A morte de um liberal: uma louvação tardia

Abstract

This is the biography of the writer, journalist, folklorist and historian Mario Neme. Bom in the city of Piracicaba in the State of São Paulo on May 2nd 1912, he died in the city of São Paulo on March 14th, 1973. He began his career as a journalist. His rich and diversified work as a writer is marked by two distinct phases, the literary one  and the historical. As a fictionist, he wrote two books of short stories which gave rise to literary polemics at the time, due to the originality of his style and themes, renewing the genus. Among the epochs of historical events, he chose to focus Colonial Brazil, with emphasis on the history of the State of São Paulo, producing, to begin with, small essays and regional studies. As director of the Museu Paulista from 1961 to 1973, he showed a dynamic conception of museology, furnishing the institution with an auditorium for courses and conferences, as well as laboratories of restauration and cine-photo-sonography. He stimulated research in the sectore of archeology, 
ethnology and history, also reactivating the publication of the Anais do Museu Paulista, which had been paralised for ten years. The transfer of the Museu Paulista to the University of São Paulo was his work. His whole life was dedicated to research. As a literary man, he always tried to write in consonance with life, searching for the proper language and participating as a personage in his dramas and comedies; as a folklorist and historian he also left the mark of his research in his published works. Donana sofredora and Mulher que sabe latim are his best works as a fictionist; as a journalist, Plataforma da nova geração; as a historian, Fórmulas 'políticas do Brasil holandês (1971) and O Brasil no tempo de Nassau (ms.)