S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Since childhood, L\u00facia Helena Galv\u00e3o has found in literature a way to understand the world. The daughter of a humble family from Rio de Janeiro, she moved to Bras\u00edlia at age 10 when her father, a banker, was transferred during the expansion of the new capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amid the uncertainties of her childhood, two authors accompanied her from an early age. As she recalls, \u201cI felt a strong connection with Khalil Gibran<\/strong> and Machado de Assis<\/strong>. These two have been with me since I was twelve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She never imagined that decades later, the Lebanese poet, writer, philosopher, and artist<\/strong> would become one of the pillars of her intellectual life. She discovered The Prophet<\/em>, Gibran\u2019s most famous book, by chance\u2014an old, marked, and yellowed copy found at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reading, which was not encouraged by her father, opened a new way for Galv\u00e3o to understand the sacred. It was in Gibran that the Rio native found an intimate, deep, and free spirituality. \u201cI always say that Gibran introduced me to God and Machado de Assis to man,\u201d she summarizes, explaining the symbolic force that shaped her intellectual life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her calling for philosophy was only confirmed after a few years at university. She first enrolled in International Relations at the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB) at 17, believing her questions lay out in the world. Later, she encountered academic philosophy but did not feel connected to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n