It is one of the owner of the poetic cycle begin with "Brumaire" and "Derivation of Brumaire." According to Cape Verdean writer Fatima Bettencourt "is an encyclopedic work not so much by the extesion of the text, but for its intensity and urgency as it rush us to look at the classics, not only in quick visits, but in constant interaction. Armenian Vieira offers these poems as who shoots scented stones".
Why Brumaire?
Arménio Vieira: They made me this question a thousand times, one of the correlations can be the story of Napoleon Bonaparte's coup, but another of a Cape Verdean phenomenon that appears in January, especially when the planes do not take off. Not now, because at night it is possible.
The Brumaire is the odyssey of the Cape Verdean people?
AV: When I begin to write I did not choose the theme is almost a moment of meditation, that is, from the first sentence and from then on I do not stop, then there's the rewrite. To say that the Brumaire is an odyssey perhaps to overcome the misery, I made a trip to get to independence, because I'm from there. I'm not thinking of Green Cape, there is something that is in me and my country will be also.
Also you said are a disruptive writer who wanted to break a little...
AV: Not little, totally. It is an epistemological cut as when Copernicus appears with a new theory there is a cut, it takes over, almost kill him and that classic revolutionary notion was awarded to a man of the church, because he was a priest. When Darwin begins to investigate his theory of evolution, in terms of natural science, it was a jump, a revolution.
So, you wanted to make this disruption in terms of writing?
AV: I would not do this, there is no command. There is something in me, a demon, a god, an angel who makes me do it, is not thought, is almost instinctive. I'll tell you, before independence we libertarians wrote poems, although there the same political background poetry was choosing themes that later surpassed. When we reached the independence I said to myself like a woman I would have reached menopause, I will no longer give birth any more, stick and over, but this poetic virus was there and made me write otherwise. There is an important moment in my life is when I took a trip to the Soviet Union and in poetic terms have not learned anything at all, but in return my friend Mario Fonseca, who at the time was one of the most important poets of Green Cape, the earliest, told me, Arménio what are you reading? What appears, because in my country there are no libraries and he offered me the great French classics. I read Baudelaire, Rambaud, Verlaine, Valerie, Prévert his counsel instead of reading for pleasure, did it under compulsion, read, reread and studied and in the middle of what I remember they gave me a book of Ezra Pound a great American poet who later became involved with the Italian fascism and was demonized so it was the only American who spoke about Camões placing it in a very high place, said about him that he was a poet who knew everything there was to know. The poet should not only write, should know and assimilate the great writers is what I did and I think it was not tiring, did not upset me.
And where do you get Shakespeare in the Brumaire?
AV: I had to read these great pieces. Not chosen, they appeared in my life, I was not looking for them, someone always offered me a book.
The book also deals with the devil are your demons at the present?
AV: Where did the devil come from? It is from Jewish books of the Old and New Testament. It is the principle of evil, there is a thesis that is God and he is good, is a pole and in one end the devil, Satan and the evil which is much earlier than the Christian doctrine, because the prophet Zoroaster's "thus spoke Zarathustra " from Friedrich Nietzsche created this principle of dualism of good and evil, only an optimistic perspective, at the end there would be an almost eternal struggle, in the end of time good will triumph over evil. In the New Testament there is that terrible thing of the door is narrow and we all are called, few are chosen and there are people who are saved, but most go to hell. I think I see the Christ, the master must pardon, says yes to a friend and love him again, work is when the guy loves the enemy, but to the Jew is an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. Christ says to forgive 70x7, is a metaphor, that is always forgive, forgive anyone ever. So Christ prays is extremely good, now is a devil because it sends people to hell, angry with a fig tree that is old and cannot give figs, admire a man who was the incarnation of God himself is hungry because he wants, he turns a fish in a thousand and turns one stone into bread.
You like in your writing to have those contradictions?
AV: The contradictions are not mine. I approach so much, love, hell, death.
It is your guiding principle that there is always an opposite?
AV: When I write not choose the theme, not the word. It happens and appears.
You think a lot before writing?
AV: I watch a worm from it may be the idea for a poem. There is one thing that I admired, who may shocked me, or I liked it, but I will not say it, I'll have to write this poem and even I wants to forget this thing, it's like a demon into me and tell me that I have to write and I write.
There are days when you cannot write?
AV: There are times when in Green Cape I am barren, like a woman who cannot give birth.
There are many periods like that?
AV The idea for a poem comes to me. Then there is the problem of picking up the pen and write. So much poetry I have imagined and never recorded, then there is one that I write. Jean Paul Sartre said that every man is a poet, but no, I am recognized for what I register, if I do not, does not exist. I write books to be read, but I will not read them, I look back to correct them, or to cut a further. A extra word can destroy a poem unless you can save it, if the word is not there and you'll have to find it.
And is a habit this constant revision?
AV: I'll tell you a story, when I wrote "Mitografias" I took a friend Short, poet and he told me that the poem on Camões was the best I've ever written, it was magnificent, many people wrote about the poet Portuguese, but there is one thing you say in a verse that the poet is the letter A of a line and João Cabral de Melo Neto was even our contemporary the Z of this straight why? They are two different poetic. He picked at the end line and said that is waht there is, he say it's abstract geometry, the trace we do even with very fine pencil on paper is not a line, because it has no dimension, the point is a circle, because if it comes under the microscope is a circle involved in circumference, has dimension, the point is an abstraction, it is ideal, everything is abstract geometry. The line has no beginning or end, in scientific terms is a segment of the line is a piece, the world is finite, the universe is probably endless, we also are finite and there is the A and Z. He made a good point on the Camões's poem, on the other hand, fell into a trap to fix me because after I learned from him, I read more books of geometry and mathematics and few poets speak of exact sciences for scientists poets are inspired fools, crazy subversives. The poet is a demon that had a deity in him, who had no own voice, it was almost an irrational being, that did not own his voice, not the philosophers, Plato was rational, Homero was crazy.
It is considered a devil to be a poet?
AV: Neither God nor devil. Until evidence to the contrary I am a human being, limited, weak. Sometimes I lack the brave, I am someone who has a knack for dancing or singing or playing any musical instrument, but like music and dance.
And his poems are for the Cape Verdean singers to sing?
AV: Only if it is a foreigner, because the Cape Verdean singer has a rule, a religion, is expressed only in Creole, in Portuguese is very rare. You can hear 3.4 warm in Portuguese, the rest is Creole. Few people understand my poems, it is true.
Therefore you invented heteronyms?
AV: No, I invented a pseudonym. The heteronyms is an invention of Fernando Pessoa that is his alone. Ricardo Reis is one of them, which becomes a character from Saramago and in a way it also becomes the heteronym of the writer, this it, any dramatic writer writes in several voices, the characters do not match, you have the hero and the villain the writer almost unfolds, he knows the saint, because that in it, but also knows the devil. A good man never had a rival? No one passed him a trick? Nor ever wanted to kill someone? The perfect world was a bummer, I do not say where they should be poor, but if everything runs well, if we're all immortal, beautiful and young, this was a great nuisance. It is a dilemma, because Hamlet says "to sleep is to die, the die is to sleep" but he did not want to die, he wants to sleep, but maybe want to have a long sleep.
Eternity is your work?
AV: No this is impossible, because our system, our galaxy disappears.
But the books are not.
AV: No, the sun dies.
Not interested in being immortal through your work?
AV: Immortal yes, but with periods when I would be killed back. Not always agreed, it's like not to sleep, for me it would be hell. I like to sleep, but I also like to wake up. The good thing is not to have extremes.
