The predicament of Cardozo in Cabral’s verses

Abstract

Being Joaquim Cardozo the most recurrent interlocutor throughout the work of João Cabral de Melo Neto, it is possible to realize a literary series among the poems that celebrate such poetic dialogue. However, the dialogue allows the set of compositions outlined there to unfold on two levels: the poems in which the honoree appears in the title of the text and those others in which their occurrence is accidental, acquiring a predicative function, sometimes adjectival sometimes adverbial. Such predicament will be illustrated retrospectively by means of an adjective contained in the book A escola das facas (1980) and an adverb present in Quaderna (1960), both inscribed under the same signifier: “Cardozo”. Considered as a fold of the literary convention, it is interesting to point out materially how this influence was consolidating, in the editorial context and in the course of the verses, to the point of establishing a crease in the Brazilian poetic tradition.