As representações do sagrado em Tempo e eternidade, de Murilo Mendes

Abstract

This work proposes a reading exercise about Tempo e eternidade, published on 1935 by Murilo Mendes, considering the notions of the sacred that arise in the poems. Based on Mircea Eliade’s insights concerning to myth and sacred, an articulation with the critical fortune of José Guilherme Merquior, Murilo Marcondes de Moura, Laís Corrêa de Araújo, Júlio Castañon Guimarães, Martin Heidegger, Octavio Paz and others is made, aiming to read Murilo Mendes’ poetic as a dialogical game between Modernism and Christian tradition. One year after publishing the book, the poet converts himself to Christian faith. Together with Jorge de Lima, a poetry book project is launched under the couplet “lets restore Poetry in Christ”, as the first edition revealed. Tempo e eternidade also represents efforts of the Brazilian Catholic intelligentsia in order to rebuild the place of experience with the divine inside an intense industrialization and urbanization context in Brazil. However, as a poetic expression that is, the literary work arises questions which indicate the condition of being in the world and it is precisely this existential aspect that this dissertation wants to investigate. Therefore, the reading of the restoration course of poetry in the modern world in three movements is proposed: the fallen world, the world in Christ and, finally, the world to come.