The poetics of orphism in Cavalo Azul review

Abstract

The Cavalo Azul review was edited and published by the poet Dora Ferreira da Silva between 1964 and 1989. Focusing mainly on poetry and philosophy, the publication had 12 sparse volumes and included the collaboration of various Brazilian and foreign writers, intellectuals, artists and poets. Despite this, it has not received the attention it deserves in literary and cultural studies and has remained practically on the margin of studies on Brazilian literary and cultural periodicals. In this article, based on auxiliary data about the publication, we present an interpretative line that associates Cavalo Azul with an Orphic tradition of poetry. With this reading hypothesis, we present the first results of our investigation into the poetics of Orphism in Cavalo Azul, developed from a reading of its images (Cavalo Azul, Poeta Vate, Eremita); also in view of their contrast with the supposedly dominant logic in the scenario of Brazilian literary and cultural periodicals. Finally, we raise some questions about the displacement of the Orphic tradition, and its variants, in relation, above all, to poetic modernity in Brazil, with the aim of suggesting a more complex vision of the framework of Brazilian poetry, in a broad perspective, from modernism to the 60s, 70s and 80s.