João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920–1999) was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets 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 designing a building is often used to describe his poetry. It usually follows a strict meter and assonant rhymes.
He worked as a diplomat for most of his life.
In 1990, he won the Camões Prize, the greatest prize in literature of the Portuguese language. In 1992, João Cabral received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which some consider to be almost as prestigious as the Nobel Prize.
He occupied the 37th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters 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.
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Melo Neto's most famous poems are:
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.
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| Preceded by Assis Chateaubriand |
Brazilian Academy of Letters - Occupant of the 37th chair 1968 — 1999 |
Succeeded by Ivan Junqueira |