Álvares de Azevedo: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Álvares de Azevedo Brazilian Poetry

Biography.

Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo (September 12, 1831 – April 25, 1852), affectionately called "Maneco" by his close friends, relatives and admirers, was a Brazilian Romantic poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist, considered to be one of the major exponents of Ultra-Romanticism and Gothic literature in Brazil. His works tend to play heavily with opposite notions, such as love and death, platonism and sarcasm, sentimentalism and pessimism, among others, and have a strong influence of Musset, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Goethe and – above all – Byron.


If I died tomorrow 


If I died tomorrow, at least I would

close my sad sister;

My longing mother would die

If I died tomorrow!


How much glory I foresee in my future!

What a dawn to come and what a morning!

I would have lost these crowns crying

If I died tomorrow!


What a sun! what a blue sky! what sweet n’alva

Nature wakes up more praise!

It wouldn’t hit me so much in the chest

If I died tomorrow!


But this pain of life that devours

The craving for glory, the aching zeal …

The pain in the chest would be silent at least

If I died tomorrow!


My Misfortune


My misfortune, no, is not being a poet,

Not even in the land of love not having an echo,

And my angel of God, my planet

Treat me like a doll …


It is not walking on broken elbows,

Having a pillow as hard as stone …

I know … The world is a lost bog

Whose sun (I wish!) Is money …


My disgrace, O candid maiden,

What makes my chest so blasphemous,

Is to have to write a whole poem,

And not to have a jew for a candle.


Her Scarf


When the first time, from my land

I left the nights of loving charm,

My sweet lover sighing My

eyes damp with tears.


A romance sang goodbye,

But longing dulled the song!

Tears wiped her beautiful eyes …

And she gave me the handkerchief that dipped her tears.


How many years have passed yet!

Do not forget but love so holy!

I still keep it in a perfumed safe

Her handkerchief that wet the tears …


I never met her again in my life.

I, however, my God, loved her so much!

Oh! when I die spread on my face

The handkerchief that I also bathed in tears!


Translated by (?)

Castro Alves: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

 

Castro Alves Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves (14 March 1847 – 6 July 1871) was a Brazilian poet and playwright, famous for his abolitionist and republican poems. One of the most famous poets of the "Condorism", he won the epithet of "O Poeta dos Escravos" ("The Poet of the Slaves"). He is the patron of the 7th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.


The Black Ship Part 1.


We are on the high sea… Mad in space

The moonlight plays - golden butterfly;

And the waves run after it. . . tiring

As a band of frenzied infants.


We are on the high sea… From the firmament

The stars jump like foam of gold. . .

The sea in exchange lights phosphorescence,

- Constellations of liquid treasure…


We are on the high sea… Two infinites

There narrowed in an insane embrace,

Blue, golden, placid, sublime ..

Which of the two is ocean? Which sky?…


We are on the high sea ... Opening the sails,

To the warm breath of the maritime winds,

Sail-boat brig runs to the flower of the seas

Like the swallows brush in the wave…


From where do you come? Where do you go? Of the wandering ships

Who knows the course if the space is so immense?

On this Sahara wild horses the dust raise,

Gallop, soar, but leave no trace.


Happy the one who can there, at that hour,

Feel from this panel the majesty!

Below - the sea, above - the firmament!…

And in the sea and in the sky - the immensity!


Oh! what sweet harmony the breeze brings to me!

What soft music from distance sounds!

My God! how sublime an ardent song is

Through the endless waves drifting without destiny!


Men of the sea! Oh rude sailors,

Toasted by the sun of the four worlds!

Children who the storms lull to sleep

In the cradle of these deep abysses!


Wait! wait! let me drink

This wild, free poetry,

Orchestra - is the sea, that roars by the prow

And the wind, that whistles in the ropes.


Why do you retreat so, sprightly boat?

Why do you evade the diffident poet?

Oh! if I only could follow your course

That reflects on the sea— mad comet!


Albatross! Albatross! Eagle of the ocean,

You who sleep in the mist of the clouds,

Shake your feathers, leviathan of space

Albatross! Albatross! give me those wings.


The Black Ship Part 2.


What matters the sailor’s cradle,

Where from he is son, where is his home?

Loves the cadence of the verse

Which the old sea teaches him!

Sing! Because death is divine!

The brig slides the bowline

Like a fast dolphin.

Tight to the mizzen mast

A nostalgic flag signs

To the waves left behind.


From the Spanish, the canticles

Broken in a languorous dance,

Remind the dark young women,

The blooming Andalusians!

From Italy, the indolent son,

Sings a sleeping Venice,

- Land of love and betrayal,

Or from the gulf in its lap

Reminds the verses of Tasso,

By the lava of a volcano!


The Englishman - cold sailor,

Since birth in the sea,

(For as England is a ship, which

God in the Channel anchored),

Vigorous, recites his country’s glories,

Remembering, proud, histories

Of Nelson and Aboukir…

The Frenchman - predestined -

Sings the glories of the past

And the honours of tomorrow!


The Hellenic sailors,

Whom the Ionic wave created,

Beautiful dark pirates

From the sea that Ulysses crossed,

Men that Phydias engraved,

Keep on singing in the clear night

Verses that Homer moaned…

Sailors from all lands,

You know how to find on the waves

The melodies of Heaven!


The Black Ship Part 3.


Descend from the immense space, oh ocean’s eagle!

Descend more…even more…no human glance can

Like yours, to dive into a flying brig!

But what do I see there…such a picture of sorrows!

It is a funeral chant!…what direful figures!

Such an infamy and evil scene…My God! My God! What a horror!


(...)

Translated by Mariza G. Góes


Helena Kolody: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Helena Kolody Brazilian Poetry

Biography.

Helena Kolody (1912–2004) was a Brazilian poet and educator. Considered to be the outstanding poet of the State of Paraná, she started writing poetry when she was 12 and published her first poem "A Lágrima" four years later. When she was 20, she became a schoolteacher and later, on graduation, a lecturer at the Curitiba Normal School. She is remembered in particular for being the first Brazilian to write verse in the Japanese haiku style, publishing "Cântico" in 1941 and including haiku verse in several later publications.


Machine-Man

Man got married to the machine
and created a strange hybrid:
in the chest a chronometer
in the skull a generator.
Red corpuscles of its blood
are rounded algorithms.


Statistical cacti grow
in their abstract gardens.


Precision planning,
life of machine-man.
The gears vibrate with
exertion of its realizations.


In its obscure core
is a strange prisoner,
whose screams agitate
the metallic structure;
blazing are the reflections
of an imponderable light
disturbing the coldness
of the armored machine-man.


Translated by Rosaliene Bacchus

Amanda Vital: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Amanda Vital Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Amanda Vital is editorial assistant at Patuá, associate editor of Mallarmargens magazine and Master's student in Text Editing at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Author of the book Passagem (Patuá, 2018). Has poems and translations in magazines, newspapers and literary supplements in Brazil and Portugal, in addition to publications in anthologies. He is technical assistant at the annual event Raias Poéticas: Afluentes Ibero-Afro-Americans of Art and Thought, curated by Luís Serguilha.

Cassiano Ricardo: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Cassiano Ricardo Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Cassiano Ricardo (July 26, 1895 – January 14, 1974) was a Brazilian journalist, literary critic, and poet. An exponent of the nationalistic tendencies of Brazilian modernism, he was associated with the Green-Yellow and Anta groups of the movement before launching the Flag group, a social-democratic reaction to these groups. His work evolved into concrete poetry at the end of his career.

Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna (born March 27, 1937), is a Brazilian poet, essay writer, and professor. He was a professor of Brazilian Literature at UCLA and the University of Texas at El Paso, and a writer for the O Globo newspaper. In 1971 he married Marina Colasanti, a Brazilian journalist and writer. In 1984, he began writing for Jornal do Brasil.

Mário de Andrade: Biography and Poems | Brazilian Poetry

Mário de Andrade Brazilian Poet

Biography.

Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.