Under the sky of Samarkand

We're with Ruy Espinheira Filho in Samarcanda. We're not far from Ciméria or Pasárgada. We're with Manuel Bandeira and Oswaldino Marques. And why not evoke Lopes Chaves Street, which is the same as saying Mário de Andrade? Just a few steps from Drummond's irritated workshop. A whole constellation of events, to which Ruy would add: et in arcadia ego. Metaphorical Arcadia, of course, alive, contemporary, in the strong register of Brazilian poetry, at whose height Samarcanda is inscribed, with the superb rigor of the artist, who knows how to trovar clearly, because he masters the forms of trobar clus. Ruy doesn't cling to those sources. He approaches in order to distance himself. There are no traces of an anguish of influence here. Samarcanda is nowhere. It is a rare species of non-place. The only geography capable of encompassing it would perhaps be drawn in the heart of the Portuguese language, under the specific difference of the winds that blow in this book. Rain and storm. The long patience of the days. And a whole liquid and transparent dimension in the ways of feeling. And of his beautiful instruments. The transparent body of the word assumed in an open biography. It is Ruy's freest and most calculated work. Most painful and joyful. Most distressing and serene. Seasoned with irony and emotion. He surpassed himself in the height of this sky, in the generous light of the four vowels that produce the proud and clear sound of Samarcanda. Marco Lucchesi