Menalton Braff

Menalton João Braff (born July 23, 1938) is a Brazilian writer of short stories, novellas and novels.

Biography Menalton Braff was born in Taquara, a Brazilian municipality in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. His formal education occurred in both Taquara and Porto Alegre, capital of Rio Grande do Sul and one of the top cultural, political and economic centers of the country.

He became interested in literature during his childhood, when he began reading classical authors. He engaged in political activism during his course of Economy in the former Universidade do Rio Grande do Sul and was forced to quit University and disappear as a citizen for a few years due to the military coup of 1964.

It was only after amnesty that Braff could use his real name again. In São Paulo, at Universidade São Judas Tadeu, Braff started his teaching career. At this time, while finishing a postgraduate course in Brazilian literature, Braff wrote his first novel. His first two books were published under the pen name Salvador dos Passos, which was abandoned in 1999 when he published À Sombra do Cipreste. This short stories book would win the Prêmio Jabuti for Literature in 2000.

He worked as a teacher and professor of Brazilian literature in Catanduva, Batatais, Ribeirão Preto, Ituverava and other regional cities. Braff married Roseli Deienno, who studied at the same university where he worked in São Paulo, and they moved to the interior of the State. Braff was the winner of Prêmio Jabuti de Literatura in 2000 with À Sombra do Cipreste.

Literary style

Braff's prose is best known for its literary impressionism and tendencies for lyrical or poetic narratives. In an interview, the author himself acknowledges: “My general tendency is for Impressionism. I feel deeply attracted to the paintings of the movement, its suggestion, its unfinished aspect; that is, a world in constant construction.” (BELEBONI, 2007).

In this sense, his works generally offer moments of impressions that compose experience instead of focusing on a realist image of a whole. His narrators prefer to suggest sensations and thus take part in an attempt to capture the moment, the fragmentary, the subjective. Stream of consciousness, for instance, is one of the techniques employed to highlight the ideas of disconnection and linear rupture.

Braff's literary inclination to the lyrical novel is based structurally on rhythmic patterns such as rhymes and alliteration. On the thematic and plot spheres, his narratives focus mainly the human condition through the projection of the inner life of either the narrator or the characters as well as the search for identity and existential meaning.

In addition, some works briefly draw attention to the social and historical aspect of fiction, such as O Casarão da Rua do Rosário (2012), a novel related to the Brazilian military government. This possible association, however, is shaped secondarily and is subordinate to the focus on language. It is also possible to study, in this sense, the social aspects “present in the internal structures of Braff’s narrative.” (COSTA E SILVA, 2011).