Proust and Modern Brazilian Writers

Abstract

AM ONG THE FERTILE ELEMENTS of the literary climate which fostered northeastern Brazil's poetry and fiction of the 1930's was the work of Marcel Proust. His writings stimulated the creative process of the poet Jorge de Lima (1893-1953) and the novelist Jos6 Lins do Rego (1901-57), providing them with a point of departure for their own original masterpieces. Proust first became known through fortuitous circumstances in Macei6, Alagoas, years before the leading modernist poet in Rio, Manuel Bandeira, confessed in 1930 that he had not yet had time to bite into Proust, whose writings he found monstrously dull.' Tadeu Rocha relates in some detail how Jorge de Lima became acquainted in the mid-twenties with Henri Rochat, a Swiss immigrant in Recife. It was through Rochat, a friend of Proust's family, that Jorge de Lima sent for and obtained the complete edition of A la recherche du temps perdu.2 Up to that time, Jorge de Lima had been a Parnassian poet, known affectionately to his contemporaries as the Prince of Alagoan poets. In 1927 he published his first poem in free verse, 0 mundo do menino impossivel,3 plainly discarding the Parnassian mold and proclaiming his adherence to Brazilian modernism. This poem contains images reminiscent of those in Proust's novel.