Mário and Drummond

Reflections on Sound and Meaning in Two Poems

Abstract

This article analyzes two poems, “O trovador”, by Mário de Andrade, published in 1922 in Pauliceia Desvairada, and “Reportagem matinal”, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade published in 1963 in the newspaper Correio da Manhã and later inserted in the book Versiprosa. Both analyses are based on concerns within literary studies with a dialogue between literature and music. Both poems, each in its own way, present the figure of the bell and poetically suggest the act of being listening to. In order not to address the contact and relevance of the two poets for Brazilian modernism, both poems are placed side by side by the sign that connects them in a single article, given the temporal disparity in which they are inserted. The reading and analysis of both poems point to a kind of contagion of the bell’s resonances in the poetic material worked by the lyrical subjects, whether in the symbiotic (and also conflicting) relationship between the subject and the city, in the case of Mário de Andrade, and in the bell resonances in the Drummondian past that returns as a “cleaned up” past.