Literature has the power to transform us and maybe you've read that somewhere. The late Mario Quintana already said that “Books do not change the world, people change the world. Books only change people”, and yes, books have the power to transform us as human beings.
Among the thousands of writers around the world, it is worth paying attention to the work of a woman, a powerful Spanish writer: Cecília Meireles. If you are in the process of self-knowledge and have been looking for books to help you on this journey, Cecília Meireles' songs can help you.
Cecília Meireles, among women writers, is one of the most important. Born in Rio de Janeiro, her father died three months before her birth and when she was three years old, her mother left her, so she was raised by her maternal grandmother. She once said in an interview, "All my life I've tried hard to win and I wasn't even surprised to lose."
She is known for a number of crafts: writer, journalist, painter, researcher and teacher. She fought to fight the word "poet", due to gender discrimination and called herself POET, many other writers adopted the same stance. In her poem Motivo, she emphasizes her vocation:
“I sing because the moment exists
and my life is complete.
I am neither happy nor sad:
I am a poet.”
The author experienced many episodes in her life, some of them tragic, such as the suicide of her husband Correia Dias. Among the many works by the author, there is one in particular: the book “Cânticos”, from 1981.
These songs by Cecília Meireles bring together a kind of mystical and transcendental atmosphere. In many verses "eternity" is emphasized.
In Greek philosophy, poems were like the presentation of physis, that is, the search for wisdom was like an act of contemplation, and the verses present in Cecília Meireles’ songs are like an act of contemplation that questions life from the perspective of eternity.
This book brings together experiences of solitude and freedom, of encounter with the life of the spirit. It expresses the thought originating in Greece, as well as bringing together principles present in Indian sacred poems, such as the poetry and work of Tagore, which reveals the pulse of the eternal in everyday life.
Songs by Cecília Meireles – a call for peace to the soul
I
You don't want to have a country.
Do not divide the Earth.
Do not divide Heaven.
Don't tear pieces overboard.
Don't want to have.
Born very high.
That all things will be yours.
That you will reach all horizons.
That your gaze, being everywhere
put you in everything,*
Like God.
*(You will be in everything)
In this song, for example, the author proposes an understanding of the infinite Universe as it is and the importance of detachment in the verse “Don't want to have”. “Born high” is somehow related to birth from the awareness that we are part of the totality, we are the ALL, part of the eternal.
II
Don't be today.
Don't sigh for yesterdays. . .
Don't want to be tomorrow.
Make yourself limitless in time.
See your life in all backgrounds.
In all stocks.
In all deaths.
And know that you will be like this forever.
You don't want to book your ticket.
She goes on:
It is the passage that continues.
It's your eternity. . .
It's eternity.
it's you
Realize the grandeur of this song and how it proposes the meditation that we are eternal beings, that there is no end, there is no definitive death.
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VI
You have a fear:
Finish.
Can't you see you're done all day.
That you die in love.
Na tristeza.
In doubt.
In desire.
That you renew yourself every day.
No love.
Na tristeza.
In doubt.
In desire.
Which is always another.
That you are always the same.
That you will die for immense ages.
Until you're not afraid to die.
And then you will be eternal.
Feel the power of these words and how they are a call to a free spirituality, without dogma, but from an individual awareness that every day you die and are born, every day somehow you renew yourself, no matter the circumstances (in love, in sadness, in doubt, in desire).
Read Cecília Meireles – read books written by women
There are so many magnificent works written by women that you need to know. It is important to open up the range of reading alternatives, especially to discover more works written by women. It is essential, especially for the female audience, to rethink “being a woman” through narratives written by women.
Try reading Cecília Meireles's book “Songs” as a tool for self-knowledge, as part of your daily meditation, as an exercise to rethink your role in the world, your purposes, your performance. Free yourself from the ties that keep you from being who you are.
A book is not just a book. Often a book can represent a doorway to freedom.
