Mário de Andrade: On Being São Paulo-wise in Paulicéia desvairada

Resumen

Published in 1922, Mário de Andrade’s Paulicéia desvairada is considered his first truly personal, if uneven, book of poetry. One of the characteristics of this volume is the opening declaration to the effect that São Paulo is the tumult of his life, and critics have customarily remarked on the organizing presence of the city in the volume. This study insists that, rather than poeticizing the city, Paulicéia desvairada represents what can be called the urbanization of poetry, and proceeds to examine, in a way previous criticism has failed to do, the incorporation of the material reality of the city into this highly significant inaugural text of Brazilian modernism.