GODOFREDO RANGEL AND AUTRAN DOURADO: THE ARTIST AND APPRENTICE

The name Godofredo Rangel has been fixed itself in the history of Brazilian literature mainly as Monteiro Lobato's eternal friend and correspondent. Nevertheless, his memory is revered by writers of the same strain as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Autran Dourado. The latter, above all, in more than one occasion, declared having had in Rangel a master in writing, whose guidance had been fundamental to the development of his literary vocation. In the novel Um artista aprendiz (n.t.: An apprentice artist), from 1989, Dourado narrates the trajectory of a novice writer, whose  encounter with the literary personality of Godofredo Rangel, fictionalized by the author in the character of Sílvio sousa, is also decisive. This study consists of the comparison between the testimony of Autran Dourado about Godofredo Rangel and the fictional matter of the novel, searching in them the elements to understand what Dourado and others considered as being a work of mastery in the literary art.