Journalism and literature - the two sides of the same coin

Abstract

Since the advent of the written word, man, throughout history, has sought - with and through it - to translate reality. The colors and pains of the real world served as inspiration for the paper to embrace from the wildest fiction to the most closely related accounts of reason. From the romance between the written word and the real world, therefore, journalism and literature - brothers, warriors and lovers - would be born, whether in an incestuous novel or in opposing camps of the same battle, - the utopian ideal of portraying reality. Along the way, the children of the word, whenever they were about to reach their ideal, gave way to the seduction of subjectivity and fiction. And so, they left behind a trail of stories told that allows us to question whether, when reality no longer fits the space "officially" destined for it, these two warriors will not change places? In this article we intend to demonstrate that journalism and literature are activities that are confused, complement each other and that often change places. This is because, although both work with two elements inherent to the written word, the real and the fictional, while literature freely adopts the subjectivity and fictional character proper of the text - accepting very clearly to work with the imagination - journalism tends, almost Always, to deny them. We will try, therefore, to find the fictional elements present in the journalistic text and the real ones present in the literary, showing that, at various moments, since the appearance of the press in Brazil, writers-journalists have used the space reserved for the fictional to say what - for reasons Political, historical, etc. - did not fit in the space reserved for the real, while at the same time they dared to embellish reality in the newspapers in order to present it more seductive and salable, making it consequently more fictitious. For this question, we will base the newspapers and the literary production of Rio and São Paulo in three specific moments, from the period between 1850 and 1950.