Viriato da Cruz: Poetry and Rhythm in the 1961 Poems

  

Abstract

This essay examines the lyric poetry of Viriato da Cruz (March 25, 1928–June 13, 1973), published in Lisbon in 1961 by the Casa dos Estudantes do Império under the title Poemas. It analyzes the relationship between sonic rhythm and the militant commitments of the author, one of the principal leaders and theorists of the struggle for Angolan independence and socialist revolution, as well as one of Angola’s most accomplished poets.

 

An Extended Introduction

Since the 1950s, Viriato da Cruz’s poetry has served as a major point of reference for Angolan nationalists and revolutionaries.

The significance and impact of his verse were recognized as early as 1949[1] by the Cape Verdean neo-realist Filinto Elísio de Menezes. The typescript of “Apontamentos sobre a poesia de Angola” (“Notes on Angolan Poetry”), preserved in the papers of Mário Pinto de Andrade (Menezes 1949), contains two graphically indented subtitles, each preceded by a dash and placed on a separate line beneath the general title: “Maurício Gomes and Viriato da Cruz” and “precursors of a poetry in formation.” In this text, Filinto Elísio de Menezes describes Viriato as “possibly the most representative [figure] in Angolan poetry” (Menezes 1949, 4) – “possibly” because the movement was still in its infancy.

The Cape Verdean poet probably had access to a version of the poems different from the one later published in book form. He quotes the following line from “Sô Santo”: “Ai o Sô Santo, homem rico de musseques e mais musseques[2]” (Ah, Sô Santo, the wealthy man of musseques upon musseques). It's easy to see the disagreement with the suggestive beginning of 'Vó Naxa's speech in the 1961 edition of Poemas:

– "Sô Santo teve riqueza… (Sô Santo had wealth...)

Dono de musseques e mais musseques…”

(Owner of musseques and more musseques...)

This divergence, although relevant to genetic criticism, is not consequential for the present discussion. What matters here is Filinto’s broader assessment, including his identification of “another important facet of the artist: the universal character of his work” (Menezes 1949, 5). “Character” is important for the present argument because it moves beyond the period’s clichéd opposition between the universal and the local – an opposition that the poet himself avoided. Angolan nationalist and neo-realist poetry commonly sought to particularize experience by presenting something intrinsically ours: unmistakable, unique, and strictly local. Conversely, the period’s universalizing tendency often meant adapting to international modernism, especially Euro-American modernism, and to an internationalist literature that was itself steeped in clichés. Viriato da Cruz brought the local into relief by universalizing it: he showed that the particular possesses an inalienable humanity and that humanity exists within specific, though collective, circumstances. This approach was consistent with his Marxist understanding of globalization, according to which “the social transformations of a particular community are also determined, as you know, by the transformations of humanity’s global process.”[3]

The universality of his work, however, does not result solely from this understanding. Viriato almost always draws universal lessons from particular episodes, as oral narratives often do. At the same time, he draws on transnational modernist rhythms and rhythmic strategies to introduce Luandan prosody into the colonial language.

As we have seen, Filinto Elísio de Menezes discussed Viriato’s verse without addressing rhythm, although he remained attentive to its artistic quality. Subsequent critics recognized the formative and central role of these poems in the development of Angolan nationalist literature, yet they likewise overlooked rhythm. Listing them all here would be tedious. More directly relevant to the present argument is Salvato Trigo’s description of “Sô Santo” as

the textual and discursive model of modern Angolan literature, announced by the 'Let us discover Angola' generation.

The phrase “the genius of native languages,” used by Mário Pinto de Andrade following Cheikh Anta Diop (Andrade 1954, 123), still seems to me both romantic and imprecise. Of greater interest here is “the textual and discursive model”: that of “modern Angolan literature,” as well as those of the colonizer and of the “native languages.”

Three years later, in the second issue of the Luanda journal Mensagem (1952), Viriato was assigned first place in the new Angolan literature, “mainly through the pen of Mário de Alcântara Monteiro – a place that no one would dispute.”[4]

Four years after Filinto Elísio, in 1953, Mário Pinto de Andrade and the Saint Toméan Neo-Realist and Pan-Africanist poet Francisco José Tenreiro produced Poesia Negra de Expressão Portuguesa (Black Poetry in Portuguese) (AAVV 1953). The volume identified the same triad later discussed by Mário António, the youngest member of the group: António Jacinto, Agostinho Neto, and Viriato da Cruz. Among them, Mário Pinto de Andrade emphasized Viriato’s contribution (AAVV 2012, 2):

Viriato da Cruz is, in our view, the poet who penetrated most deeply into Angola’s Black realities and who most fully merits the designation “Angolan poet.”

At various points, the essayist Mário António Fernandes de Oliveira discussed the poetry of his “elder,” foregrounding it within the broader generational landscape. In doing so, he repeatedly emphasized Viriato’s ability to evoke, both visually and emotionally, a distinctively Angolan scene in each composition; in this respect, he considered Viriato the most accomplished poet of his generation. Mário António stresses the local dimension in positions worth noting here[5]:

In the isolation dictated by his illness, Viriato da Cruz wrote all the exemplary poems that are known – collected for the first time in volume form by the Casa dos Estudantes do Império, many years later – each marking a path of original exploration of Angolan Literature.

"Exemplary"[6] and "exploration" is enough for the moment for us to repeat the question that guided the same essayist (Oliveira 1990, 183)[7]:

What sap, from this ground, has reached poetic flowering? The question is answered by the poems of Viriato da Cruz, considered, as we have already said, to be the most accomplished of Angolan poets.

The present essay examines how this “prospection” – whose “prospective aspect is what matters most” (Oliveira 1990, 184, 186) – achieved poetic expression through rhythms that were simultaneously local and universal. Mário António’s firsthand testimony also confirms that Viriato served as a model for his peers from the outset:

The middle of the century is the time when the relevant events took place: between 1948 and 1952, the literary movement that represented the first outbreak of national consciousness in Angola emerged and achieved its first expression, in relation to which, as until now, the first place was given to Viriato da Cruz [.../...] for the long journey of literary construction that would earn him, in relation to them, an undisputed advance, seniority, for years to come[8]. It was at this time that Filinto Elísio de Menezes contacted him [...].

This model included “the same verve combined with remarkable formal mastery” that the essayist identified in “Serão de Menino,” “Sô Santo,” “Namoro,” and “Makèzú” (Oliveira 1990, 175). How, then, was this “formal mastery” realized in specific poetic terms?

The poems were first published in Angola in a scattered way, in vehicles with fragile support and restricted circulation[9], although decisive (due to the very strength of this poetry). It was the gathering in a book by the Casa dos Estudantes do Império, in Lisbon in 1961 (the year the liberation struggle began), that allowed his literate compatriots, despite the repression, to get a first idea of his short lyrical work as a whole. The poems were already known and appreciated, but not in a meaningful sequence. To study the formation of independence literature, from the publication of the magazine Mensagem (1951[10]-1952) in Luanda until independence (1975), we will have to refer mainly to this book, which came out a decade after the first issue of Mensagem.

In addition to providing the only overview of the author’s poetics during these decisive years, the brief CEI anthology is carefully structured, offering an almost narrative account of his literary and political development. Consider the table of contents: first come three poems centered on Luanda or Angola (“Makèzù,” “Sô Santo,” and “Namoro”); then two poems with rural settings (“Serão de Menino” and “Rimance da Menina da Roça”); and finally a poem of political-literary oratory composed in dialogue with African American and Pan-Africanist literature (“Mamã Negra: Canto de Esperança”). The sequence is symptomatic: it moves from the urban periphery to the countryside and from there to Pan-African universality. It also traces a rhythmic progression, from lines structured around short, musical rhythmic units to lines that extend nearly to the edge of the page. “Mamã Negra” likewise divides its meters into relatively short rhythmic units, but its form approaches oratorical prose and is structurally comparable to Martin Luther King Jr.’s later “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963.

Of these six poems, the most popular thus far have been the first three, perhaps also the most artistically accomplished. The last one, "Mamã Negra: Canto de Esperança" (Song of Hope), was selected by Mário Pinto de Andrade and Francisco José Tenreiro for the aforementioned booklet Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa[11]. Mário António considered that "the process of intellectualization" revealed in[12] was "at the root of [...] Viriato's later poetic silence". (Oliveira 1990, 175)[13] Unsurprisingly, those first three poems[14] refer to geographical space and social levels that were familiar to the poet, who thus had a experiential basis for the construction of visual images and episodes. This also supported the intensive fusion of his language with that of his people, in an unmistakable way.

The artistic force of these poems, beyond their narrative and visual qualities, is closely related to the central concern of this essay: their treatment of rhythm. They are also the three poems in which rhythmic play is most fully structured, producing an authentic “poetic flowering.”

Viriato da Cruz’s name remains widely recognized, and several of these poems continue to be sung, memorized, and recited. In recitation, dramatization, and song, rhythm is at least as important as it is to the inner ear. By structuring the voice and the melodic sequence, rhythm directly connects speaker and listener, creating a transversal familiarity that escapes the surveillance of conscious reflection or censorship. This dynamic underlies the social and commonsense construction of rhythm.

Despite the popularity and musical acuity of the poems, most literary criticism has overlooked nationalist poetry’s investment in rhythmic sound. As a result, such studies often remain confined to commentary and thematic analysis without relating those concerns to compositional criteria. The poet himself consistently emphasized his “ideals as a writer”: namely, “to be present (at least with the weapon of literature) in the battles of our people, to incite them to the necessary struggles” (Cruz, “Apontamentos” – draft letter to the editor of O Oriente, 1958, 1). Yet this necessary incitement encountered difficulties that were not always explicitly acknowledged:

The people are much closer to Black culture than the intellectuals, for reasons of training and existence. The latter have enormous difficulties in bringing the results of their work to the attention of popular audiences.

This fragment is part of the conference "The Black intellectual and his responsibilities"[15] (1959), translated by Edmundo Rocha in the book Viriato da Cruz: O homem e o mito (Viriato da Cruz: The Man and the Myth. Rocha, Soares and Fernandes 2023). Just as the Black intellectual had enormous difficulties in reaching "the knowledge of popular audiences" with his work, so the Black writer, at the same time an intellectual (supposedly operative in written culture), tried to compose by integrating popular orality into his works to bridge the gap with the same people.

To address this problem, the poet used Angolan Portuguese, shaped by the Portuguese spoken in Luanda’s suburbs. This choice mitigated some of the difficulties commonly identified by critics of sub-Saharan African poets who write in European languages (Irele 2016). In Luanda at the time, the Portuguese appropriated and transformed by local speakers also functioned as a marker of identity. The use of Angolan Portuguese, however, had further poetic implications, some of which are raised in Abiola Irele’s lecture. Viriato da Cruz intuitively anticipated some of Irele’s questions, as the analysis below will show, positioning his lyric poetry in an intermediate space that is comparable, though not identical, to Virginia Jackson’s argument in The Cadence of Consent: Francis Barton Gummere, Lyric Rhythm, and White Poetics. The two are comparable in their conception of rhythm as “social participation” – a concept Jackson reformulates and Viriato puts to use – and in relation to racialized rhythmicity, which the poet transcends in his literary practice (Jackson 2019).

Angolan Portuguese bears the influence of tonal languages, which complicates its prosodic organization. It also integrates vowel duration into a syllable-based language in which rhythms are measured by the number of syllables grouped around a stress.

The prosody of the Portuguese language changes as you move from the streets of Lisbon (for example) to the suburbs of Luanda (for example). The use of Angolan Portuguese, mainly spoken in the suburbs (musseques) by proletarians, implies, due to the difference in prosody, rhythmic variations to the norms or quantitative tendencies of Portuguese versification. This can result, in poetry, in the composition of oscillating rhythms, metrically variable, but with minimal variations – when counted by the common method of Portuguese versification. In orality, due to the combined duration and intensity, some of the variations can be annulled, and there are rhythmic units of five syllables, for example, which, due to the dragging of a vowel or a pause, will be heard as having six. The poet himself remembered the drags, transcribing words from Kimbundu with accentual details that tell us the tone and duration (for example, when he writes "makèzú": that "è", less intense, can be pronounced as a short syllable, and the final "ú", stressed syllable, remains resonant, lengthens slightly).

The subject is complex and sensitive and, in order not to become sidetracked, we should look at the fighter's thoughts on the role of the Portuguese language in the struggle for independence. As he lucidly pointed out, the literary use of the Portuguese language by Angolans had "two audiences, both necessary". One was the Portuguese themselves, to whom the Angolan message had to be communicated to win sympathy in another country; the other was "Angolans who understand Portuguese". When speaking of these, the poet is not only thinking of those who studied at high schools or universities. Although a restricted audience, "a minority indeed", this "urbanized minority", but "from a certain point of view, more capable of liberating action", would be "largely proletarian" (Cruz, "Text by Viriato da Cruz on the role of language as an instrument of repression or liberation" 1960). It is for such proletarians that the poet writes his rhythms.

Composing lines with a militant purpose, he resorted to the Portuguese spoken in the suburbs, in the musseques, by the popular, working, and impoverished classes (including those who descended from former wealthy families, relegated by the colonial advance – which is illustrated by the character Sô Santo). When composing lines in Portuguese so that his grandmother Ximinha and his brother Filisberto would understand, and so that his children would understand and fight, he had to resort to rhythms that were intuitively perceived (by his explicit reader-listeners) as natural, familiar, everyday. The poetic challenge was therefore to write in popular rhythms, in Angolan Portuguese, in a kind of "orality-writing" (Schipper 2016) at the same time knowing that a second, colonial audience was accustomed to classical and romantic versification, as much as to the modernism that tried to reconvert it to Portuguese or Brazilian daily life. His combative and poetic efforts were part of the "important, crucial question" of the "passage from writing to orality", simultaneous with the search for "the expression of his community [...] of writing and orality at the same time" (Glissant, Introduction to a poetics of diversity 2005, 48, 49). Between 1947 and 1952, the return to orality was accelerated, not only by the urgency of the struggle but also by technological advances, particularly in Angola, such as communication via battery radio (which even reached remote rural regions). In that context, a poet whose lines were read on the radio, especially on AM[16], would reach a much wider range and number of people than books. The traditional oral means of transmission, recitation, and singing, also persisted, spreading the lines through restricted but also proletarian circles, in fractal sequences and therefore difficult to consider. In their way, they reinforced the awareness of how important it was to move from (erudite) writing to (popular) orality, linking communities of belonging with political-partisan targets.

In his initial critical text on Viriato's poetry, although he inaugurated the militant reading, Filinto Elísio de Menezes, also a poet, pointed out that the poet "possessed a defined technique". This technique was part of a Neo-Realist aesthetic, executed "without the artifice of sound puns" (p. 4). The sound puns helped with memorization, so their absence was not good, but the distance from the "sound puns" also distanced the poets from modernist juggling, seen as futile distractions. This sonically sober option included rhythmic solutions ignored by scholars, as I said. Despite not resorting to "sound puns", they penetrated their main target audience, popular audiences of the city of Luanda and its immense surroundings, as well as other colonial cities. Why?

Viriato was one of the rare Angolan poets in whom exceptional political lucidity was joined to exceptional artistic lucidity. He was as rigorous, coherent, and rational in structuring his verse as he was in analyzing the specific conditions and historical possibilities of a socialist revolution in Angola. For both reasons – his extraordinary lucidity and his commitment to an oral-written poetics – his popularity should be studied in relation to tempo, cadence, and sonic phrasing, all of which remain close to everyday Luandan speech. Such a study has not yet been undertaken. This essay seeks to help fill that gap.

 

Rhythm

Rhythm is a fundamental component of poetic composition. It may be considered across a wide range of features, including syntax, semantic recurrence, graphic arrangement, and the gestures implied by punctuation. The recognition that rhythm permeates diverse human activities – including breathing and walking, even “in an impractical step” that traces “little paths in the sand”[17] – is by no means new, is already older. It is found throughout the universe, inseparable from the person and poetry, as Croce recalled (Croce, Breviario di Estetica: Quattro Lezioni 1952, 78, 137, Croce, La Poesia 1994, 20-23), the symbolists, Senghor[18], Glissant[19] and, today, we can bring these perspectives closer to string theory. These approaches are neither unusual nor mere academic fads. For what concerns us, the articulation of string theory with the studies of poetic rhythm and linguistic laboratories, together and correlated (Gaya 1993) will one day allow us to build exact rhythmic and metrical patterns, admitting the real (and I think minimal) internal variations they support. These patterns, with their variations, can then be compared with general, universal vibratory patterns, and with the particular rhythms of the most varied functions and occupations of life, including those of breathing and blood circulation – or the breaking of waves. Recalling Karl Bücher in 1897 (Bücher 1914), tyhe rhythms of work (hammering, weeding), or of human and animal movements in general (riding, for example), are both standardized and personalized. In the rhythms of repeated manual labor, we can find recurring mathematical relationships and, at the same time, constant variations, which are almost always minimal. It is therefore inevitable that language – articulated breath – is structured by rhythms and poetry works artistically with sound sequences in their diversity. For this and other reasons (for example: the semantic and even partisan connotations that rhythms give rise to), we cannot ignore rhythm when we study poetry. Traditionalist writers, popular poets, and African writers (at least south of the Sahara) know this, even if only intuitively.

But there is the irregular (although standardizable) rhythm of the waves on the beach, of the stars winking, and the regular rhythm of the planet rolling over itself, or around the sun, with easier mathematical determination. In verse, the rhythm that treatise writers consider is generally the regular rhythm, and the variations it supports (for example heterometric) are still standardizable. It was modernism that put an end to the fixed, plastered rhythmic regularity, or at least reduced it to a game of unforeseen combinations, generally close to everyday life, like the irregular brightness of the stars. Viriato's poetry lends itself to the study of all these rhythmic aspects, taking part in the typical oral-written syncretism, a play between everyday, commonplace speech (and breathing) on the one hand, and, on the other, the normative standards of formal, colonial education. This balance is reflected in syntax and prosody (Jay-Rayon 2011, 22) in ascending or descending lines (Gaya 1993, 43-52) not only in the grouping of syllables by accents and caesuras. Now, however, I'm going to focus on the simple sound rhythm, which organizes the lines into sound syntagms focusing on a stressed vowel.

I have two reasons for focusing on sound rhythms and their variations. The first: the lines were also created to be listened to, rather than read silently, so the poet certainly took rhythm into account. The aim of bringing poetry closer to popular audiences and the idea that traditional Angolan poetry was inseparable from music and dance[20], made working on rhythms indispensable. The second reason is because its study is technically demanding, poetic rhythm requires us to make non-thematic analyses initially, because it ensures, as I said, an unguarded affinity, guided by quantitative and physical standards, measuring accents and pauses, durations and intonations, prosody, tones, and half-tones. Analyzing in this way reveals proximities, confluences, and experiences between poet and people, more intimate, prior, and interior to the processing of writing. By studying rhythms, we avoid the false approximations of writers who are merely folkloric, exotic, or partisan. Seemingly intuitive, these coincidences could appear without the poet even paying them any attention, because the rhythms of everyday life are incorporated like air through the lungs. Catching the poet unawares in his daily commitments, which he then worked on artistically, one can see the most authentic integration of Luanda's vernacular rhythms in his lines, in which he mixed Kimbundu and Angolan Portuguese, informal intonations restructuring standardized European poetics.

As we study his rhythmic experiments, it will become clear why the cadence, the poetic musicality of Viriato da Cruz, is worked on in this way, in a procedure that seems to me to be conscious and rational, as well as natural. This procedure is part of the collective and partisan effort, internationalist and Pan-Africanist, to realize a poetics in a state of decolonization, and therefore, in our case, of research into Angolanity, as Mário António understood (although reducing the rhythmic aspects to the "short breath"[21]). What Viriato da Cruz did, experimenting with alternative sonic syntaxes may have sounded to formally trained European ears like a game of harmonized dissonances within typical Luso-Brazilian versification. To do this, he took advantage of resources and freedoms previously guaranteed by European[22] and American modernism, which he appropriated[23], especially in its Black manifestations[24]. The sense of searching for rhythms rules out the merely casual, occasional. On the contrary, the study of rhythm makes it possible to perceive border negotiations between two modes of poetic composition and transmission (Jay-Rayon 2011, 31) such as between syllabic and tonal versification. This will provide fuel for several doctoral theses, but at this stage we are just going to open up critical research.

 

To investigate poetic rhythm in Viriato da Cruz's poetry in verse, we must also alert the reader to two or three Lusophone peculiarities.

In English versification, it is common to count the "feet", with each "foot" containing several syllables, for example, an unstressed and a stressed one (Britto 2008). In ancient Greco-Roman versification, "feet" were also counted (Zava 2015) but the sequence of long and short syllables was regulated, instead of unstressed and stressed. In Portuguese, metrics are counted by unstressed and stressed syllables, as in English, but not by "feet" but by syllables, joined or separated by accents and caesuras. In Portuguese, lines are measured by the number of syllables, not feet.

An example: "pa-pel" adds up to 2 metrical syllables, but in the English count, it could form a "pé" (foot), with an unstressed plus stressed. The "meter" is the sum of syllables, in the Lusophone case, or of feet, in the Anglophone case. A verse like "em papel perfumado" has 6 metrical syllables in Portuguese and two feet in English (each foot containing a sequence of two unstressed and one stressed).

The rhythm of the lines is marked by accents and caesuras, and there are various types of accents. In general, rhythmic accent and caesura (pause or rhythmic cut) follow each other within the verse, as do rhythmic accent and stressed syllable. A verse with a rhythmic accent on an unstressed syllable is considered weak and its author unskillful.

Having said that, let's analyze the case of the famous verse with which Viriato begins "the beautiful poem Namoro" (Rocha, Soares, and Fernandes 2023, 67)[25]::

Mandei-lhe uma carta em papel perfumado

(I sent her a letter on scented paper)

If you read Portuguese, there is a noticeable rhythmic accent on the stressed syllable of "carta", i.e. the first syllable of the word ("car"). The next syllable ("ta") is pronounced briefly and with the mouth almost closed. This deletion initiates the rhythmic pause, the caesura, which separates the first hemistich (the first section) from the second:

Mandei-lhe uma carta / em pa pel perfumado

In this second hemistich, we notice a less strong rhythmic accent (secondary accent) on "pel" (from "papel"), reinforced by the fact that the stressed vowel is open (but it is also said with a slightly longer duration than the previous one, or the next one). However, after the accent on the second syllable of "papel" (the stressed one), we do not have a pause, or we have an imperceptible pause when the whole sentence is pronounced at once, in everyday speech or declamation. Therefore, the second hemistich is not subdivided: it is a rhythmic unit. The pause at the end of the first hemistich marks the end of the hemistich, of the first half of the verse, which can be read separately. So, the whole verse

Mandei-lhe uma carta em papel perfumado

should be declaimed by dragging the caesura, the pause, after "letter" (carta):

Mandei-lhe uma carta

(I sent her a letter)

[...]

Em papel perfumado

(In scented paper)

As if they were two 'meters' separated graphically. In classical, normative Portuguese versification, taught in colonial high schools in Viriato's time, this was called compound verse. It is broken down into two or more sections. These sections, called hemistiches, can be graphically separated and constitute graphically marked autonomous lines.

In Portuguese versification, because of the closing of the mouth after the stressed syllable (which exists, but is less noticeable in Brazil and Angola), the metrical or poetic syllables are all counted up to the last stressed syllable, and the later unstressed syllables are not added. We can therefore metrify the opening verse of "Namoro" as having 11 or 12 syllables, depending on whether or not we merge the two vowels between "carta" and "em":

Man dei- lh’u ma car t’em pa pel per fu mado

(11 metrical syllables)

or

Man dei- lh’u ma car ta … em pa pel per fu mado

       (12 metrical syllables)

In the first case, we do not respect the length of the pause or caesura. We have a verse with 11 metrical or poetic syllables. If we do not signal the pause, we have the typical alexandrine verse, of French origin, with 12 metrical or poetic syllables, divided into two sections (hemistiches) of 6 metrical syllables each.

The tendency of modernism (and subsequent schools) to bring rhythms closer to colloquialism leads us to think that this first verse of "Namoro" has 11 metrical or poetic syllables. In this case, however, it does not matter, because what we are going to see is that the lines are based, at least in this initial part, on hemistiches (sections – equal or unequal – marked by caesuras). The hemistiches in the poem generally oscillate between 5 and 6 metrical syllables and can go down to 4 or even 3, or up to 7. In the first stanza of "Namoro", the hemistichs form a regular alternation between those of 5 and 6 metrical syllables.

Despite the differences between English and Portuguese in terms of meter and rhythm, if we look at Emily Dickinson's poetry we can find a similar structural feature: it is that, within a meter, she takes "all sorts of liberties" (Britto 2008, 29). In other words, if we count the hemistiches, we see the most diverse combinations between them, even though the total number of metrical syllables is the same for each verse. We find the same in Manuel Bandeira, Cassiano Ricardo, and many others from the first half of the 20th century in Brazil. This is what Viriato does, in a sequence with regular variations in this first stanza, but, in other stanzas and poems, in sequences with irregular variations too, minimal though they may be. This is what nineteenth-century Angolan poets like José da Silva Maia Ferreira and Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Mata did in Luanda.

 

The Rhythm of Identity

I reproduce the first stanza of "Namoro" so that the reader can follow me now:

Mandei-lhe uma carta em papel perfumado

e com letra bonita eu disse ela tinha

um sorrir luminoso tão quente e gaiato

como o sol de Novembro brincando de artista nas acácias floridas

espalhando diamantes na fímbria do mar

(I sent him a letter on scented paper

and with beautiful handwriting I said she had

a luminous smile so warm and playful

like the November sun playing artist in the                                                                 flowering acacia trees

scattering diamonds at the edge of the sea)[26]

As I wrote, if you look carefully, when the first hemistich has 5 syllables, the second has 6, and vice versa. In the case of the fourth verse, which is longer, we have three rhythmic sections and not two, but the rule of alternating between 5 and 6 remains, because the first section has 6 syllables, the middle section has 5 and the third section has 6 again (the reader should remember to neutralize the last unstressed syllable of each hemistich). This seems to show that Viriato da Cruz's poetic rhythm is based on hemistiches, and internal rhythmic sections, rather than on graphically marked lines. The result is a succession of disassembled lines, a succession of rhythmic syntagms, to which the graphic layout (organized by other criteria) do not correspond.

In that first stanza, if we count the lines as a whole, not in sections (hemistichs), and make the signs, they all have 11 metrical syllables (endecasyllables[27]), except for the fourth, which has 19. These metrics are devalued[28], or even ignored, by traditional Portuguese and Brazilian versification treatises[29]. To top it off, there is an odd verse that is different from the others, and the combination of the two wasn't even provided for by the Teoria Geral da Versificação (General Theory of Versification). Worse, it is considered out of rhythm, and ugly. However, as is the case with many other modernists, Viriato da Cruz also holds off the apparent dissonance by dividing the verse into a set of rhythmic sections (or hemistiches) that remains regular throughout the stanza, that is, that maintains a regular or regularized variation (with oscillations tending to be of a single syllable between hemistiches). This makes musical what was recommended to avoid, the sequence of odd lines with no mathematical relationship between them. We can equate this game with what Amorim de Carvalho defines as the formation of "irregular but musically correct compound lines" (Carvalho, Teoria geral da versificação 1987, 213).

Now let's read this stanza by the (heterodox) Brazilian modernist Manuel Bandeira, quoted in an essay that is also worth reading (Massini-Cagliari and Cagliari 1998, 85):

No meio da noite despertei

Não ouvi mais vozes nem risos

Apenas balões

Passavam errantes

Silenciosamente

Apenas de vez em quando

O ruído de um bonde

Cortava o silêncio

Como um túnel.

(In the middle of the night I woke up

I didn't hear any more voices or laughter

Just balloons

Wandering by

Quietly

Only once in a while

The noise of a streetcar

It cut through the silence

Like a tunnel.)

Except for the last verse, all the others either have 5 poetic syllables or have first hemistiches of 5 syllables. The repetition of the metric count in the first rhythmic section of each verse, which Portuguese versification knows well (Carvalho, Tratado de versificação portuguesa 1987, 59), ensures sufficient regularity to vary the second hemistiches, when there are any, producing irregular lines, in a somewhat strange sequence for the metrics of traditional prosodists. Note, however, that the poet makes the second hemistiches with 3 and 2 syllables, which are broken from the 5-syllable verse and therefore maintain the correct connection with the sections or 5-syllable lines. The same explains the combination of a 5-syllable verse and a 3-syllable verse in the last two lines: the 3-syllable verse is broken (hemistich) from the 5-syllable verse. Viriato changes this game.

What we have seen in Viriato's stanza[30] presents an important difference from Manuel Bandeira's: it is not the first hemistich that is repeated with the same number of syllables (this happens in his other stanzas). What is repeated, the regularity is in the relationship between the various sections, a relationship that alternates rhythmic sections of 5 and 6 syllables without exception, regardless of their position in the verse[31].

This type of assembly of rhythmic sequences makes them independent of the graphically marked lines and the poet's ear seems to be regulated by them, by hemistiches. This type of editing, based on short rhythmic sections and not on the mere metric of the lines (which can be long), allows him to introduce apparent dissonances without limiting himself to the combinations approved by the versification treatises taught in colonial high schools, or without limiting the variation to the metric repetition of the first part of the lines. It opens its own door to the local colloquiality, the vernacular, and diglossia, which make the Portuguese more Angolan without creating diglossic dissonances. In this way, the nationalist connotation of rhythm is generated, a rhythm that is identitarian and partisan, but still musical in any treatise on versification. We can say that, in our case too, "through rhythm, meaning is created by a phonic and accentual contagion" of the lines – as Kouadio wrote (Jay-Rayon 2011, 34), because the constant and short rhythmic oscillations, although regularized, bring us closer to everyday speech, as well as to traditional songs, including the intensity and duration of the vowels.

The strategy will also support a poem like "Sô Santo", with constant rhythmic sections of between 4 and 6 syllables, but a higher rate of metric variation, making it easier to insert prosaic expressions. However, the insertion of prose does not require significant metric or rhythmic oscillations. When, in the poem, the decision on doubt is communicated (asking the quimbanda to point out the cause of the misfortune), through the speech of a character (supposedly 'grandma Naxa'), a regular stanza with 7 metrical or poetic syllables is entered, topped by two even lines (2 metrical syllables each) that reproduce popular speech, isolated[32]:

«Hum-hum

Mas deixa ...

Quando o sô Santo morrer,

Vamos chamar um kimbanda

Para 'Ngombo nos dizer

Se a sua grande desgraça

Foi desamparo de Sandu

Ou se é já própria da Raça ...»

(«Mm-hm

But let...

When Mr. Saint dies,

Let us call a kimbanda

For 'Ngombo to tell us

If his great misfortune

It was Sandu's helplessness 

Or if it is already the Race...»)

If the initial two even lines were graphic to form a compound verse, they would result in a tetrasyllable, precisely the same number as the first hemistich of all the other heptasyllables of which the stanza is composed, except for one, halfway through, which inverts the proportion: "Pa-ra Ngom[33]-bo nos di-zer" (adding a section of 3 syllables with another of 4 – the symmetry of the other lines). It wasn't only at this point (in the first two lines) that, due to the strength of the internal rhythmic sections (hemistiches) and the imitation of the pause in popular speech, Viriato isolated them graphically. The procedure was used several times to highlight sound (and grammatical) syntagms, when transcribing popular speech. The rhythmic variation imposed by a popular language stops there: the rest of the stanza, as I said, is regular according to Luso-Brazilian versification, despite reproducing the speech of a popular character.

But that's not all. Look at the fifth stanza of «Serão de Menino». The first two lines of the stanza correspond to what, in the next two, are the rhythmic sections, functioning as quebrados (broken):

E a gente grande

Bem perto dali

feijão descascando para a quitanda

a gente grande com gosto ri ...

(And the big people[34]

Close by

beans peeling for the quitanda[35]

big people laugh heartily...)

The first verse has 4 metrical or poetic syllables and the second has 5. The third is symmetrical: it has two sections, one of 5 syllables and the other of 4, giving the sum a decasyllable (if there is no stop, pause, or caesura, which is obligatory in compound lines; if the caesura is respected, we have an enneasyllable). As for the last verse, it is organized into two sections of 4 syllables, forming an enneasyllable (if there is no stop, pause, or caesura; if the caesura is respected, we have an octosyllable). Once again, the total sum, the metric of each verse, is of little importance. Listening to hemistiches, by rhythmic sections, everything comes down to a play between units of 5 and 4 syllables. These rhythmic variations dissociate the internal sound sequences from the graphically defined verse, showing a more effective and dynamic underlying articulation. We are therefore justified in imagining reading in terms of the rhythmic sections and not the graphically marked compound verse.

What also seems significant to me is that the majority of variations between hemistiches are of one metrical syllable. The second most common variation is of two metrical syllables and there are rare variations of three, with no variations of more than 4 metrical syllables. This respects the mathematical relationship established by Amorim de Carvalho to regulate the "quebrados": the section that completes the "quebrado" in the "whole" verse cannot be longer than 4 syllables (Carvalho, Tratado de versificação portuguesa 1987, 40).

Therefore, as in popular songs, the variations between hemistichs show small differences and the hemistichs are short. If we compare them with the rhythms practiced by Agostinho Neto, there are much more accentuated variations. In Neto's poetry, a very long verse can be followed by a very short verse (or more). The clash of rhythms can be brutal, jolting, like the rhythm of shots in a battle, some from machine guns, others isolated, not musical harmonies. If we now compare the two types (Viriato's and Agostinho's) with Afro-Brazilian popular poetry, it is Viriato's short variations that come closest to it.

Let us take a quick look at three examples. In Olhinhos de gato (Cecília Meireles' autobiography of her childhood), there is a popular song reproduced by a parrot, which goes like this:

Papagaio real,

para Portugal,

quem passa, meu louro[36]?

É o rei que vai à caça.

Toca a trombeta e passa:

Tá-tá-rá-tá... tá-tá!

 

(Royal parrot,

for Portugal,

who's passing, my blond?

It's the king who goes hunting.

Blow the trumpet and pass:

Tá-tá-rá-tá... tá-tá!)

The rhythmic and metric oscillation is between lines of 5 and 6 syllables (the fourth verse may have 7 syllables). It's very similar (although with more variations) to a samba by João da Bahia called "Batuque na Cozinha" ("Drumming in the Kitchen"), which also appears in Olhinhos de gato but was probably composed (or recorded) in 1917 (which is the same for us). This song is easy to find today because Martinho da Vila revived it, making it popular again. The 'lyrics' – that is, the poem – can be read on-line. The variations oscillate, as in Viriato's poetry, between one and three syllables, with the most common – also as in Viriato's poetry – being oscillations of a single syllable (for example a verse with 4 syllables, another with 5; a verse with 6 syllables, another with 5). We often find the same minimal type of oscillations – and always with short lines – in the 'pontos' of Umbanda, and the interpretative variations do not affect the final game. This rhythmic play will permeate Cecília Meireles' lyrics, so easily (and rightly) associated with European culture, European roots, Euro-American, or any other globalized but non-African culture (Hebrew, Indian). As Olhinhos de gato shows us, however, there is deep, childlike, and intimate incorporation of elements of Afro-Brazilian culture in Cecília Meireles and the rhythmic games are also affected by this (compare, for example, Morena, pena de amor with Viagem and Vaga música, in terms of rhythms and metrics and, above all, the play of internal rhythms, of the hemistichs)[37].

Another suggestive comparison is with the poetry of the Brazilian modernist, socialist, and Black poet Solano Trindade, especially that linked to popular traditions such as "Bumba-meu-boi". In the poem "Bum bum bum" (Trindade 1961, 124-125) pentasyllabic lines dominate. However, with variations that can lead to lines of between 3 and 8 metrical syllables, most of the variations (between neighboring lines) being of just one syllable[38].

The comparison with Afro-Brazilian rhythms is not without reason. It makes me think that common Portuguese, when spoken under the influence of Bantu linguistics and rhythm, may find a more natural representation, more suited to everyday phrases, based on small variations between short rhythmic sections. It is, however, a hypothesis that requires much more comparison to be confirmed. It could simply be that, in line with all popular songs, the lines tend to be structured in short rhythmic sections with small variations between them.

Returning now to Viriato's "Serão de Menino", see how the stanza continues:

Com gosto ri, porque ela diz

que o cazumbi males só faz

a quem não tem amor, aos mais

seres buscam, em negra noite,

essa outra voz de cazumbi

essa outra voz – Felicidade ...

(The older people laugh with pleasure, because they say

that cazumbi[39] does nothing but harm

those who have no love, the most

beings seek in the black night,

that other voice of cazumbi

that other voice – Happiness...)

The first three lines of this part of the stanza are made up of two 4-syllable sections, as are the final two. The middle two create an 'abnormality', with transportation (enjambement in French). As for the rhythmic variation, in the fourth verse the expected internal rhythmic accent changes place: the word accent falls on the third syllable of the verse ("bus"), while the rhythmic one would be on the fourth ("cam"). The fourth verse, keeping the total of 8 metrical syllables, organizes it by a sum of less equal hemistiches (3 syllables plus 5), bringing variation. As a whole, this part of the stanza has only 8-syllable lines and is regular (note that cazumbi functions as an acute word, with an accent on the last vowel). It is also enriched by a simultaneous play between oxytone words (with a stress on the last syllable: "ri", "cazumbi", "amor", "voz") and paroxytone words. Note that only in the variation verse (the fourth) does the internal rhythmic accent not fall on a oxytone word. In the previous stanza, the opposite was true: an apparent metrical irregularity was sustained by a minimal variation between internal rhythmic sections: one section has 4 syllables and the next 5, one has 5, and the next 6 – until the children's voices were introduced, in two separate but well-matched lines: one with 2 syllables, the other with 4, totaling 6 syllables, with a rhythmic accent on a sharp word (on the second syllable). The constant alternation in the play of oscillations between hemistichs dynamizes the rhythmic structuring of the stanzas and lines, bringing the stanza closer to popular, non-regular, non-metrical speech, in other words, to the brilliance of the stars. But he does it in such a way that Luso-Brazilian versification can accept it, especially after modernism...

The transcription of a popular conversation about a farm girl, in "Rimance da Menina da Roça", uses the same type of variations, which allows it to better accommodate popular speech:

– Já viu a minina?...»

«Hum... tem cor marela

do mburututu...»

- «E não come nem nada...»

- «E os olhos de mel

'tão-sa afundar

num lago azul

que faz sonhar...»

Conversam as negras

à boca apertada.

(- Have you seen the girl?..."

"Hmm... it is yellow

of mburututu[40]..."

- "And he does not eat or anything..."

- "And the honey eyes

are sinking

in a blue lake

that makes you dream..."

Black women talk

tight mouth.)

Note how the transcription makes use of the elisions of popular speech to adjust the rhythms to the game of minimal variations that govern Viriato da Cruz's poetics in general. The trick shows us how this rhythmic game can also be found in everyday speech, in the vernacular Portuguese of Luanda. It should also be noted that, in this stanza, the poet also plays with words in a final position that oscillate between high and low, some of which rhyme: the first two lines end with low words; the third with a high word; the fourth with another low word; the next four ends with high words, integrating a rhyme and a consonance ("mel" / "azul"); the last two are low (“ne-gras”, “aperta-da). The dominant criterion therefore seems to be variation – minimal, again – also in the types of rhyme.

 

The Appropriate Rhythm

The identity link does not always create rhythmic tensions, but at the same time harmonizes in close hemistiches (in terms of the position of the respective accents), thus introducing irregular lines into harmonized strophic sets, adapting them. We've just seen examples that partly prove this. In fact, in Angolan poetry, since the 19th century, it has been common for the poet to include words or phrases in Bantu languages regularly metrized by the stanzas. This is what happens in the famous poem "Makèzú". Let us consider how...

A first observation: the word that gives it its title has an acute accent in Kimbundu.  I'm making an unorthodox comparison, because the stress accent and the intensity accent, or duration, cannot be equated. I've based myself on the spelling marked by the author, he's the one who makes the equivalence, debatable but useful. When appropriated by speakers of Angolan Portuguese, it becomes grave, closing the final [u], which is barely pronounced, in a typical descending rhythm. To emphasize the Bantu[41] pronunciation, it is spelled with an acute accent on the last vowel in the title and lines, as in the previous paragraph. This has rhythmic implications, giving a descending verse an ascending intonation. But that's not all: thus, the first verse, which is repeated halfway through the poem, instead of having 7 syllables in Portuguese, has 8, read as a Bantu word, with a stressed syllable and prolonged syllable at the end. However, the whole poem has 7-syllable lines, except for one: "Como é qui tás fazendo isso?" (which has 8 syllables). There is only one variation, to transcribe a phrase from vernacular Portuguese and another from everyday Kimbundu (Grandma Ximinha's preaching). The variation thus emphasizes the particularity, the specificity, on which a linguistic identity is based, in octosyllables, but without clashing with the traditional Portuguese norm. Its rhythm is identitarian while remaining appropriate to Luso-Brazilian versification.

According to traditional prosodists, in Portuguese versification, an even verse between odd lines is fine, it does not clash, even less so when the previous verse has an equal hemistich (a tetrasyllable). All the other lines have 7 metrical syllables, including the only one entirely in Kimbundu (except for the refrain). Therefore, the variation does not break with the norm when an entire verse is introduced in Kimbundu. When the Bantu language is introduced, the metrical regularity is maintained.

This is what was done in the 19th century, for example in the lyrics of the proto-nationalist Cordeiro da Mata, his Angolan friend Cruz Toulson, or his friend (of Portuguese origin) Eduardo Neves. All three wrote bilingual poems, in which the young woman in love speaks in Kimbundu and the poet in love in Portuguese. In "Kicola", a poem by Cordeiro da Mata, her words in Kimbundu follow the metric of the other lines, which are heptasyllabic (although with slight variations, regardless of the language used). If a verse with 8 or 6 syllables appears in the middle, this does not cause concern, because it fits in well with the heptasyllabic. Here we have the insertion of Kimbundu, the oldest language in the place, harmonized with Portuguese versification, suitable for the heptasyllabic. At the time, Kimbundu was one of the languages of the nationalist or proto-nationalist claim. A language with an identity function is therefore used in a rhythm that harmonizes it with the canonical rhythms in Portuguese.

In these cases, the rhythm does not mark a divergence from the versification norm, it does not become an icon of the nation as a difference from that of the colonizer. It is adequate, even when it reproduces a local language. Identity is left to diglossia, or vernacular Portuguese, which shows signs of the same diglossia.

In Viriato das Cruz's book, there are more poems in which the rhythm is appropriate, even though it conveys an identitarian speech. A particular case is the first conversation in "Sô Santo" (Mr. Santo). In the entire stanza (including the poet's introduction to the conversation, with two even lines of 6 and 8 syllables) no sequence clashes with the Luso-Brazilian normative arrangement for the lines, despite the intense variation and the marking of the length of certain syllables. The speeches of popular audiences and those of the protagonist alternate as odd and even lines alternate, so that, as a whole, each verse operates as a hemistich, perfectly conjugable with the next:

Quando o sô Santo passa (6)

Gente e mais gente vem à janela: (8)

- «Bom dia, padrinho ... » (5=2+3)

-«Olá...» (2)

- «Beça cumpadre ... » (4=1+3)

- «Como está? ... » (3)

- «Bom-om di-ia sô Saaanto! ... » (8=3+5)

- «Olá, Povo!... » (3)

(When Mr. Santo passes by

People and more people come to the window:

- "Good morning, godfather... "

-"Hello..."

- "Beça cumpadre... "

- "How are you? "

- "Bom-om di-ia sô Saaanto!... "

- "Hello, People!... ")

Perhaps it is merely a coincidence, but the lines spoken by the people are composed in longer metres (5, 4, and 8), whereas Sô Santo's speeches are cast in shorter ones (2, 3, and 3). The figure who occupies the higher position—now only by virtue of prestige, yet still superior—speaks less.

In the same poem, in Vó Naxa's first speech (I've already mentioned the second one), the alternations completely dominate the stanza, but without disrespecting the norm: the first verse has 7 syllables, the second 10, the third 11, the fourth can have 10 syllables or 9 (depending on whether or not the signaling is done), the fifth 6 and the seventh closes by repeating the metric of the first (7 syllables). It should be noted that the verse that, read without a signpost, gives rise to a sequence of two odd-numbered lines is supported on two hemistiches of 4 poetic syllables, repeating the second hemistiches of the two previous lines. In other words, the only irregularity, if any, is recovered by the play of the hemistiches, by regularized or harmonized internal rhythmic sections. These, in turn, oscillate between 4 and 6 metrical syllables (there is only one with 6 metrical syllables), in other words, they have the same minimal variation that we observe in the poet's lyric and which sustains the irregular metric variations from within.

When he transcribe a fragment of a song quoted by 'Vó Naxa', the lines have this sequence of metrical syllables: 6/2[42]/8 or 7 (depending on whether or not you use signaling)/2[43]/6. In other words, we have, at most, an oscillation of one to two metrical syllables between lines, but always within the range predicted by classical and romantic Luso-Brazilian treatises, with the variation tending to remain between even lines ("recitativos" in Amorim de Carvalho's terminology), which is regular, respecting the mathematical relationships established for heterometric stanzas. Once again, the rhythm is in line with the Portuguese norm, even though the language used is Kimbundu – exactly what was done in the 19th century.

In the next stanza, in which the poet takes up the voice, the first four lines are compound and their hemistiches have 5 metrical syllables (except for the second section of the first verse, which has 4 metrical syllables). The fifth verse of the stanza also has 5 metrical syllables. Then comes a speech in two lines, marked by the graphic advance. The first verse also has 5 metrical syllables, the second has 7, based on a first rhythmic section of 4 syllables and a second with 3. This is the least regular moment in the poem, but the play of hemistiches, organizing alternations of one metrical syllable in the sequence, resolves the situation.

The stanza that follows 'Vó Naxa's last line begins with a disyllable, which is then broken into the usual pentasyllabic. All the following lines either have 5 metrical syllables or are composed over sections of 5 metrical syllables. The closing stanza, in turn, is structured around an octosyllable (symmetrical: 4+4) and a heptasyllabic (asymmetrical: 3+4). The variations increase externally, in the meter, but the interplay between internal rhythmic sections (hemistiches) and the metrical variations does not go against the rules, or expectations created by the practice of the other poems, nor against Luso-Brazilian versification, even less so when lines in Kimbundu are introduced.

Conclusion

In 1909, the Japanese poet Ishikawa Takuboku (pseudonym of Hajime Ishikawa) wrote that "the true poet [...] records and reports the smallest variations that arise from moment to moment in his own heart." This statement was wrapped up in a broader question: how to be a poet in his time. It was up to poetry to constitute "a rigorous account of the variations in the emotional life of the human being (there must be a more appropriate expression, however)" (Takuboku 2001-2002, 301-302). In the last note, the poet specifies a globalized statement, replacing only the name of the country: the poetry he was talking about "should be 'poetry that can be sung by Japanese people who understand present-day Japan', who live in present-day Japan, who use present-day Japanese".

Mutatis mutandis, I notice the coincidence of emotional variations and poetic, lyrical expression (because that's what he was talking about), related to the human being, but, at the same time, to local existence. The synthesis reached by Viriato da Cruz, linking Portuguese versification with the Luandan prosody of the working class suburbs, focuses precisely on an art of variations applied to the Angolan context. It was intended "to be sung by" Angolans who understood contemporary Angola, lived in it, and spoke "current" Portuguese (in other words: located in time and space, Angola). The minimal oscillations and irregular metrics, based on regularized segmentation (Andrade 1954) of the internal rhythms, structured in short sections (a characteristic of popular songs), aim to create a rhythm that is both Angolan and harmonized with the poetic patterns of the written language, as well as with the breathing of speech. Viriato da Cruz was also establishing and researching what has become known as "Angolanity".

 

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Notas

---

[1] The same year that saw the emergence of his generation, the first pro-independence literary generation.

[2] In Angolan toponymy, names based on this root are repeated (changing the prefix, mainly by number inflection): musseque, casseque. The root refers to sandy soil (but not the beach). In the orthography of the period, “muceques”

[3] He was referring to the historical process evolving towards the extremization of decadent capitalism and the globalization of triumphant socialism (Cruz, Letter to Noémia de Souza 1952, 480). Sheet 480 corresponds to the first sheet of the letter and the quote comes from the very beginning, from the second (and long) paragraph. Extracts from the letter, but from another sheet, can be found in (Rocha, Soares, and Fernandes 2023, 368-369).

[4] In a "small biography", unsigned, "which accompanies the poem Serão de menino, by Viriato da Cruz [...] in it [Viriato da Cruz] is pointed out as the only accomplished Angolan poet" (Oliveira 1990, 182, 374).

[5] In a critical testimony written in 1981 (Oliveira 1990, 371-383).

[6] Viriato was "the author of poems that have the value of examples" (Oliveira 1990, 342).

[7] The text is from 1961 (Oliveira 1990, 179).

[8] At Liceu Salvador Correia, in Luanda, where Viriato studied, "there was a certain fame, a certain prestige of his artistic ability" (also in the drawing), according to Mário António in an interview with Michel Laban (Oliveira 1990, 525).

[9] Poems appeared in newspapers, but above all in Mensagem. (Oliveira 1990, 184)

[10] Issue 1 came out in July 1951, as you can read on the last page. It published "Mamã Negra", "a poem by Viriato da Cruz", as it says in the table of contents. The full title of the poem and the dedication already appear in the 1961 book (Cruz, Mensagem 1951, 4). A little further on (p. 7), "Namoro" is published.

[11] As early as 1953 (published in 1954), Mário Pinto de Andrade chose Viriato's poems "Makèzú" and "Sô Santo" (Andrade 1954, 131-132) for a Brazilian magazine. At the beginning of the presentation, dated 1951 (in practice, this collaboration is an anthology that is a variant of the book Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa), he talks about "folkloric poetry", "ancient black-African traditions" as "the result of a rhythmic experience of popular verse and music". But he does not deduce from this that the new Lusophone African poets should be analyzed from a study of rhythms; rather, "traditionally black" poetry (his underlining) can only be understood "integrated into the social frameworks in which Black people has moved." (Andrade 1954, 123) The text appears reformulated and clearer in the notebook Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa, dated "April 1953".

[12] Which, however, the essayist already notes, with a didactic slant, in "Serão de Menino" (A Boy's Evening). "Mamã Negra" (Black Mother), "better included [...] in the definition of 'black poetry of Portuguese expression'", despite its "strong expressive power", would mark "the transition to a complete intellectualization, with tendencies towards didacticism, which would precede the poet's silence". (Oliveira 1990, 176)

[13] However, this silence was pierced on two or three occasions, which we are only now aware of through the digitization of sources, mainly on the website of the Tchiweka Documentation Association and in the collections of Africans digitized by the Mário Soares Foundation.

[14] First in the book.

[15] Published in Présence africaine under the title Des responsabilités de l'intellectuel noir, in an issue dedicated to the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists (Rome, March 28–April 1, 1959), where the conference was given. A copy, from the estate of Mário Pinto de Andrade, is on online (Cruz, Des responsabilités de l'intellectuel noir 1959).

[16] "Amplitude modulated", which generally reached rural areas, albeit with considerable interference.

[17] Verses from the poem "Makèzú" (Cruz, Poems 1961, 7).

[18] Associating Negritude with "primordial rhythms synchronized with those of the cosmos" (Onyeocha 1977). Senghor's text was published in 1972.

[19] "the language of the self and the language of the distant question each other (it is cosmic intimacy) ". (Glissant, Philosophie de la relation: poésie en étendue 2009, 105)

[20] "Words are essential to music, and music and words to dance." (AAVV, Poesia negra de expressão portuguesa 2012, 1) It is worth recalling that, among the ancient Greeks, what we now refer to as poetry was originally inseparable from what we now call music, and that, to some extent, poetry was also accompanied by dance (not in the epics, for example, but in theatrical performance).

[21] When commenting on "Makèzú", in which he highlights bilingualism, "dialectical Portuguese", in a "picture to the popular taste" (Oliveira 1990, 184). In "Mamã negra" the lines are long.

[22] To go beyond poetry in verse, read Joyce's Ulysses, paying attention to medieval oral traditions, the sound resources of Celtic-inspired lyrics, and vernacular Irish prosody.

[23] For example, he later tried to compose poems imitating the cadence and sound of the blues.

[24] Not just black American modernism, or African American modernism in its various forms, but also Afro-European modernism. Senghor is an example. His Anthologie de la nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache de langue française was given to him by Mário Pinto de Andrade, from Lisbon, on January 1, 1950 (Oliveira 1990, 515).

[25] This is what Tomás Jorge said in his testimony in the aforementioned book (Viriato da Cruz: O homem e o mito). Tomás Jorge was a fellow member of the generation, of cultural and literary initiatives and a friend of Viriato da Cruz from an early age.

[26] The image acquires a deeper layer of meaning for an Angolan reader acquainted with the country's traditional cultures and economic history. Throughout the twentieth century, diamonds underpinned the colonial economy, their exploitation reserved exclusively to the Diamang company, while those who extracted or traded diamonds independently from the riverbeds faced imprisonment. Diamonds, however, were plentiful in the rivers. At the same time, in Luanda's oral tradition, the kianda—the spiritual being associated with both inland and sea waters—was believed to grant wealth to those who sought its favour. The "diamonds on the fringe of the sea" may therefore suggest not only literal brilliance but also the riches bestowed by this supernatural entity. Simultaneously, the sparkling lights upon the sea recall the phenomenon of bioluminescence, an image already developed in the poetry of José da Silva Maia Ferreira (1849).

[27] Amorim de Carvalho writes "hendecassílabo", a spelling that is still valid today (Carvalho, Tratado de versificação portuguesa 1987). However, this "h" is not pronounced, so following the New Portuguese Orthographic Agreement, it should be eliminated – which I do.

[28] The endecasyllable is more common in Spanish, in Portuguese versification it is disregarded and rare. Lindley Cintra, in his graduation thesis, talks about the endecasyllable but includes in it compound decasyllables (i.e. which, counted as two halves, with the respective caesura, form a decasyllable and not an endecasyllable). This is not the result of an effective reading of the compound verse, whose pause means that the unstressed syllable following the final stressed syllable of the first hemistich is not counted. Significantly, in the essay in which he reformulates part of his degree dissertation (in which he talked a lot about endecasyllables), he no longer mentions 11 syllable verse, only bipentasyllables. (Cintra 2002) The endecasyllables I'm talking about here are all bipartite, although not all bipentasyllable.

[29] In other words, those written from the 16th century to modernism, up to the 1910s and 1920s. Traditional Portuguese versification is compiled and updated in Amorim de Carvalho's Teoria geral da versificação, by which I refer to it. (Carvalho, Teoria geral da versificação 1987) or its summary in the Tratado de versificação portuguesa (Carvalho, Tratado de versificação portuguesa 1987). This theory also takes Brazilian versification into account, which makes it even more advantageous. However, there are differences, which stem from the fact that I'm treating the subject in a summary and not in a very European way.

[30] The first stanza of "Namoro".

[31] See what Amorim de Carvalho says about the bipentasyllable (Carvalho, Tratado de versificação portuguesa 1987, 44-46).

[32] In these cases, the mathematical relationships that would determine the "good relationship between the broken verse and its whole verse" are suspended (Carvalho, Tratado de versificação portuguesa 1987, 59). In the poem, for reasons I'll explain, this is of no importance.

[33] "Ngom" consists of only one syllable. The letter n merely indicates the position of the tongue before the articulation of the consonant g.

[34] The older people in children's language.

[35] A Kimbundu word (kitanda, "fair" or "market") referring here to a market stall or simply to a cloth and tray used by female street vendors (quitandeiras).

[36] The louro parrot is a species of parrot common in Brazil and well known in Portugal. At the same time, many Portuguese kings were also louros (fair-haired or blond). The expression therefore evokes both the bird and the blond-haired monarchs, creating a deliberate double meaning.

[37] I would like to thank Elizabete Farias de Castro for the initial indications regarding Cecília Meireles, João da Bahia, and the Umbanda points.

[38] Several versions of "Bumba-meu-boi" were considered by Élio Ferreira de Souza in the Brazilian context and relation to Solano Trindade (Souza 2006).

[39] Cazumbi (Kazumbi) is derived from the Kimbundu Zumbi ("God") by means of the prefix ka-, which marks the singular and may also have a diminutive function. The term refers to the spirit of a deceased person, the spirit of the dead.

[40] Mburututu — the root of the medicinal plant Cochlospermum angolense, which is very common in Angola and used to treat disorders of the digestive system. It ranges in colour from yellow to red. After the root has been soaked in water for some time, the resulting liquid is drunk. As spelled here, the word bears final stress, reflecting its pronunciation in Kimbundu. In its Portuguese-adapted form (brututo), however, it may be pronounced with penultimate stress.

[41] Strictly speaking, the form muntu should be used here, since the noun is singular. In Angolan Portuguese, however, the distinction between muntu (singular) and bantu (plural) is generally not maintained. Instead, the noun follows Portuguese inflectional patterns, yielding the forms banto (singular) and bantos (plural).

[42] The two syllables are onomatopoeic.

[43] The two syllables are onomatopoeic.