Text by Marya Marcondes, Journalism student at UFPR
Under the supervision of Rogerio Galindo
A Curitiba–São Paulo flight in 1982, an airplane seat, and a forgotten envelope. Forty-four years later, what seemed like mere abandoned paperwork ends up in the collection of one of Curitiba’s most important writers. Next Wednesday (18), the Paraná Public Library (BPP) will host the ceremony handing over to the family materials by Paulo Leminski that were kept for decades at the home of a former Varig manager.
At the time, the airline employee, Ernani Edson de Paula, found the texts on the aircraft and took the envelope home, not knowing that they were Leminski’s manuscripts and typescripts. Only recently did his daughter, Caroline de Paula, upon revisiting what her father had kept, realize there was something there that could be important. She sought out journalist Célio Martins, who helped verify the authenticity of the material, in contact with the writer’s family.
The papers were left by Leminski on a trip from Curitiba to São Paulo. Among the documents are poems, notes, literary exercises, sketches and ideas, some handwritten and others typewritten, as well as the English translation of the song “Esotérico” by Gilberto Gil. The writer’s boarding pass, which remained with the texts inside the envelope, helps reconstruct the scene of the forgetfulness.
For his daughter Aurea Leminski, the value of the find lies less in the idea of an “unpublished work” and more in the possibility of seeing her father’s creative process. She points out that the material does not contain unknown texts, but rather drafts and attempts at writing. According to Aurea, they are records of Leminski’s “writing process,” which were never published but help tell the author’s literary story.
Her sister, Estrela Leminski, reinforces this interpretation. She notes that the contents of the envelope reveal her father’s way of producing: mixing music, poetry, and ideas in the same set of papers, all at once. For the writer and composer, the material is important both for the collection and for Brazilian cultural memory, in addition to carrying a curious story that spans decades between being forgotten on a plane and arriving at the library.
The director of the Paraná Public Library, Luiz Felipe Leprevost, recalls that Leminski was a regular visitor to the institution. He emphasizes the symbolism of the handover taking place precisely in the month when the BPP turns 169 years old. Thus, the library becomes the official stage to receive the writings and bring them closer to the public, in a place that was part of the author’s own routine.
Journalist Célio Martins, who assisted in checking the material, points out that finding originals by central figures in literature is always a rare event. In Leminski’s case, the fact that the papers remained for so long “forgotten up in the air,” as he puts it, makes the story even more striking and reinforces the need to take this kind of document out of the drawer and make it available to readers, researchers, and the family itself.
At the ceremony, the contents will be delivered to Alice Ruiz and to daughters Aurea and Estrela Leminski, in the BPP auditorium. A small exhibition featuring part of the materials found will be on display at the Library until the end of March, allowing the public to closely follow a lesser-known chapter of Paulo Leminski’s trajectory, one that began with something forgotten on a flight and ended, decades later, in a public collection.
Event
Ceremony for the handover of Paulo Leminski’s writings to the family at the BPP
Date: March 18 (Wednesday)
Time: from 5:30 p.m.
Location: Auditorium of the Paraná Public Library (2nd floor)
Address: Rua Cândido Lopes, 133 – Centro, Curitiba (PR)
Capacity: 132 people
Phone: (41) 3221-4900
