How to wake up without hurt?
Restart without horror?
My sleep carried me
to that kingdom where life is inexistent
and I remain inert without passion.
How to repeat, day after day,
the incomplete fable,
to bear the likeness of all rough things
of tomorrow with the harsh things today?
How to protect myself from wounds
that tear in me the events,
any event
that resembles the earth and its purple
madness?
And the one more wound inflicted by myself
every single hour - torturer
of the innocent that I am not?
No one answers, life is cruel.
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MariGoes, you said the poet here "allows life's events pass by without reacting to them." i dont agree, otherwise he wouldn't be concerned of being wounded. i also dont think his pain is that of a "lover." he is wounded by the madness of life, the unstoppable, absurd, ignorant torrent that pains us all, fear. Fear is the torment we inflict on ourselves. and, as for "dark" poetry, that seems a pose or an aesthetic postion. de andrade simply told the truth as he saw it. and i see purple as the color a bruise becomes.
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As someone who's been experimenting with dark poetry for sometime I could relate with this piece.I love the pessimism and the last line says it all.But what caught my attention in here is "purple madness".Just yesterday,exactly 12 hours ago I wrote a poem about purple memories and insanity.
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Torturer of the innocent- the comment from Cristina from Brazil below puts this as a love poem and it makes fine sense that way, the purple madness and torturer become expressions of passion and intensity and it fits very well. Drummond's work seems to be able to express many things at once, and now i have seen the wry side of him too, and i must say it invites a delicious parody too...PK
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From guest Cristina from Brazil (contact)
Carlos Drummond de Andrade talks about loving someone. He loves this person so much it hurts. However, his relationship is not perfect and he, at the same time, cannot live without his lover. So he hurts and is afraid of the following day, where he'll be facing his pain of living with someone he cannot live without. -
And the roles we play in a society can be so different from that we might wish, captives to some great extent of the structures of things...I would not have war or ignorance of needy poor, yet i do just that, and deprive someone of food when i pay western prices for gasoline, there is much madness out there and much more lost opportunity, and we become inured to it all...a wonderful thoughtful poem here, full of subtlety and pointed use of words; broad and incisive ideas, a difficult translation to English done so remarkably well...PK
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From guest peteskid (contact)
And the roles we play in a society can be so different from that we might wish, captives to some great extent of the strucutures of things..I would not have war or ignirance of needy poor, yet i do just that, and deprive someone of food when i pay western prices for gasoline, there is much madness out there and much nmore lost opportunity, and we become inured to it all...a wonderful thoughtful poem here; full of subtlety and pointed use of words; a difficult translation to English done well...PK -
My first thought was Guilt was causing the hurt but after reading it again i feel the character has led a life of sadness and being hurt. Sleeping, he can get away from the physical sense and memories. He admits he's not an innocent- perhaps this is the guilt theory. I do know that this man intrigues me. Von
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Exceptional
Another questioning poem by Drummond de Andrade.
"And the one more wound inflicted by myself
every single hour - torturer"
Anyone have any idea what that might mean, what that wound might be? What is the self-inflicted wound? Thinking? Living? -
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I think the wound he talks about is his own inertia.
The question above the one you mentioned "How to protect myself from wounds
that tear in me the events"... it does lead me to think that the writer allows life's events pass by without reacting to them.
Drummond was a poet who wanted to do so much, to add his contribution to the Brazilian society, and he died with the idea that he didn't accomplish much. He died with the wrong idea.
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Ah thank you, that reply was fast.
Ah yes, I'd read that about Drummond. It's an interesting companion to his "Shoulders" poem.
What he did do still resonates today, just look at us, still reading and interpreting his work.
Thanks!
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