Macunaíma and Carybé commoned. An Overview of the Intercultural Mediations between Lidia Besouchet, Newton Freitas and Mário de Andrade, on the Translation and Publication of Macunaíma in Argentina
Keywords:
Macunaíma, Carybé, Lidia Besouchet, Argentinian Literature, Brazilian LiteratureAbstract
The Brazilian couple Lidia Besouchet (writer and historian) and Newton Freitas (essayist and journalist) relocated to Buenos Aires in the mid-1930s, following the interruption of democratic rule and the persecution of intellectuals and political activists by the dictatorship known in Brazilian history as the "Estado Novo" (the couple were accused of associations with the Communist Party and for participating in the National Liberation Alliance). The couple’s extended residency in Argentina would result in a series of intercultural mediations that would go on to determine the literary exchanges between Argentina and Brazil throughout the 1940s. I would like to discuss here the activities of this Brazilian couple with respect to the return and ultimate cultural residency of the Argentine/Brazilian artist Carybé in Brazil, with special attention placed on the procedures involved in Carybés endeavor to translate Andrade’s work –publishing agreements, design, state censorship– and the obstacles involved in the publication of Carybé’s Macunaíma (1928) into Spanish. The task would involve mediations between Besouchet and Freitas, realized across extensive epistolary exchanges between Mario and Carybé, and through Brazilian and Argentinian institutions. This line of inquiry –made possible through research conducted in the archives of the Brazilian couple, housed in the Institute for Brazilian Studies at the University of São Paulo– reveals problems regarding the literary criticism and historiography emerging in recent times around the debate over comparative studies between the Brazilian and Argentinian literary fields. The case of Carybé and his persecution on account of his promotion star of Macunaíma is unquestionably a unique example of the possibilities offered by a reading that focuses on the cultural hybridism emerging on the borders of both fields.
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