No other poet was more original in our literature than Augusto dos Anjos. Just read the first verse of one of his poems to identify all the aggressiveness of who, in a unique literary experience in the history of universal literature, dared to unite Symbolism with scientism naturalist. His unique poems, Me, from 1912, shock for the vocabulary and the controversial theme for the standards of the time in which he lived and even for today.
Nothing in Augusto dos Anjos' poetry is usual: although at times the pain of being the Symbolists can be noticed in their verses, it is the naturalistic scientism that draws the most attention of the reader. Thanks to its anti-lyrical poetry, Brazilian literature was able to start the discussion on the concepts of “good poetry”, since, for the first time, a writer challenged tradition by taking it to the terrain of poetry themes such as the decrepitude of corpses, the worms, the prostitute, the chemical substances that make up the human body and even the almost macabre description of the decomposition of the matter.
Don't expect any kind of lyricism in the work of Augusto dos Anjos: by reading the writer's poems you will understand what antipoetry is. Although he talks about love, the poet does it in a peculiar way, using a vocabulary that was, at the time, considered “low”, inadequate according to the current literary canon. Even today, after so many literary experiences, so many innovations that culminated in our modern literature, read the poetry of Augusto dos Anjos causes a certain strangeness: it is necessary to give new meaning to poetry and understand that it can be present even in situations disastrous.
In order for you to get to know the work of one of the most authentic poets in Brazilian literature, Brasil Escola has selected five poems by Augusto dos Anjos that will certainly make you give new meaning to poetry: it is not always pure lyricism, not only love lives the poet. Good reading!
Between the atom and the cosmos: Five poems by Augusto dos Anjos
“I am the one who was left alone/Singing on the bones of the way/The poetry of all that is dead!”. In “The Poet of the Hideous”.
Psychology of a loser
Me, son of carbon and ammonia,
Monster of darkness and brilliance,
I suffer, since childhood epigenesis,
The evil influence of the zodiac signs.
profoundly hypochondriac,
This environment disgusts me...
A yearning analogous to yearning rises to my mouth
That escapes from the mouth of a heartbeat.
Already the worm — this worker from the ruins —
May the rotten blood of carnage
It eats, and to life in general declares war,
Come peeking into my eyes to gnaw them,
And you'll just leave my hair,
In the inorganic coldness of the earth!
intimate verses
See?! Nobody watched the formidable
Burial of your last chimera.
Only Ungrateful — this panther —
She was your inseparable companion!
Get used to the mud that awaits you!
Man, who, in this miserable land,
Lives, among beasts, feels inevitable
Need to be a beast too.
Take a match. Light your cigarette!
The kiss, friend, is the eve of the sputum,
The hand that caresses is the same hand that stones.
If someone is even sorry for your wound,
Stone that vile hand that caresses you,
Dust into that mouth that kisses you!
modern Buddhism
Take, Dr., these scissors, and... cut
My most unique person.
What does it matter to me that the faggot
All my heart, after death?!
Ah! A vulture landed on my luck!
Also, from the diatoms of the lagoon
The cryptogamic capsule breaks down
To the strong right-handed scolding contact!
So dissolve my life
Just like a dropped cell
In the aberration of an infertile egg;
But the abstract aggregate of homesickness
Keep hitting the perpetual bars
From the last verse I make in the world!
the poet of the hideous
I suffer very accelerated blows
In the heart. existence attacks me
The mortifying coalescence
Of human misfortunes gathered!
In hallucinatory rides,
I feel, then, probing my conscience
The ultra-inquisitorial clairvoyance
all overonly neurons awake!
How much this probe hurts my brain!
Ah! Surely I'm the most heinous
Generalization of Discomfort...
I am the one who was alone
singing about the bones of the way
The poetry of all that is dead!
The hope
Hope doesn't wither, she doesn't get tired,
Also how she does not succumb to Belief.
Dreams go away on the wings of Disbelief,
Dreams return on the wings of Hope.
Many unhappy people don't think like that;
However the world is a complete illusion,
And it's not Hope by sentence
This tie that binds us to the world?
Youth, therefore, raise your cry,
Serve you the belief of blessed fanal,
Save yourself the glory in the future – go ahead!
And I, who live in despondency,
I also wait for the end of my torment,
In the voice of death crying out to me: rest!
By Luana Castro
Graduated in Letters
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/entre-atomo-cosmos-cinco-poemas-augusto-dos-anjos.htm
