Mario Quintana: mystery, dream and puerily in the modern space

Abstract

This article, not only briefly contextualizes the artistic movement of the Brazilian symbolism in relation to the national modernist aesthetic, which started around the year of 1890, being motivated by oneiric and metaphorical references opposed to the previous realistic school, but also has as main objective to analyze the poetical language of the southern writer Mario Quintana in his symbolistic characterization of the daily life, composed by themes of mystery, dream and puerility, such as in his representation of the city of Porto Alegre, which is the capital of the southern state Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, and London, which is the capital of England, with regards to the feeling of belonging, the observation of the changes and the laudatory discourse. This study connects its argumentation under the theories of literature and art proposed by writers as Arendt and Pavani (2006), Baudelaire (2006), Fonseca (2014), Pesavento (1994), Schüler (1987), Trevisan (2006), among others. The representation of both the antique and modern cities in the poems shows that Mario Quintana presents more references of the symbolism in his first writings than in his latest ones, which have freer verses and a less rigid language. In the modernist production of this writer, the books have more nationalist themes and tone of local exaltation, however, they keep the simplicity in its language.