Figurações da intelectualidade no Brasil: a crônica de Lima Barreto

Abstract

Lima Barreto addresses the intellectual of his time from its social ideal of art, and art within this ideal of the intellectual is one who maintains liaison with knowledge, and makes it a benefit to the community (OAKLEY, 2011). Therefore, this paper addresses the figurations of the intelligentsia in Brazil, using Lima Barreto´s idealization of art and intellectual in our analysis of the figure of the intellectual. Inevitably, when addressing the issues relating to the intellectual, we could not fail to address the very figure of Lima Barreto as an intellectual in his time. Therefore, we seek to understand how Lima Barreto as an intellectual was underestimated by his contemporaries and did not engage himself in social class struggles, this way standing apart of Gramsci´s definition of organic intellectual. We argue that Lima Barreto was not part of the intellectual elite of the Belle Époque, nor was spokesman of Rio de Janeiro´s suburb. He was a writer and intellectual activist supporting only one cause: art as a tool for a brotherhood of men. We chose the genre crônica because it is a daily writing gender and, as a social observer, Lima Barreto explored with irony and sarcasm topics related to the intellectual (SA, 2005). Therefore, the chronicles of Lima Barreto can offer us a better representation of these figurations of the intellectual in politics, media or literature. Lima Barreto built his ideal of art and intellectual in the so called Belle Époque, when a work of literature was considered way more important for its language than content and political modernization of the country was a clear imitation of European manners and customs. Unlike this, Lima Barreto argued that what is important for the intellectual is dealing with the content, being contemporary, having a true relationship with his own intellect and directing his writing to serve the common good. Obvously, literature was idealized by Lima Barreto, a militant utopian, and that is why he, Lima Barreto, was an engaged intellectual