Choir to one - notes on "cançãonoturnadabaleia"

Abstract

The object of the essay is only one of Augusto de Campos' poems from the 1990s, the cançãonoturnadabaleia. It deals with the contrasts between its three versions: the printed, that can be found in his book Despoesia, the oralized version, included in the compact disc Poetry is risk, and the videographic, produced by Flávia Soledade. The essay gives also a survey of its basic references (Melville, Morgenstern, Rilke, Scelsi, Malevitch, Rodtchenko, Baudelaire) and of its rollback to the subjects of the white, of the relations between sound and silence, color and vocal variations, recurrent themes in Campos' poetry since O rei menos o reino (1949- 1951). And, based on the dramatic monologue of moby-dick, that guides the poem, the study tries to bring to focus the representations of the voice, the tensions between duration and intensity, the iconic notation and an intensified awareness of the sonorous layer, the use of the monocrome and an enunciative oscillation, structural elements to the understanding not only of this poem in particular, but of the principles of poetic form in Augusto de Campos.