Searching a new lyricism: Mário de Andrade

Abstract

This essay aims at reframing the notion of lyricism in Mário de Andrade’s poetry, dealt with as a ‘psychological’ question by our best critics. Taking Andrade’s works Paulicéia desvairada (and its preface) and A escrava que não é Isaura into account and relating them to his readings of Apollinaire and Dermée, we may notice how disturbed and uneasy our modernist poet feels about oversimplified notions of lyric poetry. Concerned about the aethic-aesthetic dimension of literature, Andrade delves into questions still relevant to contemporary poetry such as the concept of a critical lyricism.