Cunha Melo: a Pernambucan Poet for Brazil

The recent release in Recife of the book “Dois caminhos e uma oração” represents at the same time a revelation and a revival. Its author, sociologist and journalist Alberto da Cunha Melo, can no longer be considered, at the age of 62, a sort private deity honored by colleagues who respect him as one of the most important poets in Portuguese at any time or any place, because they had access to the semi-clandestine editions produced by candlelight and distributed along the banks of the Capibaribe and Beberibe rivers. Now he’s finally been published in the Rio-São Paulo axis by the Girafa Editora.

Cunha Melo belongs to what’s called the ’65 Generation, discovered by César Leal and counting among its members Marcus Accioly. But the importance of his poetic work must be ranked a few notches above that of his contemporaries, no matter how deservedly respected they may be. An idea of his significance can be gleaned from the enthusiasm with which the poet Bruno Tolentino singled him out in an interview with newsmagazine Veja as one of the rare examples of uncontested quality in contemporary Brazilian poetry. Or by Ivan Junqueira, member of the Academy of Letters, who described his “Meditação sob os lajedos” (EDUFRN/Edições Bagaço) as brilliant, rarer than rare, singular among the 10 finalists of the Portugal Telecom Literature Prize to be awarded for the best book of 2003. His brilliance caught the eye of the judges of diverse tendencies who selected the finalists – of critic Fábio Lucas, the first to call attention to Cunha Melo’s work in the southeast; of poet Anderson Braga Horta who, living in Brasília, is an astute scavenger of Brazilian regional literature; of Deonísio da Silva, author of “A vida íntima das palavras” and who, in São Carlos, received a copy of the rarity by mail; and of Alcir Pécora, the respected Vieira scholar who, after reading the poems on the Internet, in Campinas, chose the work as one of the finalists.

Beauty in Pain

These specialists essentially agreed with Professor Alredo Bosi of the University of São Paulo (USP) who wrote the following about “Yacala,” a book-length poem self-published in Olinda and distributed to 200 friends: “The Northeast gives us, once again, following the Paraiban Augusto dos Anjos (present subliminally in the atmosphere of various passages in “Yacala”), the Alagoan Jorge de Lima and Pernambucans Carlos Pena Filho and João Cabral, its lesson on pain that engenders beauty and pulls from within the strength to construct poetry like that of Alberto da Cunha Melo, whose codename is Resistance.”

Pain, beauty, strength and resistance are the signposts for reading the dense, suffering poems that live and were born in the two volumes cited above. To them has been added a third, “Oração pela poema,” and the threesome have been packed into the single volume that has just been released nationwide. The new release comes thanks, above all, to the persistent manner in which Bruno Tolentino, a feared “maldicente” of Brazilian letters, took up the fight for the delayed but not belated recognition of the ingenuity of the great poet. Also deserving of credit is the Benedictine monk of an editor who oversaw the project. The latter, a “carioca” now based in Paulicéia, Pedro Paulo de Sena Madureira, was introduced to Cunha Melo during a stay at the São Bento monastery in Salvdor by a master aficionado of literature, Dom Timóteo Amoroso Antastácio. In preparing the originals of “Dois caminhos e uma oração”, Madureira found himself carried away by the painful pugnaciousness of some verses and the cadence of others. The same editor who revealed Adélia Prado, on the recommendation of Drummond, went so far as to exclaim, after reading the manuscripts, “Heavens, a poet on par with João Cabral!” This observation, it is said, wouldn’t sound strange to the other Pernambucan poet who served as the benchmark.

The book was published in the Southeast thanks to the generosity of Antônio Campos, head of the Maximiano Campos Institute (named after his father, the poet and novelist of the ’65 Generation) and to the persistence of Cláudia Cordeiro, professor of literature and Cunha Melo’s muse, wife and critic. The poet’s work embodies “distance, loss and the impossibility of avoidance” (in the precise definition of Mário Hélio, Pernambucan poet and critic and author of the preface). “Dois caminhos e uma oração” does justice, finally, to a poet who has published 12 books and who has contributed to 23 anthologies. “I know my handwriting. I write / for me, I write freely,” he confessed. To the delight of every demanding reader with good taste.