A Grain of Salt: Authenticity, Happiness and Friendship in Mário de Andrade’s Correspondence with Carlos Drummond

Abstract

The present paper examines the way Mario de Andrade fashions his subjectivity in his correspondence with Carlos Drummond de Andrade. The central argument is that Mario de Andrade’s passionate, strong and authentic personality is not unfamiliar with moments of insecurity, dejection and even disillusionment. Paradoxically, those moments can only be overcame by experiences of physical and spiritual pain, to which he subjects himself in his own friendship relations - for instance, through criticisms addressed to him by his friends. Thus, far from seeking happiness in a utopic ground, in the future or in the after-life, the author risks openly confronting misfortune, in the assurance that the challenges and the otherness built into this gesture will be in conditions to generate an energy capable of improving his intense, fertile and almost excessive personality.