Luso-Brazilian Dialogues

Cecília Meireles’ Presence in the Atlântico Magazine

Abstract

Regarded as one of the major names in Brazilian poetry, Cecília Meireles also kept herself present and active in the Portuguese literary environment, where she was well received and had propitious means of disseminating her work. The literary magazines, varied publications that helped her gain notoriety between 1930 and 1960, were important vehicles for the promotion of her texts. One of these magazines is precisely the Atlântico – Revista Luso-Brasileira (Atlantic – Luso-Brazilian Magazine), edited in the 1940s and the 1950s. The magazine, which was created during the Estado Novo (New State) period and had as background a nationalist discourse and an incentive for the approximation of the “sister nations”, received active participation of writers from both countries and came to be a relevant vehicle for Luso-Brazilian cultural exchange. One evidence of this is Meireles’ presence over editions of the magazine that depict her work or mention her in critical reviews or literary texts. Thus, one can say that the relationship established by the author and the Atlântico magazine exemplifies aspects of this pursuit for dialogue between Brazil and Portugal that, concerning her, overcame ideological and political purposes and reached, at last, subjective and personal traits.