One of Brazil’s leading thinkers now has five of his works in a new format; by 2024 there will be 12 more
In the early forties, the writer Osvaldo de Andrade engaged in a verbal battle with the critic Antonio Candido who, in his literary column in the Morning sheetstated that true Brazilian literature began with the generation of 1930, thus excluding that of 1922. osvaldo refers to young people with irony: “generation of good guys”, “producing a sort of primary chair of the changing world”, “adolescents in the closet”.
Today, with the republication of all of the work of White (1918-2017) under the seal of the publishing house However, who developed an austere graphic project, the words of Osvaldo (who became a great friend of Candido) evaporated. “In many respects he is an unavoidable critic,” comments the director Flavio Moracoordinator of the project which will have a total of 17 books, which will be released by the second half of 2024.
The first wave brings five works: Formation of Brazilian literature (1959), The Members of Rio Bonito (1964), literature and society (1965), The speech and the city (1993) and Introduction to Brazilian literature (1997). “In these works it is already possible to observe the ambition for synthesis that marked Candido’s career”, observes Moura. “He has tried to reflect on Brazil through literature. Candido began as a critic in the 1940s and graduated in the tradition of literary writing as a way of thinking about the country”.
Indeed, in his taste for the essay, produced with a refined and crystalline writing, Antonio Candido it combined a desire for social justice, theoretical density and aesthetic quality. “He has shown a mastery of the European repertoire and has produced seminal essays on the work of foreign authors, especially Italian, French and German, who have taken a panorama beyond our borders,” says Moura.
At the same time, Candido focused on writing by domestic authors, as can be seen in Introduction to Brazilian literature, text commissioned in 1987 by an Italian publisher, but who did not publish it, which happened only ten years later by decision of the critic himself, in order to help young people as a “complement of more substantial texts”, as he himself observed.
“There, it shows how Brazilian literature is a branch of Portuguese”, comments Moura about a peculiarity of national writing, also highlighted by the researcher and essayist Ieda Lebensztayn, author of an essay which appears in the book and which introduces the work to the lay public. “Candide observes that our literature carries the ambiguity between integrating the set of Western literatures and making changes according to the conditions of the New World”, he observes about a derivative writing, that is, from the passage from a Portuguese colony to becoming a nation, the Brazil has presented a literature which, “over time, has developed its own stamp and its own personality”.
For the first time Candido’s work will also be available in e-booksat an affordable price, enabling more people to attest to the vitality of the critic’s contribution to national thought.
Created by Candido and a group of university students, “Suplemento Literário”, by Estadão, had the aim of balancing tradition and innovation
In its task of propagating Brazilian literature, Antonio Candido he was one of those responsible for creating a privileged space for the debate of ideas, the emergence of new authors and the revision of established ones. It’s about Literary supplementwhich started circulating with The State of Sao Paulo from 6 October 1956. SLas the supplement was fondly called, it struck a balance between tradition and innovation.
“The guideline that guided the plan was the following: São Paulo at that time did not have the cultural density of Rio, where the most lively literatures and arts were concentrated,” he said. White in an interview with Stadium in 2006. “São Paulo’s greatest contribution was university culture, but there were no big cultural magazines here. Therefore, it was advisable to seek some kind of balance between the lively movement of literature and the arts and the more stable tone of university studies. O SL it was an attempt to combine the two dimensions in a creative and accessible way, blending the tone of a newspaper with that of a magazine.”
In addition to Candido, other university students have also written in SL, such as Decio de Almeida Prado, Paulo Emilio Salles Gomes AND Gilda de Mello and Souza. And the layout of SLmodern and airy for its time, it was created by Italo BianchiItalian, son of a sculptor and an opera singer.
Candide commented that the literary critic of his time was forced to deal with names that, at that time, were still unknown. “One day I received a book called Close to the wild heartsigned by Clarice the Inspector. I thought it was a pseudonym. I didn’t know who it was and needed to say if the book was good or bad. That is, my responsibility was very large, since I dealt with such authors as Murilo Mendes AND Carlos Drummond de Andrade, which had not yet gained notoriety. I was lucky enough to experience a heyday of Brazilian literature. But wrong assessments could cost me my job.”
Source: Terra
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
