A operática do mangue

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FACULDADE FRASSINETTI DO RECIFE

ANA LIDIA PETRY

ANDERSON LEITE (INSIRA O NOME COMPLETO)

MARIA EDUARDA (INSIRA O NOME COMPLETO)

MATHEUS FERNANDO FEODRIPPE DARZÉ

A POÉTICA DO MANGUE/ THE WETLANDS POETICS

RECIFE

2017

The study aims to show the different cultural manifestations coming from different artists that bring in their works the universe of the recifense's wetlands. In our studies we focus on two artists and a movement, the first is the poet João Cabral de Melo Neto through his poem "The Dog without Feathers" published in 1950. In that work, the poet ambiguously shows us a dog dispossessed of ornaments, which represents one of the highest moments of the creation of João Cabral de Melo Neto. The plucked dog is Cabral's metaphor about the Capibaribe river and its gray coexistence with the "crabmen", who are also dogs without feathers. "It is difficult to know / if that man / is no longer / below man."

The columnist, Daniel Piza (Gazeta Mercantil), describes that work as:

"A superb poem, 'The Dog without Feathers' is a description of the subhuman conditions of those who live on the stilts and mocambos of Recife. The diction is hard, as befits the theme, but never slip into the pamphlet. Only a great artist could assume the echoes of a social discourse without being a pamphleteer, a romantic or a beautician"...

As decades goes by, the need to express themselves on the part of the population in Recife in the 1990s suffered a poverty: high population density, infant mortality, low air quality, pollution, violence, social injustice, residential hillside collapse and flooding in the rainy season, lack of water, heat, congestion, endemic diseases, among other things. In the cultural area, the situation was not the best too. Then, comes the musical and poetic novelty of the Manguebeat manifesto, a space in where the city’s soul could enjoy freedom and revisit its archetypes and connect  back to the world.

Our writing uses the performance and poetry of the Manguebeat leader, Chico Science, as a guiding thread, a catalytic element, to dissolve a poetic diluted in lyrics, music presentations, films, manifestos and interviews.

The Mangue Movement was launched in Recife in 1991 by a group of artists led by Chico Science and Fred Zeroquatro. It had as basic proposal to revitalize the cultural power of the city and from there, spread it to Brazil and the world. They used the metaphors of the mangrove town (Manguetown) and the crabmen. Biodiversity, multiculturalism, technology, folklore, fiction, the media and many other resources were used by them, which for some time became mangueboys and influenced or encouraged other artists in the 1990s.

This work made by Chico Science and the staff of the cultural manifesto has drawn an unprecedented revitalization, as we see that there was a new way of expressing the Pernambuco universe present in Grande Recife, through a poetry that, marked by cultural avant-gardes such as hip hop, reggae and Punk, resized the concept of city and identity in cultural boundaries; demonstrating how common places were rewritten, distorted, restructured and how the reiteration of stereotypes of ordinary language was worked out by such poets. Evidencing the experience of the strange and the fantastic in the construction of the imaginary Manguebeat that represented Recife as Manguetown and some of its inhabitants as crabmen.

Chico Science and his band, Nação Zumbi, launched two albums which became the most influential in Brazilian pop music in the last 20 years. Science died in a car accident in 1997, when he was only 30 years old. But Mangue Beat survived him and it is alive and well.

We conclude with the observation that both poets mentioned here had, on the banks of the Capibaribe River, immersion in the "creative mud" of the Recife mangrove, which gave the authors an environment capable of shouting the murmurs of the people. With all their political-social criticism João Cabral de Melo Neto and Chico Science that they are found to be crab poets who with the force of their cries have elevated the strength of the poetic of the mangrove.

O cão sem plumas

João Cabral de Melo Neto

Paisagem do Capibaribe 

A cidade é passada pelo rio 
como uma rua 
é passada por um cachorro; 
uma fruta 
por uma espada.

O rio ora lembrava 
a língua mansa de um cão, 
ora o ventre triste de um cão, 
ora o outro rio 
de aquoso pano sujo 
dos olhos de um cão. 

Aquele rio 
era como um cão sem plumas. 
Nada sabia da chuva azul, 
da fonte cor-de-rosa, 
da água do copo de água, 
da água de cântaro, 
dos peixes de água, 
da brisa na água. 

Sabia dos caranguejos 
de lodo e ferrugem. 
Sabia da lama 
como de uma mucosa. 
Devia saber dos polvos. 
Sabia seguramente 
da mulher febril que habita as ostras. 

Aquele rio 
jamais se abre aos peixes, 
ao brilho, 
à inquietação de faca 
que há nos peixes. 
Jamais se abre em peixes. 

Abre-se em flores 
pobres e negras 
como negros. 
Abre-se numa flora 
suja e mais mendiga 
como são os mendigos negros. 
Abre-se em mangues 
de folhas duras e crespos 
como um negro. 

Liso como o ventre 
de uma cadela fecunda, 
o rio cresce 
sem nunca explodir. 
Tem, o rio, 
um parto fluente e invertebrado 
como o de uma cadela.