Truthfully, the author herself may have contributed to her own image as an alienated artist when, for example, she stated to O Cruzeiro <\/em>magazine in the 1950s that her main flaw was being \u201crather absent from the world.\u201d An\u00e9lia Montechiari Pietrani, coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Women in Literature (NIELM), at the UFRJ School of Language and Literature, explains that critics were even less receptive to Meireles’s work in the 1970s. This was when the essay Literatura e Mulher: Essa Palavra de Luxo<\/em> (Literature and Women: That Fancy Word) (1979) was written by Rio de Janeiro poet Ana Cristina Cesar (1952\u20131983), on the works of Cec\u00edlia Meireles and the Minas Gerais poet Henriqueta Lisboa (1901\u20131985) and the ideas of \u201cfeminine poetry,\u201d the space occupied by women in literature, and how their work is perceived by critics and readers. In the essay, Cesar criticizes the \u201calways erudite and fine\u201d nature of this poetry, which \u201cis clean and tenuous and ethereal,\u201d and speculates whether \u201cthere is not, behind this fluid conception of poetry, a symptomatic silencing of feminine topics or the possibility of a modern women\u2019s poetry\u2014violent, quarrelsome, tacky, omnipotent.\u201d In Pietrani’s assessment, it is \u201ca piece written in the heat of the origins of the feminist movement in Brazil, which at that time rejected the lyricism of Cec\u00edlia Meireles.\u201d<\/p>\n As a result, scholars say, the ill will towards Meireles’s literary work also eclipsed her performance in other fields. A turning point came with Lamego\u2019s 1995 master’s dissertation, defended at UFRJ, published the following year with the title A Farpa na Lira: Cec\u00edlia Meireles na Revolu\u00e7\u00e3o de 30<\/em> (The Barb in the Lyre: Cec\u00edlia Meireles in the Brazilian Revolution of 1930) (Editora Record). The study uncovered the poet’s fierce politics in the education section of the Rio de Janeiro newspaper Di\u00e1rio de Not\u00edcias<\/em> from 1930 to 1933. In the articles, Meireles acts as a spokesperson for the concepts of The New School, developed by educators and thinkers, such as the American John Dewey (1859\u20131952) and established in Brazil by intellectuals, such as Fernando de Azevedo (1894\u20131974) and An\u00edsio Teixeira (1900\u20131971). The poet soon joined her countrymen and was one of the signatories of the New Education Manifesto to the Government and the People (1932). \u201cCec\u00edlia Meireles fiercely defended public, secular, progressive education\u2014all without losing her good humor and irony,\u201d says Lamego. \u201cIn the 1930s, she discussed in the newspaper the inclusion of philosophy and music classes in the curriculum and was vehemently against mandatory religious teaching in schools, established by the Catholic Church and [then-president] Get\u00falio Vargas [1882\u20131954]. Cec\u00edlia Meireles, initially a supporter of Vargas, was soon disappointed by the direction taken by his administration and even called him ‘lord dictator\u2019 in the newspaper, but she lost the argument and was removed from the newspaper.\u201d<\/p>\n S\u00e9rgio Alcides Pereira do Amaral, from the School of Language and Literature of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (FALE-UFMG), recently came across some of this material. He is currently studying the author’s work as a contributor to the Rio newspaper A Manh\u00e3 <\/em>during the dictatorship of the New State (1937\u20131945), when she also published the poetry collections Vaga M\u00fasica<\/em> (Vague Music) (1942) and Mar Absoluto e Outros Poemas<\/em> (Absolute Sea and Other Poems) (1945). The scholar states that, in addition to weekly chronicles, whose content was more literary in nature, Meireles also had a near-daily column from 1941 to 1943, called “Professors and Students.\u201d In it, she resumed her defense\u2014begun in the previous decade\u2014of a public, secular, and emancipatory education. \u201cHer tone, however, is more peaceful; she does not actively seek to clash with the regime. At the time, Cec\u00edlia Meireles also directed the magazine Travel in Brazil <\/em>[1941\u20131942], published in English and established by the Press and Propaganda Department of the Vargas administration in an effort to attract foreign tourists to Brazil. [Author] M\u00e1rio de Andrade was one of its collaborators,\u201d he states. According to Amaral’s calculations, more than 500 texts by Meireles were published in the newspaper during that period, and at least 360 of them were never published in book form, including the long series of studies Inf\u00e2ncia e Folclore<\/em> (Childhood and Folklore). \u201cThere is still much to research and uncover about Cec\u00edlia Meireles,\u201d he states.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/SITE_CeciliaMeirelles-1-800.jpg\")
Courtesy of Global Editora<\/span><\/a>Professor Jo\u00e3o Adolfo Hansen, who retired from the School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (FFLCH-USP), believes Meireles’s work is hard to pin down using a single literary formula, which may have hindered how it is perceived by academic critics. “She is recognized as an excellent modern poet with great technical mastery, but her tone is more musical, melancholy, contemplative; it does not have the most obvious modernist traits, such as deconstruction of tradition, being more similar instead to the symbolism of the late 19th <\/sup>century,\u201d according to Hansen, who authored Solombra, ou a Sombra que Cai Sobre o Eu<\/em> [Solombra, or the Shadow that Falls on the Self; Editora Hedra, 2005], an essay on Meireles\u2019s homonymous 1963 work. \u201cBeginning in the 1950s, critics\u2014at least from S\u00e3o Paulo\u2014were heavily influenced by the harshness of concretism, which did not understand the musicality of Cec\u00edlia Meireles\u2019s work. Perhaps they expected of her something she never was or even wished to be. She had her own singular voice, but ended up labeled a conservative, alienated, outdated poet.\u201d<\/p>\nCourtesy of Global Editora<\/span><\/a>Meireles, in fact, never stopped writing for the press. It is estimated that she wrote over 2,000 chronicles from 1920 to 1964\u2014the last of which was published in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo<\/em> two months before her death that same year, from cancer. \u201cIn addition to education, folklore and literature, she addressed topics including travel, animals, food, artists, and friends,\u201d shares Lamego. Much of this material remains unknown to most people, according to Oliveira. “Not just her chronicles, but, for example, the interviews she conducted as a journalist and the many letters she exchanged with individuals, such as the Portuguese writer Armando C\u00f4rtes-Rodrigues [1891\u20131971],\u201d laments the expert. \u201cMuch of Cec\u00edlia Meireles’s work has not yet been published in books due to copyright issues, as it belongs to the poet’s family.\u201d<\/p>\n