MURILO RUBIÃO (Murilo Eugênio Rubião), Silvestre Ferraz (current Carmo de Minas), MG, June 1st, 1916 – Belo Horizonte, September 16th, 1991.
A lawyer, public servant and journalist, Murilo Rubião became known as a short stories writer, being considered by Brazilian and international literary critics as the forerunner of Latin American fantastic (or magical) realism.
Son of the philologist, journalist, poet and professor Eugênio Álvares Rubião and Maria Antonieta Ferreira Rubião. Murilo did his first studies in the cities of Conceição do Rio Verde and Passa Quatro, in Minas Gerais. He moves to Belo Horizonte, where he completes primary school at Afonso Pena School Group, secondary school at Arnaldo School and a bachelor’s degree in law at the Federal University of Minas Gerais Law School (1942).
His activities in the press, as a writer of Folha de Minas, begins during college, when he founds, in 1939, with a group of students, the Tentativa journal. He later serves as an editor of Folha de Minas and Bello Horizonte and Mensagem journals.
In 1943 he takes over the direction of the Inconfidência de Minas Gerais Radio and, a less known fact, works as a teacher at the schools Sagrado Coração de Jesus and Arnaldo. Two years later, in 1945, Murilo is elected vice-president of the Brazilian Association of Writers (section of Minas Gerais) and commands Minas delegation at the 1st Writers’ Congress, held in January 1945, in São Paulo. He moves to Rio de Janeiro in 1949 to work as head of the documentation section of Vale do São Francisco Commission. He returns to Belo Horizonte in 1950, invited by the governor of Minas Gerais, Juscelino Kubitscheck, to assume the role of cabinet officer, soon becoming head of cabinet. In the same year he is appointed as the Official Press and Folha de Minas newspaper acting director.
Between 1956 and 1960, he holds the positions of head of the Brazilian Service of Foreign Propaganda and Economic Expansion in Madrid and of cultural attaché at the Brazilian Embassy in Spain. Returning to Brazil, he resumes his duties as a technical and administrative advisor of the State of Minas Gerais, being assigned in 1961 to the editorial room of the state’s official newspaper, the Minas Gerais. In 1966, he is appointed by Governor Israel Pinheiro to organize the Literary Supplement of Minas Gerais, paper he directs until 1969 – when he assumes the head of the Department of Publications of the Official Press. Until the present day, the Supplement is regarded as one of the best cultural press organs in the country, being internationally recognized for its part in cultural diffusion and mediation. In its pages there has been edited works of Carlos Drummond
de Andrade, Pedro Nava, Emílio Moura, Abgar Renault, Roberto Drummond, Adão Ventura, Laís Corrêa de Araújo, Affonso Ávila, Julio Cortázar and Ana Hatherly, among other great names of Brazilian and foreign literature.
Among the various public positions that Murilo Rubião held, it is also worth mentioning the following: Director of the Broadcasting Service of the State of Minas Gerais, Superintendent of the Minas Gerais Health Secretariat, Director of the Official Press of Minas Gerais, Director of the School of Fine Arts of Belo Horizonte (Guignard School), Director of Ouro Preto Art Foundation (FAOP), President of the Madrigal Renaissance Foundation and President of the State Council of Culture of Minas Gerais.
For his literary work, Murilo Rubião received the Othon Lynch Bezerra de Mello Award (1948), conferred by the Minas Academy of Letters, and the Luísa Cláudio de Sousa Award (1975), from the Brazilian PEN Club. In addition, his short stories have been translated and published in several countries, such as Germany, Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Spain, the United States, France, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Venezuela. Since the 1970’s until now, his narratives have been being adapted to cinema (“The Trap”, “Zacarias, the Pyrothecnist”, “The Ex-Magician from the Minhota Tavern” and “O Bloqueio”) and to theater (The Moon, Barbara, Three Names for Godofredo, Memórias do Contabilista Pedro Inácio and The Ex-Magician from the Minhota Tavern).
His personal documents (correspondence, photographs, manuscripts and personal objects) and his personal library were donated by his family to the Acervo de Escritores Mineiros (Collection of Minas’ Writers), based at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, where they are available for consultation.
His work consists of the books: O ex-mágico (1947); A estrela vermelha (1953); Os dragões e outros contos (1965); O pirotécnico Zacarias (1974); O convidado (1974); A casa do girassol vermelho (1978); O homem do boné cinzento e outras histórias (1990). Posthumously, the following volumes were published: Mário e o pirotécnico aprendiz – cartas de Mário de Andrade e Murilo Rubião (edited by Marcos Antônio de Moraes, 1995), Contos reunidos (1998) andMares interiores: correspondências de Murilo Rubião & Otto Lara Resende (edited by Cleber Araújo Cabral, 2016).