pAsk an authority on Brazilian culture what he considers to be the most significant artistic event in Brazil during this century, observes John Nist, and he will quickly reply, 'The Modern Art Week Exhibition, staged in Sao Paulo in February, 1922.' This public demonstration and aesthetic manifesto represented a cut with the past, a violent break with tradition unparalleled in Brazilian history. The fact that Brazilians still discuss the poetical renovation achieved by Modernism shows how strongly the movement attacked and questioned traditional attitudes, cherished preconceptions, prejudiced aspects of a national sensibility that still persists, in some quarters, to this day. As a movement of research and experimentation, Modernism was, in the words of its principal prophet, Mrio de Andrade, 'a rupture, a revolt against the national intelligence.' In time it became a national affirmation that resulted in the integration of Brazilian literature into the literature of the Western world-