CRUZ E SOUSA
Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil 1861 – Rio de Janeiro 1898
When literary historians call João da Cruz e Sousa the "Black Swan" of Brazilian Symbolism, they mean to indicate his race, his eloquence and eminence, his Modernist imagery, his Platonism, his sonorous elegance and intimate formalism. Often, however, the characterization also carries some implications about Cruz e Sousa's attitude with respect to his negritude. He is sometimes read as a writer who was self-depletingly devoted to European structures of thought (white "codes," to use Manuel Bandeira's terminology), who bitterly resented his blackness and its enforced limitations, who rebelled against Christianity with an Oedipal resentfulness, and who internalized racial injustice in a way that generated masochism and envy. It is true that Cruz e Sousa's lyrics are often organized around pairs of white and black symbols (which figure other dualities: form versus chaos, purity versus suffering, dream versus pain, transcendence versus sensuality), but he tries to subsume the racial overtones of those dualities into philosophical systems, patterns of color symbolism derived from the French Symbolists, and so on. He attempts to make sense of personal differentness by organizing its representation into almost mystical linguistic patterns. By contrast, his last poems, in Últimos sonetos (Final Sonnets, 1905 posthum.), represent an effort, influenced by Schopenhauer, to focus his personal anguish on questions of mortality and on the meaning of private suffering in the absence of coherent philosophical systems of belief.
Antífona
Ó Formas alvas, brancas, Formas claras
de luares, de neves, de neblinas!...
Ó Formas vagas, fluídas, cristalinas...
Incensos dos turíbulos das aras...
Formas do Amor, constelarmente puras,
de Virgens e de Santas vaporosas...
Brilhos errantes, mádidas frescuras
e dolências de lírios e de rosas...
Indefiníveis músicas supremas,
harmonias da Cor e do Perfume...
Horas do Ocaso, trêmulas, extremas,
Réquiem do Sol que a Dor da Luz resume..
Visões, salmos e cânticos serenos,
surdinas de órgãos flébeis, soluçantes...
Dormências de volúpicos venenos
sutis e suaves, mórbidos, radiantes...
Infinitos espíritos dispersos,
inefáveis, edênicos, aéreos,
fecundai o Mistério destes versos
com a chama ideal de todos os mistérios.
Do Sonho as mais azuis diafaneidades
que fuljam, que na Estrofe se levantem
e as emoções, todas as castidades
da alma do Verso, pelos versos cantem.
Que o pólen de ouro dos mais finos astros
fecunde e inflame a rima clara e ardente...
Que brilhe a correção dos alabastros
sonoramente, luminosamente.
Forças originais, essência, graça
de carrnes de mulher, delicadezas...
Todo esse eflúvio que por ondas passa
do Éter nas róseas e áureas correntezas...
Cristais diluídos de clarões álacres,
desejos, vibrações, anciãs, alentos,
fulvas vitórias, triunfamentos acres,
os mais estranhos estremecimentos...
Flores negras do tédio e flores vagas
de amores vãos, tantálicos, doentios...
Fundas vermelhidões de velhas chagas
em sangue, abertas, escorrendo em rios...
Tudo! vivo e nervoso e quente e forte,
nos turbilhões quiméricos do Sonho,
passe, cantando, ante o perfil medonho
e o tropel cabalístico da Morte...
Antiphony
Oh pale, white Forms, clear Forms
of moonlight, snow, and mist!...
Oh vague, fluid, translucent Forms...
Incense burning on altars...
Forms set with pure, bright lights
of the love of Virgins and vaporous Saints...
Wandering brilliances, drenched coolnesses
and sorrows of lilies and of roses...
Indescribable music from heaven,
harmonies of Color and of Fragrance...
Sunset's hesitant last moments,
Requiem for the Sun in Light's Pain...
Visions, psalms and peaceful hymns,
muffled sounds of organs, sobbing...
Suspension of sensual malices
morbid, ecstatíc, subtle and soothing...
Infinite spirits, scattered,
inexpressible, Edenic, ethereal,
fertilize the Mystery of these verses
with the ideal flame of all mysteries.
Let the Dream's bluest gauzes
be bright let the Stanza be exalted
and let the emotions, the chastities
of the soul of Verse, sing in these verses.
Let the gold pollen of the finest stars
fill and inflame the rhyme with clear passion...
Let the purification of alabasters glisten
sonorously, luminously.
Primitive forces, essences, grace
in women's bodies, kindnesses...
Ali those auras that flow from Ether
in waves of rose-scented, gilded currents...
Crystals flawed by eager flashes,
desires, vibrations, longings, gusts
of courage, bitter triumphs, dark conquests,
the most peculiar quiverings...
Dark flowers of boredom and vague flowers
of empty, unwholesome, elusive loves...
Crimson depths of old sores,
open, bleeding in rivers...
Let all! alive, nervous, hot, and strong,
in the Dream's fantastical whirlpool
pass singing before Death's occult
confusion and terrible profile...
1893 trans. Nancy Vieira Couto
===============================================
Acrobata da dor
Gargalha, ri, num riso de tormenta,
como um palhaço, que desengonçado,
nervoso, ri, num riso absurdo, inflado
de uma ironia e de uma dor violenta.
Da gargalhada atroz, sanguinolenta,
agita os guizos, e convulsionado.
Salta, gavroche, salta clown, varado
pelo estertor dessa agonia lenta...
Pedem-te bis e um bis não se despreza!
Vamos! reteza os músculos, reteza
nessas macabras piruetas d'aço...
E embora caias sobre o chão, fremente,
afogado em teu sangue estuoso e quente,
ri! Coração, tristíssimo palhaço.
Acrobat of Pain
Chortle, laugh, in a laughter of storm
like a clown who, lanky and nervous,
laughs, in an absurd laughter, inflated
with violent irony and pain.
With that atrocious and bloody guffaw—:
rattle the jester's bells, convulsing.
Jump, puppet: jump, clown, pierced
by the stertor of this slow agony—
You're asked for an encore, and that's not to be sneered at.
Come on! Tighten the muscles up, tighten up
in these macabre steel pirouettes...
And though you fall on the ground, quivering,
drowned in your hot and seething blood,
laugh! Heart, saddest of clowns.
1893 trans. Flavia Vidal
===============================================
Sexta-feira Santa
Lua absíntica, verde, feiticeira,
pasmada como um vício monstruoso...
Um cão estranho fuça na esterqueira,
uivando para o espaço fabuloso.
É esta a negra e santa Sexta-feira!
Cristo está morto, como um vil leproso,
chagado e frio, na feroz cegueira
da Morte, o sangue roxo e tenebroso.
A serpente do mal e do pecado
um sinistro veneno esverdeado
verte do Morto na mudez serena.
Mas da sagrada Redenção do Cristo
em vez do grande Amor, puro, imprevisto,
brotam fosforescências de gangrena!
Good Friday
Absinthe, green, bewitching moon,
amazed as a monstrous vice...
A strange dog scrabbles in the dunghill,
howling at the fabulous space.
This is the black and holy Friday!
Christ is dead, like a vile leper,
ulcerous and cold, in the ferocious blindness
of Death, his blood purple and shadowy.
The serpent of evil and of sin
a sinister greenish poison
spills from the dead Man in serene muteness.
But from the sacred Redemption of the Christ
instead of the great, pure unforeseen Love,
sprout up phosphorescences of gangrene!
1905 trans. Flavia Vidal
=============================================
Ódio sagrado
O meu ódio, meu ódio majestoso,
meu ódio santo e puro e benfazejo,
unge-me a fronte com teu grande beijo,
torna-me humilde e torna-me orgulhoso.
Humilde, com os humildes generoso,
orgulhoso com os seres sem Desejo,
sem Bondade, sem Fé e sem lampejo
de sol fecundador e carinhoso.
O meu ódio, meu lábaro bendito,
de minh'alma agitado no infinito,
através de outros lábaros sagrados,
ódio são, ódio bom! sê meu escudo
contra os vilões do Amor, que infamam tudo,
das sete torres dos mortais Pecados!
Sacred Hatred
Oh, my hatred, my majestic hatred,
my holy and pure and benevolent hatred,
annoint my forehead with your great kiss,
render me humble and render me lofty.
Humble, but generous to the humble:
lofty to those beings without Desire,
without Goodness, without Faith, without the gleam
of the fertilizing, affectionate sun.
Oh, my hatred, my blessed standard-banner
waving in the infinity of my soul,
beyond other sacred banners.
Sound, hatred: good hatred! Be my shield
against the villains of Love, who defame everything,
from the seven towers of the mortal Sins!
1905 trans. Flavia Vidal
From: TAPSCOTT, Stephen, ed. TWENTIETH-CENTURY LATIN AMERICAN POETRY. A bilingual anthology. Austin: University of Texas, 1997. ISBN 978-0-292-78140-7
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