Uma obsessão leitora: João Cabral de Melo Neto por Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

Abstract

Impacted by the reading of João Cabral’s poetry, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen published, in 1960, a small paper about the Brazilian poet in the catholic magazine Encontro. In the following year, she dedicated to him O Cristo cigano book written by Sophia based on a story that Cabral had told her and it is permeated by the presence of Uma faca só lâmina. Sophia continued reading Cabral, as someone who chases an obsessive reading or an unresolved poetic passion, for it hasn’t been announced clearly yet. In 1989, 28 years after the first edition of O Cristo cigano, she published in the book Ilhas a poem under the title “Dedicatória da segunda edição do Cristo cigano a João Cabral de Melo Neto”, the most insightful critical reading that she has made of the Brazilian poet. I propose to follow these three readings by Sophia on Cabral’s work, placing them in the larger context of the critical reception of the poet.