"Elegia"
Channel: Gian Luca Ferme
Date: 2023-05-13

This has been one of my favorite songs by Caetano Veloso since I heard it back in the eighties. Many years later, I found out it was based on a poem by John Donne (“Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going To Bed”, from 1654). 

I find it amazing that Donne would/could write such a sensual description of the encounter between a man and a woman, about four hundred years ago.

(Please credit the source if you are using any part of this recording.)

Here are the lyrics by Veloso followed by the part of John Donne's "Elegy..." adapted in this song:

Deixa que minha mão errante adentre
Atrás, na frente, em cima, em baixo, entre
Minha América, minha terra à vista
Reino de paz se um homem só a conquista
Minha mina preciosa, meu império
Feliz de quem penetre o teu mistério
Liberto-me ficando teu escravo
Onde cai minha mão, meu selo gravo
Nudez total todo prazer provém do corpo
(Como a alma sem corpo) sem vestes
Como encadernação vistosa
Feita para iletrados, a mulher se enfeita
Mas ela é um livro místico e somente
A alguns a que tal graça se consente
É dado lê-la
Eu sou um que sabe
--------------------------------
   Licence my roving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man mann’d,
My Mine of precious stones, My Empirie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
    Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth’d must be,
[…]
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus array’d;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
[…]
Must see reveal’d.