Vilém Flusser’s connections with Brazilian poetry and literature are many and varied. His extensive knowledge of João Guimarães Rosa’s work – evidenced by his memoirs – was impressive, and it inspired numerous essays on Guimarães Rosa’s literary style, as well as a chapter in Flusser’s autobiography Bodenlos (1992) that is devoted to Guimarães Rosa. Flusser’s contact with members of the Brazilian concrete poetry movement and his many essays about it reveal Flusser’s lively critical engagement with questions relating to poetry raised by the experimental movement Noigandres. With Noigandres Flusser shared an admiration for the philosophy and work of Oswald de Andrade. For a time he was closely acquainted with Haroldo de Campos, one of the most important exponents of Brazilian concrete poetry, to which Flusser attributed an international pioneering role in realizing the radical program of “poetry as a game,” as suggested by Oswald de Andrade. In this way de Andrade had provoked “a revolutionary breach with the historical linearity of dogmatic language” (“Brasilianische Philosophie,” in: Fouquet and Lanz, Staden-Jahrbuch, 1970, p. 134; translated from the German).

Flusser also corresponded with many young poets who sent him their poems. He always responded with generosity – however, he would quite often criticize their works in a straightforward, “mature” way. His close contact with the poet Dora Ferreira da Silva from São Paulo also connected him to many other wordsmiths with whom he maintained personal dialogues or correspondence. Flusser regularly published articles and essays in Cavalo Azul [Blue Horse], the artistic-philosophical journal edited by Dora Ferreira da Silva, which became an important forum for a new generation of poets and artists.

Original article by Norval Baitello, Jr. in Flusseriana