From two to three in João Cabral

Abstract

In its first part, the essay shortly describes the review that Antonio Candido dedicated to the debut book by João Cabral de Melo Neto, Pedra do sono (1942), published in the following year entitled “Poesia ao Norte”, and collected these days in the book Textos de intervenção (2002), showing the mutual appreciation between the poet and the critic. In its central part, the essay seeks to analyze João Cabral poem “Duas das festas da morte”, from the book A educação pela pedra (1966) in the essay by Antonio Candido “A passagem do dois ao três” (1974), ability to read a dialectical movement between the two strophes of the poem. And in its final part, a brief comment to the poem that provides the title to the book by Cabral, commented in the same sense of the previous.