THE EPISTOLOGRAPHY OF MÁRIO DE ANDRADE

MEMORY OF CREATION

Abstract

The writers’ correspondence becomes many times a “laboratory” of literary production. The memorialist discourse inherent to the letter permits to document the genesis and the various elaboration steps of a literary text, from the embryo of the project to the debate about the critical reception of the work. We intend to study with this text Mario de Andrade’s correspondence taking into consideration the theoretical and critical basis of the “Archives of creation”, term used from the Genetic Critics that aims to take the creative process. Firstly, we intend to demonstrate how the letters of the creator of Macunaíma represent a “stone mason” when it brings to light the matrixes and circumstances of the writing, to document suppressed lessons in the version of a published text (and, casually, to contain the justification for determined choices), to receive artistic projects born in the moment of writing, but after abandoned etc. Secondly, we aim to discuss the examples as a whole provided by this study from José-Luis Diaz’s critical perception that in his text “Quelle génétique pour les correspondences”, warns us about the traps of the “‘exhibitionist’ genesis, a little bit truncated and staged”.