In order to try and cover as much of Latin America as possible, I put two Brazilian poets on the list in spite of not knowing any Portuguese. Because I can speak and read Spanish (and French a little) I was able to read some of the works in their original language without relying too heavily on translations. As Anne Michaels puts it, reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil, and anyway ever since I read the bastard-abominations that Ben Bellitt made out of Neruda’s poems, I have become quite suspicious of poetic translators as a whole, I wonder if many of them are not merely mediocre poets gleaning some sort of sideways, reflected glory. But anyway…
Brazilian poets in the 20th Century, like their Hispanic counterparts, did not escape the influence of Modernism. In fact, Brazil produced its own unique brand of Modern poetry which, although differing from the works produced in the River-Plate Region, also shares some of their common influences and themes. Oswaldo de Andrade, in his “Manifesto Antropofago” uses the image of the cannibal as a metaphor for the way in which Brazil as a nation and Brazilian artists in particular acquire aesthetics, knowledge and culture through ingesting and digesting that of others. One might expand this to propose that Brazilian and Hispanic modernism itself is by nature, a cannibalist movement: it is an attempt to acquire the aesthetic potency of European art by consuming it and assuming it, by annhilating its cultural and linguistic formalities and by creating something unique from the remains. What differentiates Brazilian Modernism from its Hispanic counterpart is that while the Argentine, Chilean and Urugayan poets disconnected themselves from the social aspect of their work in pursuit of a pure aesthetic, the Brazilian poets applied their avant-garde methods as a form of social critique. We see this particularly with Mario de Andrade, considered one of the fathers of Brazilian Modernism.
Paulicea Desvaiarada
The “Extremely Interesting” prologue to Paulicea Desvairada seems to belie the true nature of the poems which it introduces. Andrade describes it as a playful and ultimately futile attempt to create a new aesthetic called “Hallucinism” and a new type of poetic form “Harmonic/Polyphonic Poetry”. The tone of the prologue is playful and self-deprecating, suggesting that poetry and art is merely the act of playting games with words and ideas, creating sandcastles of ideas and then bringing them down again and creating others. The poetry itself, while playful, is in no way empty. Andrade’s poems are very serious, making strong comments on Sao Paulo society.
Drawing from his experience as a musician, Andrade imagines a poetics in which multiple voices express themselves simultaneously, in which the intense and maddening burst of lyricism from the unconscious to the conscious is transferred directly to the written page without being “vaccinated” by the “doctor intelligence” or censored by the rules and codes of language and poetic form.
“The lyric impulse cries out inside of us like the maddening crowd. It would be highly amusing if we said to the crowd: “Slow down there! Let each cry out when it is his turn; and let the one who has the strongest argument keep it for the end!”. (11)
Andrade proposes the creation of a new aesthetic: Harmonic/polyphonic poetry. Unlike melodic poetry, in which the lyric is laid out horizontally in a cohesive linear sequence, harmonic poetry allows multiple voices to sing at one time.
“I consider melodic verse the same as musical melody: a horizontal arabesque of consecutive notes which contain intelligible thought. Now, if instead of using only verses which are horizontally melodic such as: ‘Mnesarete, the divine, the pale Phryne/Appears before the austere and stern assembly/of the supreme Areopagus…’ we have words which follow each other without any immediate connection among themselves, these words…overlie one another for the gratification of our senses and no longer form melodies but rather harmonies…’ravishments…Struggles…Arrows…Songs…Populate.. (13)”
The aesthetic of hallucinism (free-falling lyricism) and the formal concept of harmonic poetry define the nature of the poems in “Hallucinated City”, but Andrade’s work is not merely an aesthetic or formalist experiment. The book contains in its impressionist wash of images a sharp critique and examination of the social mores of Sao Paulo, social climbers, bureaucrats, the bourgeoisie. Like a madman/prophet on a streetcorner or King Lear’s fool, Andrade’s poetic voice speaks in a language of its own, babbling a stream of incoherent and unstrung images shot through with sharp and direct barbs against society’s hypocrisies:
(São Paulo é trono) –E as imensidaoes das escadarias!…
Queres te assentar no pincaro mais alto? Catedral?
Estas cadeias da virtude!
Tripinga-te (os empurrões dos braços em segredo.)
Principiarais escravo, irás a Chico-Rei!
( “A Escalada” )
Eu insulto o burguês! O burguês níquel,
o burgues-burgues!
A digestão hem feita Sao Paulo!
O homem-curva! o homem-nádegas!
O homem que sendo francês, braseiro, italiano
e siempre um cauteloso pouco-a-pouco!
(“Ode au Burgués”)
It’s no coincidence that Andrade often refers to himself as a “harlequin” or a “fool”, the fool as a literary trope is often a double-figure, both a comic relief who creates playful songs and rhymes and a sharp observer and critic of the powerful. This is one of the principal features of Brazilian modernism and vanguardism which distinguishes it from its hispanic counterpart. As I have previously noted, the hispanic modernists sought refuge from an increasingly industrialized world in the concepts of pure art and poetry. Andrade and the Brazilian modernists do not join them in the aesthetic fortress of pure art, in fact Mario de Andrade embraces the city with its constant flux of voices and visions, with its technology, industry and magic. It is for this reason that he was originally linked with futurism.
Like the urban space which it describes, the poems are both orderly and chaotic,: beneath the endless and chaotic burgeoning, ferment and movement there lies a strong sense of organization. Andrade’s lines and poems contain their own internal sonic and thematic organization. Lamentably my lack of experience with Portuguese makes it hard to really hear the sonic aspects of his compositions.
