Verbal statues

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze some poems from Brazilian Parnassianism, a movement commonly massacred by literary critic as being a sort of cerebral, passionless art that didn’t do much more than emulate rules and motives from European Parnassus. The objective here is to establish links between Parnassian poems and sculpture, given that to Olavo Bilac, Raimundo Correia and Alberto Oliveira the apex of Parnassian creation would surpass verbal goldsmith with the goal of transforming the poem itself (mainly the sonnet) into an object of aesthetical contemplation. Thus, beyond the quarrel between Parnassians and Symbolists and the fact that the latter rises in Brazil as a form of answer to the first (which is nothing new, once Parnassianism itself would be given birth as an answer to late Romanticism), to notice the inflections inside Parnassianism through figures such as Francisca Júlia and Luiz Delfino becomes pivotal to throw new light on the readings performed since the start of the 20^th century about Brazilian Parnassianism.