João Cabral de Melo Neto and the balance strategy

Abstract

In this essay, the author examines the parallelisms between the poetry of the Pernambucan poet João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999), and the democratic-pedagogical wave in Brazilian society during the 1960s. In Cabral's poetry, there abound poems in which nature is connected to pedagogical and socio-racial concerns. More than a device of the poetic voice, nature is one of the great resources that enabled socio-economic hierarchies in Brazilian society since the colonial period. The didactic exchange between the mar and the sugar cane plantation is analyzed in the poems "O mar e o canavial" and" "O canavial e o mar", from the book of poems, A educação pela pedra (1962-1965), and as a counterpoint, the anti-didacticism of the poem "A educação pela pedra". Moreover, the socio-economic connection between the land Pernambuco and blacks is discussed in the poem "Paisagem do Capibaribe" from the book of poems, O cão sem plumas (1949-1950).