Today is Day: read, watch and listen to Drummond, who died 35 years ago

“For a long time I thought that absence is a lack.

And I regretted, ignorantly, the lack.

I don’t regret it today.

There is no shortage in absence.

The absence is a being in me (…)”.

the absence of Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902 – 1987), 35 years ago, is, as he wrote, a being present. I live and illuminate Brazilian culture. The renowned author from Minas Gerais from Itabira left a legacy of 50 books of poetry, chronicles, short stories and essays that made him one of the main writers in the history of Brazil.

To read, see and even hear the writer’s works and perspectives, the Brazil Communication Company (EBC) has contents that are true relics, as is the case of an interview he gave to Maria Muniz, in the 1950s, which was made public now in 2022. In the interview, he recites poems such as Poema das Sete Faces, Confidência do Itabirano, Infância, Caso do Vestido, O Mito, Caso Pluvioso, Disappearance of Luísa Porto, Pombo-Correio, and Song of the Ghost Girl of Belo Horizonte.

In Infância, for example, listen to Drummond declaiming: “(…) Far away my father used to camp / in the endless bush of the farm. / And I didn’t know that my story / was more beautiful than Robinson Crusoe’s”.

The poet on the radio

Carlos Drummond de Andrade was part of the life of Radio MEC since 1936, when he attended the donation ceremony for the frequency of Radio Society, by Roquette-Pinto, for the public power. In 1954, broadcaster Lya Cavalcanti listened to Drummond and the content generated a series that features narration, for example, by actor Paulo César Pereio and actress Conceição Rios.

The records also show that Drummond acted in the Radio MEC, station where he was a writer and columnist in the 1960s.

Also check out special editions published in the 1990s and also in 2015 at MEC FM antenna (when it had the participation of the writer’s grandson, Pedro Drummond).

In 2020, the writer Adalgisa Campos da Silva published a book with letters she exchanged with Drummond. In an interview with the program Art Clubshe said that she felt so close to the poet that one day she decided to write for Brazilian newspaper where he published a column. The translator says that, to her surprise, the author replied and a friendship was born there via the Post Office.

“I liked him a lot as a poet, but the column brought him even closer. Then one day I read a poem he wrote in the column that was an appeal for peace. I was very touched.” There began a cordial relationship between author and reader. “He always answered me. In fact, in the last letter he sent me, he signed it as ‘my squire Drummond’.

Listen to the interview below

See Drummond

At TV Brazilthe author’s work was honored 10 years ago in the From There To Here. Among the interviewees, who explain how the author is unique, were professor Eucanaã Ferraz, a researcher of Brazilian literature at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), the poet and editor of Cosac Naify, Carlito Azevedo, the poet Armando Freitas Filho and the poet Claudia Roquette-Pinto.

The program highlighted the influence of the 1922 modernists on Drummond’s work. The interviewees identify that the writer produced simple and at the same time grandiose poetry.

Check out the full program below.

Check here the complete inventory of the work of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, produced by Casa de Rui Barbosa / Ministry of Culture

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