From the vast universe of poets from all over the country who sang, in some verse, aspects of the city they adopted to live in, two of them stand out for the way they became intertwined with the imagination of its inhabitants. The Pernambuco-born Manuel Bandeira and the Minas Gerais-born Carlos Drummond de Andrade were tireless observers of the streets and their characters, of urban transformations and popular spaces. Beyond their chronicles about Rio, which had an impact on their time, the relationship of love and crisis appears in their famous poems.
Manuel Bandeira moved to Rio de Janeiro while still a child and always lived in the central area of the city: Lapa, Santa Teresa (on Rua do Curvelo, from 1920 onward) and Castelo were some of the poet's addresses, which found their way into his verses.
Image description: The image is a black and white photograph. In the upper right corner, there is a sign that reads "BECO DOS CARMELITAS." The wall behind the man is cracked and covered with various scratches and stains. To the left of the sign, there is a partially visible poster with the name "BEASQUEZ" and "Vereador." The man is wearing a dark suit and glasses, looking to the right.Flag in Beco dos Carmelitas alley, downtown Rio. Correio da Manhã Collection - Arquivo Nacional
Going through his work, we can see the near-fall of a hot-air balloon on the bustling and literary Rua do Sabão - which was located in the vicinity of today's Avenida Presidente Vargas -, dive into the Mangue red-light district, witness the drowning of João Gostoso in the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, stroll along the Marambaia sandbank, see the alley in the gleaming landscape of Glória, attend terreiros on Morro do Encantado, and listen to the cicadas of Laranjeiras.
In the "city born / on the hill Cara de Cão," narrated in the poem "Rio de Janeiro," one of the eulogies published in Estrela da Manhã in 1960, Bandeira strolled his pen with an eye on the other side of the sea – on a crime in Parada de Lucas, or on the delirium of the Desmemoriado of Vigário Geral.
He is the poet who writes verses the way others write criticism of public authorities, as in "Prece," in which he lamented the demolition of old churches in downtown Rio for the opening of Avenida Presidente Vargas, and asked the heavens to grant "one more little century of Purgatory" to the then-interventor of the Federal District, Henrique Dodsworth – or "Mayor Henriquinho," as he is called in the poem. Or also in "Carta-Poema," a request for Mayor Hildebrando de Góis to deal with the open-air garbage in the area around his apartment, near Avenida Beira-Mar, and in "Petição ao Prefeito," renewing the request for cleanup "inside the block / formed by the avenues / Antônio Carlos, Beira-Mar, / Wilson, and Calógeras."
Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph. A person is seated, wearing a dark suit with a tie. They are reading a newspaper titled "Correio do Mundo." The newspaper is open in front of the person, who holds it with both hands. The background appears to be a stone wall.Manuel Bandeira reading an edition of Correio da Manhã. Collection of the Museum of Brazilian Literature - Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation. Image taken from the Paraná Public Library website
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, a native of Minas Gerais, initially had a relationship of admiration and distance with the city. A resident of Copacabana since the 1930s, over time he became a complete inhabitant of the city of beaches, turning his mineral Itabira and provincial Belo Horizonte into mere memories in verse.
What he watched from his apartment window on Conselheiro Lafayete street was the daily life of the seasons and of bodies, the urban transformations and the passing of days. Not by chance, he is seated on a bench by the seaside, where the poet from Minas Gerais was immortalized as one of Rio's most famous statues.
Nesta cidade do Rio de Janeiro, de dois milhões de habitantes, estou sozinho no quarto, estou sozinho na América.
Poem "The Witch," from 1942
Since his first book, Alguma Poesia, from 1930, Drummond was already writing about the then capital of the country, where nudity on the beaches mingled with murders and adulteries, in the city of a people who "want to trip me up." In "Coração numeroso," we have the "promise of the sea" amid the heat of a stifling wind that "came from Minas," we enter the Galeria Cruzeiro and witness the poet's transmutation into the city itself.
Starting with these early poems, life in Rio de Janeiro seeped into Drummond's books in many ways. There are hills in hunger and celebration (“Morro da Babilônia” and “Favelário Nacional”) alongside sensual and melancholic natural landscapes – as in the poems “Os Inocentes do Leblon,” in “Vida passada a limpo” - upon seeing the “Esplêndida lua, debruçada / sobre Joaquim Nabuco, 81” - or in “Canto do Rio em Sol,” with the “Rio das quatro lagoas / de quatro túneis irmãos.”
Drummond also made urban observations, such as the “Indecisão do Méier” (Indecision of Méier) between its two movie theaters, the Cosme Velho of Machado de Assis in “A um bruxo, com amor” (To a Wizard, with Love), the deeply felt demolition of the Hotel Avenida, or the “garotos da rua Noel Rosa” (boys of Noel Rosa street) and the “namorada do tenente em Aldeia Campista” (lieutenant's girlfriend in Aldeia Campista), from the poem “Cidade” (City).
Image description: The image is a black-and-white photograph. In the foreground, we see a man sitting on a stone bench, wearing pants and a patterned shirt. He has his back to the camera, looking to the left. In the background, there is a group of people playing volleyball on the beach, with a volleyball net pole between them. There are also tall buildings in the background, possibly residential buildings. The beach appears to be sandy and has some trees along the horizon. In the lower corner of the image, it reads "Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 1972."Drummond in Copacabana, 1972. Image taken from the "Razão Inadequada" website
Somehow, every time Drummond spoke of the sea, the beach, the afternoon, the sun, the window, he was writing from the Carioca experience that turned him into one of the leading poets to translate Rio de Janeiro into verse, over more than five decades.
