Música e poesia pura: o fim de um paradigma

Abstract

The relations established between music and poetry seem to be fundamental to understand the transformations that French poetry underwent in the 20th century. In the 1920s, there was an intense debate over the concept of pure poetry, held in journals and magazines written in French and English, involving names as the abbot Henri Bremond, a French Academy member, and the writer Paul Valéry. The role of musicality, the melody of words and their connection with meaning played a key role to the notion, which had important consequences in the poetics that came throughout the century, as the symbolism. This article aims to resume the discussion, known as the quarrel of pure poetry, verify its role in the evolution of the parallel between music and poetry and indicate how the debate seemed to represent the profound changes that French poetry has undergone over the last century.