Lima, Jorge de

Born Apr. 23, 1895, in União, Alagôas; died 1953 in Rio de Janeiro. Brazilian poet.

Lima studied medicine at the University of Bahia from 1910 to 1912 and became a doctor of medicine in 1916. He practiced medicine in the provinces until 1930. His first collection of verses, Alexandrines, was published in 1914. In his best collections, such as The Negress Fulô (1928) and New Poems (1929), Lima used the folklore of the northeastern regions of Brazil to re-create the unique features of the national character.

In the 1930’s, Lima experienced repulsion for bourgeois civilization and turned to religion, as seen in the collection Time and Eternity (1935; with M. Mendes). The mystical visions of the narrative poem The Proclamation and Meeting of Miracelli (published in 1950) evince the poet’s fear of the terrible course of history. The people’s way of life and faith provided the basis for his novels The Angel (1934), influenced by surrealism, and Calunga (1935), in which a realistic narrative style predominates. In both works, Lima depicted the difficult life of peasants. In The Discovery of Orpheus (part 1, 1952), Lima attempted a mystical approach to folkloric characters.