MAY GOD NOT ALLOW ME TO DIE WITHOUT UNDERSTANDING THIS METROPOLIS

Abstract

The context of this article is the interdisciplinary dialogue between urbanism and literature. This dialogue is limited to the use of literature as a source of information and to its reading biased to urbanistic perspectives. It is based on the author´s geography and two selected works by the Brazilian poet and essayist Guilherme de Almeida, mostly considered as reference of his relation with the metropolis of Sao Paulo. It uses the author´s interurban and intraurban geography, its references to this city´s elements and compartments, and possible temporal relations between his text and urban changes implemented in the 1930-1969 period. We clearly assume that Guillherme de Almeida had no intention in explaining the city according to urbanistic principles; this article take his texts “by default”. Final considerations reiterate the author´s fractal sight of the city and the potentiality of literature as a tool to understand cities or provoking further debates on it. It also reiterates the possibility of having literature as a source to reduce investigative voids and also as a complement for old approaches already signalizing exhaustion.