The Week of Modern Art in 1922 was a milestone for Brazilian literature. At the time, the transgressive movement that aimed to overturn any kind of European influence in the arts Brazilian companies was not well received by critics and the public, but gradually gained enormous importance historic. Everything that is currently produced in the field of literature is related to the heroic phase of modernism: were it not for the boldness of the modernist triad – Manuel Bandeira, Oswald and Mário de Andrade –, perhaps our lyrics were still under the domain of classical molds and European standards.
The main commitment of early modernists it was with the construction of a genuinely Brazilian literature, a literature that spoke of its people and their customs for through an archaism-free language, in which everyday themes, nationalism, humor and irony were privileged. On first reading, the texts of the first modernist generation cause a great impact, given the break with the classical poem, whose concern was, essentially, with the form – hence the big clash with all the poetry produced, mainly, by the writers Parnassians.
To show you a little more about the literary production of the heroic phase of Brazilian modernism, we selected five poems from the first modernist generation, poems that paved the way for great writers of prose and poetry, names that were influenced by the style and literary simplicity printed in these texts, among them the great poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade. In these poems, you will find fine irony, humor and an interesting dialogic relationship with classic poems from our literature. Good reading!
Homeland corner
My land has palms
where the sea chirps
the birds here
They don't sing like the ones over there
My land has more roses
And almost more loves
My land has more gold
my land has more land
gold earth love and roses
I want everything from there
don't let god let me die
without going back there
don't let god let me die
Without going back to São Paulo
Without seeing 15th Street
And the progress of São Paulo.
Do not stop now... There's more after the advertising ;)
Oswald de Andrade
Pronominals
give me a cigarette
says the grammar
from the teacher and the student
And from the known mulatto
But the good black and the good white
of the Brazilian nation
they say every day
leave it comrade
Give me a cigarette.
Oswald de Andrade
Debussy
This way, that way.. .
This way, that way.. .
A skein of thread.. .
This way, that way.. .
This way, that way.. .
Swings in the air by a child's hand
(Comes and goes.. .)
That gently and almost to sleep the balance
— Psio... —
This way, that way.. .
Here and.. .
"The little ball fell out."
Manuel Bandeira
Beautiful girl well treated
Beautiful, well-groomed girl,
Three centuries of family,
Dumb as a door:
A love.
Fine of shamelessness,
Sport, ignorance and sex,
Donkey as a door:
A little thing.
fat woman, fillet,
Golden from every pore
Dumb as a door:
Patience...
Unconscious plutocrat,
nothing door, earthquake
That the poor man's door breaks down:
A bomb.
Mario de Andrade
I am three hundred...
I'm three hundred, I'm three hundred and fifty,
Sensations are reborn from themselves without rest,
Oh mirrors, oh! Pyrenees! oh caiçaras!
If a god dies, I'll go to Piauí to get another one!
I embrace the best words in my bed,
And the sighs I give are other people's violins;
I tread the earth like someone discovering theft
On street corners, in taxis, in cabins, your own kisses!
I'm three hundred, I'm three hundred and fifty,
But one day I finally ran into me...
Let us be patient, short swallows,
Only forgetting condenses,
And then my soul will be a shelter.
Mario de Andrade
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PEREZ, Luana Castro Alves. "Poems of the first modernist generation"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/poemas-primeira-geracao-modernista.htm. Accessed on July 27, 2021.
