See what Manoel de Barros’ house is like in Campo Grande – 10/24/2023 – Tourism

How many years does it take a man to get old?

Now, “a poet never sets a date of existence”, Manoel de Barros thus begins to answer the question he himself raised. He concludes the text in such small letters that it is best to take out the magnifying glass available on the table: “I still have the freshness of the initial words within me.”

This manuscript and other literary portions of the poet, among the greatest that Brazil has ever had, are preserved at Casa-Quintal Manoel de Barros. There, in an elite neighborhood in Campo Grande (MS), the author of “The Book of Ignorãças” lived his last three decades, until he died, in 2014, at the age of 97.

He and his wife, Stella, with whom he has been married for 64 years, negotiated every corner with the architect. Manoel, for example, decided that he wanted a house made of standing bricks. Something technically unfeasible for the whole, but which prevailed in some parts of the property, such as the facade.

A conventional version of the creator of verses like “everything I don’t invent is false” would never stand still. Inherited by a grandson, Silvestre, the residence is now a museum to access the literature and also the intimacy of Manoel, a man with a shy nature, who used a dose of courage to receive occasional visitors.

He sat on the right side of the sofa, his private space, and drank his whiskey with an ice cube made from coconut water, to relax and engage in less shy conversations. Stella used to offer her famous cheese breads to guests. She served them in a room where part of Manoel’s vinyl collection is now on display. From Beethoven, of whom he collected more than 20 records, to Gilberto Gil.

Still in the artistic field, he was a fan of Miró, Picasso and Charles Chaplin. And also a self-confessed soap opera writer — he even saw the first version of “Pantanal”, the serial named after the region where he lived for a while, on a farm inherited from his father, Santa Cruz, until moving to the house in Campo Grande .

Manoel is from Cuiabá (MT), but went to study in Rio, like so many well-to-do young people of his generation, and became fond of the then capital of Brazil. Having graduated in law, he wanted to sell the 14 thousand hectare land in a swampy area called Nhecolândia. His idea was to take the money and open a small publishing house in Rio de Janeiro.

It was Stella who shook her head. Manoel gave in, kept the farm and for almost a decade he didn’t write a single poem. The couple moved there with their newborn João, while Martha and Pedro, the eldest children, stayed at a boarding school in Rio.

Manoel spent his days like a typical farmer, going out on horseback and treating calves injured by parasites. The many birds that fly over his work come from the rural area that sheltered him as a child and later as an adult. But he hated being called the “poet of the Pantanal”, a label the press tried to foist on him for years.

He preferred to be the “poet of words”, and they would return with everything in his daily life, after the period of literary drought. “He releases one book after another, and [ganha] awards too, writing until he was close to death”, recalls Valéria Arruda, one of the six volunteers who take turns to welcome those interested in visiting the museum.

Visits, always guided and for small groups, must be booked in advance via the Sympla platform. A contribution of R$35 is suggested.

Arruda intersperses the tour of the address with stories about its owner, such as his habit of taking sips of whiskey sitting in an armchair positioned at the backyard door, so that the sun warms his feet. As man doesn’t live on goró alone, he drank a mixture with powdered guarana every day, systematically stirred with three spoonfuls.

Some rearrangements give the home a museum feel, such as the projections on the white quilt on the bed where Manoel and Stella slept. The structure is still full of patches today, because they used to wear out the furniture to the limit. They only discarded them when they had no further use. Even the hammock in the backyard was only thrown away when it finally tore, after an intense lifespan. From there, residents could see a jabuticabeira tree planted when they moved in, in 1986.

The house’s design has sustainability concerns that, although they are more popular today, guaranteed pioneering spirit in the 1980s, when it was taken off the ground. The rooms have plenty of light and air to save energy, and gardens occupy their spaces.

There are also elements collected from Manoel’s seasons abroad. The reference for the metallic handrail, which sounded rather cocky at the time, came from New York.

Another room, previously used as a storage room, was adapted to tell fractions of Manoel’s life. Valéria Arruda, the guide of the day, remembers the day he was detained by the Getúlio Vargas police. He was still in his first year of law school in 1934 when an officer found a brochure in the boarding house he was renting. The material was branded communist.

“Our Lady of My Darkness”, which would be his first book, was confiscated and never saw the light of day again. Manoel, who would later join the Communist Party, even joked that this was his most religious work.

His literary debut came three years later. He called the book “Poems Conceived Without Sin.”