João Cabral de Melo Neto

João Cabral de Melo Neto
Born João Cabral de Melo Neto
9 January 1920
Recife, Brazil
Died 9 October 1999 (aged 79)
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Occupation Writer
Nationality Brazilian
Notable awards Camões Prize
1990
Neustadt International Prize for Literature
1992

João Cabral de Melo Neto (January 9, 1920 – October 9, 1999) was a Brazilian poet and diplomat under the aesthetics of modernism. He was awarded the 1990 Camões Prize, the greatest literary prize in the Portuguese language, and the 1992 Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

Life

Melo Neto was born in Recife, Pernambuco, and died in Rio de Janeiro, and worked as a diplomat for most of his life. He occupied the 37th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1968 until his death in 1999. He is often quoted as saying "I try not to perfume the flower". His works are said to be dry, devoid of the exaggerated emotions that are usually associated with poetry, sticking instead to images, 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.

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, 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, Cabral was a friend of the painter Joan Miró and the poet Joan Brossa. A member of the Pernambuco Academy of Arts and the Brazilian Academy of Letters, he was awarded several literary prizes. When he died in 1999, it was speculated that he was a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

He was married to Stella Maria Barbosa de Oliveira, with whom he had the children Rodrigo, Inez, Luiz, Isabel and João. His second marriage was in 1986, to the poet Marly de Oliveira.

Poetry

In the poetry of Cabral, antithetical dualities adorned with baroque are worked to exhaustion: between time and space, inside and outside, massive and non-massive, male and female, northeast and Andalusian fertile semidesert, or Savanna and Pernambucan humid desert. It is a poetry that causes some shock in one who expects an poetry of emotions because his work is basically cerebral and "sensationalist," seeking a purely objective constructive and communicative poetry.

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 tendencies, he 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 cutting through the feeling of emptiness that makes it seem as if a knife is cutting into flesh.

Some words that are often used in his poetry are: 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.

He was rejected several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature (which until now has never been given to a Brazilian). He received numerous awards in Brazil and abroad, always leaving their mark, and he was a great inspiration for the concrete poetry movement in Brazil and the world.

Works

Melo Neto's most famous poems are:

His poetic works, a trend that goes to the surrealist poetry popular, are 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

Further reading

English

Portuguese

Spanish

External links

Preceded by
Assis Chateaubriand
Brazilian Academy of Letters - Occupant of the 37th chair
1968 — 1999 		Succeeded by
Ivan Junqueira