{"id":13879,"date":"2022-10-10T05:14:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-10T10:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/?post_type=product&p=13879"},"modified":"2023-10-11T14:29:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T19:29:05","slug":"furrows","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/shop\/furrows\/","title":{"rendered":"Furrows of Thirst"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade<\/a><\/h2>\n

Translated by Alexis Levitin<\/a><\/h3>\n

Furrows of Thirst
\n(Os Sulcos da Sede)<\/h3>\n

ISBN:\u00a0 978-1-956921-09-0 (pbk.)
\n(May, 2023)\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pushcart Prize Winner, 2023!\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n

\u201cA poetry of the body, a body with the potential of light, continually purified, that seeks out the word as a means of ascension.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Jos\u00e9 Saramago (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1998)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cLevitin gives us the brilliance of de Andrade\u2019s poetry in rich and musical language. We owe him a debt for illuminating the work of this superb contemporary poet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Colette Inez<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe little country that is Portugal turns out great big poets like Cam\u00f5es, Pessoa, and more recently Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade. \u2026 Alexis Levitin\u2019s versions are right to that exact point. Enjoy!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Gregory Rabassa<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cFor all his gentleness, his civility, it is a fierce solitary who speaks in these verses, a man on whom the terrible insistences of Rimbaud and Verlaine\u2026 have not been lost.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Richard Howard<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Through the simplest and most elemental images, in a tone of melancholy wonder, Andrade\u2019s last poems resonate with the mysterious silence of impending oblivion.\u00a0 Snow and fire, winter and summer, thirst and relief coexist in a dialectical dance of immediacy and memory whose rhythms are gracefully echoed in the subtle lyricism of Alexis Levitin\u2019s translation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2014Stephen Kessler, translator of\u00a0Desolation of the Chimera: Last Poems\u00a0by Luis Cernuda<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Preface by Alexis Levitin<\/h3>\n

Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade was Portugal\u2019s most popular poet at the time of his death in 2005. In the course of his career, he won all of his country\u2019s poetry awards, including the prestigious Cam\u00f5es Prize, as well as The European Prize for Poetry and France\u2019s Prix Jean Malrieu.\u00a0 Here in the United States, he is represented by eleven collections of finely-wrought verse, including Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry of Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade from New Directions.<\/p>\n

Eug\u00e9nio\u2019s craft is to sing the Portuguese language with the simplicity of a bird. His triumph is like that of a great athlete: he makes it look easy. He makes it look natural. But the delicacy, precision, and beauty of his poetry is, like all great art, achieved through what he calls, borrowing from Leonardo da Vinci, ostinato rigore. That stubborn adherence to the musical rigor of words is what sets him apart from other great Portuguese poets of the 20th century. His numerous drafts, revisions, rewritings, re-listenings, are testimony to his religious dedication to the beauty of language. Eug\u00e9nio was proud to have been referred to as a Pagan poet and it is clear from both his own commentaries and the internal evidence of the poems themselves that music is the yearned-for fulfillment of this man who worshipped the body, the senses, the loveliness of blossoms and the song of birds.<\/p>\n

The beauty of his verse, however, is a hard-won victory. He is not an unconscious participant in the weave of nature\u2019s panoply. In fact, he is supremely conscious, supremely aware of the minutia involved in his daily struggle for perfection. In a poem that appears in Labor of Patience, a book written seven years before this one, Eug\u00e9nio focuses on his eternal search: \u201cAll morning I was searching for a syllable\u201d he says, because \u2026. \u201cOnly it could shield me from\/January cold, the drought\/ of summer. A syllable\/ A single syllable.\/ Salvation.\u201d In this collection, which he must have sensed would be his last, the very first poem, \u201cTo See Clearly,\u201d refers to \u201cthose burning syllables\u201d to which he always returns. The second poem begins with the imperative \u201cGo syllable by syllable\u201d and concludes with the repeated exhortation \u201cSyllable by syllable\/walk to the empty\/water jug. \u2013Now so full!\u201d\u00a0 In \u201cWinter Poem,\u201d he balances against old age the freshness of words, \u201ca murmur of morning syllables,\u201d though in a later poem he recognizes the almost desperate nature of the poetic impulse, speaking of \u201choarse syllables\/moist with desire.\u201d Finally, in a \u201cSimple Thought,\u201d he calls those carefully gathered syllables by their rightful name, when he says \u201cIt is music\u2026.It will stay with you the rest of your days.\u201d Clearly, Eug\u00e9nio would embrace Walter Pater\u2019s claim that \u201call art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.\u201d In our struggle for meaning, for existence itself, it is clear that Eug\u00e9nio banks on the music of his language for his salvation.<\/p>\n

Though he builds his nest and monument of words and syllables, Eug\u00e9nio is clearly delighted by the rewards that come to us through our five senses. The poetry, after all, must spring from life and the four elements that sustain it. As he says in a short poem called \u201cThe Fruit\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

This is how I want the poem to be:<\/p>\n

trembling with light, coarse with earth,<\/p>\n

murmuring with waters and with wind.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In this last collection alone, notice the delicate intrusion of the senses. For touch there is \u201cthe she-goat\/its muzzle moist with dew.\u201d Or \u201cdoves trembling in heat\u201d or \u201ca few drops of rain on someone\u2019s hair.\u201d For smell, there is \u201cthe scent\/of wisteria dripping from the wall\u201d or \u201ca body\u2026that smelled\/ of ripe apples\u201d. For sound, as already noted, we have the \u201cmurmur of morning syllables\u201d or the sun which \u201csings as it burns.\u201d For sight we have \u201ctrembling furrows in black earth.\u201d And for taste, we have the stunning conclusion of his \u201cLast Song\u201d: \u201cgive me thirst itself to drink.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Eug\u00e9nio loved the natural world and the senses through which it penetrates to our core. He also loved the \u00e9lan vital of his own blood and being. Approaching the end, he is not resigned. He speaks of \u201cthe cadences of the heart\/stubbornly repeating that it\u2019s not grown old.\u201d In another poem he begs \u201cGive me another summer.\u201d In a poem dedicated to Rilke he speaks of \u201cthe intimate flame of a fire\/that refuses to go out.\u201d But in the end, he ruefully stares reality in the face: \u201cYou will leave the house unfinished.\u201d\u00a0 Indeed, we have no other choice.<\/p>\n

This book is Eug\u00e9nio\u2019s last testament. It testifies to his love of life, both around him and within. It testifies to his enduring love of language and of music. The deepest eros of this man, this poet, beyond the desires of the body and the sensuality of nature, springs forth in his lifelong dedication to the sound of words. It is the eternal eros of the music of his song.<\/p>\n

\u2014Alexis Levitin<\/p>\n

Morrisonville, New York, Summer, 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade<\/a>
\n9781956921090
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