Interview with Virgilio Maia: The Marrano memory of a Brazilian poet

This article, which takes the form of a conversation between the author and the contemporary Brazilian poet, Virgilio Maia, emphasizes the richness of the poet’s inspiration, associating sources such as the Bible with references to the sertao (including the town of Limoeiro do Norte). Maia’s work, which lies somewhere between poetry, ethnography, heraldry, and the plastic arts, reveals as much his neo-Christian cultural origins as his long-repressed Jewish heritage. During the dialogue, the poet’s speech reveals traces of a “dormant language,” which gradually becomes the object of a quest: Judeo-Spanish. As the quest develops, traces of Hebrew also re-emerge, in the form of an alphabetical Hornbook.