Nuances of the cordiality: the correspondence of writers and inflexions of the debates in the Brazilian Modernism

Abstract

This article intends to discuss the possibility of reading the Gilberto Freyre and Manuel Bandeira’s unpublished letters taking the concept of “cordiality” as basis, as the essayist presents it in his book Sobrados e mucambos (1936). Cordiality and epistolography can be connected in so far as they reinforce the approximation between contrasting elements, by employing a relational and informal language, linked to the everyday life. This articulation will be assimilated as an important item on the modernist agenda, mainly after the final year of the 1920s. Thus, one will reflect on a cordial predisposition in the Brazilian Modernism and on its likely literary incorporation by looking for subtle information presented in the epistolar form and in some documents of the author’s archives.