clearly aware of what the city was then". In the meantime, he had experimented with Modernism in the collection Lua de Vidro (1930), which likewise remains one of the main Rio Grande do Sul contributions to this school. Damasceno was part of the group of intellectuals and artists that frequented the Café Colombo, in his generation one of the main forums for ideological, political, literary, and aesthetic debates in the city, although, according to Paulo de Gouvêa's testimony, he did not occupy a prominent position in the group: "He did not warm the place. [...] He arrived, gave a "buenas" ("hello") to the group, talked a little, and went on – to Cacus' cave, to the Fujiama ridge, to the lands of the Blue Bird? No one knew by what strange paths the poet was going, towards the undefined port where he anchored his boat." Nevertheless, for Cristiano Fretta his production is representative of the interests of the group, especially by the approach he takes to Porto Alegre and the adoption in his literary work of aesthetic principles common to all. He was like the others, as Regina Zilberman believes, engaged in the process of renewal of local literature through the incorporation of novelties introduced by the modern avant-garde, but preserving ties with the past and previous literature. An excerpt from the poem Praça da Harmonia, about the old square which was a meeting place for local poets and was dismantled to make room for the Mauá Pier, serves as an illustration of the first stage: In the field of prose literature, the novels Moleque: novelinha de arrabalde (1938) and Menininha (1941) are highlights, as well as the short story book Persianas Verdes: contos e manchas (1967), which set prosaic characters in the humble settings of the streets and houses of the periphery, in the bars and popular parties, leading often miserable, sad and meaningless lives, lost in unsatisfied dreams of freedom and justice and excluded from the bright hustle and bustle and big events of urban centers, a theme that knew great vogue at the time. The author acknowledged his special debt to Eça de Queiroz: "None of us has escaped the influence of Eça de Queiroz. There is no use in wrinkling our noses, pretending to hide what is so clear. A writer much more Brazilian than Portuguese, he was to us a kind of older brother, to