By SERAPHIM PIETROFORTE*
Taking care of the prosodic and phonological dimensions of language, at least in poetic discourse, far from belletrism and literary whims, means taking care of linguistic expression.
I have a degree in linguistics and Portuguese language; I became a professor of semiotics and literature during my academic career… poetry, for me, among so many forms of approach, is identified with working with language.
In view of this, to justify my opinion, I would like to tell a personal experience involving books and authors; in this case, three books and three authors, completely different in terms of styles and distant in time and space: (i) the metamorphoses, by Ovid, in particular, the verses about Myrrha and her misfortunes – translated by Paulo Farmhouse Alberto –; (ii) the book of short stories The king in yellow, by Robert Chambers, focusing on the short story The street of Our Lady of the Fields – translated by Edmundo Barreiros –; (iii) and the long novel Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon – translated by Paulo Henriques Britto.
The story of Mirra is fantastic. I am not referring only to the tragic love for her father, but also: (a) to the way in which Ovid expresses the young woman's thoughts, between doubts and certainties, plans and frustrations; (b) to the synchronization of the story with the rites of the time, when married women would retreat into abstinence, away from their husbands, even avoiding hygiene rules, which were contrary to the delicious perfume extracted from the tree into which the protagonist transforms herself; (c) to the birth of Adonis, the son of the young woman and her father, personifying mythologies about aromas and vegetation and their cycles.
Robert Chambers, in turn, conceives a scary story in The king in yellow. In the short stories of the volume, there is a cursed book that tells the story of the King in Yellow; whoever has the misfortune – or luck – of reading this book, present in the first stories, ends up going mad. In the final stories, however, this theme disappears and other topics emerge, besides terror; among them, Robert Chambers thematizes love.
So in The street of Our Lady of the Fields, there is a beautiful description of the affection between two young people, namely, a French girl, whose emancipation and free love are confused with prostitution, and a provincial boy from the USA. Love does not appear abruptly; Robert Chambers slowly and meticulously describes the union, describing gestures and facial expressions, not forgetting the symbolism of nature, correlated to the love scene, and the details of the statue of Eros, located near the couple, representing the epiphany experienced by the lovers.
Finally, the novel Gravity's Rainbow, in which Thomas Pynchon creates a delirium of more than 800 pages. The story takes place at the end of the Second World War, and its protagonist is the American fighter Tyrone Slothrop; the discourse, however, is not limited to the chronological narrative of supposedly historical and boring facts.
In the novel, amidst the fragmented narrative, Thomas Pynchon excels in descriptions, enumerations and, among other literary resources, in the abundance of unique characters, originating from different universes, such as cartoons, songs, poems and comic books, meeting in parapsychology and paranormal research laboratories, casinos, abandoned ships, cities lost in war zones and other unusual places.
All of this, however, is not limited to good ideas coordinated around the same protagonist; it is, in fact, an excellent work with language, after all, languages are not subordinate to imagined content, precisely the opposite occurs, as narratives, descriptions and dissertations emanate from language, through the language used.
Now, given the choice of these three works to reflect on poetry, it is worth asking why, among them, only one falls into this literary genre, while the others belong to prose. As for The king in yellow, written at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century, its conception coincides with Symbolism, whose characteristics, although disseminated in verses, did not fail to influence prose writers, generating prose close to poetry – the commented passage of the story The street of Our Lady of the Fields, due to the symbolic correlations drawn between the characters, the scenery and nature illustrate such procedures –; as for Gravity's Rainbow, the same considerations pointed out in Robert Chambers' story apply, simply inserting the novel into postmodernity instead of invoking Symbolism, observing in it historical eclecticism, stylistic pluralism and transgression of traditional artistic genres, including literary ones.
To continue, it is worth commenting, even briefly, on the moment in my life when I read these texts. Unfortunately, although the readings were quite joyful, I did so during the Covid-19 pandemic, which ravaged planet Earth in 2020 and 2021. I know that many fellow poets and prose writers produced a lot during this time of isolation; I, on the other hand, was unable to write anything during the first year of isolation; only in the middle of the second year, after reading Ovid, Chambers and Pynchon, did I begin revising my novels, short stories and poems.
Under those circumstances, I confess to being disappointed with my work up until then. However, my oversights were not only due to my own literary shortcomings, since I shared most of my defects with several writers of the same generation. So, without naming any authors, I will list some of those imperfections: (i) ignorance of Portuguese verb conjugations, leading to excessive use of compound forms, and therefore the use of the infinitive, especially in the first conjugation; (ii) excessive use of the verb “ser” in the nominal predicate, indicating ignorance of other linking verbs and approximate synonyms of the verb “ser”; (iii) excessive use of the verb “ser” in the passive voice, indicating ignorance of the synthetic passive voice; (iv) predominance of asyndetic coordinated periods, which is why subordinate periods are missing and conjunctions in the Portuguese language are not used; (v) excessive use of “que” (that), whether as a relative pronoun or as an integral conjunction, resulting in the absence of reduced sentences; (vi) excessive use of the verb “dizer” (to say) to indicate direct speech, demonstrating ignorance of other illocutionary verbs; (vii) ignorance of the morpheme -mente (a morpheme), which forms an adverb; consequently, adjectives are used as adverbs; (viii) poor and excessively colloquial vocabulary for the literary register. In other words, writers seem to be unfamiliar with the raw material of literature, or rather, they are unfamiliar with the language itself; I do not want to sound rude, but not understanding the grammatical terms of my arguments already expresses this.
Well, if such issues are present in much of the prose, it is up to the reader to imagine the neglect of poetry, when the work with the plane of verbal expression, or rather, with prosody and phonology, is vehemently explicit. On this issue, it is quite difficult to argue with poets because, unfortunately, many of them identify poetry with literary freedom, inspiration, mystical ecstasy, mediumship and other positions that are, at the very least, undefined, confusing and contradictory, if not erroneous and mistaken.
Taking care of the prosodic and phonological dimensions of language, at least in poetic discourse, far from belletrism and literary whims, means taking care of linguistic expression, therefore, of its totality, after all, language is made of expression and not just of content. Thus, resorting to poetic forms such as the sonnet, for example, is not limited to sophisticating, with supposedly useless rules, the beauties of simplicity, mutilating them; calling upon sonnets, haikus, madrigals, etc., implies, in fact, dialoguing with literature itself, proposing, to readers and other poets, a similar interaction.
Still with the sonnet, from Petrarca and his invention to EM de Melo e Castro, with the polygons of the sonnet, and Glauco Mattoso, with 5555 compositions, poetry is discussed first and foremost; in view of this, writing sonnets is not restricted to stringing rhymes and decasyllables distributed in two quatrains and two tercets. In general terms, the classical sonnet represents syllogistic thought in poetic terms; strictly speaking, in this poetic form a general theme is presented and then treated in personal terms, seeking, to conclude, some solution. In this way, using sonnets refers, at least, to the foundations of Western thought itself; to illustrate, here is the sonnet Who sees, Lady, clear and manifest, by Camões:
Who sees, Lady, clear and manifest
The beautiful being of your beautiful eyes,
If you don't lose sight just by seeing them,
He no longer pays what he owes for your gesture.
This seemed like a fair price to me;
But I, because I deserve them as an advantage,
I gave more of my life and soul to want them,
Where I no longer have any leftovers.
So that life and soul and hope,
And everything I have, everything is yours,
And I just take advantage of that.
Because it is such a blessing
Giving you what I have and what I can,
That the more I pay you, the more I owe you.
I don't want to get lost analyzing poems, but the following sonnet by Bocage, The most beautiful lady was shitting, written two centuries later, dialogues with the Renaissance form, however, incorporating the Fescennine tone, typical of Baroque thought, so contrary to Camonian balance, showing that, from the eyes to the sky, everything fits in the sonnet:
The most beautiful lady was shitting,
And never has a sky been seen so white;
But seeing beauty shit
It disgusts the greediest of appetites!
She expelled the stinking mass
With some difficulty, because it was hard;
A love letter of cleanliness
Served that smelly part:
Now send it to the prettiest girl
A love letter that is flattering
Affections move, hearts incite:
To go see it serve as a curtain
At the door, where the stench and the swindle dwell,
From the dark palace of the tarman!
Over time, three centuries after Bocage and five after Camões, another Portuguese poet, EM de Melo e Castro, took up the sonnet again, reworking it through symbolist conceptions, even citing the Brazilian poet Cruz e Sousa, another sonnetist, and incorporating, in the series Polygony of the sonnet, from modern avant-garde to the classical sonnet. Here is the Polygony of sonnet 19:
the voices for the voice for this voice
voice shiver height and timbre
the voice by this voice or by the voices
endless polygon polyvoice
sonorous voice constellation cascade
serene dust suddenly agitated
lung foam polyhedron
powder vital poison stained glass window sideways
the voices the volutes the violated
the sublingual violet waves
lake voice light lialums
fast I saw the voices times times
extinct calls to stay
the voices for the voice for the place
Finally, Glauco Mattoso, who, compulsively and creating conceptual art, composed 5555, thematizing everything in the literary forms of the classic sonnet, from rock bands to fruits and vegetables sold at the market, including sadomasochistic sex. Here is the poem Flatulent:
Farting, more than burping, inspires laughter
tasty, unbridled, laughing,
from the side of whoever may have farted,
while others make bad judgments.
Based on my case, I analyze,
because, even though I am alone, locked up,
guffaw after the gases have been released
and I inhale my stench, like a Narcissus.
I start to imagine the reaction
of someone who is fond of rules of etiquette
caught by surprise by the firework…
My dream was to fart black smoke
at a banquet table, and then
let the laughter overtake me…
In Glauco Mattoso's sonnet, one should not only consider the humor of the poet's reflections expressed in verse. Alongside the laughter resounding in the rhymes of the quatrains, with emphasis on the vowels /a/ and /i/, characteristic of the interjections in ah and ih expressing laughter, there are the alliterations of the occlusive consonants simulating flatus and the vibrant ones, eructations; Glauco also follows the syllogistic reasoning throughout the stanzas to take care of farts and burps, referring to literary forms that are at least 700 years old. From this perspective, verses like these are not limited to specific poems, fruits of the occasion, but dialogue with the poetic art, expressing the history of poetry itself.
Such procedures do not stop only at fixed forms, such as sonnets, haikus, etc. With creative poets, this extends to all forms; Roberto Piva, in the poem I saw the angels of Sodom, dialogues, at least, with the famous poem Howl, by Allen Ginsberg, with surrealism and homoerotic poetry. Here is the poem:
I saw the angels of Sodom climbing
a mountain to the sky
And their wings destroyed by fire
fanned the afternoon air
I saw the angels of Sodom sowing
prodigies for creation not
lose your harp rhythm
I saw the angels of Sodom licking
the wounds of those who died without
boast, of supplicants, of suicides
and the dead young people
I saw the angels of Sodom growing
with fire and from their mouths they sprang
blind jellyfish
I saw the angels of Sodom disheveled and
violently annihilating the merchants,
stealing the sleep of virgins,
creating turbulent words
I saw the angels of Sodom inventing
God's madness and repentance
Similarly, Hilda Hilst, in the first call of the Ten calls to a friend, in addition to sowing decasyllabic verses between the stanzas, it dialogues with the cantigas de amigo, representative of the troubadour poetry of the Late Middle Ages, using metaphors as old as humanity itself, such as the woman identified with the earth and the man, with water, with the shepherd and with the sailor.
If I seem nocturnal and imperfect to you
Look at me again. Because tonight
I looked at myself, as if you were looking at me.
And it was as if the water
Wish
Escape from your home which is the river
And just sliding, not even touching the edge
I looked at you. And for so long
I hope
May your most fraternal body of water
Extend over mine. Shepherd and sailor
Look at me again. With less haughtiness.
And more attentive.
Finally, one last observation about working with language. In linguistics and semiotics classes at university, a conception that is difficult to change among students refers to the idea of language as a simple reflection of the world and of thought.
Contrary to such ideas, we turn to Ferdinand de Saussure, considered the most prominent thinker in historical linguistics of the 19th century, founder of modern linguistics and semiotics of later centuries; Saussure also directly influenced structuralism, inspiring Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, among many others. For him, language does not consist of a nomenclature, but rather constitutes a criterion of classification that is projected into the world, endowing it with meaning.
To clarify this topic, we turn to another famous linguist, Louis Hjelmslev, who, when developing Saussure's proposals, observes that language is nothing more than a simple companion, but reveals itself, in his own words, to be a thread deeply woven into the web of thought; in other words, language is not limited to reflecting thoughts, emotions, sensations, etc., but admits to being considered the source of the development of all of this.
From this point of view, that of language not as a reflection, but as the immanence of meaning and significance, working with language, far from belletrism and literary virtuosity, is equivalent to investing in the source of meaning and, perhaps, of humanity with its varied cultures.
*Seraphim Pietroforte is a full professor of semiotics at the University of São Paulo (USP). Author of, among other books, Visual semiotics: the paths of the gaze (Context). [https://amzn.to/4g05uWM]
References
CHAMBERS, Robert (2014). The king in yellow. New York: Routledge.
DETIENNE, Marcel (1989). The Gardens of Adonis. Paris: Gallimard.
GUINSBURG, Jacob and BARBOSA, Ana Mae (2008). Postmodernism. Sao Paulo: Perspective.
HJELMSLEV, Louis (1975). Prolegomena to a theory of language. Sao Paulo: Perspective.
OVID (2010). the metamorphoses. Lisbon: Cotovia.
PYNCHON, Thomas (1998). Gravity's Rainbow. Sao Paulo: Company of Letters.
SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de (2012). General linguistics course. São Paulo: Cultrix.
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