thicker
one side of the dead;
just like a bullet
of the heavier lead,
in a man's muscle
weighing it more than one side;
which bullet had a
live mechanism,
bullet that owned
an active heart
like a clock
submerged in some body,
to a live clock
and also revolting,
watch that had
the edge of a knife
and all impiety
bluish-blade;
just like a knife
that without pocket or hem
turn into part
of your anatomy;
what an intimate knife
or knife for indoor use,
dwelling in a body
like the skeleton itself
of a man who had it,
and always, painful
of a man who got hurt
against your own bones.
Seville at Home
I have Seville in my house.
I'm not the one in Seville.
It's Seville in me, my living room.
Seville and everything it sharpens.
Seville came to Pernambuco
because Aloísio told him
that Capibaribe and Guadalquivir
are of one Freemasonry.
Behold, now Seville charges
where would the brotherhood be:
I make you come to Porto in a hurry
Sevillana in addition to Seville.
Seville that beyond the Atlantic
lived the tropic in the shade
fleeing the Copacabana suns
bring thick canvas curtains
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Death and Severe Life
— My name is Severino,
as I don't have another sink.
As there are many Severinos,
that he is a pilgrimage saint,
then they called me
Severinus of Mary;
as there are many Severinos
with mothers named Maria,
I was Maria's
of the late Zechariah.
But that still says little:
there are many in the parish,
because of a colonel
who was called Zechariah
and which was the oldest
lord of this allotment.
How then to say who speaks
Pray to Your Ladies?
Let's see: it's Severino
from Maria do Zacarias,
from Serra da Costa,
limits of Paraíba.
But that still says little:
if at least five more there were
with Severino's name
children of so many Marys
women of so many others,
already dead, Zechariah,
living in the same mountain
skinny and bony where I lived.
We are many Severinos
equal in everything in life:
in the same big head
at the cost that it balances out,
in the same womb grown
on the same thin legs,
and the same because the blood
that we use has little ink.
And if we are Severinos
equal in everything in life,
we died the same death,
same severe death:
which is the death that one dies
of old age before thirty,
ambush before twenty,
hungry a little a day
(of weakness and illness
is that death Severina
attacks at any age,
and even unborn people).
We are many Severinos
equal in everything and in fate:
to soften these stones
sweating a lot on top,
to try to wake up
ever more extinct land,
that of wanting to boot
some mowing of ash.
small mineral ode
Disorder in the soul
who tramples
under this meat
that transpires.
Disorder in the soul
who runs away from you,
smoke wave
that disperses,
inform cloud
that grows from you
and whose face
you don't even recognize.
your soul runs away
like hair,
wedges, moods,
spoken words
unknowable
where are lost
and impregnate the earth
with his death.
your soul escapes
like this body
loose in time
that nothing prevents.
search for order
what do you see in the stone:
nothing is spent
but it remains.
this presence
that you recognize
don't eat
everything it grows on.
It doesn't even grow
because it remains
out of time
that doesn't measure it,
heavy solid
that the fluid wins,
that always in the background
of things comes down.
search for order
from this silence
which still speaks:
pure silence.
of pure kind,
voice of silence,
more than absence
that voices hurt.
weaving the morning
1.
A rooster alone does not weave a morning:
he will always need other cocks.
From one who catches that scream that he
and throw it to another; from another cock
catch a rooster's cry before
and throw it to another; and other roosters
that with many other roosters to cross
the strands of sunshine from your rooster cries,
so that the morning, from a thin web,
go weaving, among all the roosters.
2.
And becoming a part of the screen, among all,
rising tent, where all enter,
entertaining for everyone, on the awning
(the morning) that soars free of frame.
The morning, an awning of such airy fabric
that, fabric, rises by itself: balloon light.
hard to be an employee
hard to be an employee
In this Monday.
I'll call you Carlos
Asking for advice.
It's not the day outside
Which makes me like this,
Cinemas, avenues,
And other non-do's.
It's the pain of things,
The mourning of this table;
It's the regiment forbidding
Whistles, verses, flowers.
I never suspected
So much black clothing;
Nor those words —
Employees, without love.
Carlos, there is a machine
Who never writes letters;
There is a bottle of ink
Who never drank alcohol.
And the files, Carlos,
The paper boxes:
tombs for all
The sizes of my body.
I don't feel right
With a colored tie,
And in the head a girl
in the form of a souvenir
I can't find the word
Tell those furniture.
If I could face them...
Make you disgusted my…
An Architect's Fable
Architecture how to build doors,
to open; or how to build the open;
build, not island and trap,
nor build how to close secrets;
build open doors, on doors;
houses exclusively doors and roof.
The architect: what opens up for man
(everything would be cleaned up from open houses)
gates wherever, never gates-against;
wherever, free: air light right reason.
Until, so many free people frightening him,
he denied giving to live in the clear and open.
Where are you going to open, he was bulging
opaque to close; where glass, concrete;
until the man closes: in the uterus chapel,
with matrix comforts, again fetus.
pick beans
Picking beans is limited to writing:
Throw the grains into the water in the bowl
And the words on the sheet of paper;
and then throw away whatever floats.
Okay, every word will float on paper,
frozen water, by lead its verb;
because pick this bean, blow on it,
and throw away the light and hollow, straw and echo.
2.
Now, in this picking up of beans there is a risk,
that, among the heavy grains, between
an immaculate, tooth-breaking grain.
Right not, when picking up words:
the stone gives the phrase its liveliest grain:
obstructs fluvial, buoyant reading,
sharpens attention, baits it with risk.
The clock
around man's life
there are certain glass boxes,
inside which, as in a cage,
you hear an animal throb.
Whether they are cages is not right;
closer are to the cages
at least by size
and square in shape.
Sometimes such cages
they hang on the walls;
other times, more private,
they go in a pocket, on one of the wrists.
But where is it: the cage
will it be bird or bird:
palpitation is winged,
the jumping she keeps;
and singing bird,
not feather bird:
because of them a song is emitted
of such continuity.
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