Martin Cererê

An excellent example of modernism, initiated by the Modern Art Week. "" Martim Cererê is not just from São Paulo; he is viscerally Brazilian; he is not just an aborigine, he is the ethnic synthesis in which the immigrant himself enters (...)"" - Mário da Silva Brito

First published in 1928, at the height of the revivalist campaign initiated by the Modern Art Week, with illustrations by Di Cavalcanti, Martim Cererê represents the high point of the nationalist and jingoistic strand of the Brazilian movement. Composed of poems of varying forms and rhythms, like a picture book, it resembles the technique of cartoons or comics, featuring a mythical and lyrical text with an epic and narrative character.

The plot develops the legend of the emergence of night and the development of Brazil. The indigenous man Aimberê and the white sailor Martim fall in love with Uiara, who proposes to marry the one who brings her night. Martim goes to Africa and brings back the night, the black slaves. From this union, the bandeirantes emerge, who explore the backlands, plant the green sea of coffee plantations, and build the factories and skyscrapers of the metropolis of São Paulo.

The poem depicts the formation of Brazil. According to Cassiano Ricardo, the influence of the time, the Indianism of the literary group Anta, to which he belonged in 1926, which advocated the study of Indigenous culture as the basis for American authenticity, explains the birth of Martim Cererê. "I wrote a poem that was not only Indigenous but also racial, based on the Tupi myth, which, after all, serves as its argument today."

Modified and supplemented with new passages from edition to edition, it became a poem, at least in terms of its plot and the succession of somewhat interconnected compositions. The fifth edition was included by Companhia Editora Nacional in 1936 in the collection Os Grandes Livros Brasileiros (Volume IX). The sixth edition was finalized by the author with a foreword by Menotti Del Picchia. The eighth appeared in 1945, with original engravings by Goeldi. The tenth was included in the author's Poesias Completas (Complete Poetry), published in 1957 by José Olympio. The eleventh edition was specially illustrated by Tarsila in 1962. It was a kind of rewritten version of Martim Cererê . The twelfth edition, again by José Olympio, was the author's last revision, including an article repealing the previous editions.

"Cassiano combined example with doctrine in this great poem, which will be the Martim Cererê of this universalist phase of the poet, as Cererê was the Jeremiah of his nationalist phase." - Tristão de Athayde

"" Martim Cererê It's a great, wonderful book. None of the other green poets, who spend their time writing manifestos, with which they aim only to attract attention, have ever published anything even remotely approaching this superb book. To appreciate it, you need to read it aloud, putting it through what Flaubert called a gueuloir. But if you do, you'll see that it's been a long time since anything so powerful, so new, so original has been published among us. It's the best that futurism has produced to date." - Medeiros e Albuquerque