Poetry
A rosa do povo
Not translated into English
Carlos Drummond de Andrade · 1945
Synopsis
The collection brings together fifty-five poems, twenty-five of them in free verse, written during the Second World War. The poet speaks in it of poetry itself, of time, of fear, of love, of the family and of office work, pays tribute to Mário de Andrade and Charlie Chaplin, and answers the war with a letter to Stalingrad. In it we meet the death of a milk deliveryman, shot by a frightened man, and a flower that is born in the street, a sign of hope amid destruction.
Context
The book was published in December 1945 by José Olympio, the year the war ended and Vargas's Estado Novo fell. It is the most extensive of its author's collections. For the journal Literatura e Sociedade, it makes a synthesis of his work, of modernism and of the hope of a socialist revolution; Antonio Candido saw in it a lyrical culmination, and José Guilherme Merquior the central work of the consolidation of modernism. A thesis from the University of Brasília regards it as the apogee of the poet's output.
Who it is for
A long collection, in varied registers; it is not translated in full, but a French anthology of 2004 takes its title from one of its poems, Mort dans l'avion.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by critics as the summit of the poet's work and as a central book of Brazilian modernism.
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