De poeta a poeta: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen lê Manuel Bandeira, Cecília Meireles e Murilo Mendes

Abstract

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen is the author of one of the most substantial oeuvres of Portuguese poetry of the 20th century, which she produced over 50 years. Without being associated with a specific literary movement, Andresen was able to articulate elements of tradition and modern literature in her writings, as well as references from different cultures. This research is inscribed in the scope of literary comparativism and focuses on Andresens interlocutions with the poets Manuel Bandeira, Cecília Meireles, and Murilo Mendes, which she established in her works by citing, analyzing or mentioning their poems. Furthermore, it aims to understand how she positions herself in relation to Brazilian literature and culture, departing from the readings that the Portuguese author demonstrates to have done. Considering that reading and writing are interrelated and that the position of a writer as a reader is an attitude of selection and appropriation of their precursors, we call attention to the poems and essays of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen in which a dialog with Bandeira, Meireles and/or Mendes is established, and in light of theorists such as Antoine Compagnon, Harold Bloom and Leyla Perrone-Moisés, as well as of the critical fortune that each of those poets engendered, we examined how the readings of Brazilian authors may have helped to form the Sophia as a poet and how their works approach or distance from that which she set out to accomplish.