Morte e Vida Severina

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Morte e Vida Severina (literally, Severine Life and Death, translated by Elizabeth Bishop as The Death and Life of a Severino) is a play in verse by Brazilian author João Cabral de Melo Neto, one of his most famous and frequently read works. Published in 1955 and written between 1954 and 1955, the play is divided into 18 sections and written in heptasyllabic meter, recalling the cordel, a form of the popular poetry of northeastern Brazil, where Melo Neto was born and lived for most of his life. Morte e Vida Severina is subtitled Auto de Natal Pernambucano (Auto of Pernambucan Christmas), in reference to both the biblical perspective of the word and in a broader sense of a new beginning for life at its entirety. The play recounts the journey of a retirante called Severino, who, fleeing from the poverty and droughts that ravage the northeastern region of Brazil, follows the Capibaribe River to the fertile lands nearer to the shore and then to the capital city of Recife, only to meet different forms of poverty and exploitation. The “retirantes” had also been the theme of the famous novel Vidas Secas by Graciliano Ramos, albeit under a very different point of view. The auto evolves into an allegorical account that parallels the Nativity of Jesus and reflects on the possibility for a meaningful life amid the harshness of the sertão.