AUTA DE SOUZA

UMA VOZ QUE ECOA PARA ALÉM DO HORTO

Abstract

Auta de Souza, the best-known poetess from Rio Grande do Norte, according to literary critics of her time, is surprisingly unknown to a large part of today's reading public. However, even more surprising is the fact that, having written a single book during her lifetime, her post-mortem production, prolific and active, defies understanding and invites us to (re)visit it. In this article, we discuss her life and her literary legacy that she extrapolates to other places. To carry out this bibliographic study – a basic research, with a qualitative approach and an exploratory objective –, we are based on fundamental scholars such as Cascudo (1944), Duarte and Macêdo (2013), Farias (2013a ; 2013b), Gomes (2000), and Muzart (1991), among others. It is concluded that studying Auta de Souza, with her ethereal voice that echoes beyond Horto, is increasingly necessary these days – mainly because it rescues the best that our essence holds from the ineffable and indelible memories of childhood and youth, folding itself with resilience in the face of obstacles and transcending them, just as this immortal nineteenth-century Brazilian Northeastern female belletrist did in life and does in the afterlife, whom the Brazilian Literary Canon has never managed to muzzle.