BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
_BOOKS BY ISAAC GOLDBERG_
STUDIES IN SPANISH-AMERICAN LITERATURE
THE DRAMA OF TRANSITION
BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
BRAZILIAN
LITERATURE
ISAAC GOLDBERG, PH.D.
WITH A FOREWORD BY
J. D. M. FORD
_Smith Professor of the French and Spanish Languages,
Harvard University_
NEW YORK ALFRED · A · KNOPF MCMXXII
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
_Published, September, 1922_
_Set up and printed by the Veil-Bellou Co., Binghamton, N. Y._
_Paper supplied by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y._
_Bound by the H. Wolf Estate, New York, N. Y._
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO BURTON KLINE
of the _Philadelphia Public Ledger_
_Dear Burton:_
_You were, some eight years ago, my guide into the thorny mazes
of Journalism, and printed, in the_ Boston Evening Transcript,
_my first articles upon Spanish and Portuguese American
letters. This is but a small return for the friendship since
then established._
_I. G._
FOREWORD
Brazil is preparing to commemorate worthily the centenary of her
independence. The world outside is bidden to the feast, and to
beautiful Rio de Janeiro many nations are sending their envoys with
felicitations and gifts. Our own country, the United States of North
America, is mindful of her duty and her privilege on this occasion,
and accredited delegates are bearing her congratulations to her
ever-faithful associate in the promoting of peace and fraternity
throughout the Western Hemisphere. Perhaps it will not be taken amiss,
if the scholar and critic add his testimonial to the expressions of
good-will coming from all sides. What more fitting than that a scholar
and critic of our United States should join the chorus and voice an
honest appreciation of Brazilian letters?
Dr. Goldberg, who has already paid ample tribute to the literary
output of Spanish-speaking America, gives proof now of the catholicity
of his interest by surveying the whole course of literature in
Portuguese-speaking America, the vast land of Brazil, and by analyzing
the compositions of certain outstanding figures among the writers of
the region. He knows at first hand the authors and the works that he
treats; he knows what native and foreign critics have to say about
them; he expresses unreservedly his own opinion about them. He gives
praise where praise is due, and, in kindly fashion, he puts stricture
upon that which calls for stricture. On the whole, his pages contain
more laudation than censure; and this is as it should be, for very
many of the literary achievements of colonial, imperial and republican
Brazil are unquestionably of lasting worth. His laudation, moreover, is
uttered without any tinge of that condescension which European critics
deem it incumbent upon them to manifest when they pass judgment on the
culture of North or South America.
To his fellow-citizens of the United States of North America Dr.
Goldberg now presents an opportunity of viewing aspects of the soul
of a noble Southern land, their constant ally. Brazil’s political and
commercial importance they know well, but her literary significance
has not been so evident to them. If, reading his words, they conceive
respect for Brazilian effort and accomplishment in the world of
letters, his reward will be truly great; and that reward is truly
deserved.
J. D. M. FORD.
PREFACE
The plans for this book, as well as for my _Studies in Spanish-American
Literature_, were conceived during the years 1910-1912 while I was
engaged in research work under Professor J. D. M. Ford, head of the
Department of Romance Languages, Harvard University. It was not merely
that text-books were lacking in both the Spanish-American and the
Brazilian fields, for my interest is centred upon aesthetic pleasure
rather than upon the depersonalized transmission of facts. A yawning
gap of ignorance separated us then from the America that does not
speak English, nor was the ignorance all on our side. Commercial
opportunities, more than cultural curiosity, served to impart an
impetus to the study of Spanish and soon we were reading fiction not
only from Spain but from Spanish America. In so far as the mercantile
spirit was responsible for this broader literary interest, it performed
an undoubted service to art by widening our horizons, but one should
be wary about overestimating the permanent gain. Unfortunately, the
phonographic iteration of diplomatic platitudes brings continents no
nearer, unless it be for the mad purposes of war. If, then, we are, as
a people, quite as far as ever from Spanish America, what shall we say
of our spiritual distance from the United States of Brazil?
I may be pardoned if I indicate, for example, that the language
of Brazil is not Spanish, but Portuguese. And should this simple
fact come as a surprise to any reader, let him not be unduly
overwhelmed, for he errs in distinguished company. Thus, Gustave Le
Bon,--he of crowd-psychology fame, speaks of South America in his
_Lois psychologiques des peuples_ (p. 131, 12th ed., 1916) as being
predominantly of _Spanish_ origin, divided into numerous republics,
of which the _Brazilian_ is one. As late as 1899, Vacher de Lapouge,
in his book on _L’Aryen_ could describe Brazil as a “vast negro state
returning to a state of savagery,” important, like Mexico, only in a
numerical way.[1] A small return, it seems, for Brazil’s intellectual
adherence to France, yet indicative of inexcusable ignorance not only
of Brazil, but of Mexico, where the cultural life, though concentrated,
is intense and productive of results that would repay examination. By
1899 Brazil had already produced a fairly respectable array of original
creative writers, while Mexican poetry was adding to the wealth of
new Spanish verse. Where specialists stray, then, who shall guide the
innocent layman? Nor are the Brazilians without their case against
the English, as we shall presently note in the discussion of a mooted
section of Buckle’s _History of Civilization in England_, though they
owe to more than one earlier Englishman a history of their land. Robert
Southey, for notable example, after the collapse of the “pantisocratic”
plans harboured by him and Coleridge, found the time to write a
_History of Brazil_ that is read today only somewhat less frequently
than his poetry.
The history of Brazil, like Cæsar’s unforgettable Gaul, is generally
divided into three parts: (1) from the discovery by the Portuguese in
1500 to the Independence in 1822; (2) the independent monarchy, which
lasted until 1889; (3) the republic, 1889 to the present. This, then,
is the centenary year of Brazilian independence and, as no English
book has yet sought to trace the literary history of the nation, the
occasion seems propitious for such a modest introductory one as this.
The fuller volume which it precedes I hope to have ready in a few
years, as a contribution to the study of the creative imagination on
this side of the Atlantic.
If, in any part, I seem dogmatic, I can but plead the exigencies of
space, which permit of little analytic discussion. I am no believer in
clear-cut formulæ as applied to art; where facts are presented, they
are given as succinctly as possible, while opinions are meant to be
suggestive rather than--ugly word!--definitive. The first part of the
book is devoted to an outline history of Brazilian literature; this
is meant to provide the background for a proper appreciation of the
representative figures treated in the second part. Since the first
part deals largely with facts, I have aimed to give the reader not
solely a personal view--which belongs more properly among the essays
of the second--but also a digest of the few authorities that have
treated the subject. It thus forms a reasonably adequate introduction
to the deeper study of Brazilian literature that may some day interest
a portion of our student body, and will, moreover, be of aid in
rounding out the sharp corners of a general knowledge of letters. More
important still, it should help to an appreciation of the Brazilian
national personality. As to the representative figures chosen for more
individual treatment, through one trait or another they emerge from
the background as Brazil’s contributions to something more than an
exclusively national interest, or else afford striking opportunity for
studying phases of the national mind.
Though none of the text as it here appears has been printed elsewhere,
some of the matter has formed the substance of articles that have
been published, between 1914 and the present, in the _Boston Evening
Transcript_, the _Christian Science Monitor_, the _Literary Review_
of the _New York Evening Post_, the _New York Times_, the _Bookman_,
the _Stratford Journal_ and other periodicals, to the management and
editors of which I am indebted not only for permission to reprint, but
for their readiness to accept such exotic material. For bibliographical
aid and other favours I am also thankful to the Brazilian Academy of
Letters, Carlos de Laet, President; to Manoel de Oliveira Lima, of the
Brazilian Academy; Gilberto Freyre; C. J. Babcock, Librarian of the
Columbus Memorial Library, Washington, D. C.; C. K. Jones; Prof. H.
R. Lang, Yale; Dr. A. C. Potter and the Harvard Library; to Sr. Helio
Lobo, Consul General in New York for Brazil; and to my friend Professor
J. D. M. Ford of Harvard. For the index I am indebted to my wife.
ISAAC GOLDBERG.
Roxbury, Massachusetts.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] I take these examples from Senhor De Carvalho. Students of
Brazilian letters will not find it difficult to multiply instances from
their personal experience with educated friends.
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY J. D. M. FORD vii
PREFACE ix
PART ONE
AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
I INTRODUCTORY--THE MILIEU AND THE RACIAL
BLEND--PORTUGUESE TRADITION, AFRICAN
AND NATIVE CONTRIBUTION--LINGUISTIC
MODIFICATION--NATIONALISM AND LITERATURE--PROBLEMS
OF THE FUTURE--PHASES
OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE 3
II PERIOD OF FORMATION (1500-1750) 28
III AUTONOMOUS DEVELOPMENT (1750-1830) 53
IV ROMANTIC TRANSFORMATION (1830-1870) 72
V CRITICAL, NATURALIST REACTION, (1870-1900)
PARNASSIANS, SYMBOLISTS, ETC. 102
PART TWO
REPRESENTATIVE PERSONALITIES
I CASTRO ALVES 129
II MACHADO DE ASSIS 142
III JOSÉ VERISSIMO 165
IV OLAVO BILAC 188
V EUCLYDES DA CUNHA 210
VI OLIVEIRA LIMA 222
VII GRAÇA ARANHA 234
VIII COELHO NETTO 248
IX FRANCISCA JULIA 261
X THE NEWER WRITERS 227
SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 293
INDEX 299
PART ONE
AN OUTLINE HISTORY OF BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
The Milieu and the Racial Blend--Portuguese Tradition, African
and Native Contributions--Linguistic Modification--Nationalism
and Literature--Problems of the Future--Phases of Brazilian
Literature.
I
Although Brazil was not discovered until the opening year of the
sixteenth century, the name had long hovered in the mediaeval
consciousness together with that of those other mysterious islands
which peopled the maps and the imaginations of the dark, fantastic
days. Down from the Greeks had come the legend of an Atlantis, which,
through the centuries assumed changing shapes, losing soon its status
as continent and becoming an island. Thus, in a map of the Atlas
Medicis, dating back to 1351, there is registered a Brazil. The name
varied from Braçir, Brazil, Brazylle to O’Brasile, and the position
shifted with equal instability; now the mythical island was near the
Azores, now near the western coast of the British Isles. Charles
Squire, in his _The Mythology of the British Islands_,[1] relates that
according to legend, the gods having lost their celestial dwelling,
deliberated upon some earthly substitute. Into their discussion came
a paradise beyond the sea,--a western island variously described as
a land of promise, of felicity and of youth, and as the “island of
Breasal” or “Hy-Breasail.” It is supposed that some of the early
discoverers, imagining that they had come upon the island Eden,
named it Brazil in much the same way that Columbus named the Indies,
considering his quest for India at last successful.
However this may be, the first name officially given to Brazil was The
Land of the True (or Holy) Cross; only later did the name Brazil, said
to have been bestowed by King Emanuel of Portugal, replace the pious
title. There is something symbolic in the change; brazil[2] is the name
of the reddish dyewood which became so important commercially that it
caused naval combats and Portuguese-French rivalry, leading to the
effective occupation of the land by the Portuguese. The beam of the
cross yielded to a humbler wood as the national designation, just as
the pious pretensions of the early colonizers quickly vanished before
their impious greed.
The early reports of the newly discovered land lived up to the
paradisical visions that had partly inspired the quest. Truly here
was a land of promise, a terrestrial paradise that made men dip their
pens in milk and honey when they wrote of its wonders. Vaz de Caminha,
in what has been called the nation’s “baptismal certificate,” grew
rhapsodical in vain; Vespucci,--he for whom the American continent was
named,--actually termed it an earthly paradise, but the Portuguese were
slow to value the new possession; the cross was not a cross of gold.
Nobrega, in 1549, exaggerated the extent of the new discovery even as
others were to exaggerate the variety and magic of its fauna and flora;
he considered that it occupied no less than two-thirds of the world’s
area. Padre Anchieta, the noble leader of the Jesuits, repeated (1585)
Vespucci’s glorification and thought the new land not inferior to
Portugal, and thus ran the litany of adoration from the topographical
pen of Gabriel Soares to the chronicler Cardim, to the pompous
Rocha Pitta, and--now with realistic modifications aplenty--down
to our own day, when Graça Aranha, by the very title of his novel
_Chanaan_, reveals his conception of his native country as the Land of
Promise. From the very beginning the new discovery had captivated the
imaginations of the Europeans; to this day its chief quality is the
imagination which Senhor Aranha, in a speech at the Sorbonne (1913)
has distinguished from the imagination of other peoples. “In Brazil,”
he explained, “the collective trait is the imagination. It is not the
faculty of idealization, nor the creation of life through esthetic
expression, nor the predominance of thought; it is rather the illusion
that comes from the representation of the universe, the state of magic,
in which reality is dissipated and is transformed into an image.… The
distant roots of this imagination may be found in the souls of the
various races that met amidst the lavishness of tropical nature. Each
people brought to the fusion its own melancholy. Each, having arrived
with a spirit full of the terror of several gods, with the anguish
of memories of a past forever lost, was possessed by the indefinable
uneasiness of the foreign land. Thus was developed that implacable
sensibility which magnifies and distorts things, which alternately
exalts and depresses the spirits, which translates anxieties and
desires; a troubled source of poetry and religion, through which we
aspire to the possession of the Infinite, only to lose ourselves at
once in the Nirvana of inaction and day-dreaming.” Benedicto Costa[3]
has likened this same imagination to the Brazilian forest, with its
“disorder and opulence, its vigour and languor; trees that last for
centuries and flowers that bloom but a few moments; lianas that live
upon the sap of other growths; the brilliancy of orchids, the voices
of birds of iridescent coloration, the heat.… There is in the soul
of every Brazilian the same contrasts that characterize the tropical
forest.”[4]
Brazil, however, is not all forest any more than, intellectually, it is
all tropical confusion. There are mountains and valleys and extensive
coasts, and each region has a distinguishing influence upon the
inhabitant. Thus the climate of the sertão[5] (interior highlands) is
less variable and far more salubrious than that of the littoral. “Man
here represents perfectly the traits of the surroundings into which he
is born and where he dwells: the _sertanejo_ (i. e., the inhabitant
of the sertão) is sombre, thin, mistrustful and superstitious, rarely
aggressive, rash in his impulses, as silent as the vast plains that
surround him, calm in gesture, laconic in speech, and, above all, sunk
in an inexpressible melancholy that is in his eyes, in his mysterious
countenance, in all the rough curves of his agile body, which is rather
slender than muscular. The man of the coast is nervous, of acute
sensibility; he can smile and laugh, he has a brilliant imagination and
is a boisterous, turbulent thinker; he is an artist, preferring colored
images to abstract ideas; he is slender, of well-proportioned lines,
speaks at his best when improvising, discusses affairs with the utmost
ease, and at times with daring, and generally respects only his own
opinions; he is almost always proud and bold. The man of the sertão,
for example, is Euclydes da Cunha; the man of the coast, Joaquim
Nabuco.”[6]
It is in connection with the climate of Brazil that her writers have
taken Henry Thomas Buckle to task; the passages responsible for the
trouble occur in Chapter II of the famous _History of Civilization in
England_, wherein the investigator considers the “influence exercised
by physical laws over the organization of society and over the
character of individuals.” I quote the original passages from Buckle,
and give the refutation, which was originally made by the indefatigable
polemist Sylvio Romero.
The trade wind, blowing on the eastern coast of South America,
and proceeding from the east, crosses the Atlantic ocean, and
therefore reaches the land charged with the vapours accumulated
in its passage. These vapours, on touching the shore, are,
at periodical intervals, condensed into rain; and as their
progress westward is checked by that gigantic chain of the
Andes, which they are unable to pass, they pour the whole of
their moisture on Brazil, which, in consequence, is often
deluged by the most destructive torrents. This abundant supply,
being aided by that vast river-system peculiar to the eastern
part of America, and being also accompanied by heat, has also
stimulated the soil into an activity unequalled in any other
part of the world. Brazil, which is nearly as large as the
whole of Europe, is covered with a vegetation of incredible
profusion. Indeed, so rank and luxuriant is the growth, that
Nature seems to riot in the very wantonness of its power.…
Such is the flow and abundance of life by which Brazil is
marked above all other countries of the earth. But, amid this
pomp and splendour of Nature, no place is left for Man. He
is reduced to insignificance by the majesty with which he is
surrounded. The forces that oppose him are so formidable, that
he has never been able to make head against them, never able to
rally against their accumulated pressure. The whole of Brazil,
notwithstanding its immense apparent advantages, has always
remained entirely uncivilized, its inhabitants, wandering
savages, incompetent to resist these obstacles which the very
bounty of Nature had put in their way.… The mountains are too
high to scale, the rivers are too wide to bridge; everything is
contrived to keep back the human mind, and repress its rising
ambition. It is thus that the energies of Nature have hampered
the spirit of Man. Nowhere else is there so painful a contrast
between the grandeur of the external world and the littleness
of the internal. And the mind, cowed by this unequal struggle,
has not only been unable to advance, but without foreign aid it
would undoubtedly have receded. For even at present, with all
the improvements constantly introduced from Europe, there are
no real signs of progress.… These considerations explain why
it is, that in the whole of Brazil there are no monuments even
of the most imperfect civilization; no evidence that the people
had, at any period, raised themselves above the state in which
they were found when their country was first discovered.
In his _Historia da Litteratura Brasileira_,[7] Romero devotes his
third chapter to setting Buckle right. Brazil, he declares, far from
suffering excessive rainfall, is subject to calamitous and destructive
droughts. The Englishman, who never visited Brazil, errs likewise in
his conception of the country’s natural wonders, which he exaggerates
in the traditional fashion that was handed down by the earliest comers.
Despite the presence of the Amazon, the rivers in general are small,
not the largest in the world; the mountains, similarly, far from
rearing their crests into unattainable cloudy heights, are of the
fourth and fifth order when compared with their fellows of the old
world or the new. Neither are the animals in Brazil more gigantic and
ferocious than elsewhere. “Our fauna,” writes Romero, “is neither the
richest nor the most terrible in the world. We haven’t the elephant,
the camel, the hippopotamus, the lion, the tiger, the rhinoceros, the
zebra, the giraffe, the buffalo, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the
condor and the eagle.” Buckle speaks of Brazil’s unrivalled fertility
as an impediment; the truth is that her fertility is not unrivalled,
nor is it an impediment. In conclusion, “Buckle is right in the picture
he draws of our backwardness, but wrong in the determination of its
causes.” According to Romero, three chief reasons are to be adduced;
these are (1) natural, (2) ethnic and (3) moral. To the first belongs
the excessive heat, in conjunction with the droughts in the major part
of the country, as well as the malignant fevers prevalent on the coast.
Chief among the second is the “relative incapacity” of the three races
that comprise the population. To the last belong the “historic factors
called politics, legislation, habits, customs, which are effects that
afterward act as causes.”
Ronaldo de Carvalho[8] considers Romero’s reply somewhat timid,
inasmuch as he accepts, erroneously, many of Buckle’s conclusions.
Buckle’s passage “is not, as it appeared to the illustrious Brazilian
writer, ‘true in a general sense.’ Yet it should ‘be meditated upon
by all Brazilians’, that they may see what a dangerous snare it is to
rely so much, in our inveterate fondness for things foreign, upon the
notions imported from the intellectual markets on the other side of
the Atlantic.… Buckle’s error consisted in considering the evolution
of peoples solely under the influence of physical and geographical
factors; more enduring than these are the ethnico-historical factors,
which are much more important and far more powerful than the first.”
De Carvalho adds little to Romero’s refutation, which, in substance,
he repeats. At the time that Buckle’s first volume was originally
published (1857), Brazilian literature had long entered upon an
autonomous career and was in the throes of Romanticism, which in
Brazil was an era of intense and highly fruitful production. He can
hardly be blamed for his ignorance on this score, when an authority
like Ferdinand Wolf, writing his _Le Brésil Litteraire_ some six
years later, is accused by the querulous Romero of setting down many
laughable exaggerations.
II
Three ethnic strains have combined to produce the Brazilian of today:
(1) the Portuguese, (2) the native Indian, (3) the African Negro, who
was brought in as a slave by the Portuguese.
The native element, known as the Brazilian-Guarany, at the time of the
discovery knew no metals; they possessed a rudimentary knowledge of
weaving, and some of them practised ceramics; their instruments were
of polished stone, and their fishing and hunting implements were of
the most primitive. The form of organization was rough. “Some spoke
a rich language of delicate accents and varied expression; they had
traditional customs and were skilful in the arts of war and peace;
others, however, were coarse, deficient in culture, roaming in nomadic
bands along the coast or amidst the high sertões. Some respected
certain rules of morality and religion, in which, for example, the
family ties were sacred.…”[9] Others dwelt in a certain “embryonic
socialism” which permitted free love and the participation of woman
in masculine pursuits. Ethnologists are not agreed upon the religious
status of the tribes, hovering between the hypotheses of polytheism and
anthropomorphic animism; the latter is more likely.
The Portuguese came at the height of their national glory. The
sixteenth century, famed among them for its physical prowess, is also
the epoch of Camões, Sá de Miranda, Bernardim Ribeiro and Gil Vicente.
As to the Negro, his history in Brazil is much the same as that of the
black slave in the United States, except that, owing to the proportions
of interbreeding, the “color line” is less tightly drawn in the
southern republic.
Two chief ethnic periods of formation have been distinguished in
Brazil’s development, the first from the XVIth century to the end of
the XVIIIth; the second, from the opening of the XIXth century to the
present day. In the first period there was, chiefly, a crossing of
the Portuguese with the Indian (_mameluco_), of the Portuguese with
the Negro (_mulato_) and of the Indian with the Negro (_cafuso_).
Later interbreeding becomes more complex, owing to the influx of new
immigrants from Europe (Italians and Germans in particular, and Slavs
in the south), and to the abolition of black slavery. So that the
question has arisen whether the future of the land will be in the
hands of the Luso-Brazilian or the Teuto-Italo-Brazilian. Brazilians
naturally favour the former eventuality and in order to insure
dominance by the Portuguese-Brazilian element propose new systems
of colonization as well as immigration zones. Romero reached the
conclusion that the Brazilian people did not constitute a race, but
rather a fusion. As to whether this was a good or an evil he answered,
in his “scientificist” way, that it was a fact, and that this should
be sufficient. Since the Indian is fast disappearing and as traffic in
blacks was abolished in 1851, and slavery in 1888, white predominance
seems assured. “Every Brazilian,” said Romero, “is a mestee, if not in
blood, in ideas.” So that white supremacy, never an unmixed blessing,
does not, and cannot under the circumstances, imply an unmixed
mentality.
III
What of the effect of this milieu and this racial blend upon the
nation’s tongue and its creative output? The Brazilian is by nature
melancholy, for melancholy is an attribute of each of the three
streams that flow in his blood. The peculiar, haunting sadness of
the Portuguese lyric muse is summed up in their untranslatable word
“saudade”;[10] both the conquered native and the subjected black are
sad, the first through the bepuzzled contact with superior natural
forces, the second through the wretchedness of his economic position.
It has been recognized that the climate of Brazil has resulted in a
lyrism sweeter, softer and more passionate than that of the Portuguese.
“Our language,” says Romero, “is more musical and eloquent, our
imagination more opulent.” So, too, De Carvalho: “Brazilian prosody
has more delicate accents than the Portuguese and numerous interesting
peculiarities.”
In the matter of linguistic modification, as of racial blend and
national psychology, we of the North have problems similar to those
of the Brazilians,--problems often enough obscured by unscientific,
sentimental fixations or political dogma. The simple fact is that
life, in language as in biology, is change. Whether we are concerned
with the evolution of English in the United States, of Spanish in the
cluster of Spanish-American republics, or of Portuguese in Brazil,
change is the inevitable law. For the Spanish of Spanish-America, Remy
de Gourmont, with his insatiable appetite for novelty, originated
the term neo-Spanish. It met with much opposition from the purists,
yet it recognizes the ineluctable course of speech. The noted
Colombian philologist Rufino Cuervo, in a controversy with the genial
conservative Valera, voiced his belief that the Spanish of the new
world would grow more and more unlike the parent tongue.[11] In the
same spirit, if with most unacademic hilariousness, Mencken has, in
_The American Language_,[12] indicated the lines of cleavage between
English and “American.” Brazilian scholars have naturally assumed a
similar attitude toward their own language and have, likewise, met with
the opposition of the purists. It does not matter, for the purpose of
the present discussion, whether the linguistic cleavage in any of the
instances here given will eventually prove so definite as to originate
new tongues. Such an outcome is far less probable today than it was,
say, in the epoch when Latin, through its vulgar form, was breaking
up into the Romance languages. Widespread education and the printing
press are conserving influences, acting as a check upon capricious
modification.
One of the soundest and most sensible documents upon the Portuguese
language in Brazil comes from the pen of the admirable critic José
Verissimo.[13] “As a matter of fact,” he writes, “save perhaps in the
really Portuguese period of our literature, which merely reproduced
in an inferior fashion the ideas, the composition, the style and the
language of the Portuguese (already entered upon its decadence),
authors never wrote in Brazil as in Portugal; the masters of language
abroad never had disciples here to rival them or even emulate them.…
It would be a pure absurdity, then, to expect the Brazilian, the North
American or the Spanish-American to write the classic tongue of his
mother country.”
Chaucer wrote “It am I” where we would say “It is I” and where current
colloquial usage, perhaps foreshadowing the accepted standard of
tomorrow, says “It’s me.” English changes in England; why shall it
cease to change in the United States? And justly, Verissimo asks a
similar question for Brazil. “I have always felt,” he remarks somewhat
farther on, “that the Portuguese tongue never attained the discipline
and the relative grammatical and lexical fixity that other languages
arrived at. I do not believe that among cultured tongues there is one
that has given rise to so many controversial cases, or to so many and
so diverse contradictions among its leading writers.” The fight about
the collocation of personal pronouns is waged so earnestly in Brazil
that it has become as funny, in some of its aspects, as the quarrel of
the “lo-istas” and the “le-istas” in Spain. And so true are Verissimo’s
words that as late as March, 1921, a writer could complain in the
_Revista do Brazil_[14] that “we are at the very height of linguistic
bolshevism”; the very next month, indeed, the editorial board of the
same representative intellectual organ found it necessary to comment
upon the various systems of orthography employed by its contributors
and to designate a choice.[15] Verissimo, in accordance with A. H.
Sayce, takes as his standard of grammatical correctness that which is
“accepted by the great body of those who speak a language, not what is
laid down by a grammarian.” Still more to the point, Verissimo, who was
a man of exemplary honesty and fearlessness in a milieu that easily
tempts to flattery and the other social amenities, declares that “if
we are by language Portuguese, if through that tongue our literature
is but a branch of the Portuguese, we have already almost ceased to
be such … because of our fund of ideas and notions, which were all
constituted outside of Portuguese influence.” The important thing,
then, is “to have something to say, an idea to express, a thought to
transmit. Without this, however deep his grammatical knowledge of the
language, however perfectly he apes the classics, no man is a writer.”
Platitudinous, perhaps, but how often some platitudes bear repetition!
The language of Brazil, then, is not the Portuguese of Lisbon. From
the phonological viewpoint there is less palatalization of the final
_s_ and _z_ than is customary in Portugal; Brazil has a real diphthong
_ou_, which in Lisbonese has become a close _o_ or the diphthong _oi_.
Its pronunciation of the diphthong _ei_ is true, whereas in Lisbon this
approximates to _ai_ (with _a_ as in English _above_, or like the _u_
of _cut_). Neither is the grammar identical with that of Portugal.
“The truth is, that by correcting ourselves we run the danger of
mutilating ideas and sentiments that are not merely personal. It is no
longer the language that we are purifying; it is our spirit that we
are subjecting to inexplicable servility. To speak differently is not
to speak incorrectly.… To change a word or an inflexion of ours for a
different one of Coimbra[16] is to alter the value of both in favor of
artificial and deceptive uniformity.”[17]
Brazilianisms, so-called, make their appearance very early; they are
already present in the letters sent by the Jesuits, as well as in the
old chronicles. New plants, new fruits, new animals compelled new
words. Native terms enriched the vocabulary. Of course, as has happened
with us, often a word for which the new nation is reproached turns out
to be an original importation from the motherland. One of the oldest
documents in the history of Brazilianisms appeared in Paris during the
first quarter of the XIXth century and is reprinted by João Ribeiro
as a rarity little known to his countrymen; it formed part of the
_Introduction à l’Atlas ethnographique du globe_, prepared by Adrien
Balbi and covering the races and languages of the world. The Portuguese
section was entrusted to Domingos Borges de Barros, baron and later
viscount de Pedra Branca, a warm advocate of Brazilian independence,
then recently achieved. This, according to Ribeiro, is supposed to
constitute the “first theoretical contribution” to the study of
Brazilianisms. It is written in French, and because of its documentary
importance I translate it in good measure:
“Languages reveal the manners and the character of peoples. That of the
Portuguese has the savor of their religious, martial traits; thus the
words _honnête_, _galant_, _éate_, _bizarre_, etc., possess a meaning
quite different from that they have in French. The Portuguese tongue
abounds in terms and phrases for the expression of impulsive movements
and strong actions. In Portuguese one strikes with everything; and when
the Frenchman, for example, feels the need of adding the word _coup_ to
the thing with which he does the striking, the Portuguese expresses it
with the word of the instrument alone. One says, in French, _un coup de
pierre_; in Portuguese, _pedrada_ (a blow with a stone); _un coup de
couteau_ is expressed in Portuguese by _facada_ (a knife thrust) and so
on.…
“Without becoming unidiomatic, one may boldly form superlatives and
diminutives of every adjective; this is done sometimes even with
nouns. Harshness of the pronunciation has accompanied the arrogance
of expression.… But this tongue, transported to Brazil, breathes the
gentleness of the climate and of the character of its inhabitants; it
has gained in usage and in the expression of tender sentiments, and
while it has preserved all its energy it possesses more amenity.…
“To this first difference, which embraces the generality of the
Brazilian idiom, one must add that of words which have altogether
changed in accepted meaning, as well as several other expressions which
do not exist in the Portuguese language and which have been either
borrowed from the natives or imported into Brazil by the inhabitants of
the various oversea colonies of Portugal.”
There follow some eight words that have changed meaning, such, for
example, as _faceira_, signifying lower jaw in Portugal, but coquette
in Brazil; as a matter of fact, Ribeiro shows that the Portuguese
critics who censured this “Brazilianism” did not know the history of
their own tongue. In the XVIIth century _faceira_ was synonymous with
_pelintra_, _petimêtre_, _elegante_ (respectively, poor fellow, dandy,
fashionable youth); it became obsolete in Portugal, but in Brazil was
preserved with exclusive application to the feminine. The Brazilian
words unknown in Portugal are some fifty in number upon the Baron’s
list.
Costa finds that Portuguese, crossing the Atlantic, “almost doubled its
vocabulary, accepting and assimilating a mass of words from the Indian
and the Negro. Through the influence of the climate, through the new
ethnic elements,--the voluptuous, indolent Negro and Indian, passionate
to the point of crime and sacrifice,--the pronunciation of Portuguese
by the Brazilian acquired, so to say, a musical modulation, slow,
chanting, soft,--a language impregnated with poesy and languor, quite
different from that spoken in Portugal.”[18]
IV
A new milieu and a racial amalgamation that effect changes in speech
are bound soon or late to produce a new orientation in literature. The
question whether that literature is largely derivative or independent
is relatively unimportant and academic, as is the analogous question
concerning the essential difference of language. The important
consideration for us is that the law of change is operating, and that
the change is in the direction of independence. Much has been written
upon the subject of nationalism in art--too much, indeed,--and of
this, altogether too large a part has been needlessly obscured by the
fatuities of the narrowly nationalistic mind. There is, of course,
such a thing as national character, though even this has been overdone
by writers until the traits thus considered have been so stencilled
upon popular thought that they resemble rather caricatures than
characteristics. True nationalism in literature is largely a product
of the writer’s unconscious mind; it is a spontaneous manifestation,
and no intensity of set purpose can create it unless the psychological
substratum is there. For the rest, literature belongs to art rather
than to nationality, to esthetics rather than to politics and
geography.[19] The consideration of literature by nations, then, is
itself the province of the historian of ideas; it is, however, a useful
method of co-ordinating our knowledge and of explaining the personality
of a country. If I bring up the matter here at all it is because such
a writer as Sylvio Romero, intent upon emphasizing national themes,
now and again distorts the image of his subject, mistaking civic
virtue and patriotic aspiration for esthetic values, or worse still,
deliberately exalting the former over the latter. The same Romero,
for example,--a volcanic personality who never erred upon the side of
modesty, false or true,--speaks thus of his own poetry: “… I initiated
the reaction against Romanticism in 1870.…” And how did he initiate
it? By calling for a poetry in agreement with contemporary philosophy.
Now, it is no more the business of poetry to agree with contemporary
philosophy than for it to “agree” with contemporary nationalism.
Goethe, reproached for not having taken up arms in the German War of
Liberation, “or at least co-operating as a poet,” replied that it would
have all been well enough to have written martial verse within sound of
the enemy’s horses; however, “that was not my life and not my business,
but that of Theodor Körner. His war-songs suit him perfectly. But to
me, who am not of a warlike nature and who have no warlike sense,
war-songs would have been a mask which would have fitted my face very
badly.… I have never affected anything in my poetry.… I have never
uttered anything which I have not experienced, and which has not urged
me to production. I have only composed love-songs when I have loved.
How could I write songs of hatred without hating!” Those are the words
of an artist; they could not be understood by the honourable gentleman
who not so long ago complained in the British parliament because the
poet laureate, Mr. Robert Bridges, had not produced any appropriate
war-verse in celebration of the four years’ madness.
If, then, we note the gradual resurgence of the national spirit in
Brazilian letters, it is primarily as a contribution to a study of
the nation’s self-consciousness. The fact belongs to literary history;
only when vitalized by the breath of a commanding personality does it
enter the realm of art. The history of our own United States literature
raises similar problems, which have compelled the editors of _The
Cambridge History of American Literature_ to make certain reservations.
“To write the intellectual history of America from the modern esthetic
standpoint is to miss precisely what makes it significant among
modern literatures, namely, that for two centuries the main energy of
Americans went into exploration, settlement, labour for sustenance,
religion and statecraft. For nearly two hundred years a people with
the same traditions and with the same intellectual capacities as their
contemporaries across the sea found themselves obliged to dispense with
art for art.”[20] The words may stand almost unaltered for Brazil.
It is indicative, however, that where this condition favoured prose
as against verse in the United States, verse in Brazil flourished
from the start and bulks altogether too large in the national output.
We may take it, then, as axiomatic that Brazilian literature is not
exclusively national; no literature is, and any attempt to keep it
rigidly true to a norm chosen through a mistaken identification of
art with geography and politics is merely a retarding influence. Like
all derivative literatures, Brazilian literature displays outside
influences more strongly than do the older literatures with a tradition
of continuity behind them. The history of all letters is largely that
of intellectual cross-fertilization.
From its early days down to the end of the XVIIIth century,
the literature of Brazil is dominated by Portugal; the land,
intellectually as well as economically, is a colony. The stirrings of
the century reach Brazil around 1750, and the interval from then to
1830, the date of the Romanticist triumph in France, marks what has
been termed a transitional epoch. After 1830, letters in Brazil display
a decidedly autonomous tendency (long forecast, for that matter, in the
previous phases), and exhibit that diversity which has characterized
French literature since the Romantics went out of power. For it is
France that forms the chief influence over latter-day Brazilian
letters. So true is this that Costa, with personal exaggeration,
can write: “I consider our present literature, although written in
Portuguese, as a transatlantic branch of the marvellous, intoxicating
French literature.”[21] There can be no doubt as to the immense
influence exercised upon the letters of Spanish and Portuguese America
by France. A Spanish cleric,[22] author of an imposing fourteen-volume
history of Spanish literature on both shores of the Atlantic, has even
made out France as the arch villainess, who with her wiles has always
managed to corrupt the normally healthy realism of the Spanish soul.
Only yesterday, in Brazil, a similar, if less ingenious, attack was
launched against the same country on the score of its denationalizing
effect. Yet it is France which was chiefly responsible for that
modernism (1888-) which infused new life into the language and art of
Spanish America, later (1898) affecting the motherland itself. And if
literary currents have since, in Spanish America, veered to a new-world
attitude, so are they turning in Brazil. From this to the realization
that Art has no nationality is a forward step; some day it will be
taken. As in the United States, so in Brazil, side by side with the
purists and the traditionalists a new school is springing up,--native
yet not necessarily national in a narrow sense; a genuine national
personality is being forged, whence will come the literature of the
future.
As to the position of the writer in Brazil and Spanish America, it is
still a very precarious one, not alone from the economic viewpoint
but from the climatological. “Intellectual labour in Brazil,” wrote
Romero, “is torture. Wherefore we produce little; we quickly weary,
age and soon die.… The nation needs a dietetic regimen … more than a
sound political one. The Brazilian is an ill-balanced being, impaired
at the very root of existence; made rather to complain than to invent,
contemplative rather than thoughtful; more lyrical and fond of dreams
and resounding rhetoric than of scientific, demonstrable facts.” Such a
short-lived, handicapped populace has everything to do with literature,
says this historian. “It explains the precocity of our talents, their
speedy exhaustion, our facility in learning and the superficiality of
our inventive faculties.”
Should the writer conquer these difficulties, others await him. The
reading public, especially in earlier days, was always small. “They say
that Brazil has a population of about 13,000,000,” comments a character
in one of Coelho Netto’s numerous novels. “Of that number 12,800,000
can’t read. Of the remaining 200,000, 150,000 read only newspapers,
50,000 read French books, 30,000 read translations. Fifteen thousand
others read the catechism and pious books, 2,000 study Auguste Comte,
and 1,000 purchase Brazilian works.” And the foreigners? To which
the speaker replies, “They don’t read us. This is a lost country.”
Allowing for original overstatement, the figures do not, of course,
hold for today, when the population is more than twice the number in
the quotation, when Netto himself goes into edition after edition and,
together with a few of his favoured confrères, has been translated
into French and English and other languages. But they illustrate a
fundamental truth. Literature in Brazil has been, literally, a triumph
of mind over matter. Taken as a whole it is thus, at this stage, not
so much an esthetic as an autonomic affirmation. Just as the nation,
ethnologically, represents the fusion of three races, with the whites
at the head, so, intellectually, does it represent a fusion of
Portuguese tradition, native spontaneity and modern European culture,
with France still predominant.
* * * * *
We may recapitulate the preceding chapter in the following paragraph:
Brazilian literature derives chiefly from the Portuguese race, language
and tradition as modified by the blending of the colonizers with the
native Indians and the imported African slaves. At first an imitative
prolongation of the Portuguese heritage, it gradually acquires an
autonomous character, entering later into the universal currents
of literature as represented by European and particularly French
culture. French ascendency is definitely established in 1830, and even
well into the twentieth century most English, German, Russian and
Scandinavian works come in through the medium of French criticism and
assimilation.[23]
V
No two literary historians of Brazil agree upon a plan of presentation.
Fernandez Pinheiro (1872) and De Carvalho (1919) reduce the phases to
a minimum of three; the first, somewhat too neatly, divides them into
that of the Formative Period (XVIth through XVIIth century), the Period
of Development (XVIIIth century), the Period of Reform (XIXth century);
the talented De Carvalho accepts Romero’s first period, from 1500 to
1750, calling it that of Portuguese dominance, inserts a Transition
period from 1750 to the date of the triumph of French Romanticism in
1830, and labels the subsequent phase the Autonomous epoch. This is
better than Wolf’s five divisions (1863) and the no less than sixteen
suggested by the restless Romero in the résumé that he wrote in 1900
for the _Livro do Centenario_. I am inclined, on the whole, to favour
the division suggested by Romero in his _Historia da Literatura
Brasileira_ (1902).[24]
Period of Formation: 1500-1750
Autonomous Development: 1750-1830
Romantic Transformation: 1830-1870
Critical, Naturalist Reaction, followed by
Parnassians, Symbolists, etc.: 1870-
The fourth division allows for the decidedly eclectic tendencies
subsequent upon the decline of Romanticism.
Accordingly, the four chapters that follow will deal succinctly
with these successive phrases of the nation’s literature. Not so
much separate works or men as the suffusing spirit will engage our
attention; what we are here interested in is the formation and
development of the Brazilian imaginative creative personality and its
salient products.[25]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] London, 1905. Page 113.
[2] Cf. Spanish and Portuguese _brasa_, a live coal. Also, English
brazier.
[3] Le Roman au Brésil. Paris, 1918.
[4] Sylvio Romero (See _Litteratura Contemporanea_, Rio de Janeiro,
no date, pages 45-46, chapter upon the poet Luiz Murat) refers in
characteristic fashion to the Brazilian habit of overstating the
case of the native imagination. There is no audacious flight, he
declares; no soaring of eagles and condors. “Whether we examine the
popular literature or the cultured, we find overwhelming proof of this
assertion. Our popular novels and anonymous songs are scant in plot,
ingenious imaginings, marvelous imagery, which are so common in their
Slavic, Celtic, Greek and Germanic congeners. And the contribution
brought by the negroes and indigenous tribes are even poorer than the
part that came to us from the Portuguese. Cultivated literature … is
even inferior to the popular productions from the standpoint of the
imagination.… Our imagination, which is of simply decorative type, is
the imagination of lyric spirits, of the sweet, monodic poetry of new
souls and young peoples.”
[5] Sertão. Literally, interior, midland part. It refers here to
the plateau of the Brazilian interior. In the opening pages of his
excellent _A Brazilian Mystic_, R. B. Cunninghame-Graham suggests as a
periphrasis, “wooded, back-lying highlands.” The German _hinterland_
conveys something of the idea.
[6] Ronaldo de Carvalho. _Pequena Historia da Literatura Brasileira._
Rio de Janeiro, 1919. Pp. 13-14. For Euclydes da Cunha, see the special
chapter devoted to him in part two. Joaquim Nabuco (1849-1910) was a
distinguished publicist and writer, born in Pernambuco. In 1905 he was
ambassador to the United States.
[7] Rio. 1902. (2a Edição, melhorada pelo auctor.)
[8] Op. Cit. 16-17.
[9] De Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 27.
[10] Saudade. Compare English _longing_, _yearning_, or German
_Sehnsucht_.
[11] Rufino José Cuervo (1842-1911) was called by Menéndez y Pelayo the
greatest Spanish philologist of the Nineteenth Century.
A species of national pride finds vent in philological channels through
the discovery of “localisms” in each of the Spanish-American republics.
At the most this is of dialectic or sub-dialectic importance, but it
illustrates an undoubted trend and supports Cuervo’s contentions.
[12] New York, 1921. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
[13] Estudos de Literatura Brazileira. Sexta serie. Rio de Janeiro,
1907. Pp. 47-133.
[14] An important monthly published at São Paulo, then under the
editorship of Srs. Afranio Peixoto and Monteiro Lobato.
[15] Note, for example, the various spellings of the word _literature_
here used as in the originals.
[16] The famous Portuguese seat of learning at Coimbra.
[17] João Ribeiro. A Lingua Nacional. São Paulo. 1921.
[18] Varnhagen, in his Introduction to the _Florilegio da Poesia
Brazileira_ (Vol. I of the two volumes that appeared in Lisbon in 1850,
pages 19-20), has some interesting remarks upon the early hispanization
of Portuguese in Brazil. Among such effects of Spanish upon Brazilian
Portuguese he notes the transposition of the possessive pronouns;
the opening of all vowels, thus avoiding the elision of final _e_ or
converting final _o_ into _u_; the pronunciation of _s_ at the end of a
syllable as _s_ instead of as _sh_, which is the Portuguese rule.
[19] The wise Goethe once said to Eckermann: “The poet, as a man and
citizen, will love his native land; but the native land of his poetic
powers and poetic action is the good, noble and beautiful, which is
confined to no particular province or country, and which he seizes
upon and forms wherever he finds it. Therein is he like the eagle, who
hovers with free gaze over whole countries, and to whom it is of no
consequence whether the hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia
or in Saxony.… And then, what is meant by love of one’s country?
What is meant by patriotic deeds? If the poet has employed a life in
battling with pernicious prejudice, in setting aside narrow views, in
enlightening the minds, purifying the tastes, ennobling the feelings
and thoughts of his countrymen, what better could he have done? how
could he have acted more patriotically?”
[20] New York, 1917. P. X.
[21] Op. cit. P. 48.
[22] Julio Cejador y Frauca. _Historia de la Lengua y Literatura
Castellana_, Madrid, 1915 to the present.
[23] In their _Compendio de Historia da Literatura Brasileira_ (1909,
Rio, 2a edição refundida) Sylvio Romero and João Ribeiro point out the
existence of a certain Germanism from 1870 to 1889, due chiefly to the
constant labours of Tobias Barreto. Italian influence is very strong in
law, and that of the United States in political organization. As will
be seen in a later chapter, the United States had, through Cooper, a
share in the “Indianism” of the Brazilian Romanticists. Our Longfellow,
Hawthorne, Whitman and Poe are well known, the latter pair through
French rather than the original channels.
[24] Rio. Second edition, Revised
[25] This by no means implies acceptance of Romero’s critical
standards. See, for details, the Selective Bibliography at the back of
the book.