“September 1, 1939” and “Contemplation on the Bench”: Drummond and the Setting of W. H. Auden

Abstract

In this brief study, I propose to identify intertextual evidence that Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poem “Contemplation on the Bench” was written through the partial appropriation of the setting of W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939”. I have identified some formal and substantive similarities between the poems, especially with regard to their settings and shared metaphors. I observed that both compositions resort to soliloquy and are situated in analogous contexts: a man, seated on a park bench or in a bar, declaims aloud his thoughts, which reveal the miseries of the present world and the hope that, in the future, a new man and a just society may arise. I noted that this initial similarity unfolds into others, such as the tone of uncertainty and anguish about the future, the “normal heart” that longs for universal love, the struggle against the evils stemming from Original Sin (especially selfishness), the portrayal of rulers as tyrants and manipulators of the masses, the accusation that the press lies, and the metaphors that compare war and the new man to the forces of nature. Despite these similarities, I argue that the socialist, utopian, and Lysenkoist philosophical conception that guided Drummond in the elaboration of this poem proves to be antagonistic to the Catholic conception espoused by Auden.