Lêdo Ivo

Lêdo Ivo was born in 1924 in Maceió, capital of Alagoas state in northeastern Brazil. He settled in 1940 in Recife, where he completed his training. In 1943, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to enroll in law school, while also working for the literary supplements as a professional journalist. He married Leda Maria Sarmento Ivo de Medeiros (1923-2004), with whom he had three children.

His first book was published in 1944, a collection of poems titled As imaginações. The following year he published Ode e Elegia, which was awarded the Olavo Bilac Prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and is a turning point in the history of Brazilian poetry. The death of Mário de Andrade in 1945 led to a generational change in Brazilian poetry whose rule was "an invitation to transgression", with the triumph of purely poetical structures.[4] His literary work would be enhanced in the following decades by books of poetry, novels, short stories and essays or reports. Ivo's first novel, As Alianças, which went through several editions and awarded him the Graça Aranha Foundation Prize in 1947. He continued with O Caminho sem Adventura (1948), O sobrinho do General (1964) and Ninho de cobras (published in English as Snake's Nest) (1973), one of his biggest hits, an allegory of totalitarianism of the military dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. His last novel was A morte do Brasil (1984).

In 1949 Ivo spoke at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo in a conference titled The Generation of 1945; in the same year he received a degree in law, a profession he would never exercise, preferring to devote himself to journalism. In 1953 he visited several European countries for long periods. In 1963 he spent two months in universities in the USA, by invitation of the Government. In 1986 Ivo was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. In 2009 he was awarded the Premio Casa de Las Américas.

Ledo Ivo was also a translator. He translated into Portuguese works of authors like Albrecht Goes, Jane Austen, Maupassant, Rimbaud and Dostoyevsky.

He published two memoirs, Confissões de um Poeta (1979), which was awarded the prize of the Cultural Foundation of the Federal District, and O Aluno Relapso (1991).

• Ledo Ivo recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division’s audio literary archive on July 29, 1974