If you are a student or lover of Brazilian literature, you have certainly heard of the poet Cruz e Sousa, considered as the greatest poetic expression of Symbolism, a literary movement whose first manifestations occurred in the late 1980s. Cruz e Sousa's name is intertwined with symbolist poetry; impossible not to associate his verses with what was one of the most fertile and lasting periods of our lyrics, capable of influencing even modern writers, among them Cecilia Meireles It is Vinicius de Moraes.
Symbolist writers, among them Cruz e Sousa, were strongly influenced by Symbolism. European, presenting great innovations for Brazilian poetry, both in the thematic field and in the field formal. Regarded as one of the most original poets in our literature, Cruz e Sousa is the author of two books responsible for inaugurate aesthetics from Europe in Tupiniquim lands: Missal, a prose book, and Broquéis, a poetry book, both from 1893. In both works it is possible to identify the writer's literary project, which combined symbolist elements with elements of Parnassian poetry.
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Born on November 24, 1861, in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Cruz e Sousa was the son of slaves; he was sponsored by an aristocratic family who financed his studies and, with the death of his protector, he abandoned his studies and began a career as a writer. He actively collaborated with the Santa Catarina press, signing abolitionist chronicles and participating in campaigns in favor of the black cause. In 1890 he moved to the city of Rio de Janeiro, where he performed several functions simultaneously with his life as a writer. He died of tuberculosis, aged 36, on March 19, 1898, in the city of Antônio Carlos, in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais.
The richness and diversity of his literature can be seen by reading his only two works published during his lifetime, Missal and Broquéis. Symbolist elements coexist in his verses, such as pessimism, death, metaphysical poetry; and Parnassian elements, such as the lapidary form, the taste for the fixed form (especially the sonnet), the refined verbalism and the strength of the images. Unjustified in his time, when blacks were not commonly seen in prominent roles, Cruz e Sousa was only recognized posthumously. thanks to the commitment of literary scholars and the French sociologist Roger Bastide, who placed him among the main writers of Symbolism universal.
For you to know a little more about the work of this important poet, the site School Education selected fifteen poems by Cruz e Sousa that will immerse you in the interesting universe of one of the essential writers of our literature, whose work is always remembered in competition tests and vestibular. We hope you enjoy reading!
acrobat of pain
Laughs, laughs, in a stormy laugh,
like a clown, how awkward,
nervous, laughs, in an absurd, inflated laugh
irony and violent pain.
From the atrocious, bloodthirsty laughter,
shakes the bells, and convulsed
jumps, gavroche, jumps clown, perched
by the death throes of this slow agony...
An encore is required and an encore is not to be despised!
Let's go! tense the muscles, tense
in these macabre steel pirouettes... .
And though you fall to the ground, trembling,
drowned in your gusty and hot blood,
laugh! Heart, most sad clown.
sunset symphonies
Muslin like daytime mists
the harmonious shadows descend from the sunset,
veiled and muslin shadows
for the deep nocturnal solitudes.
Virgin tabernacles, sacrosanct urns,
the skies are resplendent with rosy sidereals,
of the moon and the majestic stars
illuminating the darkness of the caves.
Oh! for these symphonic sunsets
the earth gives off the scent of golden vases,
incense from divine censers.
The morbid full moons steam...
And how in the blue they moan and cry
zithers, harps, mandolins, violins…
lacerations
O flesh that I bloody loved,
O lethal and painful voluptuousness,
essences of heliotropes and roses
with a warm, tropical, painful essence...
Meats, virgin and warm from the East
of the Dream and the fabulous Stars,
sweet and wonderful meats,
intensely tempting the sun…
Pass by, torn apart by jealousy,
through the deepest nightmares
that stab me with deadly horrors...
Pass, pass, broken in torments,
in tears, in tears, in tears
in woe, in mourning, in convulsions, in pain...
Lonely soul
O sweet and sad and palpitating Soul!
that zithers sob lonely
by the distant, visionary Regions
of your secret and fascinating Dream!
How many zones of purifying light,
how many silences, how many different shadows
of immortal, imaginary spheres,
they speak to you, O captivating Soul!
what a flame turns on your night lights
and wear your taciturn mysteries
of the splendors of the arch of alliance?
Why are you so melancholy,
like an infant, adolescent archangel,
forgotten in the valleys of Hope?!
Free
Free! To be free from slave matter,
rip off the shackles that plague us
and free to penetrate the Gifts that seal
soul and lend you all the ethereal lava.
Free from the human, from the terrestrial bava
of the harmful hearts that govern,
when our senses rebel
against the two-faced Infamy that depraved.
Free! very free to walk purer,
closer to nature and safer
of his Love, of all justice.
Free! to feel nature,
to enjoy, in universal Greatness,
Fertile and archangelic sloths.
Irony of Tears
Together with death, life flourishes!
We walked laughing along the grave.
Mouth open, gaping, dark
From the pit it is like a rotten flower.
Death resembles the strange Daisy
Of our body, Faust without luck...
She walks around every creature
In an indefinite macabre dance.
It comes clad in its black silks
And lugubrious hammer blows and tredas
Of Illusions the eternal bier preaches.
And goodbye vain paths laughing worlds!
Here comes the wolf that devours dreams,
Hungry, absconsed, unthinking blind!
Old
You're dead, you're old, you're tired!
Like the juice of stinging tears
Here they are, the wrinkles, the undefined ones
Nights of being defeated and fatigued.
The icy twilight surrounds you
That goes gloomy shrouding lives
Before repose in groaning songs
Deep down heart torn apart.
Head hung with fatigue,
You feel the taciturn and friendly death,
May your nervous circles rule.
You're old, you're dead! O pain, delirium,
Shattered soul of martyrdom
O despair of eternal disgrace.
The death
Oh! what sweet sadness and what tenderness
In the anxious, afflicted look of those who die...
What deep anchors do they use?
Those who penetrate this dark night!
From life to the cold veils of the grave
Vague tremulous moments elapse…
And from the eyes the tears flow
Like beacons of human misfortune.
Then they descend to the frozen gulfs
Those who on earth wander sighing,
With the old hearts tantalized.
Everything black and sinister is rolling
Báratro below, to the sobbing echoes
From the gale of Death rippling, howling...
Perfumed Mockery
When in the mess
To receive some news from you,
I go to the post office
Which is at the end of the cruelest of streets,
Seeing so fed up,
From an abundance that no one collects,
The hands of others, of newspapers and letters
And mine, naked – it hurts, it afflicts me…
And in a mocking tone,
I think that everything mocks me, mocks me,
Laugh, apostrophize me,
Because I'm alone and head down, helpless,
The night walks in my head, in a circle,
More humiliated than a beggar, a worm...
Ineffable
There is nothing that dominates me and that defeats me
When my soul mutely wakes up...
It bursts into flower, it overflows
In the uproar of immense emotion.
I am like a defendant of heavenly sentence,
Condemned by Love, who remembers
Of Love and always on the edge Silence
Of stars all the sky in which he wanders and thinks.
Clear, my eyes become clearer
And I see all of the rare charms
And other more serene dawns!
All the voices I seek and call
I hear them inside me because I love them
In my soul whirling rapturously
antiphon
Ó White, white forms, Clear forms
Of moonlight, of snow, of mist!
O Vague, fluid, crystalline forms...
Incense from the thuribles of the Aras
Forms of Love, constellaring pure,
Of virgins and vaporous saints…
Wandering sparkles, mean frills
And pains of lilies and roses...
Indefinable supreme songs,
Harmonies of Color and Perfume…
Hours of Sunset, tremulous, extreme,
Requiem of the Sun that the Pain of Light sums up…
Visions, psalms and quiet songs,
Mutes of flabby, sobbing organs…
Numbness of voluptuous poisons
Subtle and smooth, morbid, radiant…
Infinite dispersed spirits,
Ineffable, edenic, aerial,
Fertilize the Mystery of these verses
With the ideal flame of all mysteries.
From Dream the bluest diaphaneities
Let them fly, let them rise in the stanza
And emotions, all chastities
From the soul of the Verse, through the verses sing.
May the golden pollen of the finest stars
Fertilize and inflame the clear and burning rhyme...
Let the correction of alabasters shine
Sonically, luminously.
Original forces, essence, grace
From women's meats, delicacies...
All this effluvium that passes through waves
From the Ether in the rosy and golden currents...
Diluted crystals of alacre flashes,
Desires, vibrations, urges, breaths
Tawny victories, bitter triumphs,
The strangest shudders...
Black flowers of boredom and vague flowers
Of vain, tantalizing, sick loves...
Deep redness from old sores
In blood, open, dripping in rivers...
All! alive and nervous and hot and strong,
In the chimerical whirlpools of the Dream,
Pass, singing, before the ghastly profile
And the cabalistic troop of Death...
Siderations
To the icy crystal stars
Cravings and desires are rising,
Climbing engagement blues and sidereals
From white clouds to expanse wearing…
In a procession of winged songs
The archangels, the smiting zithers,
Pass, from robes to silver trophies,
The golden wings thinly opening...
From the ethereal censers of snow
Clear aromatic incense, limpid and light,
Foggy waves of Visions rise…
And the endless cravings and desires
They go with the archangels formulating rites
Of Eternity that sings in the Stars...
Incarnation
Carnal, let so many desires be carnal,
carnal, be carnal so many yearnings,
palpitations and thrills and dizziness,
of the harps of emotion so many arpeggios...
Dreams, that go, by trembling flutters,
at night, in the moonlight, swell the breasts
dairy, with fine and bluish veins
virginity, modesty, shame...
May all misty dreams be carnal
of strange, vague, starry paths
where the Visions of love sleep cold...
Dreams, palpitations, desires and cravings
form, with clarity and fragrance,
the incarnation of livid Beloved!
old sorrows
Diluences of light, old sorrows
of the souls who died for the fight!
You are the beloved shadows of beauties
today colder than rough stone.
Incognito murmurs of a cave
where the Sea sings the psalms and the rudeness
of obscure religions — unpolluted voice
of all titanic magnitudes.
Pass by, remembering the old sensations,
passions that were once docile friends,
in the light of eternal glorified suns.
Joys of long ago! And today and now,
old sorrows that go away
in the sunset of Saudade shrouded! …
Luana Alves
Graduated in Letters
