From this dock of mine: the poetry of Mario Quintana

Poetry clears up the confusing blur of life with words and music. It is an amazing fact about human nature that we can perceive the existence of an imaginary world along with the real physical world. The true source of human creativity is poetry. Poetry reveals important truths about human life and the world. The poet meditates on our experience and the language of poetry allows dialogue as a free exchange of intimate thoughts.

Clearly, Quintana’s poetry is rich in observational truths. As a great poet, he is the mentor who teaches a way of seeing and feeling. Think of Zorba the Greek: “Zorba sees everything every day as if it were the first time,” Nikos Kazantzakis wrote in his famous novel. The voluptuousness of living! Great poetry reminds us every time of the importance of living. Quintana’s is hopeful, cheerful, quick-witted, gentle, and a man of broad interests. The reflected irony is the hallmark of his style. He likes to express his cunning view of things with epigrams like this: “The soul is that thing which asks us if the soul exists.” As a romantic, his main mode of expression is the lyric poem. He is capable of writing a classical sonnet and has the ability to create a free rhythm.

Quintana was born in Alegrete in 1906, in the south of Brazil, a small and quiet town near the border with Argentina. His father owned a pharmacy and his mother taught French. During his youth he studied at the Military Academy of the state capital, Porto Alegre. And after the death of his parents, he moved to that city. A journalist and translator by profession, he lived almost his entire life in the capital, which he undoubtedly loved. Quintana wrote many books and translated hundreds of novels and short stories from English, French, Spanish, and Italian into Portuguese. His father was a conspirator in the Revolution of 1923. So, the family used to speak French in front of the servants and the house.

The sensitive and curious boy grew up in the so-called Belle Époque era. When he was a child, he used to speak French and Spanish in the beautiful mansion where he was born. His mother sang Castilian songs and recited poetry, while his father encouraged him to memorize and recite La Fontaine’s fables in French. The whole family enjoyed the poetry. After his mother’s illness, the family was financially ruined.

At first glance, Quintana’s poetry reveals little influence from his personal circumstances. Very reserved man, he used to say that his whole life was in his poetry. Although he wrote chronicles and brief artistic commentaries for the press, Quintana’s poems are his main contribution to Brazilian literature. Along with Carlos Drummond, Manuel Bandeira, Vinicius de Moraes and Cecília Meireles, he is one of the most beloved poets of his country.

Images are the visual aspects of the poetic message. The predominance of the family scene as a lyrical element is a striking feature of his work. In his compositions, the feeling of life and tenderness with which he animates the simplest things stands out: clock, portrait, mirror, pencil, little street, house, bedroom, shoes, boats, clouds, etc.

I believe that the great poets are like the multicolored fish in Ingeborg Bachmann’s poem: because they come into the world with a “mission of light”. Mario Quintana died in 1994.