O Poeta é Um Fingidor
João Villaret
The Poet's Artifice: Unveiling the Layers of Emotion in João Villaret's 'O Poeta é Um Fingidor'
João Villaret's 'O Poeta é Um Fingidor' delves into the intricate relationship between a poet and their emotions, exploring the concept of artifice in the expression of pain. The song's lyrics, originally a poem by the renowned Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, suggest that a poet is a master of deception, capable of feigning emotions so convincingly that they even deceive themselves. This paradoxical idea is encapsulated in the line, 'Finge tão completamente / Que chega a fingir que é dor / A dor que deveras sente,' which translates to 'He fakes so completely / That he even fakes the pain / The pain he truly feels.' This suggests that the act of writing allows the poet to transform genuine suffering into a crafted experience, blurring the lines between reality and fiction.
The second stanza shifts the focus to the readers, who engage with the poet's work. It highlights a disconnect between the poet's true experiences and the emotions perceived by the audience. 'E os que leem o que escreve / Na dor lida sentem bem / Não as suas que ele teve / Mas só a que eles não têm,' meaning 'And those who read what he writes / Feel well the pain read / Not the ones he had / But only the ones they don't have,' suggests that readers project their own unexperienced pains onto the poet's words. This creates a shared yet individual experience of emotion, where the poet's crafted pain becomes a vessel for the readers' own feelings.
The final stanza uses the metaphor of a wind-up train ('comboio de corda') to represent the heart, which 'gira, a entreter a razão,' or 'turns, entertaining reason.' This imagery conveys the idea that the heart, driven by artificial mechanisms, entertains and distracts the mind. The poet's heart, like a wind-up toy, is both a source of genuine emotion and a crafted performance, constantly spinning in a cycle of creation and deception. Villaret's rendition of this poem captures the essence of Pessoa's exploration of the duality of human emotion and the art of poetry, making it a profound reflection on the nature of artistic expression.