Cora Coralina: literary career, awards, poems

the work of Blushcoralline she is unique, and the poet is the main name of the literature goiana. Does not join any literary school, does not intend to start any artistic movement: it is as if the author cooked the words and with her invent new recipes, among the smells and flavors that surround the City of Goiás, the first capital of its state.

Poet, chronicler, short-story writer and also a cook, Cora Coralina mix tradition and rupture, song and silence, translating into words the sweetness so characteristic of the bakers in her hometown.

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Cora Coralina Biography

Cora Coraline was born on August 20, 1889, at City of Goiás – at the time, capital of the state of Goiás – and was registered under the name of Ana Lins dos Guimarães Peixoto. Her father was a judge but died shortly after his birth. She studied only until the third year of primary school, which was enough to develop in the girl an appreciation for reading, which further enlivened her child's imagination.

Homage is located in front of the writer's house, in the city of Goiás (GO). [1]

At fifteen, she had her first tale published, and that's when the pseudonym of Cora Coralina. According to the author, there were many girls named Ana in the city, and she wanted to be recognized. She also wanted to write and attend the city's soirees.

It was at one of these soirees that she metCantídio Tolentino Bretas, older man, lawyer, divorced, with whom he fell in love. The news generated a great deal of talk in the city and was received as a scandal by Cora's family, who forbade the union of the two. Without looking back, Blushran away with the lawyer in 1911.

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The couple lived in several cities, including Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and Avaré (SP). They had six children, two of whom died shortly after giving birth. But what seemed like a release was a new deprivation: Cantídio prevented Cora from publishing his texts. He also forbade her to participate in the Modern Art Week, which took place in São Paulo in 1922.

Widow in 1934, she worked in the most diverse areas and lived in numerous cities in São Paulo, including the capital and Jaboticabal, a city that the author paid homage in her poems and that honored her back, naming one of the public spaces Centro de Eventos Cora Coralina. Cooking, selling books, plowing the land, she never gave up writing: wherever she went, Cora published articles in local newspapers. She also did a lot of volunteer and charitable service.

She returned to Goiás only in 1956, called to collect the inventory of family assets. What was supposed to be a brief visit became a reunion with her origins, and the author decided to stay. She continued writing and supporting herself by selling sweets.

at age 70, she learned to type and only then did her writings know the book format, published five years later.

Cora Coralina's Death

shot down by a strong flu, which soon became pneumonia, Cora Coralina died in a hospital in Goiânia, in April 10, 1985. The mansion on the banks of the Rio Vermelho, where she lived as a child and where she returned to in her old age, became, in 1989, the Museu Casa de Cora Coralina. There he kept his manuscripts, personal objects, kitchen items, letters, photographs, furniture, books and walls full of memories of the author, much loved by those who knew her.

Cora Coralina's first steps in literature

The official debut of Cora Coralina in literature was with the short story "Tragedy in the Country", published in 1910, in the Historical and Geographic Yearbook of the State of Goiás. Her text was highly praised – in the words of prof. Francisco Ferreira, who selected him for publication, the author “is one of the greatest talents that Goyas has; it's a real artist's temperament. [...] tells in animated prose [...] in a easy language, harmonious, at the same time elegant”.

During the marriage, she was prevented from circulating her writings; after becoming a widow, she sent texts to periodicals in the various municipalities where she lived.

The statue of the poet is on the banks of the Red River. In the background there is part of the facade of his old house, today the Museu Casa de Cora Coralina. [1]

Cora Coralina's first book

Poems from the Alleys of Goiás and More Stories is Cora Coralina's debut book, first published in 1965 by the publisher José Olympio. The return to the homeland gave him the most precious ingredient for the making of the texts: they are poems and a few sparse examples of prose full of memories, stories and images from Goiás – today also known as Cidade de Goiás. Cora Coralina collects the images of her verses from the rubbish of the countless alleys, from the memories of washerwomen, of prostitutes, of children working in the fields, of the narrow streets, of the Rio Vermelho.

Alley of my land...
I love your sad, absent and dirty landscape.
Your dark look. Your old tattered dampness.
Your greenish black slime, slippery.
And the ray of sun that descends at midday, fleeting,
and sow golden batters in your poor garbage,
wearing the old sandals of gold,
play on your mound.

[...]

I tell the story of the alleys,
from the alleys of my land,
suspects... infamous
where concept family did not pass.
“People's place” – they said, turning away.
From people from the water pot.
Of people standing on the ground.
Lost woman's alleys.
Women's alleys of life.
renegades, confined
in the sad shadow of the alley.

[...]

the poems remember the city of your childhood, while also realizing the city of their old age, already deprived of the status of capital of the state of Goiás. Displacements in time go even further: Cora also dives into documentary memory of the municipality, when it was still inhabited by forest captains, slaves and adventurers in search of precious stones or easy money. Present, memory and past are intertwined, harmonious, between the alleys sung by the author.

In simple language, accustomed to oral tradition, Cora Coralina was published: rooted after years away from the streets that saw her grow, nothing escapes her eyes. odes, narrative poems and a certain tendency to mix prose and poetry are part of the author's particular style – which, although she is not linked to any literary school, echoes the tradition modernist, preferring free verse and inspiration in everyday, concrete life.

Was Carlos Drummond de Andrade, which at the time was also published by the publisher José Olympio, who revealed Cora Coralina to the large Brazilian public, helping to promote his work. In his column in Jornal do Brasil, the poet from Minas Gerais addressed a letter to Cora:

"Rio de Janeiro,

July 14th, 1979

Cora Coraline

Not having his address, I toss these words to the wind, hoping he'll put them in his hands. I admire and love you as someone who lives in a state of grace with poetry. His book is enchanting, his verse is running water, his lyricism has the strength and delicacy of natural things. Ah, you make me miss Minas, so sister to your Goiás! It gives us joy to know that there is a being called Cora Coralina right in the heart of Brazil.

All the affection, all the admiration of hers.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade”

See too: Regionalism in prose by Rachel de Queiroz

Cora Coralina Awards

1980 – Homage of the National Council of Women of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro – RJ)

1981 – Jaburu Trophy, awarded by the Culture Council of the State of Goiás

1982 – Poetry Award nº 01, National Festival of Women in the Arts (São Paulo – SP)

1983 – Doctor Honoris Causa, Federal University of Goiás

1983 – Order of Merit at Work, granted by the President of the Republic João Batista de Figueiredo

1983 – Anhanguera Medal, Government of the State of Goiás

1983 – Honored by the Federal Senate

1984 – Grand Prix of Critics/Literature of the São Paulo Association of Art Critics

1984 – First Brazilian writer to receive the Juca Pato Trophy, from the Brazilian Writers Union (UBE)

1984 – Tribute of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization as a symbol of rural working women

1984 – Occupies chair No. 38 of the Goiana Academy of Letters

2006 – Posthumously decorated with the Grand-Cross class of the Order of Cultural Merit (OMC), granted by the Ministry of Culture

Cora Coralina Works

• Poems from the Alleys of Goiás and more stories (1965)
• My Book of String (1976)
• Copper Vintém - Aninha's Half Confessions (1983)
• Stories from Casa Velha da Ponte (1985)

• posthumous editions

• green boys (1986)
• Old House Treasure (1996)
• The Gold Coin that the Duck Swallowed (1999)
• Villa Boa de Goyaz (2001);
• The Pigeon Blue Plate (2002)

See more: The revitalization of language and the poetic potential of Guimarães Rosa

Cora Coralina Poems

singing

I put my breast in Goiás
and I sing like no one else.
I sing the stones,
I sing the waters,
the laundresses, too.
I sang an old backyard
with stone wall.
I sang a tall gate
with fallen ladder.
I sang the old house
of poor old woman.
I sang perforated quilt
stretched out on the slab;
very sorry,
I asked for patches for her.
I sang woman of life
shaping her life.
I sang buried gold
wanting to dig up.
I sang dropped city.
I sang yoke donkey
with fired firewood.
I sang grazing cows
in the fallen square.
Now it's running out
This is mine versed.
I put anchors in the sawmills
I'm staying here.

all lives

she lives inside of me
an old cabocla
evil eye,
squatting at the foot of the pigeon,
looking at the fire.
Broken Benz.
Put on spell...
Ogun. Orisha.
Macumba, yard.
Ogã, saint-father...

she lives inside of me
the washerwoman from the Red River.
your yummy smell
of water and soap.
Cloth mop.
bundle of clothes,
indigo stone.
His green Saint Caetano crown.

she lives inside of me
the woman cook.
Pepper and onion.
Well done delicacy.
Clay pot.
Wood casing.
old kitchen
all black.
Nicely curly picumã.
Pointed stone.
Coconut Cumbuco.
Stepping on garlic and salt.

she lives inside of me
the woman of the people.
Very proletarian.
very big-tongued,
abused, unprejudiced,
thick-skinned,
in slippers,
and daughters.

she lives inside of me
the farmer woman.
– Graft of land,
half a sulk.
Hardworking.
Early morning.
Illiterate.
Standing on the ground.
Well offspring.
Well breeding.
his twelve children,
His twenty grandchildren.
she lives inside of me
the woman of life.
My little sister…
so despised,
so whispered...
Pretending to be happy his sad fate.

All the lives inside me:
In my life -
the mere life of the obscure.

the washerwoman

This woman...
Raw. Sitting. Oblivious...
tired arms
Resting on your knees...
staring blankly
lost in your world
muggles and soap scum
- is the laundress.

Rough, deformed hands.
Wet clothes.
Short fingers.
Wrinkled nails.
Corneas.
sore nails
passed, scored.
On the ring, a metallic circle
cheap, memorial.

your distant look,
frozen in time.
around you
- a white soap froth

still the day is far away
in the house of God our Lord
the first clothesline
celebrate the rising sun
wearing the square
of multicolor colors.

This woman
she has forty years as a laundress.
twelve children
grown up and growing.

Widow, of course.
Calm, accurate, brave.

Fear of the punishments of heaven.
Curled up in your poor world.

Early morning.

Save the dawn.
Wait for the sun.
open the portals of the day
between muggles and lye.

Dream silent.
while the daughter grows
work their heavy hands.

your world comes down
in the bass, on the lawn.
On wire and fasteners.
In the water tub.
At night – the iron.

Go washing. Will taking.
raising twelve children
growing slowly,
curled up in your poor world,
inside a foam
white soap.

To the washerwomen of Rio Vermelho
from my land,
I make this little poem
my altar of offerings.

Cora Coraline Phrases

“I was born in rough times. I accepted contradictions, struggles and stones as life lessons and I use them. I learned to live.”

“What matters in life is not the starting point, but the journey. Walking and sowing, in the end you will have something to reap.”

"I'm more of a confectioner and a cook than a writer, and cooking is the noblest of the arts: objective, concrete, never abstract., that which is linked to human life and health."

“I was born in a cradle of stones. Stones have been my verse, in the rolling and hitting of so many stones.”

Image credits

[1] Judson Castro/Shutterstock

by Luiza Brandino
Literature teacher