João Cabral de Melo Neto
Encyclopedia
João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920–1999) was born in the state of Pernambuco
Pernambuco
Pernambuco is a state of Brazil, located in the Northeast region of the country. To the north are the states of Paraíba and Ceará, to the west is Piauí, to the south are Alagoas and Bahia, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean. There are about of beaches, some of the most beautiful in the...

, 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...

, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

s of all time.

He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower". His works are said to be dry, devoid of exaggerated emotions that are usually associated with poetry, sticking usually to images and actions and physical descriptions rather than feelings. The image of an engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...

 designing a building
Building
In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...

 is often used to describe his poetry. It usually follows a strict meter and assonant rhymes.

He worked as a diplomat
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...

 for most of his life.

In 1990, he won the Camões Prize
Camões Prize
The Camões Prize , named after Luís de Camões is the most important literary prize for the Portuguese language. It is awarded annually by the Portuguese Fundação Biblioteca Nacional and the Brazilian Departamento Nacional do Livro to the author of an outstanding work written in Portuguese.It...

, the greatest prize in literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 of the Portuguese language
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

. In 1992, João Cabral received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature
Neustadt International Prize for Literature
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award for literature sponsored by the University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, World Literature Today. It is widely considered to be the most prestigious international literary prize after the Nobel Prize in...

, which some consider to be almost as prestigious as the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

.

He occupied the 37th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
Academia Brasileira de Letras
Academia Brasileira de Letras is a Brazilian literary non-profit society established at the end of the 19th century by a group of 40 writers and poets inspired by the Académie Française. The first president, Machado de Assis, declared its foundation on December 15, 1896, with the statutes being...

 from 1968 until his death in 1999.

It was a Brazilian poet and diplomat. His poetry, ranging from a tendency to surrealist folk poetry, but characterized by esthetic rigor with a confessional poems averse and marked by the use of rhymes toantes, inaugurated a new form of poetry in Brazil.Brother of the historian Evaldo Cabral de Melo and cousin of the poet Manuel Bandeira and the sociologist Gilberto Freyre, John Cabral was a friend of the painter Joan Miró and the poet Joan Brossa. Member Pernambuco Academy of Arts and the Brazilian Academy of Letters, was awarded several literary prizes. When he died in 1999, speculated that it was a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He was married to Stella Maria Barbosa de Oliveira, with whom he had sons Rodrigo, Inez, Luiz, Elizabeth and John married in second marriage in 1986, with the poet Marly de Oliveira.

His poetry is art

In the poetry of Cabral are some perceive dualities antithetical worked with some baroque and exhaustion. Between time and space, between inside and outside, between the massive and non-massive, between male and female, between the northeast and Andalusia desert fertile, or between the Savanna and humid desert Pernambuco. It is a poetry that causes some strangeness who expects an emotional poetry, because his work is basically brain and "sensationalist" seeking a constructive and communicative poetry, objective.

Although there is a tendency in his surrealist poems, especially in the initial, as in Stone Sleep, seeking a poetry that was also significant, Melo Neto need not resort to pathos ("passion") to create a poetic atmosphere, avoiding any romantic trend , but seeks an elaborate construction of language and thought and said of his poetry, turning the whole image perception in something concrete and related to the senses, especially to the touch, as can be seen well in a single-blade knife. In this poem, Cabral presents the image of the knife through the feeling of emptiness that makes the knife in the flesh, contrasting with the very solid knife that

Some words are systematically used in poetry by this author: sugar cane, stone, bone, skeleton, tooth-edged, razor, knife, scythe blade, cut, skinned, bay watch, dry, mineral, desert, aseptic, empty, hungry. Things sound and tactile sensations: a poetry of concrete.

Nobel literature: never.
It was rejected several times for the Nobel (which until now have never been given is a Brazilian) and even then, not because of the prize that was never considered important. He received numerous awards in Brazil and abroad, always leaving their mark, and even he was the great inspirer of the concrete movement in Brazil and the world.

Works

Melo Neto's most famous poems are:
  • "Morte e Vida Severina" (translated in part by Elizabeth Bishop
    Elizabeth Bishop
    Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and short-story writer. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1956 and a National Book Award Winner for Poetry in 1970. Elizabeth Bishop House is an artists' retreat in Great Village, Nova Scotia...

     as "Death and Life of a Severino"), his most famous work, is a very long narrative poem (in most editions it goes over 80 pages) that describes the life of a poor country man in the dry northeastern part of Brazil.
  • "Uma Faca só Lâmina" (A Knife All Blade) is also considered to be one of his best works, and was translated to English
    English language
    English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

     in 1980. The poem is about the many ways to describe "that sorrowful absence in a man".
  • "Cão sem Plumas" (A Dog Without Feathers) describes the Capibaribe River
    Capibaribe River
    The Capibaribe River is a river located in Pernambuco state, Brazil, with a length of 240 kilometers. The Capibaribe originates in the Serra do Jacarará, in the municipality of Poção, and flows to the Atlantic Ocean.-Etymology:...

    of Pernambuco, and the poverty-stricken community that surrounds it.

His poetic works, a trend that goes to the surrealist poetry popular, characterized by aesthetic rigor, with poems averse to confessionalism and marked by the use of toantes rhymes, inaugurated a new form of poetry in Brazil.

Poetry

  • Pedra do Sono [Rock of the Sleep] (1942)
  • Os Três Mal-Amados [The Three Not-loved] (1943)
  • O Engenheiro [The Engineer] (1945)
  • Psicologia da Composição com a Fábula de Anfion e Antiode (1947)
  • O Cão Sem Plumas [The Dog Without Feathers] (1950)
  • O Rio ou Relação da Viagem que Faz o Capibaribe de Sua Nascente à Cidade do Recife [The River or Relation of the trip that Capibaribe does from its source until the Town of Recife] (1954)
  • Dois Parlamentos [Two Parliaments] (1960)
  • Quaderna (1960)
  • A Educação pela Pedra [The Education through the Rock] (1966)
  • Museu de Tudo [Museum of Everything] (1975)
  • A Escola das Facas [The School of the Knives] (1980)
  • Auto do Frade (1984)
  • Agrestes (1985)
  • Crime na Calle Relator (1987)
  • Primeiros Poemas [First Poems] (1990)
  • Sevilha Andando [Walking Sevilla] (1990)

Further reading

English
  • Education by stone : selected poems / João Cabral de Melo Neto; Richard Zenith., 2005
  • Selected poetry, 1937-1990 / João Cabral de Melo Neto; Djelal Kadir., 1994
  • The aesthetics of the object in the poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto / Marta Peixoto., 1977
  • The poem and the canvas: pictorial implications in the works of João Cabral de Melo Neto / Danilo Pinto Lôbo., 1972
  • João Cabral de Melo Neto / Benedito Nunes., 1971


Portuguese
  • João Cabral de Melo Neto : o homem sem alma ; Diário de tudo / José Castello., 2006
  • Os signos de uma educação : a água e a pedra na poética de João Cabral de Melo Neto / Walter Filho., 2003
  • O poeta e a mídia : Carlos Drummond de Andrade e João Cabral de Melo Neto / Fábio Lucas., 2002
  • O poema no sistema : a peculiaridade do antilírico João Cabral na poesia brasileira / Homero Araújo., 2002
  • João Cabral e o poema dramático, Auto do frade / Níobe Abreu Peixoto., 2001
  • João Cabral de Melo Neto / João Alexandre Barbosa., 2001
  • A poesia crítica de João Cabral de Melo Neto / Helton Gonçalves de Souza., 1999
  • João Cabral : a poesia do menos e outros ensaios cabralinos / Antonio Carlos Secchin., 1999
  • João Cabral de Melo Neto : o homem sem alma / José Castello., 1996
  • A bailadora andaluza : a explosão do sagrado na poesia de João Cabral / Waldecy Tenório., 1996
  • João Cabral em perspectiva / Maria do Carmo Campos., 1995
  • Lira e antilira : Mário, Drummond, Cabral / Luiz Costa Lima., 1995
  • Manuel e João : dois poetas pernambucanos / Assis Brasil., 1990


Spanish
  • Piedra fundamental : poesia y prosa / João Cabral de Melo Neto., 2002
  • Idéias fixas de João Cabral de Melo Neto / Félix de Athayde., 1998
  • A la medida de la mano / Angel Crespo., 1994

External links

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