Poetry and Complicity in the Unpublished Letters Sent by Murilo Mendes to Mário de Andrade (1931-1932)

Abstract

The unpublished correspondence we researched was sent by Murilo Mendes (1901-1975) to Mário de Andrade (1893-1945), and is in Mário de Andrade’s collection at the Institute of Brazilian Studies (Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros – IEB) at the University of São Paulo (USP). These are thirty-two documents, including letters and handwritten notes, sent between 1928 and 1944. The letters, covering a period of more than sixteen years, encompass an extensive phase of the two poets’ production, thus providing relevant information on historical, biographical and literary data. Due to the richness of the material, it was necessary to divide the work into a few stages, with this essay dedicating itself to the analysis of five letters, a note and a telegram (also signed by Aníbal Machado), sent by Murilo Mendes, between 1931 and 1932, and two letters from Mário in 1932. It is necessary to take into account that the fragmentation and dispersion inherent to the epistolary genre, pointed out by Moraes (2000) and Guimarães (2004), are even greater, in this case, as it is part of the correspondence from a single issuer.