A estrela e o anjo: convergências do sagrado em Manuel Bandeira

Abstract

The present research aims to find the convergences of the sacred in the poetics of the modernist poet Manuel Bandeira. In this way, demonstrating that the poet makes a journey within his poetry, which takes him from one pole to another within the same theme. The sacred in movement and this movement has to do with the life of the poet, who also follows several paths, linked to poetry and poetic inspiration. Manuel Bandeira was the poet who gave face to the modernist movement in Brazil, as his works, from 1919 onwards, with Carnaval, his second book, began to have a language that matched what the pioneers of modernism were looking for. A poetry free from constraints and forms established by tradition. This fact led the poet to be called “Saint John the Baptist”, i.e., the precursor, the one who announced what would become the literary school of Oswald and Mário de Andrade. To reach the answers we are looking for, we will investigate the poetic work of Manuel Bandeira, his complete poetry, the poems that demonstrate the poet's penchant for the sacred, for the things of God and religion, in addition to what is linked to the sacred as myth and mystification. Also, writers who deal with the theme of the sacred and its manifestation in the world, physical and ideas, such as Mircea Eliade, Rudolf Otto and Julien Ries; and everyone who fits the profile and who appears to us during this careful investigation. Manuel Bandeira's prose will also be investigated, his autobiography and most recognized prose work, Itinerário de Pasárgada; and the chronicles, letters and whatever else is possible to find. The research is justified in that it analyzes the path taken by Manuel Bandeira in a singular prerogative in search of the sacred and its convergences. The objective of this work is to understand this journey, this search and this connection with the unknowable, with what cannot be easily conceived. We hypothesize the idea that the poet, being part of a tradition, takes this prerogative into his poetry and transforms an entire set of beliefs into poetic matter. Manuel Bandeira is a poet linked to the people, his poetic condition has a lot to do with what he understands as the relationship between art and life, that's what he does, he transforms the little into a lot, the insignificant into poetry.