"Deles me vali": José Paulo Paes e a tradição poética

Abstract

The present work considers the relation between the poet José Paulo Paes and the poetic tradition. Its purpose is examining how the poet retakes and reinvents different poetic traditions. Among the adopted traditions by the poet, is the Greek one with its forms: epigram, epitaph and epitalamium. José Paulo Paes recovers these fixed forms but, by means of humor and irony, he adds new hues to them. Moreover, he remakes ancient proverbs in a parodic process of getting back of the original model and unconstruction of it. The theory that holds this work is that one of Eliot, in “Tradition and the individual talent”, that says the new poet finds his best and most original moments when he talks to the tradition. So we analyze too the relation among Paes and some of his forerunners, as Drummond, Bandeira, Augusto de Campos and the unknowed baiano modernist Sosígenes Costa. Although the poet initialy introduces himself as learner, by insisting in a refined irony, he is capable to reach his personal diction, expressing thus an own voice.