The Azorean Heritage in Cecilia Meireles’s Writings

Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello Universidade Federal de

Abstract. This paper aims to examine Cecília Meireles’s writings from the perspective of the presence of a Portuguese (mainly Azorean) cultural heritage that was passed on by her grandmother, an immigrant from the island of São Miguel, Azores. The paper also illustrates, within this heritage, the presence of in Meireles’s literary work—an interest that was also evoked by her grandmother’s memories, and resulted in the publication of “Poems Writ-ten in India.” By receiving and then transforming Azorean memory through her own imagination, Cecília Meireles occupies a singular place among Brazilian . We can say that she occupies a cultural “inter-place” that becomes a sort of symbolic territoriality.

Palavras-chave. Azores; heritage; folklore; memory; Cecília Meireles

More than 50 years after the death of Cecília Meireles (1901–1964), her presence in the history of in the has become increasingly more relevant and recognized, and this can be attested by the increase in the number of national and international dissertations, theses, and publications dedicated to her work.1 Cecília Meireles, a descendant of Portuguese immigrants, was born in Rio de Janeiro. Her mother, Matilde Benevides, was originally from the island of São Miguel, Azores, and her father, Carlos Alberto Carvalho Meireles, was the son of Portuguese parents from continental Portugal. When she was three years of age, Meireles lost her parents and older brothers. She was then raised by her maternal grandmother, Jacinta Garcia Benevides—an Azorean—and the only survivor of the family. Jacinta, along with the nanny, Pedrina, became responsible for Meireles’s upbringing. Her grandmother passed on the culture of her native home—the island of São Miguel—to Meireles, as well as her values and the memories of her Azorean family and culture, including linguistic expressions and oral , such as rimances,2 nursery rhymes, and popular quatrains. Pedrina, in turn,

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taught her about Afro-Brazilian culture, read her short stories with fantastic characters, such as the stories of Saci and the headless mule and, certainly, the folk games of . In addition to providing emotional support, these two women were decisive in Cecília’s life, and they were her future motivation for carrying out research on Brazilian and Azorean popular traditions, as can be seen in “Batuque, Samba e Macumba: Estudos de Gesto e de Ritmo, 1926– 1934.” Meireles’s marriage in 1922 to the Portuguese artist, Fernando Correia Dias—who had been living in Rio de Janeiro since the beginning of the First World War—enabled her to strengthen her ties with writers and literary critics from Portugal. She maintained a cultural exchange with a variety of writers and became accepted by her Portuguese critics, as shown by Fernando Cristóvão in the article, “Compreensão portuguesa de Cecília Meireles”/ “[Portuguese Understanding of Cecília Meireles],” and Leila V. Gouvêa in the book, “Cecília em Portugal”/ “[Cecília in Portugal],” among other researchers who emphasized the writer’s ties with intellectuals from Portugal. Meireles’s interest in Portugal was also revealed in lectures she gave on Portuguese writers, such as Eça de Queirós, Júlio Dinis, , Camões, and João Ribeiro, as well as in the 1944 publication of an anthology of “Poetas Novos de Portugal” / “[New Writers of Portugal],” which included the still not well-known . She wrote a long preface to this edition, where she depicts the trends in Portuguese poetry from the first half of the 20th century. In this work, Meireles was able to place these Portuguese poets within the reach of Brazilian readers. Her eighteen years of correspondence with Azorean writer, Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues are particularly relevant, and the letters they exchanged were published in a book entitled, A Lição do Poema: Cartas de Cecília Meireles a Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues / [The lesson of the poem: Letters from Cecília Meireles to Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues]. The set of 246 letters discloses much of the memory of Cecília’s ancestors and “reopens” what Celestino Sachet— organizer of the book—wrote in the introduction, as the “dialogue of Azoreanity between two sides of the Atlantic.” This fruitful dialogue is echoed in Meireles’s second sentence of the first letter addressed to the Azorean writer: “It is wonderful talking to you over the sea. Like two whelks” (Meireles, A Lição do Poema 3). In a letter dated March 12, 1946, Cecília commented on her folk collections and alluded to her childhood memories, which had been restored by the books that Côrtes-Rodrigues had sent her through the mail, and among these are the manuscripts from the future “Romanceiro Popular Açoreano”/ “[Popular Azorean Verses]”:

Tenho uma pequena coleção de objetos folclóricos de todas as partes do mundo (exatamente como os marinheiros)—roupas, máscaras, bonecos (muitos bonecos), cerâmica, etc. … Agora V. me transporta para momentos da infância, restitui-me, de

Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 41

certo modo, a um mundo que tenho conservado defendido de todos os assaltos e permite-me encontro de saudades conservadas como flores antigas—essas flores que de repente nos caem de dentro dos livros. (Meireles, in Sachet 6)

I have a small collection of folk artifacts from all parts of the world (the same as sailors do)—clothes, masks, dolls (many dolls), ceramics, etc. … Now you transport me to moments of my childhood, restoring me, in a way, to a world that I have kept protected from all kinds of assaults, and that allows me to encounter the longing preserved like old flowers—those flowers which suddenly fall from within books.

In this same letter, Côrtes-Rodrigues inserts a small quatrain which is included in the “Cancioneiro,” and that she recognizes as having heard many times whispered by her grandmother, though “with variations in the first and third verses”:

Meu arvoredo sombrio, Não digas que eu aqui vim, Não quero que o meu bem saiba Partes ni novas de mi. (Meireles, in Sachet 6)

My shadowy woods, Don’t say that I came here, I don’t want my love to see These new parts of me.3

And Cecília Meireles continues:

Esta quadra coseu muita roupa minha, e é como um objecto familiar que me acompanha. Hei de ver se lhe mando muitas variantes de muitas dessas quadras, bem como dos seus adágios e daquelas parlendas e rimas infantis que um Sr. Goulart publica num dos números da Insulana. (Meireles 6)

This quatrain sewed much of my clothing, and it is like a familiar object that accompanies me. I will see if I can send you several variants of many of these quatrains, as well as of its adages and of those nursery and children’s rhymes that Mr. Goulart publishes in one of the issues of Insulana.

Cecília Meireles’s interest in Azorean folklore can also be seen in the following articles about Azorean folklore in the journal, Insulana, from Ponta Delgada: “Folclore Guasca e Açoriano” (1947); “Adágios Açorianos” (1953); and “Cancioneiro popular açoriano de Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues” (1953). In 1955, the “Panorama folclórico dos Açores, especialmente da ilha de São Miguel” was published in the journal, Insulana, and was republished again in 1958 in Brazil. Another of her articles, “Notas sobre o Folclore Gaúcho- Açoriano,” appeared in a posthumous edition published in 1968 by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

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In the introduction to the Panorama Folclórico dos Açores, Meireles revealed her interest in preserving the cultural memory of the Azorean immigrants. In the opening of the book, Meireles shows how important it is for the descendants to remember the ancestral customs and folklore of the Azorean islands, in order to perceive how these elements are still present in Brazilian culture:

Creio que nós, descendentes de açorianos, […] devemos relembrar os velhos hábitos familiares trazidos para o Brasil, e estudar a sua fixação no novo ambiente. Justamente pretendia esta Memória ser uma exposição comparada do folclore das Ilhas com o de Santa Catarina. Grandes dificuldades impedem, por enquanto, a realização desse trabalho, que viria revelar afinidades, consanguinidades de espírito, sentimento da nossa continuação no passado, que é o modo de se fortalecer um povo no seu destino, como se chega terra à planta para consolidá-la e garantir-lhe vida. (Meireles, Panorama 6)

I believe that we, descendants of the Azoreans, […] should remember the old familiar customs brought to Brazil, and study their settlement in the new environment. Indeed this Memory was intended to be an exhibition comparing the Azorean Islands’ folklore with that of Santa Catarina. In the meantime, major difficulties prevent this work from being carried out. This work would have revealed similarities, spiritual kinships, a feeling of our continuation in the past, a way to strengthen a people toward their destination, as when we ground a plant in the earth as a way of setting it and guaranteeing it life.

This publication was prepared to be presented at a Conference for the Commemoration of the Second Centenary of the Azorean Colonization, held in October of 1948 in Santa Catarina, Brazil. In this short book, the author’s aim is to present the elements of the “scenery” of the Azores Archipelago, as well as the “material life” (housing, clothing, food, popular medicine), “family life” (marriage, child care, children’s folklore), “work” (agriculture, fishing, weaving), “social life” (popular rights, property, traditional celebrations, such as Carnival), “psychic life” (religiosity, superstitions), “aesthetic life” (music, dance, lullabies), and “intellectual life” (linguistic expressions, oral literature, popular theater, songbooks). In the description of “Cenário” (“Scenery”), Cecília invites her reader to mentally visualize the map of the Azores, with the “nine points” in the middle of the Atlantic, suggesting that the reader positions himself/herself in the place of the islander surrounded by the sea. She also comments on the vocation of the sea to take the islanders, some to their death, others to distant places:

Olhamos o mapa e vemos nove pontos. Nenhum pormenor é avistável. O Atlântico envolve tudo. Assim na vida do ilhéu: o mar é quase o verdadeiro cenário. Anda em redor dele. Fala-lhe em praias contínuas. Estremece-lhe os barcos. Fatalmente leva- lhe algum parente, já que é próprio do mar,—segundo a superstição—alimentar-se Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 43

cada dia de alguma criatura viva. Leva-os, mesmos vivos, também para longe. E pode ser que não tornem, seduzidos por outros lugares. (6)

We look at the map and we see nine points. No visible details. The Atlantic encompasses everything. Thus, in the life of the islander: the sea is almost the true scenery. It encircles him. It talks to him in continuous beaches. It shakes the boats. Fatally, it takes a relative away, since it is the sea’s nature,—according to superstition—to feed every day on a living creature. It takes them, even if alive, also far away. And it may be that, seduced by other places, they will not return.

Meireles goes on to reflect on the characteristics of the solitary Azorean scenery, where the islander, with his feet on the volcanic rocks, glimpses only the ocean around and the sky above:

O mar, em volta. A rocha vulcânica embaixo dos pés. Sobre uma grande concha líquida que o cerca, e onde a terra é uma pequena pérola,—a outra grande concha— aérea!—do céu. Concha de brumas, nesse estranho clima, aumentando a incerteza do cenário. (7)

The surrounding sea. The volcanic rock under their feet. On a large liquid seashell which surrounds them, and where the land is a small pearl,—the other large seashell—in the air!—from the sky. Seashell of mist, in this strange climate, increasing the uncertainty of the scenery.

Furthermore, Meireles notes that the Azorean listens carefully, “between the sky and the sea” (7), an image that is conveyed in the following quatrain:

Esta noite, à meia noite, Ouvi um lindo cantar: Eram os anjos do céu Ou as sereias do mar. (7)

This night, at midnight, I heard beautiful singing: It was the angels of the heavens Or the mermaids’ ringing.

The popular quatrains collected by Cecília Meireles, predominantly from the Island of São Miguel, allude not only to the presence of the sea, the rocky landscape, and to the concerns and dangers provoked by the proximity of the ocean, but also, as the writer points out, to the fact that Azoreans feel like they are one with that landscape:

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Sobre as vagas me embalei. (6)

O mar pediu a Deus peixes Para andar acompanhado; Quando o mar quer companhia, Que fará um desgraçado? (7)

Born on the beaches of the sea, In the sand I was created, I slept in the heart of the wave, Upon the swell I was cradled

The sea asked God for fish So as to walk in two; When the sea wants company, What will the wretched do?

In the book, Morena, Pena de Amor / [Morena, Suffering of Love] (1939), composed of twenty-nine poems (quatrains and poems with two or three stanzas), Cecília Meireles recreates the rhythm, musicality, and simplicity of popular Azorean quatrains. Also included is a reference to Moreno people4 in the book’s title, who, like “Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed,” “lived with faith and died with sorrow” (Morena 25). In poem 19, the lyrical Self alludes to the condition of insularity:

Por todos os lados, o mar me rodeia; me deixa recados escritos na areia.

Das águas sou filha: nasci de um beijo de espuma em redor de alguma silenciosa ilha.

Maravilha, maravilha da espuma em pedra serena: a água nos olhos brilha, da pedra é que sou morena. (9) Everywhere around me is the sea’s long hand; leaving me messages scribbled upon the sand.

I am the waters’ daughter: I was born from a kiss of foam surrounding some silent Island. Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 45

Wonderful, wonderful from the foam from serene stone: the water in my eyes shine, from stone and I am morena.

In poem 51, the lyrical subject is identified as a descendent of the morena people, who suffer yet sing, and who stare death in the face:

A onda que se levanta do meu peito para o teu chora mesmo quando canta, pois vem de um mar que sofreu.

É o mar da morena gente, de exaltado coração, que encara a morte de frente, cantando qualquer canção.

Que morre sorrindo num lugar qualquer, que acha tudo lindo porém nada quer … (17)

The wave that rises from my chest to yours even when it sings it cries, for it’s from suffering shores.

It is the sea of the Morena race and from an exalted heart, that stares death in the face while singing any part.

That dies smiling in any land, and thinks all stunning but never demands …

Meireles, in many of the poems, alludes to the insular landscape, the solitude of the islander, and to the feeling of instability in everything; this is suggested by the very movement of the sea. Thus, apart from the solitude, suggested by the very situation of the archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic, far from the continent (1400 to 1850 km from , depending on the island) and even farther from North America, the Azoreans lived with the danger of a frightening and unpredictable sea. This geographical position shapes the soul of the Azorean people and explains the feeling of “being in the middle,” a sentiment that is also described by the writer, Fernando Aires, as follows: 46 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 5 (2016)

Expansão e recolhimento interior: dois movimentos antagónicos com a mesma raiz de ínsula. Dualidade conflituosa que oscila entre o intimismo e a abertura do mundo, entre a tensão e a distensão, entre o silêncio e a fala com estranhos. Algo de cambiante e estável, como o solo sísmico, como a paisagem e o clima, onde as fronteiras entre imobilidade e movimento, entre luz e sombra, entre a terra e a água não são bem nítidas. Por pouco não somos místicos. Por pouco também não somos “conquistadores” de continentes. Ficamos sempre a meio caminho entre o ter e o ser, entre a realidade e o sonho, entre a realização e a frustração—simbolicamente marcado no mapa a meio do Atlântico, entre dois mundos, sem pertencermos decididamente a nenhum. … (qtd. in V. Freitas, 64)

Expansion and inner retreat: two antagonistic movements with the same island roots. A conflicting duality that oscillates between intimism and the opening of the world, between tension and distension, between silence and talking to strangers. Something changing and stable, like the seismic ground, like the landscape and the climate, where the borders between immobility and movement, between light and shadow, between land and water are not very clear. We are not mystic by a small margin. We are also not “conquerors” of continents by a small margin. We are always halfway between having and being, between reality and dream, between achievement and frustration—symbolically marked on the map in the middle of the Atlantic, between two worlds, without belonging decisively to either. …

In 1932, the Azorean writer, Vitorino Nemésio, emphasized, in an article for the journal, Insula, the condition of isolation and the nature of the Azorean soul, with the term “Azoreanity” (analogous to “hispanidad,” by Unamuno), meaning the singular characteristics of the inhabitants of the archipelago. The nature, therefore, molds and influences the spirit of the islanders:

Uma espécie de embriaguez do isolamento impregna como as sereias a alma e os actos de todo ilhéu, estrutura-lhe o espírito e procura uma fórmula quási (sic) religiosa de convívio com quem não teve a fortuna de nascer como o logos, na água. […] Meio milénio de existência sobre tufos vulcânicos, por baixo de nuvens que são asas e de bicharocos que são nuvens, é já uma carga respeitável de tempo,—e o tempo é espírito em fiéri. Mais outro tanto, e apenas trocaremos metade da memorialidade de Vergílio. Somos, portanto, gente nova. Mas a vida açoriana não data espiritualmente da colonização das ilhas: antes se projecta num passado telúrico que os geólogos reduzirão a tempo, se quiserem … Como homens, estamos soldados historicamente ao povo de onde viemos e enraizados pelo habitat uns montes de lava que soltam da própria entranha uma substância que nos penetra. A geografia, para nós, vale tanto como a história, e não é debalde que as nossas recordações escritas inserem uns cinquenta por cento de relatos de sismos e enchentes. Como as sereias temos uma dupla natureza: somos de carne e pedra. Os nossos ossos mergulham no mar. (13– 14)

A kind of drunkenness from the isolation impregnates the soul and actions of every islander like mermaids, structuring the spirit and pursuing an almost religious Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 47

formula of living with he who did not have the good fortune of being born like the logos, in the water. […] Half a millennium of existence over volcanic tuffs, under clouds that are wings and creatures that are clouds, is a considerable amount of time,—and time is spirit in fiéri. More so, and we only exchange half of the memory of Vergílio. We are, therefore, young people. But Azorean life does not spiritually date from the colonization of the islands: before one projects into a telluric past that the geologists will reduce to time, if they please… As men, we are historically tied to the people from which we came and embedded by the habitat in some hills of lava, which release from their very bowels a substance that penetrates us. Geography, for us, is worth as much as history, and it is not in vain that our written memories include some fifty percent of accounts of earthquakes and floods. Like mermaids, we have a double nature: we are flesh and stone. Our bones dive into the sea.

Mónica Maria Serpa Cabral also emphasizes the influence of the geographical conditions on the islanders’ temperament in a study on Azorean short stories. According to her, “the island generates, on the one hand, reveries of extroversion, activating desires and appealing to departures, and, on the other hand, reveries of introversion, awakening the desire for intimacy, for repose and activating the psychology of man towards retreating to one’s roots” (3), a reflection which is theoretically supported in Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space. In Cecília’s poetry, this island transforms into an imaginary and welcoming space: a utopia. “A ilha de Nanja”/ “[The island of Nanja]” (which means “never” in informal language), a paradise island of “obscure inheritance, remote property,” as evoked in this excerpt:

É um grande consolo possuir-se a Ilha de Nanja, uma ilha que não se vê no mapa, mas que descansa tranquilamente no meio do oceano, do vasto oceano das solidões. Apenas uma vez visitei a minha Ilha—herança obscura, propriedade remota, inalienável, usufruto de outros, que a julgam sua, que não sabem de minha pessoa nem dos meus títulos. A Ilha, porém, é totalmente minha, por um direito mais decisivo e profundo que o das fórmulas jurídicas. E apraz-me ouvir falar seus moradores e visitantes na sua inocente ignorância, louvando lugar e clima e horizontes, certos de tudo conhecerem, do que os cerca, mas sem nenhuma noção exata da minha ilha—a Ilha de Nanja. (108)

It is a great consolation to possess the Island of Nanja, an island that is not on the map, but which rests peacefully in the middle of the ocean, the vast ocean of solitude. Only once have I visited my Island—obscure inheritance, remote, inalienable property, used by others, who claim it as their own, who do not know me or my titles. The Island, however, is totally mine, by a more decisive and profound right than that of legal formulas. And it pleases me to hear its residents and visitors talk in their innocent ignorance, praising the place and the climate and horizons, certain of knowing everything about what surrounds them, but without any exact notion of my island—the Island of Nanja. 48 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 5 (2016)

In her poem, “Romance Açoriano”/ “[Azorean Romance]” (1952), with three stanzas, Cecília Meireles refers to the nine islands of the archipelago, represented by “nine girls, sitting on high seas,” isolated but, at the same time, eager to have contact with one another. The solitary girls gather within themselves characteristics of the islands, with their natural elements transformed into “green dresses”, and “fine pearl hands” and “rosy coral feet.” The work of the island girls is to weave “quilts of fog,” and “sheets and towels of moonlight.” They are solitary girls on high seas; “eager to love” and waiting for someone to marry. Thus, the first and third stanzas are centered on the solitude of the girls waiting for someone who can free them from their isolation. The second stanza of the poem emphasizes the elements of the scenery, personifying the islands (girls), while giving them attributes (their voice is a “breath of the orange tree”) and their chores (weaving “towels of moonlight”), specific to the natural entities and phenomena of the island’s landscape:

[…] Elas são nove meninas, sentadinhas no alto-mar; as mãos, de pérola fina, os pés, de róseo coral, prendem nas tranças, estrelas, o arco-íris é o seu colar … sua voz é cheia de flores é um sopro de laranjal … Com aparelhos de areia levantaram seu tear. Jogam peixinhos de prata, lançadeiras sem rival: tecem colchas de neblina, lençóis e toalhas de luar. (Poesia Completa 1064)

[…] There are nine little girls sitting on the high-sea; their hands of fine pearl, their feet of pink coral, tied in braids, stars, the rainbow is a necklace … the voice is full of flowers blown from the orangery … With instruments made of sand rose their loom. Throw silver fish, weavers with no rivals: Sewing fog-quilts, sheets and towels of moonlight. Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 49

For Cecília Meireles, family inheritance becomes a component of her development, in such a way that one can say that the writer also seems to place herself, somewhat, in a cultural “inter-place”, which becomes a kind of symbolic territoriality. Her Brazilian origins are shared with her Azorean inheritance, and shape her entire development, like ballast that sustains the construction of the self, while transforming and recreating memories transmitted by her grandmother. Upon visiting the Azores for the first time, in 1951, she confesses on a radio station (23 November) that the motivation for this trip originated from her childhood, which was populated by enchanted stories, ballads, popular lullabies, the landscape and island events, as well as a “mystical notion of life.” Aware “of the exiles” and feeling like she belonged to the place of her ancestors, she claimed that she would like to be received there like an “old child,” who was nourished by the poetry of São Miguel through her grandmother:

Se me perguntarem o que me traz aos Açores, apenas posso responder: a minha infância. A minha infância: o romanceiro e as histórias encantadas; a Bela Infanta e as bruxas; as cantigas e as parlendas; o sentimento do mar e da solidão; a memória dos naufrágios e a pesca da baleia; os laranjais entristecidos e a consciência dos exílios. A dignidade da pobreza, a noção mística da vida, a recordação constante da renúncia: o atavismo cristão. […] Minha vinda a estas ilhas é como um regresso, uma visita familiar, um acto de ternura. Não desejaria que me recebessem como a uma escritora brasileira, por mais que me seja cara a terra onde nasci e onde tenho vivido:—mas como a uma criança antiga que a poesia de S. Miguel nutriu, numa infância de sonho, no regaço de uma avó dolorida, heroica e nobremente sentimental. (qtd. in Maia Gouveia 304)

If you ask me what brings me to the Azores, I can only say: my childhood. My childhood: the ballads and the enchanted stories; the Beautiful Princess and the witches; the lullabies and nursery rhymes; the feeling of the sea and the solitude; the memory of the shipwrecks and whale fishing; the sad orange trees and the awareness of the exiles. The dignity of poverty, the mystical notion of life, the constant recollection of abdication: Christian atavism. […] My coming to these islands is like a return, a familiar visit, an act of affection. I would not wish for them to receive me like a Brazilian writer, as dear as the land I was born is to me and where I have lived: — but like an old child whom the poetry of S. Miguel nourished, in a dream childhood, in the lap of a grandmother in pain, heroic and nobly sentimental.

The presence of Meireles’s grandmother in her life contributed to awakening not only the curiosity of little Cecília in relation to Portugal, but also towards India and the rest of Asia. Given that the islands of the Azores were a point for stopovers for repairs and to refuel5 the ships during long trips to Africa, Brazil, and India, these trips were integrated in the imagination of the Azorean people. Thus, it was also through her Azorean inheritance that the 50 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 5 (2016)

Indian culture became part of Cecília’s interests. With respect to these influences, this is what the author stated in an interview with Pedro Bloch:

Quanto a Portugal basta dizer que a minha Avó falava como Camões. Foi ela quem me chamou a atenção para a Índia, o Oriente: ‘Cata, cata que é viagem da Índia’, dizia ela, em linguagem náutica, creio, quando tinha pressa de algo. Chá-da-Índia, narrativas, passado, tudo me levava, ao mesmo tempo, à Índia e a Portugal. Em Portugal me encanta aquele ‘casticismo rural’, aquele classicismo. (34)

Regarding Portugal, it suffices to say that my grandmother spoke like Camões. She was the one who brought my attention to India, the East: ‘Cata, cata que é viagem da Índia’ / [Rush, rush, it is a voyage to India], she would say, in nautical language, when she was in a hurry, I believe. Indian Tea, narratives, the past, everything took me, at the same time, to India and to Portugal. In Portugal, I am delighted by that ‘rural purity,’ that classicism.

“Nautical language,” alluded to by the author in the interview with Pedro Bloch, emerges in various poems, and one can claim that the semantic field related to the sea forms constellations of symbols (boats, anchors, corals, fishing, shipwrecks …), and these constitute the most relevant imagistic network of the poetic construction of Cecília Meireles. Her grandmother’s expression, cited in the interview, is reproduced in a long poem in 1961 (89 verses), constructed in a dialogue form between the adult lyrical self and a girl (“my daughter”) about the distant travels full of danger, undertaken by the Portuguese. The poem begins with the refrain, “Cata, cata, que é viagem da Índia …,” and the first two stanzas of the poem introduce the questions:

“Cata, cata, que é viagem da Índia …”

As horas da navegação, minha filha, os adeuses dos lenços, e a morte nos barcos. Rezemos pelos náufragos. A ordem do rei, o rei que Deus tenha na sua glória — mas por que os reis querem ser donos do mundo?

Por que o rei queria o marfim e o ouro e a seda e a prata, e mandava seus galeões para tão longe, ao lugar onde o sol nasce e os ares são de jasmim?

Não poderia se viver sem cravo e cinamomo, Sem erva-doce e açafrão E aquela curva pimenta coral? (Poesia Completa 1185) Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 51

“Rush, rush, it’s the trip to India …”

The hours of sailing, my little girl, the good-byes in waving handkerchiefs, the death in the ships. Let’s pray for the wrecked. The king’s order. The king, may God take him into His glory, — but why do kings want to become lords of the world?

Why did the king want ivory and gold? and silk and silver, and send his galleons so far, to the land where the sun rises and the air is of jasmine?

Could he not live without cinnamon and clove, Without fennel and saffron and that coral peppered curve?

“Rush, rush, it’s the trip to India …” (qtd. in Loundo 235)

The entire poem is made up of questions, without answers, about the ambition of the kings who sent ships in pursuit of spices, silks, quilts and shawls, ivory and precious stones, merchandise often paid for with the lives of men, exposed to maritime storms in tragic journeys:

[…] Não, não, antes a alma dos homens do mar perdidos entre cordame e alcatrão, suados e dobrados ao peso da derrota, gritando nomes amados ao vento sem ouvidos, depondo súplicas e prantos nas mãos líquidas do mar. (Poesia Completa, 1186)

[…] No, no, above all the souls of the seamen, lost between the tackle and the pitch, sweaty and groaning under the weight of defeat, screaming out beloved names to an earless wind, handing over supplications and wails to the liquid hands of the sea. …” (qtd. in Loundo 237)

In secondary school, Cecília Meireles researched and learnt about religiosity in India—, Hinduism, and, above all, Buddhist thought—as she herself reported in a letter sent to Portuguese writer, Maria Valupi6:

Na escola secundária, pus-me a investigar os problemas do espírito pelo caminho da ciência. […] Por essa época enamorei-me do Buda. Ele resumia os dois extremos das 52 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 5 (2016)

minhas tentativas: era o santo, mas era o filósofo. Jesus foi apenas a Poeta (Quando digo apenas não o quero diminuir, mas definir). Ora, eu precisava chegar à contemplação do mundo não apenas pelo coração, que sempre tive demais, mas pela lógica, que utilizo para o corrigir. E assim amei Buda. Longo amor. (qtd. in Cristovão 69)

In secondary school, I investigated the problems of the spirit through the path of science. […] At that time, I fell in love with Buddha. He summed up the two extremes of my attempts: he was a saint, but he was a philosopher. Jesus was only a (When I say only, I do not mean to diminish Him, but rather define). However, I needed to arrive at a contemplation of the world not only through the heart, of which I always had too much, but through logic, which I use to correct it. And this is how I love Buddha. A lasting love.

Even before making a two-month trip to India, in 1953, the work of Cecília Meireles, starting with her first book, Espectros / [Spectres] (1919), incorporated elements of Indian culture. For example, she wrote a text as a tribute to Gandhi, on the occasion of his death, on January 30, 1948, entitled, “Elegia sobre a morte de Gandhi” / [An elegy on the death of Ghandi]. Moreover, she was responsible for translating the works of the Indian writer, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) to the Portuguese language.7 Concerning Meireles’s connection to India, Dilip Loundo, the English translator of “Poemas escritos na Índia” / “[Poems written in India],” upon the 50-year commemoration of Cecília’s visit there, notes that the similarities of her work with the Upanishad scriptures “show, eloquently, that the presence of India in Cecília’s poetic creation, far from being a residue of her symbolic origins, constituted an important factor in the creation of an (active) modernist affiliation” (Loundo 17). Awakening her sensitivity to perceive the world in all of its manifestations of life, her grandmother, Jacinta, as Walmir Ayala states, was a “true poetic mentor to Cecília Meireles, in that part of childhood where discoveries are definitive and paths mysteriously decided” (17). This childhood thus provides her with the necessary conditions for her inner development, with “silence and solitude” being prominent factors in this period of her life: “My childhood as a lonely, little girl gave me two things that seem negative, and were always positive to me: silence and solitude. This has always been the area of my life” (qtd. in Damasceno 81). In the previously mentioned interview with Pedro Bloch, Cecília Meireles commented on her taste for contemplation and isolation: “There are those who think that my isolation, my way of being alone […] is distance, when, in fact it is my way of being fascinated by people, analyzing their foundations, their complexities.” (qtd. in Bloch 34). The poem, “Desenho” / [Drawing],” in “Mar Absoluto e Outros Poemas”/ “[Absolute Ocean and Other Poems],” reveals the scenery of Cecília Meireles’s childhood, with her maternal grandmother, and her capacity to “inventory the world,” as the poet, Darcy Damasceno, points out, in the essay, Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 53

“Poesia do sensível e do imaginário” / “[Poetry of sensitivity and imaginary]”. The lyrical self numbers the elements of the landscape of her childhood, in her “colored orchard,” with echoes, lizards, butterflies, peacocks, jasmines … and the presence of her grandmother, who “sang/songs of the sea and groves, in an older language” (v. 21 & 22). Cecília’s contemplative and happy childhood, despite the loss of her parents and brothers, nurtures the soul of the poetic girl, and the poem is the result of this attitude towards life, which she herself calls “affectionate and participatory poetic contemplation.”8 Just as tree leaves fall in autumn and grow again in the spring, so does the exercise of capturing that which is poetic in the world, and this allows for a renewal of the Self, after each “fall.” The following is the last stanza of the poem, “Desenho” / “Drawing”:

[…] Minha vida começa num vergel colorido, por onde as noites eram só de luar e estrelas. Levai-me aonde quiserdes!— aprendi com as primaveras a deixar-me cortar e a voltar sempre inteira. (Damasceno, Obra Póetica 319)

[…] My life starts in a colored orchard, where nights were made of stars and moonlight, Take me where you shall! — I learnt from the spring how to be cut and yet return intact.9

In “Elegia” / “[Elegy]” (1933–1937), a long poem composed of eight parts, written in memory of her grandmother, and one of the most touching in the Portuguese language, Cecília allies the sadness of loss to delicate feelings of beauty, derived from the memory that taught her to contemplate and love all things, a legacy that is transmuted in verses. These teachings are modeled in the verses of “Elegia” and in part 7, the exercise of poetic contemplation comes through, awakened in the relationship with her grandmother and the insular elements present in coexistence, as well as the inescapable pain of separation:

O crepúsculo é este sossego do céu com suas nuvens paralelas e um última cor penetrando nas árvores até os pássaros.

É esta curva dos pombos, rente aos telhados, este cantar de galos e rolas, muito longe; e, mais longe, o abrolhar de estrelas brancas, ainda sem luz.

Mas não era só isto, o crepúsculo: faltam os teus dois braços numa janela, sobre flores, e em tuas mãos o teu rosto, aprendendo com as nuvens a sorte das transformações. 54 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 5 (2016)

Faltam teus olhos com ilhas, mares, viagens, povos, tua boca, onde a passagem da vida tinha deixado uma doçura triste, que dispensada palavras.

Ah!, falta o silêncio que estava entre nós, e olhava a tarde, também.

Nele vivia o teu amor por mim, obrigatório e secreto. Igual à face da Natureza: evidente, e sem definição.

Tudo em ti era uma ausência que se demorava: uma despedida pronta a cumprir-se.

Sentindo-o, cobria minhas lágrimas com um riso doido. Agora, tenho medo que não visses o que havia por detrás dele.

Aqui está meu rosto verdadeiro, defronte do crepúsculo que não alcançaste. Abre o túmulo, e olhe-me: dize-me qual de nós morreu mais.

The dusk is the sky’s silence with its parallel clouds and the last of color penetrating the trees even the birds.

It is this curve of pigeons, close to the roofs, this singing of roosters and doves, far; and, further still, the lightless blossom of stars.

But it’s not just this, the dusk: It is the absence of your two arms in a window, over flowers, and in your hands your face, understanding the luck of transformation from the clouds.

It is the absence of your eyes with islands, seas, adventures, races, your mouth, where the passage of life had left a sweet sadness that went without words.

Oh! The absence of silence that hung between us, And that look of the afternoon, too. And in that silence lived your love for me, binding and secret. Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 55

Equal to the face of Nature: evident and undefined.

Everything about you was a delayed absence: a parting ready to be fulfilled.

With this feeling I would cover my tears with a frantic smile. Now, I am afraid that you didn’t see what was really hidden behind.

Here is my true face, in front of the dusk you never reached. Open the tomb and see myself: tell me which of us died more.10

The force of cultural inheritance impregnates the literary writing of Cecília Meireles and ends up sustaining her creative process. At the same time, this presence explains the reason for which the author has often been misunderstood by Brazilian critics. An exception is the reception of the “Romanceiro da Inconfidência.” This work recalls a historical event in Brazil— the conspiracy of —though her approach symbolically surpasses the revival and reflection on the happenings in the old Vila Rica by unifying the human condition in a timeless event. In Meireles’s writing, her answers to existential questions come from a dialogue with Azorean inheritance, poetically transformed into imagistic networks that appeal to the insular landscape and the solitude of the island, so as to present a metaphysical and visionary conception of life which surpasses the perceptible reality and follows different itineraries in pursuit of answers to the mysteries of existence. Theoretical reflections on “migrant literature,, cultural legacy, and memory exemplify the literary production of writers such as Cecília. According to Pierre Ouellet, within the notion of migration is the idea of transgression, through which the Self is emancipated from its first identity:

C’est un passage à l’autre, un mouvement transgressif de l’Un vers l’Autre, qui enfreint les lois du propre, franchit les frontiers de la propriété ou de l’individualité, pour aller au-delà, toujours, du lieu d’où l’on vient et d’où l’on tire son identité, pour mieux défaire ce lien originaire et le renouer chaque fois en un nouveau destin, un autre devenir qui est aussi un devenir autre. (Ouellet 19)

It is the passage to the other, a transgressive movement from One towards the Other, which violates the laws of the self, opening the borders of property or of individuality, to go beyond, always, from the place they are from or from whence they derive their identity, to better undo this originating tie and renew it in each new destiny, another becoming which is also becoming another. 56 │ InterDISCIPLINARY Journal of Portuguese Diaspora Studies Vol. 5 (2016)

Ouellet points out that, when he talks about “migrant” literature, he does not refer only to the poetic, romantic, or theatrical works by authors born in other places, who keep in memory and in writing the cultural elements of their origin, but also to the intersubjective and intercultural mobility that characterizes certain native authors. The writing of Cecília Meireles combines two conditions: it carries and transforms her cultural and affective Azorean inheritance, while at the same time, it contains an aesthetic sensitivity open to others, as revealed by her journey chronicles, “Poemas italianos, Poemas Escritos na Índia” / “[Italian Poems, Poems Written in India],” and her work as a translator.11 She can, therefore, be placed among the writers of “intercultural migration,” also defined as interlinguistic and intersubjective, and for whom subjectivity is always at stake, in a radical movement that leaves nothing in a state of stability.

Notes 1 Translated by Karin Mosling. Technical revision and translation of Meireles’s poetry by Patrick Holloway. A revised version of this paper was published in Portuguese in: Alea, vol.18.3, Rio de Janeiro, Sept/Dec. 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1517-106X/183-470. 2 The rimance (archaic form of romance) or xácara is a term which, in peninsular literature, is equivalent to the European ballad, a short epic poem that is sung, originally popular and transmitted orally. Despite theoretical efforts by some authors, namely Almeida Garret (1799– 1854), regarding their distinction, rimance and xácara are frequently confused with the solau, another subgenre of the ballad. Translated from Infopédia [online] Porto Editora, 2003–2013. [Consulted on 21 Nov. 2013]. 3 This translation from the popular Azorean verses and the subsequent translations of Cecília Meireles were translated by the poet Patrick Holloway and seek to keep the musicality of these verses. 4 Morenos are people from the East, near and far, a reference which confirms the author’s interest in Eastern cultures. 5 Obs: The main stopover of Portuguese armed forces over the course of the 16th century was the port of Angra on the Terceira Island, where structures were created to support the ships and crews that arrived in bad conditions. In Guinote (2003). 6 Pseudonym of the Portuguese writer, Maria Dulce Lupi Cohen Osório de Castro. 7 Collection of texts by R. Tagore, for the centenary commemorative edition of the Indian author, in 1961, edited by MEC; Çaturanga, 1962, for the Nobel Prize in Literature Collection. 8 Meireles, Cecília. Apud Damasceno, Darcy. Notícia Biográfica. In Damasceno, 1994, p. 80. 9 Translated by Patrick Holloway. 10 Translated by Patrick Holloway. 11 Cecília translated and published works by Rainer Maria Rilke, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Rabindranath Tagore, Virginia Woolf, poetry from Israel, Charles Dickens, One Thousand and One Nights, but there are unpublished translations by the author, including of the following authors: A. Casona, J. Anouilh, Pushkin, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, B. Shaw.

Works Cited Ayala, Walmir. “Nas Fronteiras do Mar Absoluto.” edited by Meireles, Cecília. Crônica Trovada da cidade de Sam Sebastiam. José Olympio, 1965. Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello / The Azorean heritage │ 57

Bloch, Pedro. “Pedro Bloch Entrevista Cecília Meireles.” Revista Manchete, vol. 630, 1964, pp. 34–37. Cabral, Mônica Maria Serpa. O Conto Literário de Temática Açoriana: A Ilha, o Mar e a Emigração. Dissertation, Universidade de Aveiro, 2010. Cristóvão, Fernando. “Cartas Inéditas de Cecília Meireles a Maria Valupi.” Colóquio Letras, vol. 66, 1982, pp. 63–71. ---. “A Compreensão Portuguesa de Cecília Meireles.” Colóquio Letras, 1978, pp. 20–27. Damasceno, Darcy. “Notícia Biográfica.” Obra Poética, by Cecília Meireles, Nova Aguilar, 1994, pp. 79–90. Freitas, Vamberto. O Imaginário dos Escritores Açorianos. Salamandra, 1992. Gouvêa, Leila V. B. Cecília em Portugal: Ensaio Biográfico sobre a Presença de Cecília Meireles na terra de Camões, Antero e Pessoa. Iluminuras, 2001. Guinote, Paulo J. A. Ascensão e Declínio da Carreira da Índia (Séculos XV–XVIII). 2003, http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/01guifrulopes/Pguinote-nauparis.htm Loundo, Dilip. Introductory Study: Cecília Meireles and India. Travelling and Meditating: Poems Written in India and Other Poems, by Cecília Meireles, translated by Rita R. Sanyal and Dilip Loundo, Embassy of Brazil, 2003, pp. 13–49. Maia Gouveia, Margarida. Cecília Meireles: Uma Poética do “Eterno Instante.” Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda, 2002. Meireles, Cecília. “Adagios Açorianos.” Insulana, vol. IX, 1953, pp. 187–188. ---. “Cancioneiro Popular Açoriano de Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues.” Insulana, vol. IX, 1953, pp. 433–446. ---. “Folclore Guasca e Açoriano.” Insulana, v. III, Instituto Cultural de Ponta Delgada, Tipografia do Diário dos Açores, 1947, pp. 1–10. ---. Morena, pena de amor. Nunca Mais … e Poemas dos Poemas. Baladas para El-Rei. Civilizacão Brasileira, 1973. ---. Ilusões do Mundo. Nova Aguilar, 1976. ---. Panorama Folclórico dos Açores. Especialmente da Ilha de São Miguel. Instituto Brasileiro de Educação, Ciências e Cultura, 1958. ---. Poesia Completa. Nova Aguilar, 1994. ---., editor. Poetas Novos de Portugal. Dois Mundos, 1944. Mota, Luísa. O Canto Repartido: Cecília Meireles e Portugal. Imprensa Nacional – Casa da Moeda, 2012. Nemésio, Vitorino. “Açorianidade.” Açorianidade e Autonomia. Páginas Recolhidas, edited by Carlos Marinho Matos Brumarte, 1989. Ouellet, Pierre. L’Esprit Migrateur. Essai sur le Non-sens Commun. VLB Éditeur, 2005. Sachet, Celestino, editor. A Lição do Poema: Cartas de Cecília Meireles a Armando Cortes-Rodrigues. Instituto Cultural de Ponta Delgada, 1998.

Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello is a Professor in the post-graduate program in Romance at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Areas of teaching and research include Brazilian literatures, and theory of literature with a focus on poetry, narrative, theories and criticism of the imaginary.