SOURCE: Nunes, Cassiano. “The Characteristics of Modern Poetry in Brazil.” Comparative Literature Studies 5, no. 1 (March 1968): 21-39.

In the following essay, Nunes describes the growth of modern poetry in Brazil, focusing on the works of such authors as Murilo de Arajújo, Raul Bopp, Cassiano Ricardo, and Mário de Andrade.

A complete understanding of the phenomenon of Brazilian Modernism is possible only by examining it on three planes; universal, continental, and national. Brazilian Modernism is, in this first plane of universality, a result of the circumstance of Time, even as it lives as a national artistic movement with repercussions in all facets of life. Artists immediately interpreted the new perspective of the world, of life, representing the many social, philosophical, and scientific facts which were the essence of Western Modernism. “Cherchez la femme” recommends a character of Dumas the Younger to Sherlock deciphering a crime. By analogy, we...