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Ismália

Ismália 2016
Game
Matheus da Rocha Montanari

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Ismalia is originally a poem by Alphonsus Guimaraens (1870-1921), the work is an interactive animation programmed in Java that brings the poem to a video-game environment and allows the player to control Ismalia in her madness and sorrow while she collects tears and reach for the two moons.

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When Ismália went mad, she,

Dreaming in a tower high,

Saw a moon up in the sky,

Saw a moon down in the sea.

 

Then she started, dreamingly

Bathing in moonlight, to sigh

For the moon up in the sky,

For the moon down in the sea.

 

Lost in her insanity,

She sung there a lullaby:

She was so close to the sky,

She was so far from the sea.

 

Like an angel, finally,

She spread both her wings to fly

Toward the moon up in the sky,

Toward the moon down in the sea.

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The two angel-wings that she

Got from God flapped and thereby

Her soul soared straight to the sky,

Her flesh sunk deep in the sea.

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Tanslation by Nelson Ascher

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