In the first half of the 20th century, the literary and art scenes were closely intertwined, with writers and artists developing a number of collaborative projects. In manifestos like the Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil (1924) and Manifesto Antropófago (1928), writer Oswald de Andrade called for the emergence of a Brazilian culture in its own right that would liberate itself from European influence. At the same time, he employed the aesthetic devices of the European avant-garde and the figure of the wild cannibal (Antropofago). The portrayal of this figure was influenced by European authors during the course of Brazil’s colonisation and is considered problematic from a contemporary perspective. For example, the Indigenous legends that were published by the artist Vicente do Rego Monteiro became a major source of inspiration for a number of – mainly white – writers in São Paulo, including Mário de Andrade, Raul Bopp, and Guilherme de Almeida. These writers travelled throughout the different regions of Brazil in the hope of tracing their Brazilian heritage among the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon region, or in the Afro-Brazilian culture in the country’s north-east. In terms of their formal elements, the majority of the publications in question resemble Futurist, Dadaist, or Surrealist literature. However, literature also shifted course with the advent of the dictatorship in 1937, with writers adopting a more realistic style, and social themes coming to the fore. It was not until Juscelino Kubitschek was elected to the presidency in 1956 that things began to open up again, with literature once again becoming more diverse and experimental.

More Than Twelve Ways to Read Brazil

1920s: The collection of poems Pauliceia desvairada (Hallucinated City) sees Mário de Andrade invent a rhythm in response to the transformation of the city of São Paulo. In 1924, Oswald de Andrade published the Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil, an article in which the author proposes exporting Brazilian poetry or even culture as a counterpoint to the ongoing import to Brazil of European artistic ideas.

Although they harboured different perceptions of Brazil, Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade wrote two masterworks published in 1928: Oswald’s Manifesto Antropófago and Mário’s Macunaíma. The former involves an exercise in cultural devouring, in which the act of “eating” European culture is seen to contribute to the development of a Brazilian art in its own right; in the latter, the “hero with no character,” who acts as the protagonist of the novel, changes race and gender several times throughout the course of his journey from the north to the south of Brazil. In both works, there is a reconfiguration of the national literary status quo with several different layers and an emphasis on the orality and prosody of the Brazilian language.

1930s: In Raul Bopp’s 1931 poem Cobra Norato, the myth of the anaconda in the Amazon rainforest takes centre stage. Between 1954 and 1958, Bopp was the Embassador of Brazil in Bern.

In the 1930s, several intellectuals analysed the historical sources of what was considered Brazilian culture. Two major works to emerge from this exploration are Casa grande e senzala (The Masters and the Slaves) by Gilberto Freyre and Raízes do Brasil (Roots of Brazil) by Sergio Buarque de Holanda. According to Freyre, even though the architecture of colonisation engendered fissures between the white European “masters” and the enslaved Black African population, the intermingling of the two groups was ultimately inevitable. Sérgio Buarque, on the other hand, outlines in his text what he describes as the phenomenon of “cordiality” among Brazilians, with all its contradictions.

1940s: With her 1943 debut novel Perto do coração selvagem (Near to the Wild Heart), Clarice Lispector reveals with density and simplicity several of the emotions of human beings. The poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade published with A rosa do povo (The People’s Rose) a poetry anthology in which the individual, the nation, and the whole world are all balanced in his poetic compositions.

1950s: Cecília Meireles’ poetry collection Romanceiro da Inconfidência (The Romance of the Conspiracy) published in 1953, channels a chorus of historical voices from the Inconfidência Mineira (Minas Gerais Conspiracy), which was an unsuccessful separatist movement in Brazil.

In 1956, João Guimarães Rosa reinvented the Brazilian literary language with Grande sertão: veredas (Bedeviled in the Badlands). The magic universe that is the country’s sertão (or hinterland) region is filled with neologisms, archaic expressions, and all the small paths (veredas) of the northern part of Minas Gerais. Ultimately, all paths, both geographic and linguistic, are interconnected.

At the end of the 1950s, a group of three young poets (Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos, and Décio Pignatari) penned a manifesto in which they laid the foundations for a new way of reading and making poetry: Plano piloto para a poesia concreta. Integrating design, visuality, and sound, concrete poetry would come to constitute a landmark for poetry in the decades and generations that followed.