Although I particularly appreciate rhymed verse, I would never endorse Bilac and Guimarães Passos, who maintained “that in any verse composition one must not prescind from rhyme. It is indispensable”. There are several reasons for this. But one of them deserves special mention. I do not know how the aforementioned poets composed, but it seems necessary to me, after skipping the whole process of ideation of the poem, that a draft be made of it. If I want to make rhymes, then I first sketch the poem in blank verse, to then concentrate on the rhythm, the rhymes, and the careful selection of words. I realize clearly that if I were to worry about rhymes at this point in the draft, it would only hinder my creative impulse, interrupting the flow of ideas to open a dictionary, something absolutely counterproductive. Therefore, I have to conclude that this creative impulse, in its spontaneous form, calls for manifestation in blank verse—not to say free verse. Well then: I know that not every great artistic effect is spontaneous, quite the contrary, as almost all the brilliance of a work comes from carefully thought out details. Rhyme, therefore, although an artificiality, is justified. But practice shows, time and time again, that to rhyme verses is to adulterate them, and even though one may gain in beauty by doing so, that initial naturalness is lost. Finally, I get where I want to go. There will be verses in which the poet will be so stimulated that he will feel himself emotionally pouring his soul out onto the paper; verses that will come out like an avalanche, that will express his innermost self and will spring forth with a momentum and sharpness different from what he normally creates. I am not sure how much is gained by rhyming such verses, I mean, it seems to me that the poet who deforms them to fit formalities may commit a crime against himself and insult the very singular moment in which he conceived them.
Tag: literature
Everything Indicates That I Will Complete a Full Year…
Everything indicates that I will complete a whole year of exclusive dedication to fifteen miserable poems or, more precisely, to about one thousand seven hundred verses. Laugh, Hugo, laugh! And, at the end of the process, there will be no publication, because it is necessary for the verses to rest—although it seems that this is what they have been doing in the last months. Were these notes not a very efficient way to give vent to the ideas that come and pile up, I would be faced with an impregnable mountain of annotations. I have, at the bottom, some forty perfectly idealized short stories that require no more than a day’s work to be realized on paper. Besides, I do not know how many plots for novels, plays, or whatever. Even for poems, there are excesses that could not be used in this volume. And I am left wondering how, in the past, artists who did not have secretaries would organize themselves after ten, twenty years of creative work. Without a computer, it seems to me that I would be forced to give up…
The Great Genius Most Often Lives Hindered
I believe it was Carpeaux who noted that the great genius most often lives hindered by circumstances. And even if he does not want to, even if he resists, a force seems to set him in motion, prohibiting unproductive inertia. Thus we have the most common profile: an individual neither poor, nor rich; neither totally deprived of means, nor blessed with too many facilities. He takes action; he does it because he needs to, because he feels pulsating a desire and a need to surpass himself, to elevate himself, which is nothing more than a flat refusal of his actual conditions. From this, he acquires an unbreakable motivation, ready to go to the ultimate consequences to achieve what he has set out to do. He adapts as best he can to the momentary hindrances and goes forward, always forward. Then, all this complex set of circumstances that Pessoa talks about, especially those of the environment, makes his spirit exceptionally vigorous, so that he is finally benefited by the necessary—as Pessoa also notes—”minimal episodes of luck”. It is a very interesting phenomenon, and one that makes one think…
Just as Machado’s Irony…
Just as Machado’s irony, badly imitated—and so imitated—is irritating, so is this simulated lightness in poetry, this simplicity that pretends to be profound, this delicacy that, when it is not the authentic expression of a temperament, is annoying. In short: Drummond and Bandeira. Perhaps the greatest curse of success is its offspring, that is, the imitators. How embarrassing is the technique when exposed without the original varnish! And to see all these cheap copies proliferating, making ridiculous the very creativity that engendered it… Directly, it is true, the originals are not tarnished; however, it is difficult to say that any artist would rejoice in forgeries. There remain antidotes, and none seems more potent than inserting absurd, repulsive eccentricities into one’s own art, which no imitator will have the courage to appropriate.