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BRAZILIAN TALES
TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ISAAC GOLDBERG
Author of "Studies in Spanish-American Literature," etc.
Boston
The Four Seas Company
1921
_Copyright, 1921, by_
THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
The Four Seas Press
CONTENTS
Page
PRELIMINARY REMARKS 7
THE ATTENDANT'S CONFESSION 43
BY JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS
THE FORTUNE-TELLER 65
BY JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS
LIFE 87
BY JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS
THE VENGEANCE OF FELIX 107
BY JOSÉ MEDEIROS E ALBUQUERQUE
THE PIGEONS 121
BY COELHO NETTO
AUNT ZEZE'S TEARS 139
BY CARMEN DOLORES
TO
J. D. M. FORD
SMITH PROFESSOR OF THE FRENCH AND SPANISH
LANGUAGES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
SOME INFORMAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS
The noted Brazilian critic, José Verissimo, in a short but important
essay on the deficiencies of his country's letters, has expressed
serious doubt as to whether there exists a genuinely Brazilian
literature. "I do not know," he writes, "whether the existence of an
entirely independent literature is possible without an entirely
independent language." In this sense Verissimo would deny the existence
of a Swiss, or a Belgian, literature. In this sense, too, it was no
doubt once possible, with no small measure of justification, to deny
the existence of an American, as distinguished from an English,
literature. Yet, despite the subtle psychic bonds that link identity of
speech to similarity of thought, the environment (which helps to shape
pronunciation as well as vocabulary and the language itself) is, from
the standpoint of literature, little removed from language as a
determining factor. Looking at the question, however, from the purely
linguistic standpoint, it is important to remember that the Spanish of
Spanish America is more different from the parent tongue than is the
English of this country from that of the mother nation. Similar changes
have taken place in the Portuguese spoken in Brazil. Yet who would now
pretend, on the basis of linguistic similarity, to say that there is no
United States literature as distinguished from English literature?
After all, is it not national life, as much as national language, that
makes literature? And by an inversion of Verissimo's standard may we
not come face to face with a state of affairs in which different
literatures exist within the same tongue? Indeed, is not such a
conception as the "great American novel" rendered quite futile in the
United States by the fact that from the literary standpoint we are
several countries rather than one?
The question is largely academic. At the same time it is interesting to
notice the more assertive standpoint lately adopted by the charming
Mexican poet, Luis G. Urbina, in his recent "La Vida Literaria de
México," where, without undue national pride he claims the right to use
the adjective Mexican in qualifying the letters of his remarkable
country. Urbina shows that different physiological and psychological
types have been produced in his part of the New World; why, then,
should the changes stop there? Nor have they ceased at that point, as
Señor Urbina's delightful and informative book reveals. So, too,
whatever the merits of the academic question involved, a book like
Alencar's "Guarany," for instance, could not have been written outside
of Brazil; neither could Verissimo's own "Scenes from Amazon Life."
II.
Brazilian literature has been divided into four main periods. The first
extends from the age of discovery and exploration to the middle of the
eighteenth century; the second includes the second half of the
eighteenth century; the third comprises the years of the nineteenth
century up to 1840, while that date inaugurates the triumph of
Romanticism over pseudo-Classicism. Romanticism, as in other countries,
gave way in turn to realism and various other movements current in
those turbulent decades. Sometimes the changes came not as a natural
phase of literary evolution, but rather as the consequence of pure
imitation. Thus, Verissimo tells us, Symbolism, in Brazil, was a matter
of intentional parroting, in many cases unintelligent. It did not
correspond to a movement of reaction,--mystical, sensualist,
individualist, socialistic or anarchistic,--as in Europe.
Two chief impulses were early present in Brazilian letters: that of
Portuguese literature and that of the Jesuit colleges. At the time of
the discovery of Brazil only Italy, Spain, France and Portugal
possessed a literary life. Portugal, indeed, as the Brazilian critic
points out, was then in its golden period. It boasted chroniclers like
Fernao Lopes, novelists like Bernardim Ribeiro, historians like Joao de
Barros, and dramatists of the stamp of Gil Vicente. The Jesuit
colleges, too, were followed by other orders, spreading Latin culture
and maintaining communication between the interior and the important
centers. It is natural, then, that early letters in Brazil should have
been Portuguese not only in language, but in inspiration, feeling and
spirit. Similarly, we find the early intellectual dependence of the
Spanish American countries upon Spain, even as later both the Spanish
and the Portuguese writers of America were to be influenced greatly by
French literature. "Brazilian poetry," says Verissimo in the little
essay already referred to, "was already in the seventeenth century
superior to Portuguese verse." He foresaw a time when it would
outdistance the mother country. But Brazilian literature as a whole, he
found, lacked the perfect continuity, the cohesion, the unity of great
literatures, chiefly because it began as Portuguese, later turned to
east (particularly France) and only then to Brazil itself. In the early
days it naturally lacked the solidarity that comes from easy
communication between literary centers. This same lack of communication
was in a sense still true at the time he wrote his essay. The element
of communicability did exist during the Romantic period (1835-1860),
whereupon came influences from France, England, Italy, and even
Germany, and letters were rapidly denationalized. What was thus needed
and beneficial from the standpoint of national culture prejudiced the
interests of national literature, says Verissimo. He finds, too, that
there is too little originality and culture among Brazilian writers,
and that their work lacks sincerity and form (1899). Poetry was too
often reduced to the love of form while fiction was too closely copied
from the French, thus operating to stifle the development of a national
dramatic literature. Excessive preoccupation with politics and finance
(where have we heard that complaint elsewhere?) still further impeded
the rise of a truly native literature.
Perhaps Verissimo's outlook was too pessimistic; he was an earnest
spirit, unafraid to speak his mind and too much a lover of truth to be
misled by a love of his country into making exaggerated claims for
works by his countrymen. We must not forget that he was here looking
upon Brazilian letters as a whole; in other essays by him we discover
that same sober spirit, but he is alive to the virtues of his fellow
writers as well as to their failings.
It is with the prose of the latest period in Brazilian literature that
we are here concerned. From the point of view of the novel and tale
Brazil shares with Argentina, Columbia, Chile and Mexico the leadership
of the Latin-American[1] republics. If Columbia, in Jorge Isaacs'
_Maria_, can show the novel best known to the rest of the world, and
Chile, in such a figure as Alberto Blest-Gana (author of _Martin Rivas_
and other novels) boasts a "South American Balzac," Brazil may point to
more than one work of fiction that Is worthy of standing beside
_María_, _Martin Rivas_ or José Marmol's exciting tale of love and
adventure, _Amalia_. The growing Importance of Brazil as a commercial
nation, together with a corresponding increase of interest in the study
of Portuguese (a language easily acquired by all who know Spanish) will
have the desirable effect of making known to the English reading public
a selection of works deserving of greater recognition.
[1] I am aware of the recent objection to this term (See my
Studies in Spanish American Literature, pp. 233-237), but no
entirely satisfactory substitute has been advanced.
Just to mention at random a few of the books that should in the near
future be known to American readers, either in the original or through
the medium of translations, I shall recall some of the names best known
to Brazilians in connection with the modern tale and novel. If there be
anything lacking in the array of modern writers it is a certain broad
variety of subject and treatment to which other literatures have
accustomed us.
It is not to be wondered at that in surroundings such as the Amazon
affords an "Indian" school of literature should have arisen. We have an
analogous type of fiction in United States literature, old and new,
produced by similar causes. Brazilian "Indianism" reached its highest
point perhaps in José Alencar's famous _Guarany_, which won for its
author national reputation and achieved unprecedented success. From the
book was made a libretto that was set to music by the Brazilian
composer, Carlos Gomez. The story is replete with an intensity of life
and charming descriptions that recall the pages of Chateaubriand, and
its prose often verges upon poetry in its idealization of the Indian
race. Of the author's other numerous works _Iracema_ alone approaches
_Guarany_ in popularity. The dominant note of the author, afterward
much repeated in the literary history of his nation, is the essential
goodness and self-abnegation of the national character.
Alfred d'Escragnolle Taunay (1843-1899) is among the most important of
Brazil's novelists. Born at Rio de Janeiro of noble family he went
through a course in letters and science, later engaging in the campaign
of Paraguay. He took part in the retreat of La Laguna, an event which
he has enshrined in one of his best works, first published in French
under the title _La Retraite de la Laguna_. He served also as secretary
to Count d'Eu, who commanded the Brazilian army, and later occupied
various political offices, rising to the office of senator in 1886. His
list of works is too numerous to mention in a fragmentary introduction
of this nature; chief among them stands _Innocencia_; a sister tale, so
to speak, to Isaacs's _María_. According to Verissimo, _Innocencia_ is
one of the country's few genuinely original novels. It has been called,
by Mérou (1900), "the best novel written in South America by a South
American," a compliment later paid by Guglielmo Ferrero to Graça
Aranha's _Canaan_. Viscount Taunay's famous work has been translated
into French twice, once into English, Italian, German, Danish, and even
Japanese.
The scene is laid in the deserted Matto Grosso, a favorite background
of the author's. Innocencia is all that her name implies, and dwells
secluded with her father, who is a miner, her negress slave Conga, and
her Caliban-like dwarf Tico, who loves Innocencia, the Miranda of this
district. Into Innocencia's life comes the itinerant physician, Cirino
de Campos, who is called by her father to cure her of the fever. Cirino
is her Ferdinand; they make love in secret, for she is meant by
paternal arrangement for a mere brute of a mule driver, Manaçao by
name. Innocencia vows herself to Cirino, when the mule-driver comes to
enforce his prior claim; the father, bound by his word of honor, sides
with the primitive lover. The tragedy seems foreordained, for
Innocencia makes spirited resistance, while Manaçao avenges himself by
killing the doctor. A comic figure of a German scientist adds humor and
a certain poignant irony to the tale. Such a bare outline conveys
nothing of the mysterious charm of the original, nor of its poetic
atmosphere. Comparing _Innocencia_ with what has been termed its sister
work, _María_, I believe that _María_ is the better tale of the two,
although there is much to be said for both. The point need not be
pressed. The heroine of _María_ is more a woman, less a child than
Innocencia, hence the fate of the Spanish girl is tragic where that of
the other maiden is merely pitiful. _Innocencia_, on the other hand, is
stouter in texture. In _María_ there is no love struggle; the struggle
is with life and circumstance; in _Innocencia_ there is not only the
element of rivalry in love, but in addition there is the rigid parent
who sternly, and at last murderously, opposes the natural desires of a
child whom he has promised to another. Where _María_ is idyllic,
poetic, flowing smoothing along the current of a realism tempered by
sentimentalism, _Innocencia_ (by no means devoid of poetry) is
romantic, melodramatic, rushing along turbulently to the outcome in a
death as violent as María's is peaceful. There is in each book a
similar importance of the background. In _Innocencia_ the "point of
honor" is quite as strong and vindictive as in any play of the Spanish
Golden Age. _María_ shares with _Innocencia_ relieving touches of humor
and excellent pages of character description.
Taunay's _O Encilhamento_ is a violent antithesis to the work just
considered. Here the politician speaks. In passages of satire that
becomes so acrimonious at times as to indicate real personages, the
wave of speculation that swept Argentina and Brazil is analyzed and
held up to scorn. The novel is really a piece of historical muck-raking
and was long an object of resentment in the republic.
Everything from Taunay's pen reveals a close communion with nature,
an intimate understanding of the psychology of the vast region's
inhabitants. His shorter tales, which I hope later to present to the
English-reading public, reveal these powers at their best. Now it is a
soldier who goes to war, only, like a military Enoch Arden, to return
and find his sweetheart in another's arms; now it is a clergyman, "the
vicar of sorrows," who, in the luxuriant environment of his charge
suffers the tortures of carnal temptations, with the spirit at last
triumphant over the flesh. Whatever of artifice there is in these
tales is overcome, one of his most sympathetic critics tells us, by
the poetic sincerity of the whole. Taunay, too, has been likened to
Pierre Loti for his exotic flavor. In _Yerecé a Guaná_ we have a
miniature _Innocencia_. Yerecé and Alberto Monteiro fall in love and
marry. The latter has been cured, at the home of Yerecé, of swamp
fever. The inevitable, however, occurs, and Montero hears the call of
civilization. The marriage, according to the custom of the tribe into
which Montero has wed, is dissolved by the man alone. He returns to
his old life and she dies of grief.
A work that may stand beside _Innocencia_ and Verissimo's _Scenes from
Amazon Life_ as a successful national product is Inglez de Sousa's _O
Missionario_. Antonio de Moraes, in this story, is not so strong in
will as Taunay's vicar of sorrows. Antonio is a missionary "with the
vocation of a martyr and the soul of an apostle," on duty in the
tropics. The voluptuous magnetism of the Amazon seizes his body.
Slowly, agonizingly, but surely he succumbs to the enchantment,
overpowered by the life around him.
Since Machado de Assis (who should precede Azevedo) and Coelho Netto
(who should follow him, if strict chronological order were being
observed) are both referred to in section three, which deals
particularly with the authors represented in this sample assortment of
short tales, they are here omitted.
With the appearance of _O Mulato_ by Aluizio Azevedo (1857-1912), the
literature of Brazil, prepared for such a reorientation by the direct
influence of the great Portuguese, Eça de Queiroz, and Emile Zola, was
definitely steered toward naturalism. "In Aluizio Azevedo," says
Benedicto Costa, "one finds neither the poetry of José de Alencar, nor
the delicacy,--I should even say, archness--of Macedo, nor the
sentimental preciosity of Taunay, nor the subtle irony of Machado de
Assis. His phrase is brittle, lacking lyricism, tenderness, dreaminess,
but it is dynamic, energetic, expressive, and, at times, sensual to the
point of sweet delirium."
_O Mulato_, though it was the work of a youth in his early twenties,
has been acknowledged as a solid, well-constructed example of Brazilian
realism. There is a note of humor, as well as a lesson in criticism, in
the author's anecdote (told in his foreword to the fourth edition)
about the provincial editor who advised the youthful author to give up
writing and hire himself out on a farm. This was all the notice he
received from his native province, Maranhao. Yet Azevedo grew to be one
of the few Brazilian authors who supported himself by his pen.
When Brazilian letters are better known in this nation, among Azevedo's
work we should be quick to appreciate such a pithy book as the _Livro
de uma Sogra_,--the Book of a Mother-in-Law. And when the literature of
these United States is at last (if ever, indeed!) released from the
childish, hypocritical, Puritanic inhibitions forced upon it by quasi
official societies, we may even relish, from among Azevedo's long shelf
of novels, such a sensuous product as _Cortiço_.
I have singled out, rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of
the characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Graça Aranha's
_Canaan_, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Guglielmo
Ferrero's fulsome praise of it as the "great American novel."[2] For
South America, no less than North, is hunting that literary will o' the
wisp. Both _Maria_ and _Innocencia_ have been mentioned for that honor.
[2] Issued, in English (1920) by the publishers of this book.
There is a distinct basis for comparison between _Innocencia_ and
the more famous Spanish American tale from Colombia; between these and
_Canaan_, however, there is little similarity, if one overlook the
poetic atmosphere that glamours all three. Aranha's masterpiece is of
far broader conception than the other two; it adds to their lyricism an
epic sweep inherent in the subject and very soon felt in the treatment.
It is, in fact, a difficult novel to classify, impregnated as it is
with a noble idealism, yet just as undoubtedly streaked with a powerful
realism. This should, however, connote no inept mingling of genres; the
style seems to be called for by the very nature of the vast theme--that
moment at which the native and the immigrant strain begin to merge in
the land of the future--the promised land that the protagonists are
destined never to enter, even as Moses himself, upon Mount Nebo in the
land of Moab, beheld Canaan and died in the throes of the great vision.
_Canaan_ is of those novels that centre about an enthralling idea.
The type which devotes much attention to depictions of life and
customs, to discussions upon present realities and ultimate purposes,
is perhaps more frequent among Spanish and Portuguese Americans than
among our own readers who are apt to be overinsistent in their demands
for swift, visible action. Yet, in the hands of a master, it possesses
no less interest than the more obvious type of fiction, for ideas
possess more life than the persons who are moved by them.
The idea that carries Milkau from the Old World to the New is an ideal
of human brotherhood, high purpose and dissatisfaction with the old,
degenerate world. In the State of Espirito Santo, where the German
colonists are dominant, he plans a simple life that shall drink
inspiration in the youth of a new, virgin continent. He falls in with
another German, Lentz, whose outlook upon life is at first the very
opposite to Milkau's blend of Christianity and a certain liberal
socialism. The strange milieu breeds in both an intellectual langour
that vents itself in long discussions, in breeding contemplation,
mirages of the spirit. Milkau is gradually struck with something wrong
in the settlement. Little by little it begins to dawn upon him that
something of the Old-World hypocrisy, fraud and insincerity, is
contaminating this supposedly virgin territory. Here he discovers no
paradise à la Rousseau--no natural man untainted by the ills of
civilization. Graft is as rampant as in any district of the world
across the sea; cruelty is as rife. His pity is aroused by the plight
of Mary, a destitute servant who is betrayed by the son of her
employers. Not only does the scamp desert her when she most needs his
protection and acknowledgment, but he is silent when his equally
vicious parents drive her forth to a life of intense hardship. She is
spurned at every door and reduced to beggary. Her child is born under
the most distressing circumstances, and under conditions that strike
the note of horror the infant is slain before her very eyes while she
gazes helplessly on.
Mary is accused of infanticide, and since she lacks witnesses, she is
placed in a very difficult position. Moreover, the father of her child
bends every effort to loosen the harshest measures of the community
against her, whereupon Milkau, whose heart is open to the sufferings of
the universe, has another opportunity to behold man's inhumanity to
woman. His pity turns to what pity is akin to; he effects her release
from jail, and together they go forth upon a journey that ends in the
delirium of death. The promised land had proved a mirage--at least for
the present. And it is upon this indecisive note that the book ends.
Ferrero's introduction, though short, is substantial, and to the point.
It is natural that he should have taken such a liking to the book, for
Aranha's work is of intense interest to the reader who looks for
psychological power, and Ferrero himself is the exponent of history as
psychology rather than as economic materialism. "The critics," he says,
"will judge the literary merits of this novel. As a literary amateur I
will point out among its qualities the beauty of its style and its
descriptions, the purity of the psychological analysis, the depth of
the thoughts and the reflections of which the novel is full, and among
its faults a certain disproportion between the different parts of the
book and an ending which is too vague, indefinite and unexpected. But
its literary qualities seem to me to be of secondary importance to the
profound and incontrovertible idea that forms the kernel of the book.
Here in Europe we are accustomed to say that modern civilization
develops itself in America more freely than in Europe, for in the
former country it has not to surmount the obstacle of an older society,
firmly established, as in the case of the latter. Because of this, we
call America 'the country of the young,' and we consider the New World
as the great force which decomposes the old European social organization."
That idea is, as Ferrero points out, an illusion due to distance. He
points out, too, that here is everywhere "an old America struggling
against a new one and, this is very curious, the new America, which
upsets traditions, is formed above all by the European immigrants who
seek a place for themselves in the country of their adoption, whereas
the real Americans represent the conservative tendencies. Europe exerts
on American society--through its emigrants--the same dissolving action
which America exerts--through its novelties and its example--on the old
civilization of Europe." The point is very well taken, and contains the
germ of a great novel of the United States. And just as _Canaan_ stands
by itself in Brazilian literature, so might such a novel achieve
preeminence in our own.
Ferrero is quite right in indicating the great non-literary importance
of the novel, though not all readers will agree with him as to the
excessive vagueness of the end. Hardly any other type of ending would
have befitted a novel that treats of transition, of a landscape that
dazzles and enthralls, of possibilities that founder, not through the
malignance of fate, but through the stupidity of man. There is an epic
swirl to the finale that reminds one of the disappearance of an ancient
deity in a pillar of dust. For an uncommon man like Milkau an uncommon
end was called for. Numerous questions are touched upon in the course
of the leisurely narrative, everywhere opening up new vistas of
thought; for Aranha is philosophically, critically inclined; his
training is cosmopolitan, as his life has been; he knows the great
Germans, Scandinavians, Belgians and Russians; his native exuberance
has been tempered by a serenity that is the product of European
influence. He is some fifty-two years of age, has served his nation at
Christiania as minister, at the Hague, and as leader in the Allied
cause. He is, therefore, an acknowledged and proven spokesman. The
author of _Canaan_ has done other things, among which this book, which
has long been known in French and Spanish, stands out as a document
that marks an epoch in Brazilian history as well as a stage in
Brazilian literature. Whether it is "the" great American novel is of
interest only to literary politicians and pigeon-holers; it is "a"
great novel, whether of America or Europe, and that suffices for the
lover of belles lettres.
III.
In considering the work of such writers as these and the authors
represented in this little pioneer volume one should bear continually
in mind the many handicaps under which authorship labors in Portuguese
and Spanish America: a small reading public, lack of publishers,
widespread prevalence of illiteracy, instability of politics. Under the
circumstances it is not so much to be wondered at that the best work is
of such a high average as that it was done at all. For in nations where
education is so limited and illiteracy so prevalent the manifold
functions which in more highly developed nations are performed by many
are perforce done by a few. Hence the spectacle in the new Spanish and
Portuguese world, as in the old, of men and women who are at once
journalists, novelists, dramatists, politicians, soldiers, poets and
what not else. Such a versatility, often joined to a literary
prolixity, no doubt serves to lower the artistic worth of works
produced under such conditions.
In connection with the special character of the tales included in the
present sample of modern Brazilian short stories,--particularly those
by Machado de Assis and Medeiros e Albuquerque--it is interesting to
keep in mind the popularity of Poe and Hawthorne in South America. The
introspection of these men, as of de Maupassant and kindred spirits,
appeals to a like characteristic of the Brazilians. Such inner seeking,
however, such preoccupation with psychological problems, does not
often, in these writers, reach the point or morbidity which we have
become accustomed to expect in the novels and tales of the Russians.
Stories like _The Attendant's Confession_ are written with a refinement
of thought as well as of language. They are not, as so much of
Brazilian literature must perforce seem to the stranger's mind, exotic.
They belong to the letters of the world by virtue of the human appeal
of the subject and the mastery of their treatment.
Chief among the writers here represented stands Joaquim Maria Machado
de Assis. (1839-1908). Born in Rio de Janeiro of poor parents he was
early beset with difficulties. He soon found his way into surroundings
where his literary tastes were awakened and where he came into contact
with some of the leading spirits of the day. The noted literary
historians of his country, Sylvio Roméro and Joao Ribeiro (in their
_Compendio de Historia da Litteratura Brazileira_) find the writing of
his first period of little value. The next decade, from his thirtieth
to his fortieth year, is called transitional. With the year 1879,
however, Machado de Assis began a long phase of maturity that was to
last for thirty years. It was during this fruitful period that
_Memorias Postumas de Braz Cubas, Quincas Borbas, Historias Sem Data,
Dom Casmurro, Varias Historias_ and other notable works were produced.
The three tales by Machado de Assis in this volume are translated from
his _Varias Historias_. That same bitter-sweet philosophy and gracious,
if penetrating, irony which inform these tales are characteristic of
his larger romances. Four volumes of poetry sustain his reputation as
poet. He is found, by Roméro and Ribeiro, to be very correct and
somewhat cold in his verse. He took little delight in nature and lacked
the passionate, robust temperament that projects itself upon pages of
ardent beauty. In the best of his prose works, however, he penetrates
as deep as any of his countrymen into the abyss of the human soul.
The judgment of Verissimo upon Machado de Assis differs somewhat from
that of his distinguished compatriots. Both because of the importance
of Machado de Assis to Brazilian literature, and as an insight into
Verissimo's delightful critical style, I translate somewhat at length
from that writer.
"With _Varias Historias_," he says in his studies of Brazilian letters,
"Sr. Machado de Assis published his fifteenth volume and his fifth
collection of tales ... To say that in our literature Machado de Assis
is a figure apart, that he stands with good reason first among our
writers of fiction, that he possesses a rare faculty of assimilation
and evolution which makes him a writer of the second Romantic
generation, always a contemporary, a modern, without on this account
having sacrificed anything to the latest literary fashion or copied
some brand-new aesthetic, above all conserving his own distinct,
singular personality ... is but to repeat what has been said many times
already. All these judgments are confirmed by his latest book, wherein
may be noted the same impeccable correctness of language, the same firm
grasp upon form, the same abundancy, force and originality of thought
that make of him the only thinker among our writers of fiction, the
same sad, bitter irony ...
"After this there was published another book by Sr. Machado de Assis,
_Yayá Garcia_. Although this is really a new edition, we may well
speak of it here since the first, published long before, is no longer
remembered by the public. Moreover, this book has the delightful and
honest charm of being in the writer's first manner.
"But let us understand at once, this reference to Machado de Assis's
first manner. In this author more than once is justified the critical
concept of the unity of works displayed by the great writers. All of
Machado de Assis is practically present in his early works; in fact, he
did not change, he scarcely developed. He is the most individual, the
most personal, the most 'himself' of our writers; all the germs of this
individuality that was to attain in _Braz Cubas_, in _Quincas Borbas_,
in the _Papeis Avulsos_ and in _Varias Historias_ its maximum of
virtuosity, may be discovered in his first poems and in his earliest
tales. His second manner, then, of which these books are the best
example, is only the logical, natural, spontaneous development of his
first, or rather, it is the first manner with less of the romantic and
more of the critical tendencies ... The distinguishing trait of Machado
de Assis is that he is, in our literature, an artist and a philosopher.
Up to a short time ago he was the only one answering to such a
description. Those who come after him proceed consciously and
unconsciously from him, some of them being mere worthless imitators. In
this genre, if I am not misemploying that term, he remained without a
peer. Add that this philosopher is a pessimist by temperament and by
conviction, and you will have as complete a characterization as it is
possible to design of so strong and complex a figure as his in two
strokes of the pen.
"_Yayá Garcia_, like _Resurreiçao_ and _Helena_, is a romantic account,
perhaps the most romantic written by the author. Not only the most
romantic, but perhaps the most emotional. In the books that followed it
is easy to see how the emotion is, one might say, systematically
repressed by the sad irony of a disillusioned man's realism." Verissimo
goes on to imply that such a work as this merits comparison with the
humane books of Tolstoi. But this only on the surface. "For at bottom,
it contains the author's misanthropy. A social, amiable misanthropy,
curious about everything, interested in everything,--what is, in the
final analysis, a way of loving mankind without esteeming it...
"The excellency with which the author of _Yayá Garcia_ writes our
language is proverbial ... The highest distinction of the genius of
Machado de Assis in Brazilian literature is that he is the only truly
universal writer we possess, without ceasing on that account to be
really Brazilian."
When the Brazilian Academy of letters was founded in 1897, Machado de
Assis was unanimously elected president and held the position until his
death. Oliveira Lima, who lectured at Harvard during the college season
of 1915-1916, and who is himself one of the great intellectual forces
of contemporary Brazil, has written of Machado de Assis: "By his
extraordinary talent as writer, by his profound literary dignity, by
the unity of a life that was entirely devoted to the cult of
intellectual beauty, and by the prestige exerted about him by his work
and by his personality, Machado de Assis succeeded, despite a nature
that was averse to acclaim and little inclined to public appearance, in
being considered and respected as the first among his country's
men-of-letters: the head, if that word can denote the idea, of a
youthful literature which already possesses its traditions and
cherishes above all its glories ... His life was one of the most
regulated and peaceful after he had given up active journalism, for
like so many others, he began his career as a political reporter,
paragrapher and dramatic critic."
Coelho Netto (Anselmo Ribas, 1864- ) is known to his countrymen as a
professor of literature at Rio de Janeiro. His career has covered the
fields of journalism, politics, education and fiction. Although his
work is of uneven worth, no doubt because of his unceasing
productivity, he is reckoned by so exacting a critic as Verissimo as
one of Brazil's most important writers,--one of the few, in fact, that
will be remembered by posterity. Among his best liked stories are
"Death," "The Federal Capital," "Paradise," "The Conquest," and
"Mirage." Netto's short stories are very popular; at one time every
other youth in Brazil was imitating his every mannerism. He is
particularly felicitous in his descriptions of tropical nature, which
teem with glowing life and vivid picturesqueness.
Coelho Netto is considered one of the chief writers of the modern
epoch. "He is really an idealist," writes Verissimo, "but an idealist
who has drunk deeply of the strong, dangerous milk of French
naturalism." He sees nature through his soul rather than his eyes, and
has been much influenced by the mystics of Russia, Germany and
Scandinavia. His style is derived chiefly from the Portuguese group of
which Eça de Queiroz is the outstanding figure, and his language has
been much affected by this attachment to the mother country. His chief
stylistic quality is an epic note, tempered by a sentimental lyricism.
In his book _Le Roman au Brésil_ (The Novel in Brazil, which I believe
the author himself translated from the original Portuguese into French)
Benedicto Costa, after considering Aluizio Azevedo as the exponent of
Brazilian naturalism and the epicist of the race's sexual instincts,
turns to Coelho Netto's neo-romanticism, as the "eternal praise of
nature, the incessant, exaggerated exaltation of the landscape..." In
Netto he perceives the most Brazilian, the least European of the
republic's authors. "One may say of him what Taine said of Balzac: 'A
sort of literary elephant, capable of bearing prodigious burdens, but
heavy-footed.' And in fact ... he reveals a great resemblance to
Balzac,--a relative Balzac, for the exclusive use of a people,--but a
Balzac none the less."
Despite his lack of ideas, his mixture of archaisms, neologisms, his
exuberance, his slow development of plots, his lack of proportion
(noticeable, naturally, in his longer works rather than in his short
fiction) he stands pre-eminent as a patron of the nation's intellectual
youth and as the romancer of its opulent imagination.
Medeiros e Albuquerque (1867- ) is considered by some critics to be the
leading exponent in the country of "the manner of de Maupassant,
enveloped by an indefinable atmosphere that seems to bring back Edgar
Allan Poe." He has been director-general of public instruction in Rio
de Janeiro, professor at the Normal School and the National School of
Fine Arts, and also a deputy from Pernambuco. With the surprising
versatility of so many South Americans he has achieved a reputation as
poet, novelist, dramatist, publicist, journalist and philosopher.
IV.
The part that women have played in the progress of the South American
republics is as interesting as it is little known. The name of the
world's largest river--the Amazon, or more exactly speaking, the
Amazons--stands as a lasting tribute to the bravery of the early women
whom the explorer Orellana encountered during his conquest of the
mighty flood.[3] For he named the river in honor of the tribes'
fighting heroines. Centuries later, when one by one the provinces of
South America rose to liberate themselves from the Spanish yoke, the
women again played a noble part in the various revolutions. The statue
in Colombia to Policarpa Salavarieta is but a symbol of South American
gratitude to a host of women who fought side by side with their
husbands during the trying days of the early nineteenth century. One of
them, Manuela la Tucumana, was even made an officer in the Argentine
army.
[3] This derivation of the river's name is by many considered
fanciful. A more likely source of the designation is the Indian
word "Amassona," i.e., boat-destroyer, referring to the tidal
phenomenon known as "bore" or "proroca," which sometimes uproots
tress and sweeps away whole tracts of land.
If women, however, have enshrined themselves in the patriotic annals of
the Southern republics, they have shown that they are no less the
companions of man in the more or less agreeable arts of peace. When one
considers the great percentage of illiteracy that still prevails in
Southern America, and the inferior intellectual position which for
years has been the lot of woman particularly in the Spanish and
Portuguese nations, it is surprising that woman's prominence in the
literary world should be what it is.
The name of the original seventeenth century spirit known as Sor Inés
de la Cruz (Mexico) is part of Spanish literature. Only recently has
she been indicated as her nation's first folklorist and feminist! Her
poems have found their way into the anthologies of universal poesy. The
most distinguished Spanish poetess of the nineteenth century, Gertrudis
Gómez de Avellaneda, was a Cuban by birth, going later to Spain, where
she was readily received as one of the nation's leading literary
lights. Her poetry is remarkable for its virile passion; her novel
"Sab" has been called the Spanish "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for its stirring
protest against slavery and its idealization of the oppressed race. She
was a woman of striking beauty, yet so vigorous in her work and the
prosecution of it that one facetious critic was led to exclaim, "This
woman is a good deal of a man!"
But South America has its native candidate for the title of Spanish
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and this, too, is the work of a woman. Clorinda
Matto's "Aves Sin Nido" (Birds Without a Nest) is by one of Peru's most
talented women, and exposes the disgraceful exploitation of the Indians
by conscienceless citizens and priests who had sunk beneath their holy
calling. It seems, indeed, that fiction as a whole in Peru has been
left to the pens of the women. Such names as Joana Manuele Girriti de
Belzu, Clorinda Matto and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonero stand for what
is best in the South American novel. The epoch in which these women
wrote (late nineteenth century) and the natural feminine tendency to
put the house in order (whether it be the domestic or the national
variety) led to such stories as Carbonero's "Las Consequencias," "El
Conspirador" and "Blanca Sol." The first of these is an indictment of
the Peruvian vice of gambling; the second throws an interesting light
upon the origin of much of the internal strife of South America, and
portrays a revolution brought on by the personal disappointment of a
politician. "Blanca Sol" has been called a Peruvian "Madame Bovary."
Although Brazil has not yet produced any Amazons of poetry or fiction
to stand beside such names as Sor Inés de la Cruz or Gertrudis Gómez de
Avallaneda, it has contributed some significant names to the women
writers of Latin America. Not least among these is Carmen Dolores
(Emilia Moncorvo Bandeira de Mello) who was born in 1852 at Rio de
Janeiro and died in 1910, after achieving a wide reputation in the
field of the short story, novel and feuilleton. In addition to these
activities she made herself favorably known in the press of Rio, Sao
Paulo and Pernambuco. Her career started with the novel _Confession_.
Other works are _The Struggle_, _A Country Drama_, and _Brazilian
Legends_. The story in this volume is taken from a collection entitled
_The Complex Soul_.
* * * * * * *
The present selection of tales makes no pretense at completeness,
finality or infallibility of choice. This little book is, so to speak,
merely a modest sample-case. Some of the tales first appeared, in
English, in the _Boston Evening Transcript_ and the _Stratford Journal_
(Boston), to which organs I am indebted for permission to reprint them.
ISAAC GOLDBERG.
_Roxbury, Mass._
THE ATTENDANT'S CONFESSION
By Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
First President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
So it really seems to you that what happened to me in 1860 is worth
while writing down? Very well. I'll tell you the story, but on the
condition that you do not divulge it before my death. You'll not have
to wait long--a week at most; I am a marked man.
I could have told you the story of my whole life, which holds many
other interesting details: but for that there would be needed time,
courage and paper. There is plenty of paper, indeed, but my courage is
at low ebb, and as to the time that is yet left me, it may be compared
to the life of a candle-flame. Soon tomorrow's sun will rise--a demon
sun as impenetrable as life itself. So goodbye, my dear sir; read this
and bear me no ill will; pardon me those things that will appear evil
to you and do not complain too much if there is exhaled a disagreeable
odor which is not exactly that of the rose. You asked me for a human
document. Here it is. Ask me for neither the empire of the Great Mogul
nor a photograph of the Maccabees; but request, if you will, my dead
man's shoes, and I'll will them to you and no other.
You already know that this took place in 1860. The year before, about
the month of August, at the age of forty-two, I had become a
theologian--that is, I copied the theological studies of a priest at
Nictheroy, an old college-chum, who thus tactfully gave me my board and
lodging. In that same month of August, 1859, he received a letter from
the vicar of a small town in the interior, asking if he knew of an
intelligent, discreet and patient person who would be willing, in
return for generous wages, to serve as attendant to the invalid Colonel
Felisbert. The priest proposed that I take the place, and I accepted it
eagerly, for I was tired of copying Latin quotations and ecclesiastic
formulas. First I went to Rio de Janeiro to take leave of a brother who
lived at the capital, and from there I departed for the little village
of the interior.
When I arrived there I heard bad news concerning the colonel. He was
pictured to me as a disagreeable, harsh, exacting fellow; nobody could
endure him, not even his own friends. He had used more attendants than
medicines. In fact he had broken the faces of two of them. But to all
this I replied that I had no fear of persons in good health, still less
of invalids. So, after first visiting the vicar, who confirmed all that
I had heard and recommended to me charity and forbearance, I turned
toward the colonel's residence.
I found him on the veranda of his house, stretched out on a chair and
suffering greatly. He received me fairly well. At first he examined me
silently, piercing me with his two feline eyes; then a kind of
malicious smile spread over his features, which were rather hard.
Finally he declared to me that all the attendants he had ever engaged
in his service hadn't been worth a button, that they slept too much,
were impudent and spent their time courting the servants; two of them
were even thieves.
"And you, are you a thief?"
"No, sir."
Then he asked me my name. Scarcely had I uttered it when he made a
gesture of astonishment.
"Your name is Colombo?"
"No, sir. My name is Procopio José Gomes Vallongo."
Vallongo?--He came to the conclusion that this was no Christian name
and proposed thenceforth to call me simply Procopio. I replied that it
should be just as he pleased.
If I recall this incident, it is not only because it seems to me to
give a good picture of the colonel, but also to show you that my reply
made a very good impression upon him. The next day he told the vicar
so, adding that he had never had a more sympathetic attendant. The fact
is, we lived a regular honeymoon that lasted one week.
From the dawn of the eighth day I knew the life of my predecessors--a
dog's life. I no longer slept. I no longer thought of anything, I was
showered with insults and laughed at them from time to time with an air
of resignation and submission, for I had discovered that this was a way
of pleasing him. His impertinences proceeded as much from his malady as
from his temperament. His illness was of the most complicated: he
suffered from aneurism, rheumatism and three or four minor affections.
He was nearly sixty, and since he had been five years old had been
accustomed to having everybody at his beck and call. That he was surly
one could well forgive; but he was also very malicious. He took
pleasure in the grief and the humiliation of others. At the end of
three months I was tired of putting up with him and had resolved to
leave; only the opportunity was lacking.
But that came soon enough. One day, when I was a bit late in giving him
a massage, he took his cane and struck me with it two or three times.
That was the last straw. I told him on the spot that I was through with
him and I went to pack my trunk. He came later to my room; he begged me
to remain, assured me that there wasn't anything to be angry at, that I
must excuse the ill-humoredness of old age ... He insisted so much that
I agreed to stay.
"I am nearing the end, Procopio," he said to me that evening. "I can't
live much longer. I am upon the verge of the grave. You will go to my
burial, Procopio. Under no circumstances will I excuse you. You shall
go, you shall pray over my tomb. And if you don't," he added, laughing,
"my ghost will come at night and pull you by the legs. Do you believe
in souls of the other world, Procopio?"
"Nonsense!"
"And why don't you, you blockhead?" he replied passionately, with
distended eyes.
That is how he was in his peaceful intervals; what he was during his
attacks of anger, you may well imagine!