Analysis Of Ferreira Gullar’s Trap on humans

One of the influential Brazilians of the 20th century Ferreira Gullar (b. 10 Sep 1930 - d. 4 Dec 2016) was a poet and Essayist. The young Gullar was a poetry reader of the best Brazilians and the foreign poets.

From Dirty Poem Translated by Leland Guyer

Oh, my dirty city
 you suffer deeply and in silence
 from the shame the family smothers
 in its deepest drawers
 of faded dresses
 of tattered shirts
 of legions of degraded people
 barely eating
 yet embroidering flowers on
their tablecloths on
their table centerpieces
with water jars

However, from his schooling days Ferreira had an interest in poetry. As well as, he also wrote few of them, but he could not see any future in his small village. The real life started for him when he flew to the second most popular city, Rio de Janeiro in 1950 and started working as a journalist.

Another poem written by Gullar was “There are Many Traps in The world”. There are many traps, some gets caught in social shame, or others in religious or political, drugs etc. However, the poet grabbed the reader’s attention on refuge at the beginning.

Art exists because life is not enough

Ferreira Gullar

Ferreira gave the best comparison of the human being to morning foam on the beach. As well as, it all ends with the biggest battle of life like betrayal, jail or hang. Gullar also said that life is crazy that often ends and vanishes like a Bomb.

Furthermore, he did not forget about generations of a kid’s fearless entry on this earth. And, seeking the unending answers of every question and convergence. The poet taught us that we should endure such traps until our death. The hard truth about life that is humans are prisoners and throughout their life. However, man should not give up in the middle of the life.

Poem: “There are Many Traps in The World” by Ferreira Gullar

There are many traps in the world
and what is a trap could be a refuge
and what is a refuge could be a trap
Your window, for instance,
opens to the sky
and a star tells you that man is nothing
or the morning foaming on the beach
batters it, before Cabral, before Troy
(four centuries ago Tomás Bequimão
took the city, created a popular militia
and then was betrayed, jailed, hanged)
There are many traps in the world
and many mouths telling you
that life is short-lived
that life is crazy
And why not the Bomb? They ask you.
Why not the Bomb to end it all, since
life is crazy?
Yet, you look at your son, the little kid
who doesn’t know
who fearlessly enters life and wants
life
and seeks the sun, the ball, fascinated, sees
the aeroplane and questions and questions
Life is short-lived
life is crazy
but there’s nothing but life
And you couldn’t kill yourself, that’s the truth.
You’re a prisoner of life as if in a cage.
We’re all prisoners
in this cage that Gagarin was the first to see
from above, and to tell us: It’s blue.
And we already knew it, so well
that you couldn’t kill yourself and wouldn’t
kill yourself
and will endure until the end.
It’s certain that in this cage there are those who have
and those who have not
there are those who have so much that they alone could
feed the whole city
and those who haven’t enough for today’s lunch
The star is a liar
the sea is a sophist. In fact,
man is tied to life and needs to live
man has hunger
and needs to eat
man has children
and needs to provide for them
There are many traps in the world
and it’s necessary to shatter them.

In Gullar’s long explained poem defines the human traps also, read Joseph Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” on colonial control. The soul-scrubbing poem by Saint Tukaram Maharaj is also worth reading today.