Febrônio/Fébronio

Abstract

Febrônio is the name of a serial killer arrested in Rio in 1927. The French writer Blaise Cendrars transfigured this character in a series of reports published in the journal Paris Soir and in a volume called Fébronio, magia sexualis, in 1938. This article studies the transforming of Febrônio into Fébronio (the spelling used by Cendrars) i.e. the murderer’s conversion into a mystical figure and the rewriting of a real story in order to analyze Cendrars’ poetic.

Keywords

• Cendrars
• madness
• literature
• primitivism