Content area
Full Text
In the poem "3 de maio" in the collection Poesia Pau Brasil. Oswald de Andrade presents three simple verses that reflect the greater motions causing sway in the rest of the collection:
Aprendí com meu filho de dez anos
Que a poesia é a descoberta
Das coisas que eu nunca vi (Andrade, Poesia 141)
This seemingly simple definition, with its pointed emphasis on discovery, resembles the affirmation presented in Paulo Prado's 1924 preface, which attributes Oswald de Andrade's own simultaneous discovery of poetry and Brazil to new visions: "Oswald de Andrade, numa viagem a Paris, do alto de urn atelier da Place Clichy-umbigo do mundo-descobriu, deslumbrado, a sua própria terra. A volta à pátria confirmou, no encantamento das descobertas manuelinas, a revelaçâo surpreendente de que o Brasil existia" (Prado 89). Both instances defy the expected setting of discovery: in the preface's anecdote, the discovery of Brazil happens without being in it, whereas in the poem, time lets discovery, traditionally understood as a past action, to happen in the future, through the youthful eyes of the ten-year-old son rather than the experienced eyes of his father. Indeed, the "Manifesto da poesia Pau-Brasil," published shortly before the collection of poems, demands: "Ágil a poesia. A Poesia Pau-Brasil. Ágil e cándida. Como uma criança" (Andrade, "Manifesto" 42). Charles Perrone notes that this comparison invokes "the fresh world-view possible in the Americas" (19), wrapping up this new, childlike poetry in a sense of Latin American futurity. In the brevity of "3 de maio," Oswald establishes a synthesis of three temporalities: past discovery, future son, and present father. The poem slips between elements of each; the title, for example, suggests a date that one could point to on a calendar, with the insistence that an event happened on that day in the past, or perhaps (since the poem does not indicate a year) a reoccurring date of importance that resides equally in past and future. On the other hand, the final verse hints that poetry is made of the things that have not been seen and are to be seen: meanwhile, the present tense in the middle verse lets all this be acknowledged at once in the imposing certainty of "poetry is...."
The above example, uniting poetry' and discovery in...