Letters as testimonies of the reception of Motivos de Proteo: José Enrique Rodó and his creative process in dialogue

Abstract

This text analyzes the correspondence of the Uruguayan writer José Enrique Rodó (1871-1917), preserved in the Arquivo Rodó (Rodó Archive), at the Biblioteca Nacional del Uruguay (BNU). Concentrating the analysis on the passive correspondence that revolved around the work Motivos de Proteo (1909). The format of the book was conceived by the author as open, procedural and inconclusive. In order that, in his initial conception, the correspondence sent and received by him served as writing workshops, as they were indispensable to sediment the dialogic and continuous form. The text was disseminated through letters exchanged with different authors located in many parts of the world, mainly in the Latin American continent. Our proposal was to find, in those passive correspondence, the initial impacts highlighted by the readers, and how the criticisms and observations made can be taken as fundamental for the critical fortune of the book. We concluded that the wide path on which the work has gone, much is due to the artisanal effort of its author in disseminating it and maintaining the epistolographic dialogue as fundamental in his creative process, moreover, the possibility of the letters being read as an extension or diversification of the literary criticism stands out.