The metaphysical projection in Cecilia Meireles: two poems:
"Song"
and "Timidez"
From the book Viagem..
Luis Quintana Tejera[1]
Resumen
La voz poética de Cecilia
Meireles (1901-1964) sobresale de manera particular en la literatura brasileña
del siglo XX. No se trata solo de transmitir un mensaje, de conmover al otro, a
su semejante, un mensaje que grita al corazón y busca identificarse con quien
lo escucha. Curiosamente, el decir lírico es uno de los géneros más
frecuentados, pero no muchos de los que se consideran poetas logran impactar
con su verbo; este mismo verbo puede ser una expresión que conmueva a las
multitudes como lo hizo el joven Pablo Neruda con sus Primeros Veinte poemas
de amor o, retrocediendo un poco en el tiempo, como el del malogrado
Garcilaso de la Vega con sus églogas y sonetos. Los dos y muchos más lograron
su objetivo, mientras que Pablo Roca, en el contexto chileno, y el divino
Herrera, en el caso español, veían con recelo que alguien pudiera superarlos de
la manera en que estas dos voces, iluminadas por las musas, pudieron lograrlo.
¿Cuál es el misterio de muchos que escriben y pocos que alcanzan la fama que la
posteridad otorga? Quizás en el carisma o, en una forma sensible de lograr la
perfección formal o, en un sentimiento que perciben en lo profundo de lo que el
corazón les dicta. Cecilia Meireles es una voz femenina superior –en logros
conceptuales y en el manejo de figuras literarias– a Gabriela Mistral; considero
—es una opinión crítica personal que, en el manejo de sus nocturnos, se asemeja
a un decir poético poco conocido en la literatura latinoamericana, como el de
la uruguaya María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira. Ambas se instalan en esa noche infinita
en la que viven para cantar a la naturaleza. Por lo tanto, nos atrevemos a
proponer, en el análisis de dos poemas de Meireles, una cosmogonía de la que se
deriva un panteísmo personal sobresaliente, como lo explicaremos líneas infra.
Introduction
The poetic voice of Cecilia
Meireles (1901-1964) excels in a particular way in 20th-century Brazilian
literature. It is not just a question of transmitting a message, of moving the
other, his fellow, a message that screams to the heart and seeks to identify
with whom helistens. Interestingly,
lyrical say is one of the most frequented genres, but not many of those who
consider themselves poets,, manage to
impact with their verb; this same verb may be an expression that moves the
crowds like that of the young Pablo Neruda with his early Twenty love poems
or, going a little further back in time, that of the malograde Garcilaso
de la Vega with his églogas and sonnets. The two and manymore, they achieved their goal,, while Pablo Roca
in the context of the Chilean and,,
the divino Herrera in the case of
Spanish,saw with suspicion that someone could overcome them in the way that
these two voices,, illuminated by the muses,, were able to achieve it. What is
the mystery of many writing and few attaining the fame that posterity bestows?
Perhaps in the charism or, in a sensitive way of achieving formal perfection or, in a saying
feeling in the depths what the heart dictates to them. Cecilia Meireles is a
much superior female voice– in conceptual achievements and in the management of
literary figures – to Gabriela Mistral; it seems tous, that, in the management of its nocturnal ones,,
it resembles a poeticor little known sayingor in Latin American
literature,, such as that of the Uruguayan María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira. Both
settle into that infinite night in which they live to sing to nature.
Therefore, we dare to propose in the
analysis of two poems of Meireles, a cosmogony [2]
from which derives a marked personal pantheism [3]
as we will explain lines later.
Journey (1929- 1937).
From this book by the Brazilian author is from where we will take the two poems to
analyze:"Song" and "Timidez". Let's make a short reference
first to the volume that bears the title of Travel.
Meireles excels in a careful style where the sensory aspect prevails. There is
much of Latin American modernism and the
Brazilian movementor of the same name
and, very little or almost nothing,, of
the avant-garde currents that had justn passed. In a quick look at the totality of the
poems that appear there, we highlight that the title of "Song" is
carried by three compositions; there are also thirteen epigrams that remind us, in part at least, of the epigram
acids of the Roman Martial in Latinliterature;
two nocturnal and a poem that is titled "Night".
In ancient times, the epigram was a short poem of two
to eight verses, focused on its only subject and possessing a playful character
in which the author plays with themes of varied condition, as Meireles does in
his reflection on the destiny of nature and the seemingly insignificant things
ofthe world. Speaking of this same
pantheistic nature includes other poems that are true elegies for their subject
and for their search for answers to existential questions typical of the first
half of the twentieth century and defining also the essential condition of the
thinking human being. These verses include those entitled "Winter",
"Earth", "Field", "Body of the Sea" and reflecting bitterness and nostalgia for man's
original being.
En cuanto a los nocturnos, uno de ellos comienza
diciendo: “Volteo la cabeza en dirección a la montaña” y el otro expresa:
“Suspiro de viento // lágrima de mar, // este tormento // todavía puede acabar”
(traducción libre del autor de este artículo). Sin ánimo de agotar el análisis
de los versos transcritos, porque el objetivo del presente ensayo es otro, sólo
mencionamos el carácter lúdico y sensible a flor de piel, de tales reflexiones
que caracterizan a la poetisa brasileña, en donde los motivos de la naturaleza
son evidentes, como ya lo hemos comentado.
Analysis of "Song"
It says the following:
I put a dream on
a ship, and the ship above the sea; I
opened the sea with my two hands
for the wreck.
My hands are wet
with blue and waves ajar;
the color flows from my fingersit deserted sands.
The wind came
from afar, the night, cold curve; underwater is dying my dream, and on his
ship...
I will cry as
much as necessary
to make the seazcabelieve,
and my ship gets to the bottom,,
and my dream disappears. mar cre
Then all perfect: smooth beach, tidywaters. Dry eyes like stones, and my
two hands broken.
(From the book Viagem).
This poem has a dreamlike
character and responds to the scheme of the uróboros
(theserpent that bites its tail) since it begins narrating a dream and ends
up seeing that same dream disappear and everything becomes seemingly perfect,
but its "two broken hands" of the last verse, seem not to allude to
the same situation.
Let's go in parts. Already from
the first quartet there is a certain sonority that is based on the use of
strong vowels, which serve to auditorly express the melancholy of the
composition. In Portuguese it is heard as follows: "Pus o meu sonho num navio // e o navio en mar;// depois abri o mar com as m'os,// para o meu sonho shipwreck". The
words"sonho, navio and mar" resort to the vowels o-o // a-o
// to //, respectively to manifest that affliction, barely suggested, but affliction at last. In the term"navio",it is
observed as the only weak vowel that appears is neutralized by the
"a" and the "o" that surround it and drown it—soundly
speaking.
In the conceptual order, the
voice that speaks does so in the first person; He is a great, almost cosmogonic
first person who tries to order an entropiccosmos, just as his contemporary,, the Uruguayan Carlos Sabat Ercasty (1887-1982) in his book Poems of Man from 1921.
She places her dream on a ship
and athe ship at the top of the sea,, then open with her hands to that
mysterious and eternal sea; almost pantheistic, in which the lyrical
subject is projected to see his dream shipwreck. We speak of pantheism, of the
god nature of Spinoza, because the sea is that god from which man comes and, inparticular, the poet herself incorporates this
subject by seeing itself as part of the infinite sea from which she emanates her own nature and to which she wishes to return with her
death.
The term "shipwreck"
speaks of a failure, of something that could not be realized and says so with a
bitterness similar to that expressed by Pablo Neruda in "A Desperate
Song" of his Twenty Love Poems.
There was also the sea, the shipwreck, the cease to be in the midst of an
aggressive but majestic nature.
In the second quartet, he
alludes to having "wet hands" as the expression of that sea that
approaches her and possesses it completely. But he stresses: "My hands are
wet in blue." This synestsia[4] speaks with complete clarity of the color of
the sea that permeates the hands of the lyrical subject; "wet with
blue" entails a translation of attributes where synestesia
authorizes to exchange different sensations: color by the tactile perception
that is transmitted when touching those hands that are impregnated by the
infinite ocean; it is even more so, they are the sea; as the Spanish poet of the Generation of 27, Gerardo
Diego said: "I am a drop in the wind that screams into the sea, I am the
sea". In this
expression lies precisely the pantheism mentioned above: we are a small part of thatwhole sea; but, despite our
insignificance, we are still the sea.
A second synestsia complements
the previous one: "The color that drains from my fingers // dyes the
deserted sands". The sea reaches the desert to pollute it with
"blue". And that cosmogonic and pantheistic nature, continues to
stand out; now it's the wind, the night, the cold that invades everything, as
his dream dies inside the ship.
But the poet does not resign
heed to lose everything and, therefore, in the fourth quartet begins to cry
intensely to grow that same sea that surrounds and encompasses it. Figurative
language continues to be present, in this case, through the use of a hyperbole
(literary exaggeration) according to which we cancry so much that, in doing so, we are able to
increase the capacity of the ocean. We insist on pantheistic achievement since the lyrical subject
feels the same as the sea and in its tears lies this ability to increase the flow and, to integrate intothe marinegiant, which is a disrupt and reflection of its weak human condition. There is something else:
human beings from their own smallness dare to be matched with this arcane
phenomenon of nature; Next to him you will walk through its most hidden corners,
visit the multitudes of fish that live there and will not fear the fiercest of
marine animals, because she is also part of them. She is
sea, but despite ysto she
cannot avoid the shipwreck,, in which her own dream is dying.
It
is at this moment, that she wakes up to
check that all her universe is already in order; in apparent order, of course,
where there are smooth beaches and ordered waters: "smoothbeach, orderedwater,". águas
But he soon proves that he has not awakened, but has ceased to be
in the midst of that dreamlike, lethal and ferocious dream.
Agrega, to complete the
surprising picture of his own death: "drymeus olhos as pedras // and as minhas duas m.os. Eyes
and hands are the part of your body that disintegrates; who cease to be, in a
kind of sinister metamorphosis where the eyes turn to stones and their
hands," he says rather by resorting to a pleonasm:[5]"my two hands" - they
break to cease being in an instant.
Those
hands wet with blue no longer belong to the vital landscape in
which they were born, but return to the silence of ocean immensity; metaphorical expressions: my eyes like stones
and my two broken hands—the first one a comparison governed by the nexus
"like" and, the second, a metaphor—show what Garcilaso said in the first égloga and
expressed in the notion of "finished, of cease to be". "I'm
dying and I'm still afraid of life," said the Spanish rebirth poet. The poet suddenly confronts her destruction,
and she does not even have time to face her own agony.
She
dies, but her death manifests itself through a curious way of reintegrating
into nature, so she will be able to give life to other souls. It is, without a
doubt, the[6]announcement
of a metempsicosis, where we
ceased to be to be reborn later in other existences and in other souls.
Critical
reflections around the poem "Timidez"
A little gesture is enough for me
done from afar, very mild,
for you to come with me,
so I'll always take you.
Only that one I won't do it.
A fallen word
of the mountains of moments
dismantles all the seas,
it unedes very distant lands.
Word I won't say.
For you to guess me
between taciturn winds
I turn off my thoughts
seen nightly clothes.
That I bitterly invented.
And as long as you don't find out
go the worlds sailing
in certain airs of time
until you don't know when.
And one day I'll be done.
From the book Viagem..
It is a lyrical composition in which the poet sings to
the shyness of existing in a cosmos where even the slightest movement is
invaluable.
A small gesture of nod—so begins
by saying in the first quartet—will be enough "for you to come with
me," "so that I always take you." These are words of love that
involve a commitment to the one who decides to be in the other unreservedly and
with an enviable perseverance.
In Portuguese he expresses:
"Basta-me um small gesture, // feito de longe e de leve, // so
that venhas comigo // e eu sempre te leve". It can be observed,, like the poem above,
as predominates strong vowels where the
"e" occupies a relevant place. It is repeated sixteen times and in
eight of which expressively carries the voice. Unlike the "a" and the
"o" that only appearsn on five occasions in each case. If we add to this that the
"e" is the least strong of the vowels that participate in this condition,[7]we
can see that the poem is spoken of a sublime expressive simplicity in which the
burden of pain becomes less intense than in the preliminary song analyzed.
In the second quartet, he
stresses that "a fallen word from the mountains of moments" will
suffice to dismantle all the seas and unite faraway lands. Nature provides its
landscape so that the poetic voice weeds its symbols and give birth to its
metaphors. The latter are aesthetically well achieved: "mountains of
instants", "clean all the seas", "unite distant
lands".
Let's look at each one of them.
The first refers to an accumulation of moments that,, despite being very brief,, end up elaborating the whole; in it
you can also observe the use of baroque antithesis: the enormous opposes the
fleeting, mountains versus passing moments. But these moving moments become
transcendent to the lystic[8]style,
because in them nests that instant that can become eternal. In short, life is
made of moments and the sum of those moments can lead to fullness.
This word is capable of dismantling all the seas; it can make
habitable to the oceans contaminated by the poisonous hand of
man; that man who, in Hobbes's words in the Leviathan, "is
the wolf of man". Poetic work can
be seen as expendable, more, as something
unnecessary in this cosmos where human beings only think of their own
well-being and act behindthe "other" who need it.
The sublime word will also be
able to unite the lands no. more distant; it will be able to turn the tower of
Babel where we live in a place where the only possible language is spoken, the
language that everyone can come to understand.
From the point of view of
versification, the first two stanzas of the poem are quartets like the last,
the penultimate,quintet; but in turn, alternate free verses,, of a single line,, which allow the intervention of the
poetic voice to tell their own truths.
The first of these seemingly
isolated verses from the general context expresses: "I will not,"
with which she is denying the possibility of acting like that otherself, to whom she asks for a small gesture to
approach her; but she will not,, if the other does not carry it out first.
The second verse shouts,, in the midst of the expression of a
categorical term: "Word I will not say". Here the lyrical subject
becomes airtight and reticent. And that immense ego of the poetic voice tells
the universal recipient that it is up to him to guess his message with the help
of pantheistic nature, made up of taciturn winds. And in this way, the poetic
self will turn off his thoughts while wearing "night clothes"
"that I bitterly invented.".
The infinite veil of the night
extends to cover the secret. And while the other cannot reveal the arcane of
that magical and elusive word at the same time, the worlds will continue to
sail within the framework of the time that passes, not knowing exactly when
they will end.
This is the[9] constant becoming in which man is
immersed. The individual is a beggar of the word; he thinks he knows what he
really wants, but he's not right to find the exact word that defines it. To
unravel this mystery, perhaps we could resort to the factual formula revealed
to Margaret when, telling her that she positively believes
in God, she also tells her that many terms come to her mind to name him. And he
concludes by telling him that no matter what he calls it,the only transcendent
thing is that it exists because, as Goethe said through his character,
"the name is only smoke that candles the celestial flame". And that
word that the lyrical subject will not say may be: feeling, love, surrender,
search, commitment. It doesn't matter which of these terms best suits the
mysterious word. For one day it will come to an end when death will end every
single one of man's aspirations.
From the above, the last verse
reads to the lyrics: "One day I will be done". All human beings are
destined, from our birth, to flow into the immense sea that collects all the
rivers, as Jorge Manrique pointed out in the coplas dedicated to the death of
his father. The lyrical subject is indebted to death and also understands that
the end— as garcilasian as we explained above — must come, even if our spirit
does not want it that way.
Conclusions
It is
pleasant the feeling that leaves in us to have read Cecilia Meireles and,
through this brief sample of her work,we can understand the sensitivity that
characterizesit, at the same time to understand that the poetic
verb acquires, being handled by it, a different dimension.
We have pointed out when passing
the similarity with other poets —Garcilaso de la Vega, Neruda,
Sabat Ercasty, María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira, Gerardo
Diego, Jorge Manrique.
With them he shares the magic of his logos and reverence the power of poetry
that can navigate this dirty and corrupt world,, without tainting himself.
The rhetorical figures are used
correctly and without anydawn, as did the avant-garde currents that emerged in their time. She does not
require greater complexity than the one the
universe offers her.
The cosmogony to which were ferred, places it in a world where the
vision of nature—alive and acting—leads her to the encounter of her own
pantheism which,, while bears some
resemblance to spinoza's,, is
not the same as the philosopher offers. All the approaches that we have allowed
ourselves to make with literature and philosophy are nothing more than
approximations that if they have anything in common is the desire to recreate a
world in which man and woman do not feel so alone and
dispossessed.
Reading meireles is a way to
regain the testimony of a time—the twentieth century—of a country—Brazil—and of
a language—Portuguese—.la portuguesa— This language opens the door to a
different dimension than we do in Latin America. Its sonority, its rhymes, its
stanzas represent the Portuguese Hispanic world,, of a country that seems to be a stone
convidado at the meeting of the Spanish-speaking nations castellana that surround it. But only Ior surround him without
suffocating him; they are only next to him to be able to appreciate his
invaluable contributions.
Cecilia Meireles's poetics
ennoble the country that saw her born and projects it into the universe of the
continent's female poetry, as a
powerful voice that has much to say.
[1] Luis Quintana Tejera is a Mexican writer
born in Uruguay and it plays as a professor and researcher at the Faculty of
Humanities of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico. Dr. in Letters
from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico. Member of the National System of Investigators Level 1,
dependent on CONACYT and a member of the Cervantina International Network based
in Guanajuato, Mexico. As a creator he has written four short story books, two
volumes of poetry and one novel. In the field of literary research, it has composed
more thirty-five books of literary criticism around authors such as: Esquilo,
Sophocles, Séneca, Balzac, Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo
Neruda, Cervantes, Benedetti and Kafka, among others.
[2] Cosmogony (from Greek cosmogonA kosmogonía The
worldviewA kosmogenía, derived from World, Cosmos'world'
and the root for (c)ΝομCentury gígnomai / yoginA gégona'born')
is a narrative Mythical which
aims to respond to the origin of Cosmos and its own Humanity.
Generally, in it we go back to a moment of pre-existence or of Chaos originating,
of entropy, in which the world was not formed, for the elements that were to
constitute it were in disarray; in this sense, the cosmogonic mythical
narrative presents the grouping— gradual or sudden — of these elements, in a
highly symbolic language, with the participation of divine factors that may or
may not possess anthropomorphic attributes (Cfr.
Abbagnano (1989), Philosophy
Dictionary).
[3] Panteísmo. Pantheism is explained as a belief
or conception of the world, a doctrine philosophical according to
Which is
all God and God is everything; the universe and God are the same, that is, they
are ao. I mean, God is not a
creature in
particular not a simple energy; but each creature is an aspect or manifestation
of God, which is conceived as the divine actor who plays both the countless
roles of humans, animals, plants, stars and forces of nature. Spinoza's work
can be confronted in this regard Ethics
demonstrated according to the geometric order where the philosopher will
speak of God Nature, monistic and infinite giving rise to the subsequent
development of the pantheistic conception that will stand out in the
productions of several writers, Europeans and Latin Americans (See Spinoza, 1977).
[4] Sinesia is the poetic figure that
describes and conveys one sensation or perception in terms of another: a
hearing sensation whose adjective corresponds to a visual—In Neruda: "your
metal laugh"—or a tactile to allude to color, as in the example of the
poem analyzed here.
[5] Construction
rhetoric figure consisting of emphatically adding to a sentence more words from
thes Necessary, in order to beautify Aesthetically style o, of add
expressiveness to what is said.
[6]Doctrina Religious And Philosophical Greek supported by Plato and his master Socrates, according to which
souls transfer from one body to another after death. A synonym for
metempsicosis is reincarnation.
[7] Cfr.
Navarro Tomás, 1966. Spanish
intonation manual.
[8] Cfr.
Wolfgang Goethe. Urfaust.
[9] We refer to reality understood as process
or constant change. Becoming is one of the concepts of greatest philosophical
roots.
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