MENDES, MURILO

born May 13, 1901, Juiz de Fora, Braz. died Aug. 14, 1975, Lisbon, Port. Brazilian poet and diplomat who played an important role in Brazilian Modernism after 1930, though much of his life was spent as a teacher and as cultural attach in the Brazilian embassy in Italy. Mendes' early poems, characterized by ironic good humour and a colloquial vocabulary, illuminated the creative, chaotic forces within Brazilian everyday life. His later works show an increasing Surrealist influence. Following his conversion to Roman Catholicism (1934), he collaborated with Jorge de Lima in the creation of metaphysical poetry (e.g., Tempo e Eternidade, 1935; Time and Eternity), some of which is couched in allegorical terms. Much of Mendes' subsequent poetry shows an almost dialectical tension between the worlds of forms and of religious transcendence. In poetry published during the last two decades of his life, he sought to incorporate the austere clarity and dryness of traditional Iberian Spanish verse, an influence which he communicated in turn to Joo Cabral de Melo Neto. He also experimented with certain Concretist techniques.