PAPILAS MODERNISTAS:

ALTERIDADE E IDENTIDADE NACIONAL NO DIÁRIO DE VIAGEM O TURISTA APRENDIZ, DE MÁRIO DE ANDRADE

Resumen

Travel writings are privileged texts both for the study of perceptions of alterity and, based on them, the expression of travel writer’s identity. We aim to identify the establishment of such relations in O Turista Aprendiz, Mário de Andrade’s diary during his travel through the Amazon River in 1927. In the work, Andrade’s comments about the Self and the Otherness wittily aim to problematize eurocentrism. Andrade’s writings are also linked to his concern about Brazilian national identity and national culture’s issues. Such interest drives the poet’s observation towards Amazonian material culture, music, linguistic variants and food. We sustain that the diary’s writings show the importance of Andrade’s travel to Amazon in his work, especially regarding his conception of Brazilianness as a syncretic and pluralistic cultural phenomenon, which is related to popular everyday life. Thus, we believe that it is not appropriate to consider O Turista Aprendiz’s points of view as a simple result of Mário de Andrade’s Modernist literature. Instead, this would also have been shaped by what Andrade saw, listened to, tasted, talked and thought in Amazon.