Orfeu da conceição: between sadness and myth

Abstract

According to a prominent Brazilian literary critic, the truly important poets are those whose poetry says more than it used to say, and if we try to list what Vinicius de Moraes learned about Brazilian poetry (and prose) Certainly we would not see much, not that he had bequeathed nothing to us, on the contrary he did it so well that his language is now present in the language of everyone. I chose Orfeu da Conceição: tragédia carioca2 as a subject of study because of the use of the carnival in a version of the myth of Orpheus. It is a theatrical play in three acts, written in 1954, in the second phase of Brazilian Modernism. Indeed, Vinicius de Moraes had also entered into a more reactive and "committed" moment of his creation, this "commitment" being illustrated in his work by the choice of his themes. Proofreading, reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Orpheus, for example, the author retraces the version of a Brazil somewhat forgotten, if not perceived with a certain amount of discrimination: that of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of its publication, Vinicius de Moraes dedicates his story to the Brazilian blacks, which he believes are at the origin of the richness and cultural energy of the country. The originality of the transposition of the myth to the favelas cariocas is all the stronger because the orphic myth Brazilian version uses the carnival as an intermediary between the world of the living and that of the dead.