Misery of life, misery of form

an analysis on Álvaro Lins’ critics to Jorge Amado

Abstract

In this work, it is argued that there is a humanist perspective in Álvaro Lins’ critics to Jorge Amado’s fiction which brings great contributions to modern reflections on the Novel of 1930 and to the contemporary literary criticism. Here are analyzed three subjects of the texts signed by the newspaper pagebottom’s critic: 1) the attempt to think the literary form according to the author’s aesthetical project; 2) the personalism, which makes a more direct contact with the common reader; 3) the perspective of fiction as a form of knowledge. Those judgments leads to that conclusion: Lins’ literary criticism propose a valuable reflection on a possible contribution of the fiction to social problems. According to him, it is not enough the writer having good political ideas and intentions without a having a literary form to express it, because all effort may result null.