March 10, 2023

I was born in the 90's, in Brazil, in the state of São Paulo, in the ABC Paulista, in the city of Santo André, in a central neighborhood, albeit in a humble house inhabited by the working class. In this historically and geographically precise location, it was easy to imagine that my muses were not really my muses. I remember fondly, however, the Portuguese language classes in elementary school, when we relived the bucolic Portugal of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with its grand cities of those times, and its fertile fields. There, Fernandos Pessoas crossed paths with nymphs during his observant walks along the Tagus River. But I was in my youth, in love and in Brazil, where cities are astonishingly larger than Lisbon and fields notably more fertile. The muses, without my full awareness, continued to be the nymphs. Not the same ones from the literatures that brought them here, since here, with polluted Ipirangas covered with tons of concrete, they cannot come out exhaling their perfumes and singing their troubadour hymns. Much less could they circulate with the Iansãs and the Iaras, humming a bossa nova. Here the muses are apparently dead. Apparently dead.

They are alive, but they hide in other elements of nature, no longer in the river waters of São Paulo. Now they are in the marine waters of the wet eyes of the very people who inhabit Brazilian lands. It is necessary to know that the muses never stopped dancing under the sun; however, with the frenetic rhythm of the highways and sidewalks, congested by rushing and shoulder bumping, it becomes much more difficult to see them. Even more so, when we, who here in these welcoming lands, have been thrown out into the open, without identity or support, are unable to recognize what touches our souls. How could a Brazilian find the watery eyes capable of wetting the windows of his poet soul?

Firstly, it is necessary to go through our own internal rivers: the Amazon, the Paraná, the Iguassu, the Tapajós, the Xingu, the Negro and the Tamanduateí, bathed with salty, hot and cold sweat and blood, from the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Arctic, the Antarctic and even the Indian Ocean. Through the Brazilian fluvial guts, all the oceans wept.

Although we were taught that the muses are only one, like the white nymphs of the Portuguese river, there are other fountains gushing out inspiration from the multiple human experiences, like the Native Amazonian Naiá, who fell in love with Jaci, the moon, and its intense brightness that illuminates the forest sky. This passion caused her to drown in a river, although, as in a magical realism, typical of legends and original myths, she was transformed into a Victoria Regia. Leonardo da Vinci was also enchanted by the beauty and malice of Salai, his apprentice, twenty years younger, with whom he lived for almost three decades, between 1490 and 1518, immortalizing him with the painting of Saint John the Baptist. Or the muse of the Mongol emperor Shal Jahal, his favorite wife Mumtza Mahal, whose transcendental love was immortalized in the most iconic mausoleum in the world, annually receiving millions of poets in search of revelation, in the city of Agra, India. One could also mention Narcissus, the son of a river-god and a nymph, who fell in love with himself, and drowned while chasing his reflection in the waters. Or was it the reflection of his roots? Narcissus was also transformed into a plant, which retains its same name, in an eternal stooping seeking its reflection.

The muses mentioned here are part of the particular context of each poet, touched by beings that inspired them, bringing the beauties hidden in the unconscious of each subjectivity. All have in common, however, death and abandonment, for these muses are too human, too true. This is how the muses of the earthly world are. The first and overwhelming encounter takes place through external beauty, in which a physical aspect generates reconcave and reconvex movements, revolutionizing the experience of the being that allows himself to live and relive emotions. A gesture, a physical aspect, or one smallest detail with wider possibilities, which I believe to be more reliable to contain hidden beauties, a regard. The watery eyes of the people, make possible portals for perennial imagination. Caudal rivers, with intense flows of piranhas, botos, pirarucus, anemones, crabs, turtles, sharks, seahorses, and everything else that God created for the joy and enchantment of attentive eyes. It is necessary, however, not to forget that rivers, especially Brazilian rivers, are deep and the possibility of drowning is high.

To fall in love with the muses is necessary, to become involved with them is not, to paraphrase poets who understand the subject well.

The nymphs of the Pessoas, who inhabit pastoral worlds, not revealing themselves in conscious developmental plans, differ from the others. Perhaps muses are sources of inspiration only because they are inaccessible, idealized. For this reason they are muses, because if they were real, they would have their earthly and material dilemmas. It is better to leave them in this idyllic, imaginary field, where their mere existence is, for the thirsty artist, like the oasis of a desert wanderer.

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