I'm leaving for Pasargada is the title of a poem written by Manuel Bandeira (1886-1968), renowned Brazilian poet of modernism.
Published in the book Debauchery, in 1930, the poem presents a idealized city as a solution to the problems.
Therefore, Pasargada means a kind of refuge, a wonderful place - which only exists in the poet's imagination - where there is only room for the pleasures of life.
See the poem in full:
"I'm leaving for Pasargada
I'm a friend of the king there
There I have the woman I want
in the bed i will choose
I'm leaving for Pasargada
I'm leaving for Pasargada
Here I am not happy
There existence is an adventure
so inconsequential
May Joana the Madwoman of Spain
Queen and false insane
Comes to be the counterpart
daughter-in-law I never had
And how will I do gymnastics
I will ride a bike
I will ride a wild donkey
I'll climb the tallow stick
I will bathe in the sea!
and when you're tired
I lie on the riverbank
I send for the mother - from the water.
to tell me the stories
that in my time as a boy
rose came to tell me
I'm leaving for Pasargada
In Pasargada it has everything
it's another civilization
It has a secure process
to prevent conception
It has an automatic telephone
Have alkaloid at will
have beautiful whores
for us to date
And when I'm sadder
But sad to have no way
when at night give me
will to kill me
- I'm a friend of the king there -
I will have the woman I want
in the bed i will choose
I'm leaving for Pasargada."
The poem has modernist characteristics, highlighting the poet's idea of an escape to a better place, as a way to escape his reality.
It was written and built with rounds, which refers to the idea of a escapism very common in archadian and romantic poems, which always sought a way to alleviate the pain of unrequited love or an inspiration in distant and rural places.
The escape then mentioned in the poem would be to Pasárgada, a technological city in Bandeira's imagination. With many references to modernism and the admiration for machines and technology, the poem is quite contrary to Arcadian thought.
Pasárgada also makes reference to the Persian city that was the capital of the First Persian Empire, and which figured in the poet's imagination from his adolescence until the creation of this poem.
The escape to this city is a metaphor for the search for freedom, for a life that could have been more pleasurable, had it not been for the tuberculosis that afflicted the poet.
In this freedom was also the desire to live an active life that the illness deprived him of having. At various moments in the work, it is possible to identify a return to childhood before the illness sets in.
Another topic discussed is affection and physical contact, sensitive topics for Manuel Bandeira.
In this sense, the escape to Pasárgada would also bring the possibility of experiencing love adventures and the satisfaction of erotic desires in a place where there is no solitude.
In this way, Pasárgada, this incredible imagined city, transcended poetry itself and became the representation of a place where life is better, a symbol of freedom and hedonism, which preaches pleasure as Lifestyle.
Read too:
- Freedom
- Characteristics of Romanticism
- Romanticism