Fragmentos de um diário : a correspondência pessoal de Helder Pessoa Camara (1944-1952)

Abstract

Starting with a set of personal letters written daily by the priest, born in Ceará, Helder Pessoa Camara which were sent to the female writer Virgínia Côrtes de Lacerda, from Minas Gerais, between the years 1944 to 1952 and under the perspective of the self writing – one of the many possibilities of Cultural History – we elaborate this paperwork. It´s focus consists to think how Helder Camara – a historical subject in terms of religious and political influence since the 1930s – uses the letters as a space of his production about himself and about others, as a place of subject production. Therefore, we will work with personal correspondences – reasoned from the text, from the material support and from the annexes like the Meditations of priest José, the photos and the maps; notes from the margins of the books; personal manuscripts and a series of interviews, made with friends and colleagues of the priest Helder Camara in the 1940s and 1950s. Thus becomes possible to think how the epistles, written in series, enable us to view the construction of his personal relations and the course whereby his ideas ripen and open new paths of reflection, a period in which the facets of personality that would be known Helder were being properly polished and mature.