Abstract
Benjamin Péret, a French surrealist poet who lived in Brazil between 1929 and 1931, observed in this period Afro-Brazilian rituals and wrote a series of articles (“Candomblé and macumba”) that were published in a São Paulo newspaper. This text presents an analysis of this set of articles by using other references by and about Peret. It approaches two sets of questions. First, how the French poet’s observations dialogued with contemporary ethnographies of Afro-Brazilian groups. Second, the dialogues established between Péret’s perspective and the concerns of a parcel of Brazilian modernism. The transformations which Afro-Brazilian religions undergo may be seen as processes that raise issues similar to the modernist project of “discovery of Brazil”. The report of Peret with his surrealist traces is both a testimony and a product of this search.
Keywords
Afro-Brazilian religions; spiritualism; surrealism; Brazilian modernism