The 'Poetry of Football' in Literature and Popular Brazilian Music

Our contribution aims at a comparative analysis of poems and song lyrics of the Brazilian popular music that have the football as theme. To reflect about the relationship between football, literature and music, we will adopt the category of 'calcio di poesia' formulated by the famous Italian filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) in an article published in January 1971 in the newspaper Il Giorno. In aesthetic terms, the characteristics of a 'football poetry' would be the dribble, the moment of 'subversion' which like the goal would be its ultimate expression. As corpus analysis, we selected the poems 'Oanjo das pernas tortas' (1962) by Vinicius de Moraes and 'Gol' (2006) by Ferreira Gullar and the lyrics of the songs 'Ponta de lanca africano' (1976) by Jorge Ben and 'O Futebol' (1989) by Chico Buarque de Holanda as examples of 'translation' of this 'poetic language'. Adapted from the source document.