Jorge de Lima e os nativos da Ilha: podeis frechar-nos índios atuais

Abstract

This essay goes through the relationship of the poet, essayist and novelist Jorge de Lima (1893-1953) with the indigenous issue (the tragedy, the genocide). My text starts from Invenção de Orfeu (1952), but returns to the origins of the problematic relationship through lesser-known works of the author, as Rassenbildung und rassenpolitik in Bresilien (1934), Salomão e as mulheres (1927), “Todos cantam sua terra...” (1929) and Anchieta (1934), composing this way a panel of controversial ideologies and contra-ideological fecundities. The semiophagy of the great poem, this epic-national experiment, can only be understood from the unfolding of two gestures: to cannibalize itself; and to rape his ascendancy