Morte e Vida Severina
Morte e Vida Severina (literally Severine Life and Death and translated by Elizabeth Bishop as The Death and Life of a Severino) is a long poem by Brazilian author João Cabral de Melo Neto, his most famous and often read work. Published in 1955 and written between 1954 and 1955, it is written in heptasyllabic meter, recalling the popular poetry of the culture of the northeastern Brazil, where he was born and lived, and divided in 18 parts.
Morte e Vida Severina is subtitled Auto of Pernambucan Life, which, notwithstanding evokes theatrical characterizations, but already introduces its theme: the poem is a narrative of the journey of what is known in Brazil as a retirante, a person who, in the northeastern areas of the country, flees from the drought – rather common in that region – either to the city or to livable lands.
Style and Structure
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"– My name is Severino,
I have no Christian name.
There are lots of Severinos
(a saint of pilgrimage)
so they began to call me
Maria's Severino.
There are many Severinos
With mothers called Maria,
So I became Marias's
Of Zacarias, deceased."
-Morte e Vida Severina by João Cabral de Melo Neto (Translated by Elizabeth Bishop)
Properly, Morte e Vida Severina recounts the journey of a retirante and his life style, both which truly resembles more of death than of life, a paradox Melo Neto would deal with several times within poem.
The poem is formally divided in 18 named parts; however, the poem can be split between a first period, the retirante before reaching the city, and a second, from when he has. These parts are strictly constructed in seven syllable metric and create a strong sense of singing rhythm. In fact, "Morte e Vida Severina" made use of the regional style of writing cordel.
It is written in first-person, thus narrated by Severin himself – and therefore alike an object and a subject in the work –, but it is cut several times in monologues and dialogues of third parties.
Synopsis
Morte e Vida Severina begins describing its object of narration: Severino, a retirante from Pernambuco wandering to Recife, the state's capital. Melo Neto introduces a character, Severino, whose name comes from the Portuguese word for "severe", but who can not be defined by this: as him there are several others named Severino; as well, he can not be identified by his mother and father whereby they are as any other father and mother of any other Severino. Thus, such character doesn't stand for a person; rather, its represents the whole of the people who live under the miserable and arid conditions of Brazil's northeast – "we are many Severinos, equal in everything and in their evil". As such, Melo Neto briefly defines the characteristics of such a life: "And being us all Severinos/ equal in everything in life/ we shall die of equal death/ same severin death:/ the death that one dies/ of old-age before the thirties/ of ambushes before the twenties/ of famine a bit a day" (freely-translated).
Later, Melo Neto, describing the burial of another Severino, criticizes the latifundiary style of the economy, which take from man his strength, youth and labor – "This grave in which you are/ (...) It's of good size/ nor deep no large/ it is the part that for you fits/ from this latifund.'
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"- This land you know well
(it drank you sold sweet)
- This land you know well
(it drank the old boy)
- This land you know well
(it drank you husband's strength
- Of this land you are well known
(through relatives and friends)
- Of this land you are well known
(you live with your wife and children)
- Of this land you are well known
(it waits for you since you're born)
-Morte e Vida Severina, by João Cabral de Melo Neto (Freely translated from Portuguese)
Much further in the poem, the retirante actually reaches the city, yet, where he expected to find work, food, clothes and a better life in general, he finds the belief that he has just been pursuing his own death.
There, he, most likely, metaphorically finds Joseph and with him converses upon life and even cogitates suicide, by asking: "what difference would it make/ if in spite of going on/ I took the best exit:/ jumping, at night,/ to outside of the bridge and the life?"
This conversation, however, is interrupted by the birth of the interlocutor's child, therefore Jesus Christ, and to him the place and the river - itself a metaphor - sing. Persons bring gift to the boy, but all of these are simpleton and relate to the misery of their givers: crabs that will keep their life from the mud; newspapers to use as cover; a mud doll and others.
Two Egyptian fortunetellers predict the boy's life, both of which announce he will never leave that life.
Melo Neto closes the poem when the man, Joseph, than answers him by saying that he doesn't known if living is worth, but that life itself has manifested: "And there is no better answer/ than the spectacle of living:/ See it unravels its line, also called life/ see the factory that it/ stubbornly fabrics/ see it sprout as it now did/ in a new exploded life;/ even when is small/ the explosion, as this happened;/ even when it’s an explosion/ as this one, flimsy;/ even when it’s the explosion/ of a severine life”.
Adaptations
In 1965, Roberto Freire asked the then-young Chico Buarque to make the work into a musical play. It was released by Chico as his second album the following year.
It was also adapted to cinema, though partially, in 1977 by Zelito Viana; in 1981, TV Globo produced a version.
Also, an black-and-white 3D animated version was made by Miguel Falcão.
Elizabeth Bishop made a translation of the poem as The Death and Life of a Severino.
See also
References
Neto, João Cabral de Melo. "Morte e Vida Severina". Analysis of the same poem on several sources.
Encyclopædia Britannica, "João Cabral de Melo Neto".
