Portuguese Language Day 2023
No better time than World Portuguese Language Day to tackle the poetic prose of this allusion-laden, wordplay-heavy rap/song/spoken word about the Portuguese language by Caetano Veloso (with Elza Soares). Right from the top, the title “Língua” could be translated as “language” or “tongue” and in fact that play on words is right in the first line of the song. Obviously, “tongue” can mean both in English, but “língua” is the primary word for both in Portuguese. This wordplay is further complicated/developed by the fact that the first word of the song (“Gosto”) can be both “I like” and “taste.” And that’s nowhere near the hardest part of this to translate. The second line (“Gosto de ser e de estar”) uses both versions of “to be,” the former, broadly speaking, being more permanent and the latter more temporary. But they do both mean the same thing, at some level, and thus require a rather loose translation. And that line is emblematic of what follows below: sort of a translation, sort of an explanation, sort of a reimagining.
“Language”
I like to feel my tongue brush against the tongue of Luís de Camões
I like being and becoming
And I want to dedicate myself to creating confusions of prosody
And a profusion of parodies that shorten pains
And steal colors like chameleons
I like the Pessoa in the person
The Rosa in the rose
And I know that poetry is to prose
As love is to friendship
And who can deny that that’s superior?
And let the Portugals die bit by bit
My homeland is my language*
Speak, Mangueira! Speak!
Flower of Lazio** Sambodrome
Lusoamerica, powdered Latin
What does this language want, what can it do?
Let’s attack the syntax of the paulistas
And the surfers’ false English relax
Let’s be imperialists! Where?***
Let’s ride Carmen Miranda’s choo-choo diction bike
And may Chico Buarque de Holanda save us
And checkmate, Luanda explains to us
We carefully listen to TV Globo’s precise grammar****
Let’s be the wolf of the wolf of the man
The man’s wolf’s wolf’s wolf*****
I love names
Names that end with 'ã'
Of things, like 'rã' [frog] and 'ímã' [magnet]
Ímã ímã ímã ímã ímã ímã ímã ímã
Names of names
Like Scarlet Moon de Chevalier
Glauco Mattoso and Arrigo Barnabé and Maria da Fé
And Arrigo Barnabé
Incredible, it’s better to write a song
There’s proof that you can only philosophize in German
If you have an incredible idea
It’s better to write a song
There’s proof that you can only philosophize in German
Blitz means lightning
Hollywood means Azevedo
And the Recôncavo, bay of my fear
Language is my fatherland
I don’t have a fatherland, I have a motherland
And I want a siblingland
Concrete poetry, chaotic prose
Future vision
Samba-rap, chic-left with banana
(Could it be on Sugarloaf?)
It’s 'craude', brô
You and thou, I love you
What can I do, dude?
Make it quick!
(Yê-yeah-yê-ah)
You play at being bad, Ricardo!?
Your uncle will be desperate
Oh, Tavinho, tuck that shirt in
That way you look more like a scarecrow
I'd like to spend some time in Mozambique
We sing-speak like those who want to be black
Who suffer horrors in the Harlem ghetto
Books, records, videos by the handful
And let them talk, think, speak
*In O Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquietude), the Pessoa heteronym Bernardo Soares wrote: “My homeland is the Portuguese language.” In 2007, the samba school Mangueira adapted the phrase for their Carnaval theme.
**A poetic euphemism for the Portuguese language from Olavo Bilac’s sonnet “Língua portuguesa” (“Portuguese language”): “Última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela” (“Last flower of Lazio, uncouth and beautiful”), a reference to Portuguese as the last language derived from the vulgar Latin spoken in that part of Italy.
***The Portuguese here is “Cadê?” - a unique word in (and to) Portuguese that combines the interrogative “where” and the verb “to be” to get “Where is?”
****The global tour of influences on Portuguese runs from the “Americanized” Carmen Miranda through “Luanda” and Africa, via Chico’s “Morena de Angola” - with the policing of the “proper” media hovering.
*****An anthropophagist reimagining of Hobbes.
I owe an enormous debt to Luisa Bertrami d’Angelo’s Jan. 21, 2016, piece “A canção ‘Língua’ de Caetano Veloso” (“Caetano Veloso’s song ‘Língua’”) in the online journal nota, in which she analyzes this amazing song line by line. There are so many layers to this song, that I wouldn’t be surprised to see it reappear in this space again some day…