Book, Form and exegesis and Ariana, the woman[LS]

In this volume, the reader has brought together Form and Exegesis (1935) and Ariana, a Mulher (1936), the second and third books by Vinicius de Moraes, respectively. Forma e exegesis was published when Vinicius was just 22 years old. But if the young poet had already caught the attention of critics with his first book, The Path to Distance (1933), the second brought consecration when he received the prestigious award from the Felipe d'Oliveira Society. Ariana, the woman is a single, long poem that brings into play, as if in an overflow, the emotional and existential world of a subject. The text begins with the clock “somberly striking Midnight” and ends with the same clock “stopped at Midnight”. It is in this stagnant, dead world that the poet cries out for Ariana. But she is not just a woman; as the title suggests, she is the woman. And it is also death, life, nature. The volume that the reader now has in their hands opens with a notebook of images that reproduces manuscripts and typescripts - part of the poet's long work to reach the final version of the poems -, photographs and other documents, such as old covers and the receipt of payment for the printing of the first copies of Form and Exegesis.