Charles Drummond and Carlos Baudelaire : an Encounter Over Urban Botany

This text aims to entertain a dialogue with the modern pathos as evidenced by two poets, separated by eras but nevertheless close in their effort to understand the new experiences offered by life in big modern cities: Charles Baudelaire, in France, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade, in Brazil. Bearing in mind especially the writings of Walter Benjamin, for whom the transitory character of the present in vivid experience could liquefy individual expectations and models of uniqueness, we put forth the thesis that the verses of these poets are able to offer a privileged literary image - for both their newness and their beauty. Ultimately, Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence is called upon, as the reiteration of commodification and the modus vivendi bourgeois can lead to the emergence of a critical subjectivity which is therefore immanent