O mar e a noite, as formigas e as lagartixas: o imenso e o mínimo na poesia de Cecília Meireles

Abstract

This article seeks to discuss certain images in Cecília Meireles‘ poetry in order to highlight a dialectic between the large and the small, the immense and the minimal, from which Cecília Meireles’ poetics invites us to ‘learn to see’, that is, to overcome a perception of the world limited by a certain kind of instrumentalised modernity, which assimilates and standardises everything, or erases what it cannot assimilate. In these poems, there is a somewhat animistic conception that suggests an intimate connection between our humanity and all things, which can be found in the attentive observation of small details that would go unnoticed without this loving gaze.