Poetry
Ondula, savana branca
Not translated into English
Ruy Duarte de Carvalho · 1982
Synopsis
Poems drawn from the oral expression of several African peoples, which the author quotes, fuses, agglutinates and reorders in three movements: versions, derivations, reconversions. Notes name for each poem the sources consulted, often knowledge gathered in English or French, and a map locates the peoples of Angola. A Nyaneka poem, made of proverbs collected at the Huíla mission, meditates there on transmitted speech, the limits of human knowledge and destiny.
Context
The book appeared in Lisbon in 1982 from Sá da Costa, at the end of research carried out from 1977 to 1980. Its author presents it both as a work of poetic creation and as an instrument of dissemination, written as a poet and not as direct testimony. One study holds it to be programmatic, a cultural document as much as a map of the country; another sees in it a refusal to reduce the old cultures to a repository of folklore. Taken up in 2005 in the author's collected poetry, it was reissued in São Paulo in 2022.
Who it is for
Poems in Portuguese, followed by notes on their sources and a map; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by critics as the programmatic book of his poetry, and reissued in Brazil in 2022.
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