Hallucinated City

Mário de Andrade (trans. Jack E. Tomlins)

Often hailed as the “Bible” of Brazilian modernism, Mário de Andrade’s Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) weaves together threads from French symbolist poetry, German expressionist painting, and musicology into a whirring tapestry of his beloved city of São Paulo, and answer and affront to the strains of Futurism so omnipresent at the time. It is reprinted here in the seminal translation of the late scholar Jack E. Tomlins.

Mário de Andrade (Oct. 9, 1893–Feb. 25, 1945) was a poet, novelist, critic, musician, photographer, etc., and arguably the most important figure in Brazilian modernism. He lived almost his entire life in São Paulo, where he played a central role in shaping the avant-garde sensibilities of nearly every field of Brazilian art.