I-Juca Pirama
Encyclopedia
I-Juca-Pirama is an epic poem
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

 written by Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian author Gonçalves Dias. Published in 1851
1851 in literature
The year 1851 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*January 1 - The Georgian theatre company gives its first performance, under the direction of Giorgi Eristavi....

, it is written under decasyllabic
Decasyllable
Decasyllable is a poetic meter of ten syllables used in poetic traditions of syllabic verse...

 and alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...

 verses, and divided in ten cantos. It is one of the most famous Indianist poems of the Brazilian Romanticism.

I-Juca-Pirama means, in Tupi
Old Tupi language
Old Tupi or Classical Tupi is an extinct Tupian language which was spoken by the native Tupi people of Brazil, mostly those who lived close to the sea. It belongs to the Tupi–Guarani language family, and which has a written history spanning the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries...

, "He who must die and that is worthy to be killed".

Plot

The poem tells the story of a Tupi warrior who is arrested by an enemy, cannibal
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...

 tribe — the Timbiras. As he is about to get killed for sacrificial endings, he begs for mercy, in order to be freed and return to the woods, where his old, sick and blind father awaits. The Timbiras then allow the Tupi warrior to go.

The warrior reunites with his father. After smelling the sacrificial paint in his son's body and hearing that he was let go, his father demands they head back to the Timbiras' tribe.

He and his father return to the Timbiras' tribe in order to continue the sacrifice ceremony. However, the cacique
Cacique
Cacique is a title derived from the Taíno word for the pre-Columbian chiefs or leaders of tribes in the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles...

(chief) of the Timbira tribe tells to the old man that they no longer want the Tupi warrior to be sacrificed, since he begged for mercy and thus is a coward.

Angered, the old man curses his son, saying that he is the disgrace of the Tupi tribe. The son cannot stand his father's hate, and suddenly wages war against the whole Timbira tribe. The old man listens to his son's war screams and realizes that he is fighting with honor.

The battle is only finished when the Timbira cacique recognizes the valor of his enemy and says:
After hearing this, the old man hugs his son, apologizes for the curses and cries of joy.

This story would be told for generations in the Timbiras' tribe.

See also

  • Os Timbiras (another epic poem by Gonçalves Dias)
  • Indianism
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