A Educação pela Pedra e Depois

by João Cabral de Melo Neto

A educação pela pedra é mais um livro integrante do projeto de relançamento das obras de João Cabral de Melo Neto pelo selo Alfaguara. Nesta coletânea de poesias, Cabral atinge a sua maturidade estética. Os poemas se encaixam em uma estrutura pré-estabelecida, seguindo o conhecido e rígido estruturalismo de João Cabral, mas sempre com a capacidade de emocionar o leitor.
Este relançamento é composto de quatro livros escritos pelo autor no período entre 1960/66. São eles: Quaderna, Dois Parlamentos e Serial, de 1960 e 61, além de A educação pela pedra, de 1966, vencedor de vários prêmios, entre eles o Prêmio Jabuti.
Os três primeiros livros retomam temas caros ao autor, como sua vida em Pernambuco, com os engenhos, os rios e o mar. E também descrevem sua passagem marcante pela Espanha, especificamente sua vida em Sevilha.
Em A educação pela pedra, livro que dá nome a esta nova edição, João Cabral alcança figuras marcantes da história da poesia brasileira, com força e beleza que não se acanham diante de seus planos arquitetônicos de construção poética.

Genres: Poetry, Brazil, Fiction, Portuguese Literature, Literature

385 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

João Cabral de Melo Neto was born in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, and is considered one of the greatest Brazilian poets of all time.

He is often quoted saying "I try not to perfume the flower". His works are said to be dry, devoid of exaggerated emotions that are usually associated with poetry, sticking usually to images and actions and physical descriptions rather than feelings. The image of an engineer designing a building is often used to describe his poetry. It usually follows a strict meter and assonant rhymes.

He worked as a diplomat for most of his life.

In 1990, he won the Camões Prize, the greatest prize in literature of the Portuguese language. In 1992, João Cabral received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which some consider to be almost as prestigious as the Nobel Prize.

Reviews

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joao Cabral de Melo Neto writes poetry about objects and things that brings out nuances and factors that we don't normally associate with them. An example is the title poem Education by Stone:

An education by stone: lesson by lesson;
learning from the stone by going to its school,
grasping its impersonal, unstressed voice
(it begins its classes with one in diction).
The lesson in morals - its cold resistance
to what flows and to flowing, to being molded;
a lesson in poetics - its concrete flesh;
another in economics - its compact weight:
lessons from the stone (from the outside in,
a speechless primer) to learn how to spell it.

Another education by stone: in the backlands
(from the inside out, and predidactic).
In the backlands the stone does not give lessons,
and if it gave them, nothing would be taught;
there the stone is not something you learn
but is a stone from birth, penetrating the soul.

In another poem, a tribute to other poets, he included one of my favorites, Marianne Moore and a poet I am in the process of reading, Francis Ponge.

Marianne Moore, refusing a pen,
writes her stanzas
with a cutting edge,
a common jackknife or scalpel.

She discovered that the clear side
of things is the obverse,
and therefore dissects them
to read texts more accurately.

She enters with unswerving hand
and a scalpel pen
to produce, on leaving,
a neatly stitched poem.

And since the scar is clean,
sparse and straight,
more than the surgeon
one admires the surgical blade.

Francis Ponge, also a surgeon,
uses a different technique, turning
the things he operates on
in his fingers, and himself around them.

He handles them with all ten
thousand fingers of language;
his is not a straight scalpel
but one that's always branching.

With it he so wraps and wraps
the thing that he almost winds it
into a ball and loses
himself, wound up inside it.

And just when it would seem
he can no longer penetrate,
he enters without cutting,
through a crack that went unseen.

[Rebecca]

You know, it's a real pity we don't read more poetry in translation. There's a lot of twaddle out there about how you never get the 'real' experience of the poetry, but I think sometimes poetry isn't the real experience of poetry, anyway, so why let that stop you? This stuff is totally captivating, for instance.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

With open book on my knees
and wind in my hair
I look at the sea.

What happens in water
starts repeating
in memory.
*
Whatever lives wounds.
*
If you let go and you lie down
under the steady eastern wind
of a beach in Northeast Brazil,
more than letting go, you lie;

if you give yourself up to the sea,
your body closes in, isolates
itself inside its own cage,
and less than existing, you are;

if furthermore the trade wind
stirred by the sea (or stirring it)
makes the coconut trees
intone their single syllable,

you may be able to hear,
in this detached and empty
state, just being, the whistling
of time flowing, your flowing.

[Goldfinch Bolton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impersonal, Material, and even stern. I would love to see what sort of sculptures he'd make. He creates such dynamic poems with so few words, really showing how syntax and devices can be used to create something great. Personal favorites are the one about talking about cast and forged iron and the longest piece about the sugar mill worker.

[Pablo López Astudillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una buena forma de entrar a conocer las bases de la poesía concreta. Libro dificilísimo de leer. Nunca había visto algo parecido.

[rafael m.f. · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Habitar o tempo

Para não matar seu tempo, imaginou:
vivê-lo enquanto ele ocorre, ao vivo;
no instante finíssimo em que ocorre,
em ponta de agulha e porém acessível;
viver seu tempo: para o que ir viver
num deserto literal ou de alpendres;
em ermos, que não distraiam de viver
a agulha de um só instante, plenamente.
Plenamente: vivendo-o de dentro dele;
habitá-lo, na agulha de cada instante,
em cada agulha instante: e habitar nele
tudo o que habitar cede ao habitante.

E de volta de ir habitar seu tempo:
ele corre vazio, o tal tempo ao vivo;
e como além de vazio, transparente,
o instante a habitar passa invisível.

Portanto: para não matá-lo, matá-lo;
matar o tempo, enchendo-o de coisas;
em vez do deserto, ir viver nas ruas
onde o enchem e o matam as pessoas;
pois como o tempo ocorre transparente
e só ganha corpo e cor com seu miolo
(o que não passou do que lhe passou),
para habitá-lo: só no passado, morto.".

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

mineralism in the house~!

[Suellen Rubira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Não sei como ele faz isso, mas ele faz.

[Guilherme Marques · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dos quatro livros que compõem essa coletânea, Serial é, de longe, o pior, quase me fez pensar numa nota três - que seria uma pena, pois os outros, principalmente o que leva o título, são muito bons. "Habitar o tempo", "Rios sem discurso", "Coisas de cabeceira" (todos - aliás, é interessante como João Cabral retoma não apenas temas e formas, rigorosamente, mas até mesmo outros poemas do próprio livro), "A palavra seda", os "Cemitérios", "Estudos para uma bailadora andaluziana", os poemas de "Dois parlamentos"... Para citar apenas alguns, são os que se destacaram, para mim.

[Elina Rindle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this side by side Original Portuguese to English Translation edition as someone who can read both but on different levels. Sometimes the original definitely brought out different cadences that got lost in the translation but overall such a job well done in capturing the essence of the poems in the English version.

[Ricardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.4⭐️ O cuidado e esmero para escrever este livro pelo “engenheiro das palavras” é delicioso.”Fábula de um arquiteto”, “Uma ouriça”, Tecendo a manhã”, “O urubu mobilizado”, “O sertanejo falando”, “Agulhas” são meus favoritos.

[Fantastic Seahorse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great materialist poet but I need more poetry lessons to understand the transformation of imagery, & 胡续冬的诗歌中的的互文.

[Sarah]

Not for me.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved these poems. These are mainly smaller poems, looking at the world and life with wit and brilliance and imagination - uncovering things often hidden to my eyes.

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Education By Stone: Selected Poems, Richard Zenith, the translator, selected poems from poetry collections that João Cabral de Melo Neto published between 1942 and 1987, a span during which the writer evolved as a poet. A final chapter or essay, called The Afterword, describes his painterly style and his influences from memories of youth and from experiences of living abroad to write about northeastern Brazil. The title hints at the impersonal, objective style with solid images and absence of lyricism. Yet, these stylistic elements, joined together and built on each other, produce an emotive, original artwork,

"Forge your iron; shape it by force,
not into a flower you already know
but into what can also be a flower
if you think it is and say it is so."

-from "The Ironware Shop in Carmona"

[Claudia Lizardo]

O Scanner falhou. O livro que tenho na verdade e EMMA, de Jane Austen, publicado pela Editora Nova Fronteira - Rio de Janeiro - em 1996, com tradução de Ivo Barroso. ISBN: 85-209-0762-8.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

An investigation of objects, and therefore life. Concrete and meditative. Loved his tribute to W.H. Auden.

[Clarissa Lima · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lindo!

[Paul Kerschen]

The translation is just excellent, and discloses more variety than you'd think.