Condolences and ressentments of João Cabral “Na morte de Joaquim Cardozo”

Abstract

Deceased in 1978, Joaquim Cardozo puts a limit on the poetic work of João Cabral de Melo Neto, both by what illuminates retrospectively the interlocution of the two authors and by what is projected in the poetry of their friend and first reader. Although it is possible to trace compositions from one devoted to the other since O engenheiro (1945), as the oldest poet starts to convalesce, he becomes more present in the books Museu de tudo (1975) and notably in A escola das facas (1980). There are listed three compositions written and published as if were epitaphs, whose repercussion resonates with great force that absence in the Brazilian cultural context. The composition “Na morte de Joaquim Cardozo” illustrates the resentment of the Pernambuco poet, less for the affective loss than for the contribution that should have been consummated as a literary reference and did not avenge. Analyzing the sound path of the poem in focus, before other poems collected in the same volume, it is intended to demonstrate the formal refinement inherited from the other author, as well as its record inscribed in the sound, in detail.