The lyrical self is a fundamental element of poetry. when we read a poem, we are facing a literary work by lyric genre, that is, a written composition that highlights above all the subjectivity – the sensations, emotions, the interiority of a subject. But who is this guy? Is this guy the author of the poem? Are, then, all poems a biographical part of poets' lives?
In fact, it is not the poets who are enunciated in the verses. Poetry speaks through the lyrical self.
Read too: Epic – long narrative poem that tells about heroic deeds
What am I lyrical?
Lyrical self, poetic self or lyrical subject are nomenclatures used to indicate the voice that enunciates the poem. The lyrical genre is intended to express emotions, sensations, psychic dispositions, that is, the experience of a self in its encounter with the world. But this lyrical self, this voice in the poem, not necessarily the author, but rather a fictitious self, which may or may not have characteristics of the authorial self.
In a famous poem titled “Autopsychography”, Fernando Pessoa tells us: “The poet is a pretender./ He pretends so completely/ That he even pretends to be pain/ The pain that indeed feel.” See: what is felt by the poet, that is, by the author, does not correspond exactly to what was written. That's because the poetic art models, through language, these experiences and impressions caused in the author. And it is through the voice of the lyrical self that the poem is enunciated.
We must remember that the power of poetry does not reside in an authorial outburst, but in an enunciation of feelings that go beyond the individual experience of the poet. When we read a poem, we connect with that emotion or feeling because it is universal.
see some examples:
Corn prayer
Sir, I'm not worth anything.
I am the humble plant of small yards and
poor crops.
My grain, lost by chance,
it is born and grows in the careless earth.
I put leaves and stem, and if you help me, Lord,
even random, solitary plant,
I give ears and I return in many grains
the initial lost grain, saved by a miracle,
that the earth has fertilized.
I am the primary plant of the crop.
The traditional wheat hierarchy doesn't belong to me
And from me the universal target bread is not made. [...]
(Cora Coraline)
The poem “Prayer to the corn” is written in the first person and enunciated by the voice of the corn itself. It is not the author who is said to be the primary plant of the crop. It is the corn itself that “speaks” in the poem.
sorry for the soldier's bride
How can I stay in this lost house,
in this night world,
without you?
Yesterday your mouth spoke to my mouth...
And now that I will,
without knowing more about you?
They thought I lived for my body and my soul!
All eyes are blind... I lived
only from you!
Your eyes, which have seen me, how can they be closed?
Where have you gone, that you don't call me, you don't ask me,
How will I be now, without you?
Snow falls on your feet, on your chest, on your
heart... Far and lonely... Snow, snow...
And I boil in tears here!
(Cecília Meireles)
The voice of this poem by Cecília Meireles is the soldier's bride, the one who becomes a widow even before getting married – it's the one who learns that the groom died in combat. It is from this voice that the poet will enunciate the feelings of absence, despair, sadness, of being perpetually separated from those she loves.
Golden years
it seems you say
i love you maria
In the photo
We are happy
I call you, flustered
And I leave confessions
on recorder
Will be funny
If you have a new love [...]
(Chico Buarque)
Chico Buarque is famous for his compositions whose voice is a female lyrical self. This is the case of “Anos Dourados”: the lyrical self, Maria, is the one who spells out the lyrics of the song; is the one who cares anxiously for her ex-love.
See too: Luís Vaz de Camões – considered the greatest poet of the Portuguese language
How to identify the lyrical self?
As poetic composition involves artistic creation through language, whenever a self enunciates itself in the poem, a newentity is created. It is not a question of the poet who exists in the world, who has an appearance, a determined attitude towards facts, etc., but of a non-material voice which models and versifies the impressions experienced by the author, transforming them into verses. Read the poem “Final Song” by Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
final song
Oh! if I loved you, how much!
But it wasn't that much.
even the gods lame
in arithmetic lines.
I measure the past with a ruler
of exaggerating distances.
All so sad, and the saddest
it is not having any sadness.
It's not worshiping the codes
of mating and suffering.
It's live plenty of time
without me over mirage.
Now I go. Or will me?
Or is it going to go or not go?
Oh! if I loved you, and how much,
I mean, not that much.
(Carlos Drummond de Andrade)
In the first person, the lyrical self does not enunciate a particularity of his life, but the dissolution of a love relationship – which does not necessarily need to start from a biographical fact. The lyrical self gives voice to a universal feeling and it is not necessary for the author to have personally lived what this self enunciates.
Sometimes, however, the lyrical self is very close to the authorial voice, that is, it enunciates characteristics that are, in fact, part of the author's life. Read the poem “Confidência do Itabirano”, also by Drummond:
Confidence of Itabirano
Some years I lived in Itabira.
Mainly I was born in Itabira.
That's why I'm sad, proud: made of iron.
Ninety percent iron on sidewalks.
Eighty percent iron in souls.
And this alienation from what in life is porosity and communication.
The desire to love, which paralyzes my work,
comes from Itabira, from its white nights, without women and without horizons.
And the habit of suffering, which amuses me so much,
it is a sweet Itabira heritage.
From Itabira I brought several gifts that I now offer you:
this iron stone, the future steel of Brazil;
this Saint Benedict of the old saint-maker Alfredo Duval;
this tapir leather, laid out on the living room sofa;
this pride, this bowed head…
I had gold, I had cattle, I had farms.
Today I am a civil servant.
Itabira is just a picture on the wall.
But how it hurts!
(Carlos Drummond de Andrade)
In this case, Drummond explains a biographical fact: the lyrical self of this poem corresponds to the author subject, born in Itabira, Minas Gerais, civil servant, who contemplates his hometown from a portrait and its characteristics inherited. This Itabirano lyrical self is, therefore, an authorial voice, in which the first person actually corresponds to the author's experience. We know this because it reveals a very particular relationship with a particular location and situation.
Difference between lyrical me and narrator
we call storyteller the entity that tell a story. Similar to the lyrical self, he should not be confused with the author either, that is, the person who signs the work. However, the two terms are not equivalent: the lyrical self does not tell a story, but gives voice to a sensation, to a feeling – the lyric is the genre of emotions, par excellence.
Thus, he is necessarily an “I”, a first person involved in what is enunciated by the poem. The narrator, in turn, don't necessarily need to be part of the story that counts – it can be an observant narrator, for example, who enunciates a story that does not belongs, or even an omniscient narrator, capable of immersing himself in the most intimate thoughts of characters.
Also access: Parnassianism - literary movement that produced only poetry
solved exercises
Question 1 - (ENEM 2018)
what does she want
this woman in red
something she wants
to wear this dress
can't just be
a casual choice
could be a yellow
green or maybe blue
but she chose red
she knows what she wants
and she chose dress
and she is a woman
so based on these facts
I can already say
I know your desire
dear watson, elementary:
what she wants is me
it's me what she wants
it can only be me
what else could be
FREITAS, A. A uterus is the size of a fist. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2013.
In the process of writing the poem, the author gives the lyrical self an identity that here represents the
A) hypocrisy of the discourse based on common sense.
B) change of image paradigms attributed to women.
C) attempt to establish precepts of female psychology.
D) importance of the correlation between actions and caused effects.
E) valuing sensitivity as a gender characteristic.
Resolution
Alternative C. The lyrical self in Angélica Freitas' poem believes that it lists norms of female psychological functioning: if it chose a red clothes, it was not by chance, but because I wanted to draw his attention, this "me", this man who enunciates the poem.
Question 2 - (ENEM 2019)
This
They say I pretend or lie
Everything I write. Do not.
I just feel
With imagination.
I don't use the heart.
Everything I dream or go through
What fails or ends,
It's like a terrace
About something else.
This thing is what's beautiful.
That's why I write in the middle
What is not at hand,
Free from my entanglement,
Seriously than it is not.
To feel? Feel who reads!
PERSON, F. chosen poems. São Paulo: Globo, 1997.
Fernando Pessoa is one of the most extraordinary poets of the 20th century. His obsession with poetic work found no limits. Pessoa lived more on the creative plane than on the concrete plane, and creating was his great purpose in life. Poet of the “Orpheus Generation”, he assumed an irreverent attitude. Based on the text and theme of the poem “This”, it is concluded that the author
A) reveals its emotional conflict in relation to the writing process of the text.
B) considers the influence of social facts to be fundamental for poetry.
C) associates the mode of composition of the poem with the poet's state of mind.
D) presents the concept of Romanticism regarding the expression of the poet's voice.
E) separates the poet's feelings from the voice that speaks in the text, that is, from the lyrical self.
Resolution
Alternative E. The poem deals precisely with the separation between what the author feels and what is enunciated by the lyrical self. It is not the person who writes who necessarily feels what is written: he invents, feels “with his imagination”, he does not turn his words into a biographical mirror.
by Luiza Brandino
Literature teacher
