Antonio Cicero: Brazilian poet, composer and former head of UBC

Summary
The following tribute was published by UBC (Union of Brazilian Composers), following the passing of Antonio Cicero
Photo Antonio Cicero_Brazilian Poet.jpg

Brazilian music and literature have lost a giant. Antonio Cicero passed away this Wednesday, 23 October. A poet, philosopher, and composer with nearly 130 registered works at UBC - Brazilian Union of Composers, former director of this society, and an active defender of droit d’auteur and the irreplaceable human nature of artistic creation, he leaves life at the age of 79, in the same way he always lived: with great clarity.

Suffering from Alzheimer's disease, as he revealed in a letter sent to close friends, he chose assisted death in Switzerland. He was accompanied by Marcelo Pies, his lifelong partner. The information was confirmed by the Brazilian Academy (ABL), of which Cicero had been a member since 2017, an institution to which he naturally belonged.

Cicero's work has always been a continuation of the ancestral tradition that connects poetry and music. In an interview with UBC Magazine in 2017, after being elected to the ABL, and about a year after fellow songwriter Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Cicero said he saw nothing strange in the renewed attention of the literary world to music.

“The earliest known poetry, that of classical Greece, was set to music. The term 'lyric' itself comes, of course, from 'lyre.' Lyric poetry was presented as songs. The first poets didn’t write their poems; they sang them, while playing the lyre, during feasts or banquets. Sometimes dancers performed during the recitals. Since epic poems are very long, it’s believed that they were a sort of 'rap,' something between singing and reciting,” said the composer of great pop-rock and MPB genre hits, performed by his sister Marina Lima and many others. “This proves that a written poem isn’t necessarily better than song lyrics. This fact was ignored for many centuries, but today, for example, in Brazil or the United States, when great poets dedicate themselves to writing song lyrics, it’s once again recognised.”

Throughout his career, he wrote songs with some of the greatest in the Brazilian music scene, such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, João Bosco, Adriana Calcanhotto, and Lulu Santos. However, as important as his musical work was his literary production. One of his most famous poems, “Guardar,” demonstrates the richness of layers in his texts. It began like this:

“To keep something is not to hide it or lock it away. / In a vault, nothing is kept. / In a vault, the thing is lost to sight. / Keeping something is looking at it, gazing at it, admiring it by admiring it, that is, illuminating it or being illuminated by it.”

With simple, direct words, the poet beautifully played with the Italian language, where guardare means to look. This was Cicero, whose work was always marked by lyricism and philosophical reflections in a straightforward language, also expressed in other poetry books like “A Cidade e os Livros” and “Porventura,” as well as essays like “Finalidades Sem Fim,” which was nominated for the Jabuti award.

His death this Wednesday came in a measured and serene manner. As he expressed in his letter to friends, his desease had already made it impossible for him to maintain his favourite activities: writing, reading.

“What has happened is that my life has become unbearable. I am suffering from Alzheimer’s. As such, I don’t even remember some things that happened not only in the distant past but even things that happened yesterday. Except for my closest friends like you, I no longer recognise many people I meet on the street and with whom I’ve interacted before. I can no longer write good poems or good philosophical essays. I can’t concentrate even to read, which used to be my favourite thing in the world.”

Among the many tributes he received, one stands out in particular: that of his friend and frequent collaborator Caetano Veloso.

“Upon waking, I learned about Antonio Cicero. I received a message from him, where the coherence and clarity, which were always characteristics of my philosopher and poet friend, impress but don’t take away the sadness that his physical absence causes me.”, Caetano wrote on social media. “Cicero was my best friend, the most upright person I ever knew. The purest friendship affection one could imagine. And a luminous intelligence. Marcelo, his husband of so many years, must understand my sadness and also my pride in Cicero’s coherence. His sister Marina put music to one of his poems, and from there came a long and brilliant repertoire of songs. She must also understand me. I love Cicero’s bold book of philosophy, where he praises Descartes in a post-structuralist era. Dying by one’s own decision emphasises his thinking. And his poetry.”