Historical letter from Monteiro Lobato (1941)

On his birthday, the patriotic writer Monteiro Lobato recounts his daily life in jail, provoking his accusers.

Historical letter from Monteiro Lobato to Leonor de Aguiar. In Portuguese. One page. In Portuguese. 21.4 cm x 28.5 cm. São Paulo, April 18, 1941. Low-quality paper (obtained from prison by Lobato), restored in São Paulo by Manuel Ley Rodriguez, a Pinacoteca specialist. Single piece.

Jail, 4/18/941

Leonor,

The carnations came to celebrate our table in this mine
day of years spent in prison - in the delicious prison that
hard conquered at the expense of truths in the back of the scumbags
dances. I complete one month today, and I'm still in prison because despite
of acquitted there was an appeal and I have to wait for a new trial.
I moved my office here - but I have too many visitors
and the work does not pay off. When they give me time off, I translate KIM,
by Kipling, and body and soul diving in India. I don't give to
I generally like to feel trapped. In the company of the old lama
and Kim, marching along the Great Trunk Road to India, towards
to Benares, I rejoice. I even got myself a chela (disciple) in
person of Eloy - a goat from Alagoas of in-
broken. It stopped at ten years - Kim's age. Today at 5 am,
it was still dark, my chela already came to congratulate me and bring me a bu-
little bit of flowers. He has a huge admiration for me, and not
let go of me - as good Indian chelas do not let go of Masters.
« When you leave here, everything goes dark ; when you enter, everything
lights up. » Promoted me to champion...

Today is cleaning day in our free room. took out to the garden
the six beds and everything else but the table I write on and I'm tapping
it is. They wash the room around me, and I like the island feel.
All news in jail. How stupid is the general! wanted to harm me and
it only managed to provide me with a very interesting experience.
When you go to UJB, ask Geraldo for a letter to Goes - read it and
congratulate me on the topknot.

Farewell, dear friend of carnations. rejoice
with what happens to the friend.

Lobato

On May 24, 1940, the writer Monteiro Lobato, in the midst of the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, wrote a letter to President Getúlio Vargas, soon followed by another to the Chief of Staff of the Army, decrying “Mr. President of the Republic, in view of the oil issue in Brazil, allowing the National Petroleum Council to delay the creation of the large oil industry in our country, to serve, solely and exclusively, the interests of the Standard-Royal Dutch trust”.

Deemed offensive to public authorities and agents operating in the oil sector, Lobato was accused of a crime against National Security. On March 18, 1941, he was preventively arrested for having tried to flee the country. Released on June 20, 1941, after an intense and media-intensive defense by his lawyers, Lobato was imprisoned for three months in the same prison as Luís Carlos Prestes and Dilma Rousseff.

The value of a card depends on many factors, this one accumulates several elements in its favor. Written by one of the best-known Brazilian writers in Brazil and abroad to this day, on his birthday, during the historic episode of his arm-wrestling with the military dictatorship, this letter brings together everything that made him famous. Lobato : a lot of humour, a lot of provocation, a great literary style and an immense culture. Certainly one of the most important Brazilian pieces in this collection.