From scraps and networks one makes a romance: Creation in Lima Barreto

Abstract

The notebooks of Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881-1922), which he called Retalhos (Scrapbook), are made up of newspaper clippings pasted together without chronological sequence, quotations and sketches of works, handwritten notes. A place of storage and experimentation, the Retalhos suggest traces of the novelist's insertion in the literary life and how the complexity of the context also comes to integrate the work of writing. Destined for the trash, the notebooks unravel the networks that can illuminate the creative process of the Rio writer. In this work, we intend to approach the notebooks from a specific perspective: the production of the novel Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma (Sad Ending of Policarpo Quaresma), considering the research, collection and storage of newspaper clippings about the cultural context that the work deals with; language exercises that suggest names of characters, scenes and plot themes; the long process of creation that contradicts biographers and critics who consider the production of the novel as a quick action, carried out in between the hustle and bustle of cafes and bars.