The study of the correspondence between Haroldo de Campos, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz and Severo Sarduy opens significant perspectives for understanding the role that friendship with these writers played in Haroldo's work and trajectory. Furthermore, the letters pinpoint the necessary reflection on the place and the crucial role of literature, art and humanities in the Latin American context that produced them and in which they are inserted. In other words, the correspondence may allow us to understand what this “untimely Latin America is, an entity that sparkles, appears, disappears, according to the times”, as stated by Raúl Antelo in an interview, always in search of self-definition:

Uprooted and cosmopolitan, Hispanic-American literature is a return to and search for a tradition. In searching for it, it invents it. But invention and discovery are not the terms that suit its purest creations. A desire for incarnation, a literature of foundation [3] (Paz, Signos em Rotação 131).

Doubtless, “being Latin American”, permeated by the continent's political instabilities, are concerns of the writers in question and bring them together. Haroldo de Campos, in a text that I located in the collection (mimeo, undated), entitled Meu itinerário latino-americano, addresses the specific ties, which I highlight below. Based on the references indicated in the body of the text, it must have been produced in mid-1990. Haroldo says:

My encounter with Latin American literature, on the one hand, never went through the official channels of diplomatic culture; on the other hand, it has always responded and responds to “elective affinities”, to direct contacts, without institutional mediation, with works and authors whose characteristics corresponded to the literary project that, with my companions from the Noigandres Group, led us to think of a new poetry.

[...]

Through my travels and wanderings, I established relationships of exchange and personal friendship with several Latin American writers of my preference. Among them, I will mention the Mexican Octavio Paz and the Argentine Julio Cortázar.

[...]

Starting in February 1968, I began to correspond with the Mexican poet [Octavio Paz], at that time still his country’s ambassador to India. After that date, I met him in person several times, in Europe, the USA, and Mexico, and we strengthened our friendship.

[...]

As for the unforgettable writer and friend Julio Cortázar, I was, as far as I know, the first Brazilian to write about Rayuela (The Game of “amarelinha”). [...] After that, our personal relations became closer [4] (Campos, paper unpublished, personal archive; my translation).

Figure 1. Reference to Haroldo de Campos' visit to Paris, probably between February and March 1977, grant of material by Ivan de Campos.

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Figure 2. Letter. May, 17, 1977, Haroldo de Campos personal collection, grant of material by Ivan de Campos.

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Figure 3. Zip Sonet translation by Haroldo de Campos, sent in letter dated May 17, 1977, Haroldo de Campos collection, made available by Ivan de Campos.

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At another time, in the publication Cuadernos hispano-americanos (Number 570/ December 1997), Haroldo will again refer to friendships with Latin American writers, this time mentioning Cabrera Infante and Severo Sarduy. Haroldo writes: “I am interested, in terms of prose, by several contemporary authors, with some of them ending up in friendly relationships. I highlight, above all, the names of Julio Cortázar, Severo Sarduy and Gillermo Cabrera Infante” (Campos, “Da razão antropofágica” 10; my translation). These friendships took on different shades, depending on Haroldo's interlocutor, and many times made it possible for Haroldo’s poems to arrive in other countries, as he himself visited his friends in different parts of the world, but in this case, especially in Paris. Below is an example of correspondence; it is important to note the friendship and also the affective tone.

Figure 4.

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In the specific case of the Latin American friends considered here, there was dialogue not only between the letter writers and Haroldo de Campos, but among themselves. An example of the bond between the writers is found in the book Escrito sobre un cuerpo by Sarduy [5] which has a preface by Haroldo de Campos and in the first essay which is, among others, about Cortázar, features an epigraph by Octavio Paz.

Figure 5. Letter from Severo Sarduy, July, 10, 1979, Haroldo de Campos collection, made available by Ivan de Campos.

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Figure 6. Severo Sarduy New Year’s votes, Haroldo de Campos collection, made available by Ivan de Campos.

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All of them were connected by bonds of friendship and intellectual complicity, or, going further and in the poet's terms, “otherness is, first and foremost, a necessary exercise in self-criticism” (Campos, “Da razão antropofágica” 255; my translation). This dialogue goes beyond literary issues and reaches the debate on the political concerns that permeated the context in which the letters were written. In this sense, the poetry-politics pair, or better put, political poetry, in its engagement and the politics of poetry, in their dedication to form—which is also a political gesture, they go hand in hand.

In 1996, Revista Encuesta, Diario de Poesía (Buenos Aires, Argentina) asked the following question to a group of Latin American poets: “How would it be possible to think today about the relationship between poetry and politics?” To this question Haroldo de Campos responds: “In a general sense—of maximum generality—all poetry, as a practice of freedom, is politics” (my translation, 23)[6]. In this text, Haroldo indicates two modes of participatory poetry. The first is called poetry of agitation, “agit prop”, quite engaged, in which the referential function, that is, the pragmatic (conative-referential) function, according to the poet, has as strong a value as the poetic.

The second perspective is what he calls “poetry in a political mode”, in which valuing form as an instrument of change is fundamental but is not necessarily limited to the pragmatism of action provided for by “agit prop” (Campos, “Poesía/política, hoy” 23; my translation). An example of this is, according to the author, his poem “Servidão de Passagem”, from 1961, in which the pair pure poetry/poetry for is thematized in Hunger of form/form of hunger, as in the verses: “o azul é puro/ o azul é pus/ de barriga vazia/ […] poesia em tempo de fome/fome em tempo de poesia/no meio a fome/nomeio a fome” [the blue is pure / the blue is pus / on an empty stomach […] poetry in a time of hunger/ hunger in a time of poetry / in the midst of hunger / I name hunger] (Campos, Xadrez de estrelas 125-126; my translation).

In addition to this aspect, the study of the letters is also a reflection on the current Brazilian and Latin American context, based on the historical meanings that can be learned from the correspondence between Haroldo de Campos, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz and Severo Sarduy. Brazil went through a critical moment between 2016 and 2022; at a time when everything that seemed impossible to us to happen on a political level (with economic and social repercussions) is implemented with atrocious speed day after day, hitting science and universities hard. It's not that the ruins anticipate each other. They were already there, and we didn't see them.

The current context calls for an in-depth study of the recent history of Latin America, which, after a period of return to right-wing governments, sees, in some countries, the rise of progressive and left-wing candidates, bringing to light the continent's historical struggles, at the same time that the sought-after agendas return: reducing inequality, economic development, valuing cultural plurality and diversity.

The correspondence exchanged between letter writers began a few years before the establishment of dictatorships in their countries, at the end of the 60s, or the establishment of a government that, despite gains for the left, persecuted homosexuals and prostitutes, as is the case of Cuba, and so Sarduy leaves the country [7]. In this way, when rereading this context through the letters, it will be possible, from a synchronic reading of the past, to understand the present. In fact, among others, this is one of the primary functions of collections, preserving history, memory and founding reflections that promote change through actions. In the face of history, Haroldo de Campos is not pessimistic, although he is often merciless in his denunciation, as in this excerpt from the poem “the muse is not medusa”:

nessa

de todos nós latino-amarga américano chile na argentina no uruguai

o condor tatala enormes

asas lutulentas

(aqui também

na terra em transe do brasil) torturadores de tacão marcial e dentes-

-de sabre

deixam seu rastro:

sanguinolenta floração

de coágulos vermelhos [8] (Campos, Entremilênios 71).

in this

of all of us Latin-Bitter America Chile in Argentina in Uruguay

the condor flaps its enormous

lutant wings

(here too

in the trance-stricken land of Brazil) torturers with martial heels and saber-toothed

leave their trail:

bloody bloom

of red clots (my translation).

The dictatorial situation in Latin America, portrayed in the poem, is referred to, although not directly, in a letter from Cortázar to Haroldo dated April 27, 1975, in which the Argentine writer explains why he had to hurriedly leave Brazil, where he had come incognito, to visit his mother, as he ran the risk of political arrest if he went to Argentina. It is a very important document about their context and friendship, in addition to mentioning Cortázar's friendship with other Brazilian intellectuals, such as Leyla Perrone-Moisés, Celso Lafer and Boris Schnaiderman.

Figure 7. Letter from Julio Cortázar to Haroldo de Campos, Haroldo de Campos collection, made available by Ivan de Campos – page 1.

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Figure 8. Letter from Julio Cortázar to Haroldo de Campos, Haroldo de Campos collection, made available by Ivan de Campos – page 2. Writes Cortázar with ball point pen: “La ironía del asunto es que el artículo del diario es sumamente cordial y simpático. Pero su autor no pensó que me metía en un lío” [The irony of the matter is that the newspaper article is extremely cordial and friendly. But its author didn't think I was getting into trouble]. And by the end of the page: “Forma con que parten los cronopios” [The way the cronopios part”].

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Another poem in which Haroldo de Campos’ denunciation and indignation are striking is “The Left Angel of History”:

Os sem-terra afinal estão assentados na pleniposse da terra:

com-terra: ei-los enterrados

[...]

entranhados no lato ventre do latifúndio

[...] (Campos, Crisantempo 67)[9]

The landless are finally settled in full possession of the land:

with land: here they are buried

[...]

entrenched in the deepest depths of the latifundium

[...]

An example of the fusion of “agit prop” with the “political mode”, which becomes more frequent over the years, is “Ode explícita à poesia no dia de São Lukács”, published in A Educação dos Cinco Sentidos, 1985, from which I quote fragments:

[...]

dizem que estás à direita mas marx (le jeune)

leitor de homero dante goethe enamorado da gretchen do fausto sabia que teu lugar é à esquerda o louco lugar alienado

do coração

[...]

porque não tens mensagens o teu conteúdo

é a tua forma e porque és feita de palavras

[...] (Campos, A educação dos cinco sentidos 13).

[...]

they say you are on the right but marx (le jeune)

reader of homer dante goethe in love with gretchen from faust knew that your place is on the left the crazy alienated place

of the heart

[...]

because you have no messages your content

is your form and because you are made of words

[...]

Haroldo postulates that the “hope-principle” (Bloch) no longer fulfills its role, that it is powerless to face the failure of utopias and the necessary re-proposition of the function of art and, in a broad sense, of life open to shared peace. Thus, driven by post-utopia, when he understands that experience demands that we brush history against the grain, avoiding, as Benjamin would suggest, the repetition of catastrophes through the opening of stories, Haroldo activates the reality principle (Campos, “Da morte do verso à constelação” 269). Without shying away from denunciation, from exposing the fractures of history, it is necessary to seek the power of poetry, of language, the driving force of change and of what is alive that still pulses in tradition.

However, calling on the name of Haroldo de Campos, based on his work and correspondence, to reflect on Latin America and, mainly, on the poet's trajectory, is to open oneself to the positivity of actions, and refute a nostalgic lament. Haroldo de Campos encourages a vision formed by concrete utopia, a subject moved by a post-utopian stance; when faced with ruins, the bankruptcy of utopias and the impossibility of vanguards, he rejects both a defeatist attitude and a naively hopeful one, which would place the responsibility for all change in the future, exempting the actions of the present from the need to sift through the rubble, the obstacles to remake the thread of stories, sew together the scraps.

This outlines what Biagio D'Angelo describes as eutopia under the specter of post-utopia, a “utopia not infested by violent and bloodthirsty revolutions” (48). The author highlights the way in which Haroldo, through synchronic poetics, presents utopian reflections (assuming a strong Oswaldian influence), far from a dysphoric or even dystopian tone.

11.

da mão que pinta

da garganta que canta

- onde foram cárceres

nasça o espaço

comunal da paz compartilhada –

da arte: gesto (pintura) ou (poema) fala:

que se comparte (Campos, Entremilênios 73).

11.

from the hand that paints

from the throat that sings

- where there were prisons

may the communal space of shared peace be born -

from art: gesture (painting) or (poem) speech:

that is shared

In the last part of the poem “a musa não se medusa”, published in Intermillenniums, one can see exactly Haroldo de Campos’ eutopian proposal. This time in one of the many authorial poems in which he will address post-utopia through the proposition of action [10].

The critique of the context and the proposition of the communal space of shared peace are part of a project that considers both the political poetry of the “agit prop” and that of the political mode and that has, in the concept of post-utopia, a very complex elaboration. The acute awareness of the role of the artist's denunciation of the crumbling of left-wing and horror projects is present in all of Haroldo's work in poems and critical texts.

From the mid-1970s onwards, Haroldo de Campos began to situate the historical discourse about literature from a perspective that articulates his “aesthetic project with an ideological project” that was more evident and even more powerful than the participatory leap of concrete poetry, the leap of the jaguar, as Décio Pignatari called it, in 1962, becoming stronger in the 1990s. This articulation is also indebted to the political-social scenario experienced by Brazil and Latin America between the mid-1960s and the end of the 1980s.

The historical context was fundamental to Harold's elaborations regarding post-utopia. In 1979, faced with the exhaustion of the military regime, strikes led by Lula broke out, and he emerged as a prominent political figure from that time to the present day. Haroldo was not insensitive to the meaning of his emergence. Haroldo de Campos' commitment is clear and can be attested, among others, by two poems written for Lula. The first, published in Folha de São Paulo on September 3, 1994, was written at the request of Sérgio Mamberti, at the time involved in Lula's campaign for the Presidency; it is called “For a citizen Brazil”[11]. The second is from January 2003, called “Inauguration” and concerns Lula’s inauguration as president of the republic.

His leftist stance culminates in the last verses of the poem “Posse”[12]: Minimizing such a stance, which can actually be proven in several poems published throughout what Haroldo himself called, in Workshop Testimonials, his 50 years of poetic activity, is to lose sight of the social and political scope of the post-utopian proposal which began to be built in 1979.

An interesting point to consider is that Haroldo de Campos chooses to speak from the position of a Brazilian and Latin American writer, and this ends up defining his speech, his work, his cosmopolitanism. The same happens with the writers with whom he corresponds:

Therefore, in what I want to tell you today, my vision of the Latin American literature of our days will be that of someone for whom a book is only one of the multiple modalities that our peoples assume to express themselves, to question themselves, to search for themselves in the whirlwind of a merciless history, of a drama in which underdevelopment, dependency and oppression come together to silence the voices that are born here and there in the form of poems, songs, theater, cinema, paintings, novels and stories (Cortázar, “La literatura latinoamericana de nuestro tiempo” 281; my translation).

Haroldo, Cortázar, Paz and Sarduy, each in their own way, believe that there is a change within the reach of the literary and poetic word and face the necessary separation of the notion of economic and social underdevelopment from the role and importance of art. To our dismay as a continent, if the economic backwardness and profound social ills that, unfortunately, have also plagued us throughout history were not enough, we would also, according to some, be condemned to assuming an underdeveloped position in the arts. To this Eurocentric vision, the authors return their sharp criticism:

The notion of underdevelopment is an outgrowth of the idea of economic and social progress. Apart from the fact that it is repugnant to reduce the plurality of civilizations and the very destiny of man to a single model, industrial society, I doubt that the relationship between economic prosperity and artistic excellence is one of cause and effect. We cannot call Kavafis, Borges, Unamuno, Reyes underdeveloped, despite the marginal situation of Greece, Spain and Latin America (Paz, “Invenção, Desenvolvimento, Modernidade” 135; my translation).

“[...] This explains why it can happen that economically backward countries can nevertheless play the first violin in philosophy” (Engels in a letter to Conrad Schmidt in a quote from HC) [...] It has always seemed to me that, in terms of literary work, this complexifying law of the transmission of the cultural legacy also occurred, from which poetic production could not escape and which allows us to identify the emergence of the new even in the conditions of an underdeveloped economy (Campos, “Da razão antropofágica” 232; my translation).

Based on these considerations, it is noted that the correspondence maintained with Latin American writers, especially since the last years of the 1960s, becoming more intense in the 1970s and 1980s, begins to matter as a component of current thinking. To the debate presented, it is necessary to add one more point of investigation.

The research carried out so far points to the unquestionable importance of the neo-baroque in the articulation of dialogues between Campos and Latin American writers. It also strengthens the hypothesis that it is possible, from a critical perspective, to articulate neo-baroque with the post-utopian question insofar as this brings together, in terms of formal resolutions, a critical stance in relation to utopias, history, language, to think about the present–or better, the now. Irlemar Chiampi, right at the opening of her Barroco e modernidade, indicates this characteristic:

The reappropriation of the baroque in the last 20 years of this century [referring to the 20th century], by a significant sector of Latin American literature, has the value of a poetic experience that inscribes the past in the dynamics of the present so that a culture can evaluate its own contradictions in the production of modernity [...] This most recent reappropriation to which we refer is that expressed in the works of novelists, poets and essayists such as Severo Sarduy, Augusto Roa Bastos, Haroldo de Campos, [...] Octavio Paz, among others (Chiampi 3).

To reiterate: the hypothesis is raised here that given that post-utopia is, conceptually, the way in which poetry appears from the mid-1970s onwards for Haroldo de Campos and that it is, as I said above, at the same time, a device for critically reading the present, in literature, in society, neo-baroque is the language of post-utopia. It is the form par excellence through which post-utopia can manifest itself, present itself in poetry and prose, although there may be post-utopian poems and narratives in thematic terms that do not fit into a neo-baroque aesthetic [13].

The reflection on the persistence of the Baroque in Latin America began to gain expression between the end of 1940 and 1960, by Lezama Lima, in some essays, but which, according to Chiampi, were still confined to little circulation. It gains more strength with Alejo Carpentier in the 1960s, reaching the highest point of formalization with Severo Sarduy, in 1972, when he established the “neo-baroque” (Sarduy, “O barroco e o neobarroco”) and also two years later, when Octavio Paz published Los hijos del limo.

Figure 8. Letter from Octavio Paz to Haroldo de Campos, July, 10, 1979, Haroldo de Campos collection, made available by Ivan de Campos.

[Due to format incompatibility, see the PDF version for the image]

Evidently, the reflection on the permanence of the baroque in Latin American poetry and arts predates the formulation of post-utopia by Haroldo de Campos, but the formulation of the concept of “neobaroque” by Sarduy occurs in 1972, based on a history of reflections on art in Latin America that began in the late 1950s (Hidalgo Nácher, 142). It is almost contemporary with Haroldo's formulation of post-utopia, which began to be outlined in 1979.

In “Barroco, neobarroco, transbarroco”, a text from 2004, Haroldo recalls that in his essay “The Work of Open Art,” from 1955 (Campos et al., Teoria da poesia concreta 53), he refers to the term “neobaroque”; anticipating the placement of Sarduy, says Haroldo: “before, therefore, Severo Sarduy, a dear and admired friend […] who introduced the concept in the Spanish-American field in 1972” (Campos, Brasil transamericano 15). In any case, it is with Severo Sarduy that the concept, systematization and reflection are effectively established. The term post-utopia appears in Harold's work for the first time in 1979, in dialogue with the idea of post-avant-garde, enunciated by Paz, in Los hijos del limo.

In O sequestro do barroco na literature brasileira he addresses the issue of the baroque in an intriguing way, showing that ignoring the baroque in our literature is forcing us to an origin. According to the poet, we are born baroque, empty of origin and past, formed, bloodily, by diverse cultural experiences, so that, for Haroldo, and for other writers, the baroque origin is fundamental in the construction of a thought about literary historiography and history in general. Haroldo says:

Our literature, articulated with the Baroque, had no childhood (in-fans, what does not speak). It did not have a “simple” origin. It was never in-forme. It is born as an adult, “formed”, in the plane of aesthetic values, speaking the most elaborate code of the time. In it, in the movement of its “signs in rotation”, it inscribed itself from the beginning, singularizing itself as difference. The “movement of difference” (Derrida) has always been produced: it has always been produced: it does not depend on the “dated incarnation of an auroral LOGOS, which decides the question of origin like a sun in a heliocentric system [...] Our literary “origin”, therefore, was not punctual, nor “simple” (in an organicist, genetic-embryonic sense). It was “vertiginous” [...] (Campos, “Da razão antropofágica” 239; my translation).

This vision of the baroque, however, is much closer to Sarduy's neobaroque, as resistance, “arte del destroniamento y la discusión” [art of dethronement and discussion] (Sarduy, O barroco e o neobarroco 183), acting as aesthetics and criticism, as a helix of the inheritance. It can be assumed that the Haroldian post-utopia and the neo-baroque will be articulated based on developments in the avant-garde, such as aesthetic attitudes and criticism of the context, the crumbling of utopias [14].

However, for the relationships between the two to be sufficiently proven, from a perspective of dialogue and from a perspective of the history of Latin American thought, constructed by writers who are very representative of their national literature in the period referred to, it is necessary to go beyond the analysis of their respective works and essays, as these offer some resistance to the advancement of research, as they would always come up against the unavoidable inference.

In this way, the study of the correspondence that Haroldo de Campos maintained with Octavio Paz, Severo Sarduy and Julio Cortázar is strongly justified and becomes crucial as it significantly contributes to the establishment of the construction of a thought about history (of Latin American literature) by these writers –a thought conveyed in their critical studies, their poetry and/or prose, translations, lectures and classes. However, it has never been approached from the perspective proposed here, as an epistolary dialogue, with intertwining between post-utopia, neo-baroque and politics, and strong bonds of friendship, so that the originality of the approach also strongly justifies the project.

Central corpus, orbital corpus

After a period of evaluation, survey and first systematization of the collection (2019-2022) and verification of the scope and quantity of material, I understand that it is important to establish a division in the corpus. The central corpus is composed of letters written by letter writers Haroldo de Campos, Julio Cortázar, Octavio Paz and Severo Sarduy. I call it an orbital corpus, drawing on Haroldo's foray into the universe of physics in A Máquina do Mundo Repensada, the subject of my thesis. Orbitals are regions in the electrosphere of atoms where the probability of finding an electron is highest. Similarly, the orbital corpus of this research is one that configures a region, a space, in which the probability of finding information, data and revelations is maximum and has a positive impact on the understanding and analysis of the central corpus.

In this way, the orbital corpus is composed of the investigation of reading reflections and records of articles written by the writers, made by Haroldo or related to themes of common interest, organized in reading binders and class notes, as well as the examination of the marginalia in the writers' books with notes by Haroldo, available in the Casa das Rosas collection. Poetry magazines, mentioned in the letters and available in Haroldo de Campos's collection are also evaluated, such as Vuelta, for example, and letters with other letter writers, whose role in the dialogue about Latin America for Haroldo is fundamental.

Still regarding correspondence and its history, in the orbital corpus, at least two names are relevant and are responsible for Haroldo's approach to the writers considered: Jorge Schwartz and Celso Lafer. Haroldo's friendship and dialogue with both are fundamental to the dynamics of Harold's correspondence with Latin Americans, at least as a starting point for friendships that were consolidated over time.

The study of the epistolary group therefore means following the synchronic spiral of these thoughts, or even the monad of interlocution and friendship between the group. There are several documents in the central corpus that show that the political dimension and the amalgam between ethics and aesthetics impose themselves as a necessary path of approach for this correspondence, which therefore has literary, historical and heritage value to be preserved and disseminated. Therefore, it is also worth highlighting the importance of archival and heritage studies for the preservation of history, memory and culture, both from a poetic point of view and from what, from the poetic and poiésis, overflows into the political, social and history. Importantly, at the same time, these instances inevitably enter the creation of the authors in question.

Silviano Santiago (9-10), in the preface to the volume he organized with the letters of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Mario de Andrade, states that “by invading the intimacy of the epistolary letter, we are, rather of all things, transgressors [for] correspondence are inviolable”. Later, however, he clarifies that, in the case of the correspondence between Carlos and Mario, there are four strong reasons for the “invasion of correspondence” or for overstepping the issue and I use them to justify the “transgression” that this research proposes.

Firstly, there is the eminence of the writers' work; secondly, its social and political importance; thirdly, the intellectual curiosity of the new generations about these works and reflections; fourthly, and in which lies the strongest reason for the opening of the letters, is the fact that they allow us to propose new readings for the works. It seems to me that this is a strong argument for reading the letters mentioned here, perhaps even deconstructing established views on the work of Haroldo de Campos, in particular.

In Haroldo's case, it seems to me that it is also about, and beyond subjectivity itself, the maintenance of a collective idea of art, the construction of a thought about history through dialogue; it is not collective in the avant-garde sense, but it is a movement in that it displaces visions, de-babelizes cultural differences, unifies a project that is strongly imbued with a reflection on Latin America, on the economic crisis of countries under military dictatorships, on the function of poetry and the role of the poet/critic/translator in authoritarian contexts in which it is/was necessary to become transhuman.

Works Cited

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Bloch, Ernest. O princípio esperança. Translated by Nélio Schneider. Rio de Janeiro, Eduerj, 2005.

Campos, Haroldo de. A Educação dos Cinco Sentidos. São Paulo, Editora Brasiliense, 1985.

____. O sequestro do barroco na literatura brasileira: o caso Gregório de Matos. Salvador, Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado, 1989.

____. “Da razão antropofágica: Diálogo e diferença na literatura brasileira”. Metalinguagem e outras metas. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1992, pp. 231-257.

____. Meu itinerario latinoamericano. São Paulo, ca. 1995. Personal Archive.

____. “Poesía/política, hoy”. Encuesta. Diario de Poesía no. 23, 1996. https://ahira.com.ar/ejemplares/diario-de-poesia-n-37/ 4 May 2025.

____. “Da morte do verso à constelação. Poesia e modernidade. O poema pós-utópico”. O Arco Íris Branco. São Paulo, Imago, 1997, pp. 243-270.

____. Crisantempo. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1998.

____. Entremilênios. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2012.

____. Xadrez de Estrelas. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 2013.

____ et al. Teoria da poesia concreta: textos críticos e manifestos 1950-1960. São Paulo, Ateliê Editorial, 2006.

Chiampi, Irlemar. Barroco e modernidade. São Paulo, Perspectiva, 1998.

Cortázar, Julio. Cuentos Completos, vol. I, II. Buenos Aires, Alfaguara, 2010.

____. “La literatura latinoamericana de nuestro tiempo”. Clases de Literatura, Buenos Aires, Alfaguara, 2013, pp. 279-293.

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[1] This article is a result of a long-term research developed with CNPq-Research Scholarship [2017-2025]. It would be not possible without the unrestricted support and encouragement from Ivan de Campos, son of Haroldo de Campos, who made the collection available for my consultation, as well as the dissemination of this material. All images of letters in this article were authorized for reproduction by Ivan de Campos, through authorization letters, granted on July 25, 2019 and April 21, 2022. These authorizations are included in the following Research Productivity Grant projects, submitted to the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development - CNPq, in 2019 (312256/2019-1 - Here blossom friendship: Haroldo de Campos' correspondence with Latin American writers) and, as a continuation, in 2022 (305461/2022-2 - Literature, politics and invention in letters between Haroldo de Campos, Cortázar, Paz and Sarduy), which can be consulted with this funding agency, on the Carlos Chagas Platform. These are public processes for granting research funding. The requests for the letters were made in writing, the records of which I also have. In both processes cited, the authorizations granted by Ivan de Campos are reproduced, and I also have a physical document of the same.

[2] “Here shines friendship” (my translation). Verse of Haroldo de Campos’ poem “friendship conjoins loneliness: carlos bracher painting”, dedicated to Carlos Bracher, published in Jornal da Tarde, 6/7/1989, “Arte em Jornal”. Republished in the ut pictura section in Crisantempo (131).

[3] I quote here the Brazilian translation of this text by Haroldo de Campos, published with other essays, gathered and organized by Haroldo de Campos. It was the first time that Paz essays were translated to Portuguese. The English translation presented here is mine.

[4] “[…] desembarcó procedente de São Paulo su amigo el poeta Haroldo de Campos, a quien toda combinatoria semántica exalta a niveles tumultuosos, razón por la cual días después Lucas vio con maravillada estupefacción su soneto vertido al portugués y considerablemente mejorado” [His friend, the poet Haroldo de Campos, disembarked from São Paulo, whom every semantic combination exalts to tumultuous levels, which is why days later Lucas saw with astonishment his sonnet translated into Portuguese and considerably improved] (Cortázar, Cuentos Completos 335; my translation).

[5] I refer here to the translation of this book by Haroldo de Campos, published in Brazil in 1979.

[7] “The persecution of homosexuals in Cuba preceded the closure of Lunes. On October 11, 1961, when the police arrested prostitutes and likely homosexuals who were in Old Havana, in the Colón neighborhood, on a night that became known as ‘la noche de las tres P’ (pederasts, prostitutes and pimps), it marked the beginning of repression [...] A few years later, the policy of repression against homosexuals and all those who had ‘inappropriate conduct’ was implemented with the emergence of forced labor camps, the Umaps [... ]” (Miskulin 7).

[8] For an in-depth analysis of the poem see Martha, “The Muse Is Not Afraid”.

[9] The text is a tribute to the 19 Landless People murdered on April 17, 1996, in Eldorado dos Carajás (PA). The date is considered the World Day of Peasant Struggle and National Day of Struggle for Agrarian Reform. It was published in Folha de São Paulo and later in Crisantempo (Perspectiva, 1998). It was set to music by Gilberto Mendes, and can be enjoyed conducted by Naomi Munakata, leading the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra (OSESP), who passed away in April/2020 due to COVID-19 infection (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1RZKVwzWQE). About this poem, I wrote an article to be published in Signótica magazine, entitled “For a Post-Utopian Ethics: Notes on Politics and Human Rights in the Work of Haroldo de Campos”.

[10] The idea of action in Harold's post-utopian poetics comes from Walter Benjamin, for whom action serves, among other aspects, as Löwy points out, the “interest in safeguarding subversive and anti-bourgeois forms of culture, seeking to prevent be embalmed, crystallized” (80). It is worth insisting here that post-utopia is not dystopian. For details on the discussion of the concept and the assertiveness it maintains in relation to utopia, see Martha, “Post-Utopian Constellation”.

[11] See the article “PT and Poetry: Citizenship with a Broken Foot” by Iumna Simon.

[12] I quote Haroldo from the comment by Manoel da Costa Pinto, in Folha de São Paulo, on 3/7/1994. It is worth noting here that this independent, but engaged attitude, is in line with what Benjamin says regarding the need for the artist not to become too amalgamated with the ideas he defends and the struggle of the proletariat, so as not to lose his independence or his stance criticism (247). Haroldo seems to me to be extremely linked to this proposal. He never shied away from his position; at the same time, he never engaged in partisan disputes.

[13] Haroldo remarks in an interview with Rodolfo Mata: “There was a moment, then, when I realized —it was in the 70s— that worldwide and in Brazil there was a crisis of ideological certainties. Octavio Paz would also note this. Paz would criticize the future, stating that, in the name of an idealized future, the needs of the present ended up being forgotten, and, in the name of totalitarian ‘paradise’, attempts to achieve the ‘here and now’ ended up being denied. [...] Utopia loses some of this visionary idea of projecting into the future what it cannot achieve in the present, but it maintains its critical dimension and, through this critical dimension, can recover certain traditions of the past, which they had not been able to prosper, and offer incentives for the present”. Note how the idea of “safeguarding the forms”, looking at the past, has a Benjaminian mark. In fact, this fact is not a critical discovery; Haroldo in the essay on post-utopia refers to the importance of Benjamin for his reflection explicitly (Poesia e modernidade: da morte do verso, 267)

[14] Haroldo de Campos' correspondence with Severo Sarduy begins in 1970 and his analysis will certainly bring consistency to the articulations raised here. It cannot be forgotten here that Galáxias was completed in 1976 and published in 1984 and that it is a neo-baroque profusion. Sarduy, among others, highlights Haroldo's (neo)baroquism. In a 1978 article, about Haroldo de Campos (and Galáxias), the poet Severo Sarduy analyzes Haroldo's writing, highlighting the recurrence of the trinomial metaphors/mobility/parables, contrasting the poet with the Cuban Lezama Lima, who privileges, in his text, image/fixity/hyperboles. With regard to images and metaphors, the distinction seems clear: images are still fixed, they impose themselves as hyperboles, or rather, hyperbolic fixation of the real, a supra-reality, “realm par excellence of the possible of man, it grants one of those substitutes through which the poet can ‘represent’ what reality throws at him as a mysterious challenge” (Sarduy, Rumo à concretude 120).