Seoane had a restless soul. His imagination snatched him in creative eruptions that, in a given time, didn't find an output by the means of brushes, paints and cavas. It was at this time that, around the 1960's, Seoane starts to write poetry. His poetic work, just like on the plastic arts, can be better understood by cicles - phases on the life of the artist in which his worries, pains, crie and loves took a turn not into the canvas, but rather fell into the poetry realm.
The so often spoken poetic work of Seoane was never published despite the incentives from great friends - some of them notorious poets themselves - and, for many years, it was forgotten, asleep in the middle of the bibliographic estate of the family archives. This work is in the process of cataloging and editing to finally be released sometime in the near future.
For those who are curious about this side of the artist, we have made available here a couple of his poems. From Seoane's poetic work, there are two poems that found its way to the general public in 1965 whe they were published respectively on the newspapers Diário da Noite and Folha de São Paulo:
The so often spoken poetic work of Seoane was never published despite the incentives from great friends - some of them notorious poets themselves - and, for many years, it was forgotten, asleep in the middle of the bibliographic estate of the family archives. This work is in the process of cataloging and editing to finally be released sometime in the near future.
For those who are curious about this side of the artist, we have made available here a couple of his poems. From Seoane's poetic work, there are two poems that found its way to the general public in 1965 whe they were published respectively on the newspapers Diário da Noite and Folha de São Paulo:
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Oh! this incertitude
of knowing who I am... Oh! this anguish without direction... What am I made of? How can I move in this great space so small of me!? How to find myself In this directionless infinity... How to rest in the spinning circle of darkness! I sleep over myself and the awakening is far away Oh! these hands of mine and these ten fingers sliding and pressing this body of mine... Amisdt this incertitude amisdt howls amisdt the pains of the world of knowking who I am... |
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UNDERWORLD RETURN
Over the closed door My body hovered over the silence on the limit of the beyond in four spaces of blood. Four spaces of dream held back on my desire; dawn of a new day following the everlast. I picked the rain's profile from the face of a late hour and the hidden sun from the bulge of the absent night. And I'm almost there: here comes the day, --- my smile and the daybreak born at the same time. NILSON SEOANE (from the upcoming book “The Chant of Desperation”) |
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Seoane had as friends, admirers and masters on the literary realm, some of the brightest and most accomplished writers of the Brazilian literature such as Manuel Bandeira, Érico Veríssimo, Jorge Amado, Lygia Fagundes Teles, Ida Laura and many others. On his correspondence archives we find not only words of friendship, but also some tributes rendered to him by his friends that paid back their admiration for his plastic poetry with beautiful watercolors of words:
From the underwater depths
blue algae
starfish split in two
You arrived
to the floor
of the Earth
and the ghostly vegetation
opened up
in a floral fire
to welcome you
daisies grew up on the swamps
poppies were born from the sun
crimson corollas came from cups of blood
and even from the silent stained glasses
the flowering
blossomed
between abysmal butterflies and birds
the life hallucinating
weed smoking
men
gently outline the figures
seeking a gesture
of a smile
of a pain
and between them
you rise
with your dazzled world
with your heartfelt experiences
over which you try to pluck
the mistery of the seed
of the germination
of the being
that is born shapeless inside the night
and in an explosion
of colors
and of quests
tranforms itself
in a human being
Ida Laura
blue algae
starfish split in two
You arrived
to the floor
of the Earth
and the ghostly vegetation
opened up
in a floral fire
to welcome you
daisies grew up on the swamps
poppies were born from the sun
crimson corollas came from cups of blood
and even from the silent stained glasses
the flowering
blossomed
between abysmal butterflies and birds
the life hallucinating
weed smoking
men
gently outline the figures
seeking a gesture
of a smile
of a pain
and between them
you rise
with your dazzled world
with your heartfelt experiences
over which you try to pluck
the mistery of the seed
of the germination
of the being
that is born shapeless inside the night
and in an explosion
of colors
and of quests
tranforms itself
in a human being
Ida Laura