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Callaloo 24.4 (2001) 1149



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The Painter Estêvão Silva

Edimilson de Almeida Pereira


Student of Victor Meireles
in the Imperial Academy
of Fine Arts, he was a demon
for those classical days in
Rio's nineteenth century.
His still lifes
redolent of country homes
wore norms of pleasure
to the eye, though not in real life.
In the Museu Mariano
Procópio one of Silva's canvases
awaits the person
who might see its fruit
in a beautiful aquarium.
Beneath that tenderness are craters,
everything that matters
to a man in his art.
Estêvão in Minas
will always be from Rio, and his work
has an unsavoriness that
binoculars from a distance
would find plump and pleasant.
It only proves that styles
change, not the wild beasts.

--Translated by Steven F. White



From White.

Edimilson de Almeida Pereira lives in Juiz de Fora in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He has published poetry and studies of Brazilian culture which include Corpo vivido, A roda do mundo (with Ricardo Aleixo), Negras raízes mineiras: Os arturos, and Mundo encaixado: Significação da cultura popular. He teaches Brazilian literature at the Federal University in Juiz de Fora.

Steven F. White's study and translations of contemporary Afro-Brazilian poetry have appeared in Callaloo 18.4, 19.1, and 20.1. He is the co-author with Edimilson de Almeida Pereira of "Brazil: Analysis of the Interactions and Conflicts in a Multicultural Society" in Cultural Cartographies: Comparative Studies in Race, Ethnicity and Nationhood. He also translated the subtitles for the feature-length film Cruz e Sousa: O Poeta do Desterro (1999) by Brazilian director Sylvio Back. White's CD Transversions (2001) includes his translations set to music of poetry by Latin American and Spanish writers. His most recent volume of poetry is Fire that Engenders Fire/Fuego que engendra fuego. He teaches at St. Lawrence University.

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