Its historic importance is less to be questioned, though it has

not created a school. Costa’s very characterization of it as a

critico-philosophical novel contains a criticism, which is further

brought out in his short concluding chapter upon his personal theory

regarding the Brazilian novel. For here he suggests as the coming type

what he calls the _esthetico-social_ novel,--“the theory of art for

art’s sake employed in representing the social moment of a people.” I

am not concerned with this inartistic theory; inartistic because it

would choose the subject for the artist, who alone has the right to

select and combine his materials. Neither am I concerned with Costa’s

uncomprehending attitude toward the Russian novel, in which he can find

only folly, cruelty and delirium! It is a large world, and we must each

write what is in ourselves, not what preceptive critics would order

to fit in with their clamping theories. But I wish to point out that

Costa’s employment of the word _esthetic_ in his term for the novel of

Brazil’s future indicates, for all his praise of the Aranha book, a

sense of something lacking in _Chanaan_.

“The philosophy of Graça Aranha, … is a philosophy of hope, of

intoxication, before the glorious majesty of nature; it is like a

magnificent flower of dream, life, desire, aspiration toward happiness,

which returns incessantly to the august bosom of the eternal Pan. Man

passes on; he is a particle of dust that is blown for a moment across

the earth. His whole struggle aims to merge him with nature, through

religion, through love, through philosophy. It is this unceasing

anxiety to dissolve into something superior to ourselves that produces

the great mystics, the great lovers or the great philosophers; yet, at

bottom, life in itself is worth what the dust is worth that glitters

for an instant in the sun’s rays.… Such surely is the philosophy of

Graça Aranha; a sunflower gilded by thought, it turns eternally toward

fleeting happiness, in a perpetual desire to merge with it and drink

in the light through its petals.… Flower of serene, victorious life,

but with distant roots in the banks of the Ganges, nurtured by a vague

pessimism, in nihilism, in incipient anarchy, in the everlasting

beatitude of Nirvana.…”

This is the poetry of criticism, as _Chanaan_ is the poetry of the

novel,--a poetry not unlike Alencar’s _Guarany_, yet as unlike as

Alencar was to Aranha. Like Aranha’s novel, so this criticism, for all

its preoccupation with Brazilianism, is the result of European culture

acting upon the native spirit. It is but another revelation of the

literary axiom that renaissance springs from the impact of foreign

influences; parthenogenesis is as rare in literature as in life.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See, for citations from Ferrero and _Chanaan_, the English version

of the book (Boston, 1920) by M. J. Lorente.

[2] In such passages as these Senhor Aranha seems to fall into the

exaggeration of that very imagination which he has sought to interpret

to foreigners. Araripe Junior, in a study of Gregorio Mattos, coined

the word _obnulation_ to signify the transformation worked upon early

settlers by their new surroundings,--a retrogressive subsidence into

the savage state. Here Milkau seems at once to fear and prophesy a new

“obnulation.”

VIII

COELHO NETTO

As Bilac is the poet of Brazilian voluptuousness, Coelho Netto is its

novelist. But there is this essential difference: Bilac etches his

lines while Netto splashes the colours over his canvas with unthinking

prodigality. Bilac is the silver stream glittering along through the

landscape that it reflects with the transmuting touch of its own

borrowed silver; Netto is the gushing torrent that sweeps everything

along in its path, part and parcel of the surrounding exuberance.

“Our literature lacks original character,” says the talkative Gomes

in _A Capital Federal_, one of Netto’s earliest novels (1893),--less

a novel, indeed, than a series of impressions in which not the

least element is the fairly unceasing chatter of its persons. “It

is not really a national literature because, unhappily, nobody

concerns himself with the nation. The eyes of our poets scan the

constellations of other heavens, the waters of other rivers, the

verdure of other forests.” Again: “We are still a people in process

of formation,--still at the beginning of life and yet, at the age

when Greece was lyrical, in the youthful days in which all men try to

compose poems of religion and hope for the shelter of the soul, we

despair, we are pessimistic.… By conviction? Because of suffering?

Absolutely not. Scarcely by imitation. We lament in the cradle and ask

for death, Nirvana. We begin reading with the Book of Job. Show me

our Romantic period, which is, so to speak, the adolescence of Art,

in its second phase, after the renaissance. We had none. We leaped

into naturalism, which is analysis, and already we are headed for the

cachexy of decadentism.…” There is much to be said against the plaints

of this citation, whether one consider its nationalistic implications

or its insinuation that Brazil’s Romantic period lacked genuineness.

I quote it, however, to show that at the very beginning of his career

Netto intended a conscious reorientation of the Brazilian novel away

from the naturalism of Azevedo in the direction of what we may term

neo-romanticism. Both men are concerned with what blurred thinking so

readily calls the baser passions; both are sensualists, each envisaging

life not so much through a different theory as through a different

temperament.

Netto is the Anselmo Ribas of his early books, wherein already appears

the voluptuary, the creature of extravagant language and unbridled

imagination, the weaver of tangled imagery, the wielder of a copious

vocabulary that has been estimated at as high as 20,000 words. And

that voluptuary appears everywhere, in the images, the narrative,

the thoughts. “Amber-hued wine that seems to sing in its glasses a

dithyramb of gold,--impatient wine that seethes and foams,--wine that

rages like the mighty ocean,--ambrosia of a new era,--live, intelligent

wine,--wine with a soul.” Such is the wine that is drunk by Ribas

and his friend Gomes, who has his scents for each colour, sound and

feeling. When the silks of a lady rustle, the noise is comparable to

the sounds “made by the flocks of wild pigeons when they raise their

flight on the riverbanks of my native province.” In his work, as in

this simile, his sensuousness is mingled with the primitivity of mother

earth. He has written much of the city life, and has traveled with his

pen through all the forms, but he is strongest when closest to that

primitive urge. I prefer him, for short tales, in such an early work

as _Sertão_; for the novel, in such a concise miniature masterpiece as

_Rei Negro_.

Henrique Maximiano Coelho Netto was born on February 21, 1864, in the

city of Caxias, department of Maranhão, of a Portuguese father and an

Indian mother. In 1870 the family moved to Rio de Janeiro. From his

slave attendant Eva he imbibed a wealth of Brazilian folk lore; from

Maria, the Portuguese housekeeper, he drank in (and with what avidity

his later work reveals) the common heritage of Oriental tales. Another

powerful influence (and this, too, is duly chronicled in _A Capital

Federal_) was his uncle Rezende, a book-keeper with a taste for the

Portuguese and Latin classics. For the fundamental traits of Netto

as a creative spirit one need hardly go farther than these childhood

impressions. Here we have his mixed blood, his predilection for the

native lore and exotic artistry, his preference for the ancient writers

and a fondness for the Portuguese classics that reveals itself in his

not infrequently archaic language. Some of his pages, Verissimo has

shown, would be better understood in Portugal than in Brazil.

Though his early education lacked method, already at the age of eight

he read Cicero; he pursued his studies at various institutions, never

remaining through the complete number of years. Like most Brazilians,

he began with a sonnet, followed by a number of poems which

fortunately, he never issued; his newspaper experience commenced in the

_Gazeta da Tarde_, 1887. Unlike most Brazilians he wrested a living

from the nation by his pen, and 1892 found him teaching the history of

the arts. His restlessness, however, seems to keep him flitting from

place to place and from interest to interest. In 1900 he is found in

Campinas teaching literature, remaining for three years. In 1909 he is

back in Rio at the Gymnasio Nacional, lecturing upon letters. From that

year until 1917 he represents the state of Maranhão in the national

assembly. Today finds him busily at work revising the long list of his

labours and issuing them with as keen an interest as if they were the

first fruits of his imagination.

“Even to this day,” he confessed to an interviewer a few years ago, “I

feel the influence of the first period of my life in the sertão. It was

the histories, the legends, the tales heard in my childhood,--Negro

stories filled with fear, legends of _caboclos_ palpitant with sorcery,

tales of white men, the phantasy of the sun, the perfume of the forest,

the dream of civilized folk.… Never did the mixture of ideas and

race cease to predominate, and even now it makes itself felt in my

eclecticism.… My imagination is the resultant of the soul of Negro,

_caboclo_ and white.” The criticism is born out by a study of his many

books, most of which, as the author himself would be the first to

agree, will be speedily forgotten in the excellence of the salient few.

Neo-romantic though he be, Netto is no believer in the false Indianism

that for a time held sway in the native letters. His affection for the

Portuguese tongue, which he considers the most plastic of languages,

does not preclude a belief in a Brazilian literature. Asked whether

he was religious--and here again reading of his representative books

bears witness to his self-knowledge--he replied, “Very. I don’t know

whether I believe in Lord Christ, or in Lord Nature, but I believe in

the immanent principle of divinity. And perhaps, for this reason, I am

one of the rare men who hope.”

“One may say of him,” writes Costa, “what Taine said of Balzac: ‘he is

a sort of literary elephant, capable of bearing prodigious burdens,

but slow of gait.’” And before Costa, Netto said of himself that he

was a “Trappist of labor,--what the French call a _bête de somme_.”

Better than any one else Verissimo, upon whom Costa largely draws for

his consideration of Netto, has defined the qualities of the prolific

polygraph. Netto has tried all the styles; he has from the first

revealed that exuberance which makes of him a splashing colourist, a

vivid describer of externals, an expert in word pageantry; his prose is

often a wild cataract, a tangled forest. He is not a writer of ideas,

but of sensations. Erroneously he has termed himself a Hellenist and a

primitive, unmindful, as the scrupulous Verissimo has indicated, that

these terms in themselves are contradictory. Much of his labour is

“literature”; many of the novels are spoiled by their evident origin in

the desires of newspaper readers; his fondness for archaisms offends

linguistic common sense; even his descriptions, according to the

testimony of compatriots, are largely invented, no truer to the native

scene than are some of his characters to the native life. His defects,

notably carelessness in structure, are the defects of improvisation.

And yet--for all that his critics so justly note, he compels the

reader with the peculiar fascination that is his own--the attraction of

a volcano in eruption, of a beauty whose very exoticism draws even as

it repels.

He is that rare flower of the literary life,--a personality. His

rôle has been that of a minor Balzac, pouring forth volume after

volume in disconcerting and damaging confusion, coupled with that of

a Mæcenas-Hugo, encouraging the youth of his nation to ardent effort

in the arena of letters. “He reproduced,” says Costa, “unconsciously

in his own country what was being practised in France consciously by

the neo-romantics, the idealists,--all those who revolted against the

ever-increasing asperities of agonizing naturalism.”

* * * * *

Much of what is best in Netto is concentrated in one of his earliest

books, _Sertão_, published in 1896 at Rio de Janeiro. This is a

collection of some seven tales notable for atmosphere, power, poetry.

In _Praga_ (Curse), we are plunged deep into the past of superstition

and sensuality that lies in the sertanejo’s breast. Even burning with

fever, Raymundo wants Lucinda. In his delirium he recalls how he tried

to rob, and murdered, Mãi Dina the year before, the crime being laid

to gipsies; the murdered woman visits him in his visions and he has a

terrific battle with her; rushing forth from his cabin he encounters

a colt and mounting it, makes a mad dash, like a Mazeppa of the

sertão, for the salvation that he feels lies in flight. He exhausts

his mount and then makes his wandering way to Mãi Dina’s grave; in

a frenzy he begins to slash right and left with his knife, when a

misdirected blow sends him rolling off into a swamp, where he meets

his end. Not her curse but his conscience has wrought retribution.

This is a strange mingling of reality with fancy,--a sultry realism

sprinkled with scientific terms and heavy with tropical luxuriance of

phraseology; but there is poetry, too,--poetry of the indigenous mind,

as in the tale that follows: _O Enterro_ (The Burial). This account

of the burial of the Indian witch Tecai, a pagan for whom the pious

Christians of Itamina refuse even to give a coffin, is really a poem.

So too, largely, is _A Tapera_, a tale of mingled legend, wild dream

and virgin forest, in which the hermit of Santa Luzia recounts to the

teller, the tale of his beautiful wife Leonor. Within a year she proved

unfaithful and was discovered by her husband’s black foster-mother

Eva. On the night of the discovery she is slain by Eva and together

they bury her. The husband goes mad, taking it into his head that a

certain tree follows him vengefully about. Under that tree one day he

digs her up and morbidly caresses the skull. After hearing the tale,

the narrator dashes off on his horse at a mad gallop and is told,

three days later, that he must have dreamed all this in a fever. This

is strained situation, no doubt, but Netto knows how to produce the

Poesque thrill of horror, not merely by accumulation of detail but by

adroit manipulation of it. That he may at times achieve simplicity is

shown in _Firmin, O Vaqueiro_, in which the aged cattleman dies amidst

the songs and the animals that he loved and dominated so well, even

as he did the girls of his early hey-day. The song of the story might

serve as the epigraph to much of what Netto has written:

No coração de quem ama

Nasce uma flor que envenena.

Morena, essa flor que mata,

Chama-se paixão, morena.

In the heart of him who loves

Is born a flower with poison laden.

Dark-brown maiden, that flower which slays,--

They call it passion, dark-brown maiden.

For sex in Coelho Netto is at once the Fate that snares man and woman

and the Furies who pursue them. Take _Céga_ (Blind), one of the best

things he has done; it is a powerful tale, instinct with a deep human

pity, yet with no trace of preceptiveness. Life here goes and comes

with the radiant indifference of the sun that shines over all and of

the crickets that shrill their monotonous accompaniment. Anna Rosa,

married to Cabiúna, loses her sight at the birth of her child Felicia;

then, through the fever of the sertão, she loses her Cabiúna; then she

loses Felicia herself, because the maiden has kept her approaching

motherhood a secret until it is too late. The grandchild lives on as a

token of the continuity of life’s urge, which brooks no restraint of

human laws. Rarely does Netto attain such proportion in description,

narrative, psychology; here Nature may smile upon her folk, but

humour, gladness do not dwell for long amongst them. Even when humour

comes, it is the smiling face of fear, as in the account of _Mandoví_,

the _caboclo_ whose superstitious fancy was lashed into terror by a

forest bird that seemed to be calling his name and by a wraith-like

palm-leaf swaying in the moon. Most gruesome of all, yet of undeniable

fascination, is the concluding tale, _Os Velhos_, (The Aged Couple),--a

study in obsession that is passed on by an old husband to his faithful

wife. He suffers from a sort of catalepsy and fears that some day,

while in the death-like state, he will be buried alive. At last his

final attack slays him, but she, fearing lest he be not really gone,

lets him rot in his hut until the stench rises beyond endurance and the

village populace take matters into their own hands. It is harrowing,

repelling, morbid, but done with something of the skill that a Poe

attains in such a piece as _The Fall of the House of Usher_. The motif

of the ominous urubus--the black vultures of the southern continent--is

most artistically handled, as is that of the contagious obsession as

it grows upon the aged husband. Even here we discover evidence of

the author’s voluptuousness, inverted to be sure, until it becomes

a species of olfactory sadism. Few tales display such an effective

treatment of the sense of smell made into an inevitable, primary

attribute of the story itself.

_Rei Negro_ (The Black King) belongs to the maturity of the writer’s

career, having appeared in 1914. It is told in straightforward,

uninterrupted manner, without an entangling opulence of words or a

dazzling series of irrelevant descriptions. Equally at home in the

desert sertão, the glitter of life in the capital, or the _fazenda_

that is a link between the two, the author in this novel, presents as

background the lively, multifarious life upon a large plantation, and

as persons, the proprietors above and the virtual serfs below. The

bare plot is simplicity itself; a favourite slave, Macambira, marries

one of the black belles of the _fazenda_; the son of the proprietor,

indulged since his birth and sensuous with the double unrestraint of

climate and assumed racial prerogatives, attacks and overcomes the

prospective bride. Fright seals the woman’s lips, but when, after her

happy marriage, the child is born white, the truth must come out. The

proprietor’s efforts to hide his son’s misdeed--for the child is born

during a prolonged absence of the woman’s husband--prove abortive and

Macambira wreaks vengeance by slaying his wife’s assailant. The wife

has died in the agony of her knowledge and the birth; the husband, once

his revenge is accomplished, disappears beyond the mountains.

This is no common slave, however; Macambira, from the lips of the

old Balbina, hears thrilling accounts of his regal provenience. Here

he is but a humble black; among his own tribe, yonder in the African

wilds, he is a king, a black king. His wrongs are more than matters

of individual care; his slaying of Julinho is more than a personal

vengeance. It is the vengeance of a tribe, the assertion of a race, the

proclamation of human dignity. The greater to heighten the contrast

between black and white, Netto has made Macambira a chaste, Herculean

figure, proof against the temptations of mind and milieu to which

Julinho succumbs and is ultimately sacrificed. The environment is

drawn with swift, but effective strokes; the minor characters really

live; there is genuine pathos in the common situation out of which

the author draws uncommon results; there is poetic beauty, as well as

psychological power, to the legendary evocations of old Balbina as she

whispers the tale of greatness into the black king’s ears and arouses

his spirit to what to him is a mighty deed.

I have singled out, for more than passing comment, but two works of

some threescore and a half that range from short tales and newspaper

fragments to the novel, the drama, the text-book, speeches and essays

upon the education of women. For such early novels as _A Capital

Federal_ and such later ones as _A Conquista_ I can feel no literary

interest; they are, together with more than one other of their fellows,

valuable for a study of the day in which they were written and for

the instable temperament that produced them. Similarly, _Esphinge_, a

novel of exotic mystery that begins with high promise soon descends to

the helpless confusion which threatens all dallying with other-worldly

themes, particularly when the author would maintain contact with

external reality rather than plunge frankly and fearlessly into the

unseen realms. As to the short stories, one may open any collection

quite at random; the good will be strangely mixed with the bad. Now

the tale is a mere excuse for commentary, usually upon men and women

and passion, with Netto in cynical mood; nature becomes a luxuriant,

inciting procuress, as witness the long titular story in the collection

called _Agua de Juventa_ (Fountain of Youth),--a tale that, like more

than one of Netto’s, belongs rather to the liquor and cigars of stag

parties than to literature. Not, understand, because it is “immoral,”

but because it lacks the texture, the illumination, the significance,

of art. That he can be sentimental he shows in _Epithalamio_ of the

same collection; the propaganda impulse is so strong that it overflows

into tale after tale. And over it all, the fructifying ardour of his

voluptuousness, as prodigal as nature itself, which scatters myriad

seeds where only one can take root and thrive.

* * * * *

“Naturalism,” writes Costa, “with Aluizio de Azevedo was the epic of

the race’s sexual instincts; with Coelho Netto, neo-romanticism will be

the eternal praise of Nature,--the incessant and exaggerated exaltation

of the landscape.” Both “isms,” I believe, are but the reflection of

the authors’ temperaments; in Netto, Nature is but one of the symbols

of sex, one of the means of representing, expressing the superabundant

vitality. It is his imagination that works upon Nature rather than

Nature upon his imagination; he is a distorting mirror; he has not

created character, he has not invented situation, so much as he has

utilized men, places and events in the presentation of his overflowing

personality.

As a historical phenomenon, Coelho Netto represents veritably a

period in the national letters; literature becomes a self-supporting

profession--it had already been that with Aluizio de Azevedo--and the

production of a steady stream of novels for avid metropolitan readers

is as systematized as ever in our own supposedly more materialistic

nation. As an artist Netto is less significant; haste, disorientation

and constant supply of a none too exigent demand rendered him less

exacting with himself,--something that by nature he has never been in

any case, though he can view his labours objectively and note their

demerits. A spontaneous, not a premeditative artist, achieving, at

his most happy moments, a glowing union of creature and creation,--a

creation truly Amazonian in its prodigality of scene and sense, with

creatures as unreal, yet as fascinating as itself. This is no small

accomplishment, for it makes of the reader a participant, and that is

what all art, major or minor, must do. Netto here expresses not only

the ardent Brazilian dwelling amidst a phantasmagoria of the senses;

this overflow of primitive instincts is a human heritage that, with

its torch of life, makes us no less than the one touch of nature, kin

to the rest of the world. “The Colonel’s lady and Mary O’Grady are

sisters under the skin,” sang Kipling, to whom Netto has been rashly

compared. And changing the genders, the Colombian poet Silva has sung

in the poem Egalité of his _Gotas Amargas_ (Bitter Drops)

Juan Lanas, el mozo de la esquina,

es absolutamente igual

al Emperador de la China:

los dos son el mismo animal.

“Juan Lanas, the street-corner loafer is on absolute terms of equality

with the Emperor of China. They both are the selfsame beast.”

IX

FRANCISCA JULIA

Women have played an interesting, if necessarily minor part in the

material and cultural development of the South American republic.

The name of the world’s largest river--the Amazon, or, more exactly

speaking, the Amazons--is supposed to stand as a lasting tribute to

the bravery of the early women whom the explorer Orellana encountered

during his conquest of the mighty flood; according to this derivation,

by many considered fanciful, he named the river in honour of the

tribes’ fighting heroines, though a more likely source would be the

Indian word “amassona” (i. e., boat-destroyer, referring to the tidal

phenomenon known as _bore_ or _proroca_, which sometimes uproots trees

and sweeps away whole tracts of land). Centuries later, when one by

one the dependencies 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 Salvarieta is but

a symbol of South American gratitude to a host of women who fought

side by side with their husbands during the crucial days of the early

nineteenth century. One of them, Manuela la Tucumana, was even made an

officer in the Argentine army.

If women 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 agreeable arts of peace. When one considers

the great percentage of illiteracy that still prevails in Southern

America, and the inferior intellectual and social position that has

for years been the lot of women particularly in the Spanish and

Portuguese nations, it is surprising that woman’s prominence in the

literary world should be what it is. Yet the tradition--if tradition

it may be called--boasts a remarkable central figure in the person of

Santa Teresa, of sixteenth century Spain. “A miracle of genius” was

that famous lady, in Fitzmaurice-Kelly’s fulsome words, … “perhaps the

greatest woman who ever handled pen, the single one of all her sex who

stands beside the world’s most perfect masters.” In the next century,

Mexico produced a personality hardly less interesting in Sor Juana Ines

de la Cruz, (who only yesterday was indicated as her nation’s first

folklorist and feminist), blazoned forth to her audience as “la Musa

Decima mexicana,”--nothing less than the tenth muse, if you please, who

happened then to be residing in Mexico. And we of the North, in the

same century, ourselves boasted a tenth muse in the English-born Anne

Bradstreet of Massachusetts Colony, whose book of verses was published

in London, in 1650 (ten years after the original Massachusetts edition)

with the added line, “The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America.”[1]

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 spirits. Her poetry is remarkable for its virile passion; her

novel “Sab” is the Spanish “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” 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 great

deal of a man!” This, too, is in the tradition, for had not Sor Juana

Ines de la Cruz, as a girl, been so eager for learning that she begged

her parents to send her to the University of Mexico in male attire? She

was hardly more than eight at the time, to be sure, but the girl is

mother to the woman no less than the boy is father to the man.

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 conscienceless exploitation of

the Indians. In Peru, it would seem, fiction as a whole has been

left largely to the pens of women. Such names as Joana Manuele

Girriti de Belzu, Clorinda Matto and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonero

stand for higher aspiration rather than achievement, but they reveal

an unmistakable tendency. The latest addition to their number is

the youthful Angélica Palma, daughter of the famous author of the

_Tradiciones Perruanas_.

Brazil has not yet produced any woman who has secured the recognition

accorded to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz or to Gómez de Avellaneda; it

has, however, added some significant names to the Ibero-American

roster. To poetry it has given Narcisa Amalia, Adelina Vieira, Julia

Lopes d’Almeida, Zalina Rolim, and lastly Francisca Julia da Silva.

They are sisters in a choir that boasts choristers in every nation

of the Ibero-American group,--now a civic spirit like the Dominican

Salomé Ureña, who belongs to the latter half of the nineteenth century,

now such a more passionate continuator as the lady who writes in

Puerto Rico under the pseudonym of La Hija del Caribe (The Daughter

of the Carribees),--again the Sapphic abandon of Alfonsina Storni

of Argentina, the domestic charm of Maria Enriqueta of Mexico, the

pallid perfection of the Uruguayan Juana de Ibarbourou, the apostolic

intensity of Gabriela Mistral (Lucilla Godoy) of Chile, and the

youthful passion of Gilka Machado, youngest of the new Brazilians.

These women do not, as a rule, and despite some too broad assumptions

in South America as to the exclusively materialistic spirit of the

United States, enjoy the advantages of culture that are possessed by

our lady poets. There is no Amy Lowell among them to revel in the

smashing of canons and amuse herself with the erection of new ones

for others to smash. There is no atmosphere of Bohemianism and night

life in metropolitan cafés. Facile analogies might be drawn, but not

too much faith should be placed in them. Thus Maria Enriqueta would

suggest Sara Teasdale; Alfonsina Storni would similarly suggest Edna

St. Vincent Millay, who is indubitably her superior. Over them all,

except in the rare and welcome moments of spiritual rebellion, hovers

an air of domesticity, as if, upon venturing into the half-forbidden

precincts of art,--which means perfect expression and therefore is

“unwomanly,”--they carried with them something of that narrower home

and hearth which only now they are abandoning.

“It is not easy,” wrote Verissimo upon the consideration of a volume of

poetry by Sra. D. Julia Cortines, “to speak freely of women as authors,

since, however much as writers they detach themselves from their sex,

the most elementary gallantry requires us to treat them solely as

women. I, who am very far from being a feminist (which is perhaps not

quite consistent with my social opinions), do not deny absolutely the

intellectual capacities of womankind, and, with the same impartiality

(at least, so I presume) I cannot discover in them any exceptional

qualities of heart or mind.… It may have been for this reason that the

Muse, who is a woman, never deigned to endow me with her favors and

denied me the gifts of poesy.… Happily, Brazilian poetesses are few

in number; unhappily, they are not good poets. Almost all, past and

present, are mediocre. There has been none up to this time who might

dispute a place with the half dozen of our best poets of the other sex.

I could never understand, or I understand it in a manner that could

hardly brook explanation, since woman according to current opinion is

far richer in matters of feeling than man, she has never given anything

really notable or extraordinary in art, which is chiefly feeling.… One

of the forces of art is sincerity, and woman, either because her own

psychological organism forbids it, or because the social organization

that limits her expansion has never consented to it, has never

been able to be sincere without endangering her privileges or even

declassifying herself.” Love, he continues, being the chief of lyric

themes, and woman prevented by social custom from really expressing

herself, the virtual silence of woman in art is inevitable.[2]

Some such reasoning as this explains the domesticity of the women

poets. It explains, too, I believe, why Francisca Julia, for whom a

number of Brazilian critics would claim a respectable place with the

men of her nation, embraced the Parnassian cult during the few years

that were vouchsafed her. She was, if her poems tell anything, an

ardent spirit; her passions were too great for the routine of civic

and domestic verse; she would do something more than merely transfer

her “kitchen, church and children” into homiletic poems. Lacking

either the courage or the temperament of an Alfonsina Storni, she

could express herself through an apparently cold and formal imagery.

Her early impassivity may have been the defence reaction of a highly

sensitive compassionate nature. Throughout her work she is, if we

must use terms, more “Parnassian” than a number of avowed men of that

cult, which had reached its crest in Brazil at the time Francisca

Julia was emerging from adolescence. She was little more than twenty

when her first collection, _Marmores_, appeared in 1895, and it is

common knowledge that she had been writing then for some six years for

such organs as the _Estado de São Paulo_ (one of the most important,

and the oldest, of Brazilian newspapers), the _Correio Paulistano_,

the _Diario Popular_, the _Semana_. Between _Marmores_ and the next

book, _Esphinges_, intervened some eight years. Late in 1920 she died,

and perhaps the crown of her recognition--for her ability had been

recognized with the publication of her first book--was the phrase from

the speech by Umberto de Campos in the Brazilian Academy of Letters,

on November 4th, several days after her burial. “If the Academy of

Letters, upon its establishment, had permitted the entrance of women

into its body,” declared the youngest of its members, “it would in this

hour be mourning a vacant chair.”[3]

As her poetry was cold imagery of her ardent inner life, so are the

titles of Francisca’s two books of verse symbols of her artistic aims.

_Marmores_ and _Esphinges_: the first, the marble of the statue,

external aspect of impassivity; the second, the silent sphinx, symbol

of internal passionlessness. She was a vestal tending the eternal

flame, but the fire was carved out of stone. Her artistic life traces

a curve from religious serenity and impassability to compassion,

thence to a sort of indifferentism. All this was inherent in her early

paganism, to which in later life she really returns. Her mastery of

form is, one feels, a mastery of her emotions; much of her poetry is

impassive, chiefly _a fior di labbra_, as the Italians would say,--on

the rim of her lips. Not that she is insincere. For, as there is a

sincerity of candour, so is there a sincerity of silence. The sphinx,

a poetic figure, cannot, from its very muteness, be a poet, though

its speechlessness lends itself to poetry. Francisca Julia, however

much she would be the sphinx, more than once gives the answers to her

own questionings. It is then that she is most at one with her art,

producing some of the finest poetry that has come out of modern Brazil.

Her _ars poetica_ is summed up in the two sonnets grouped under the

title _Musa Impassivel_ (Impassive Muse) and serving as the motto of

the collection _Marmores_.

I

Musa! um gesto siquer de dor ou de sincero

Lucto, jamais te afeie o candido semblante!

Deante de um Job, conserva o mesmo orgulho, deante

De um morto, o mesmo olhar e sobrecenho austero.

Em teus olhos não quero a lagrima; não quero

Em tua bocca o suave e idyllico descante.

Celebra ora um phantasma anguiforma de Dante,

Ora o vulto marcial de um guerreiro de Homero.

Dá-me o hemistichio de ouro, a imagem attractiva,

A rima, cujo som, de uma harmonia crebra,

Cante aos ouvidos d’alma; a estrophe limpa e viva;

Versos que lembrem, com os seus barbaros ruidos,

Ora o aspero rumor de un calháo que se quebra,

Ora o surdo rumor de marmores partidos.

II

O’ Musa, cujo olhar de pedra, que não chora,

Gela o sorriso ao labio e as lagrimas estanca!

Dá-me que eu vá comtigo, em liberdade franca,

Por esse grande espaço onde o impassivel mora.

Leva-me longe, ó Musa impassivel e branca!

Longe, acima do mundo, immensidade em fóra,

Onde, chammas lançando ao cortejo da aurora,

O aureo plaustro do sol nas nuvens solavanca.

Transporta-me de vez, numa ascenção ardente,

A’ deliciosa paz dos Olympicos-Lares

Onde os deuses pagãos vivem eternamente;

E onde, num longo olhar, eu possa ver comtigo

Passarem, através das brumas seculares,

Os Poetas e os Héroes do grande mundo antigo.[4]

This is genuine aristocracy of comportment; it is genuine attitude

rather than absence of feeling. Note that the poet’s Muse is not to

reveal the sign of her emotions lest they sully the beauty of her

countenance; the emotions, however, are there, and tears, at times,

fall from the stony eyes. Such emotion, in her finer work, is most

artistically blended with the aloofness that Francisca Julia sought.

Impassivity is a meaningless word for poets, since it cannot by very

nature seek to express itself, being the antithesis of expression;

withdrawal, however, is a legitimate artistic trait, and she exhibits

it in as successful a degree as has been attained by any poet of her

country. So much a part of her nature is her coyness, that even when

conquered by feminine pity she conveys her mood through an imagery none

the less effective for its indirection; as in _Dona Alda_:

Hoje Dona Alda madrugou. Ás costas

Solta a opulenta cabelleira de ouro,

Nos labios um sorriso de alegria,

Vae passear ao jardim; as flores, postas

Em longa fila, alegremente, em coro,

Saúdam-n’a: “Bom dia!”

Dona Alda segue … Segue-a uma andorinha:

Com seus raios de luz o sol a banha;

E Dona Alda caminha.…

Uma porção de folhas a acompanha.…

Caminha.… Como um fulgido brilhante

O seu olhar fulgura.

Mas--que cruel!--ao dar um passo adeante,

Emquanto a barra do roupão sofralda,

Pisa um cravo gentil de lactea alvura.…

E este, sob os seus pés, inda murmura:

“Obrigado, Dona Alda.”[5]

This is not poetry that shakes one to the depths, nor does it come from

one who was so shaken; but there is artistry in ivory as well as in

marble, and Francisca Julia here has caught the secret of the light

touch that stirs the deep response.

There is a remarkable sonnet that opens the collection _Esphinges_,

and I wonder whether it is not, in symbolized form, the keynote to the

woman’s poetic aloofness.

Read for the first time the _Dança de Centauras_ (Dance of the

Centaurs, and note that these centaurs are females); a sonnet of

sculptural, plastic beauty, you are likely to tell yourself, as vivid

as a bas-relief come suddenly to life. Read it again, more slowly, and

its impassivity seems to melt into concrete emotion; this is virgin

modesty hiding behind verse as at other times behind raiment. The poet

herself is in the dance of the centaurs and leads them in their flight

when Hercules appears. It is worth noting, too, that the poem does not

reach its climax until the very last words are spoken; the wild rout is

a mystery until the very end. Form and content thus truly become the

unity that they are in the artist’s original conception.

DANÇA DE CENTAURAS

Patas dianteiras no ar, boccas livres dos freios,

Núas, em grita, em ludo, entrecruzando as lanças,

Eil-as, garbosas vêm, na evolução das danças

Rudes, pompeando á luz a brancura dos seios.

A noite escuta, fulge o luar, gemem as franças,

Mil centauras a rir, em lutas e torneios,

Galopam livres, vão e veem, os peitos cheios

De ar, o cabello solto ao léo das auras mansas.

Empallidece o luar, a noite cae, madruga.…

A dança hyppica pára e logo atrôa o espaço

O galope infernal das centauras em fuga:

E’ que, longe ao clarão do luar que impallidece,

Enorme, acceso o olhar, bravo, do heróico braço

Pendente a clava argiva, Hercules apparece.[6]

It is the twilight and the night that bring to her lines their more

subjective moods; but even here, rarely do present emotions invade

her. It is as if she must feel by indirection, even as she writes--now

harking back to a longing, now looking forward unmoved, to the

inevitable end. Yet there are moments when the impassive muse forgets

her part; she strides down from her pedestal and cries out upon Nature

as a “perfidious mother,” creator, in the long succession of days and

nights, of so much vanity ever transforming itself. This Parnassianism

then, is the mask of pride. And in such a sonnet as _Angelus_ the mask

is thrown off:

Oft, at this hour, when my yearning speaks

Through the lips of night and the droning chimes,

Chanting ever of love whose grief o’erwhelms me,

I would be the sound, the night, full madly drunk

With darkness,--the quietude, yon melting cloud,--

Or merge with the light, dissolving altogether.

This pantheism is paralleled, in _Vidas Anteriores_ (Previous Lives)

by her consciousness of having lived, in the past, a multiplicity of

lives. It may be said, in general, that as a modern pagan she is far

more real than as the rhyming Christian she reveals herself in her few

attempts at religious poetry.

Shortly before her death she wrote a sonnet called _Esperança_ (Hope),

that is clear presentiment. She did not weaken at its approach; she

was, as near as is humanly possible, the impassive muse of her own

sonnets:

I know it’s a kindly road and the journey’s brief.

Her didactic works, _Livro da Infancia_, published in 1899, consisting

of prose and verse, and _Alma Infantil_, written in collaboration

with Julio Cesar da Silva, 1912, for school use, do not belong to her

major productions. It is significant of the status of the Brazilian

text-book, as well as of the varied tasks thrown upon the shoulders of

the educated in a continent where the major portion of the population

has been thus far condemned to illiteracy, when we see how frequently

even the major creative spirits of the country turn to the writing

of text-books. Yesterday Olavo Bilac, fellow Parnassian of Francisca

Julia, spared time for the labour; today Coelho Netto, Oliveira

Lima, Monteiro Lobato do so. Again and again is one reminded what a

sacrifice, what a luxury, is the creative life in a land that lacks

anything like the creative audience. And how much better off are we,

who are only on the threshold of a truly national literature?

* * * * *

It is not impossible that the fame of Francisca Julia da Silva will

grow with the coming years. She will be recognized not only as a gifted

woman who was one of the few to carry on, worthily, the difficult

perfection of Heredia, Leconte de Lisle, Theophile Gautier and their

fellows, but as the equal, when at her best, of Brazil’s foremost

Parnassians. There are not many sonnets in the poetry of Olavo Bilac,

who so generously received her, to match the sheer artistry of her

_Dance of the Centaurs_, her _Argonauts_, her _Impassive Muse_. Indeed,

compare the _Impassive Muse_ with Bilac’s over-ardent _Profissão de

Fe_ (Profession of Faith) and see whether the woman has not in the

very words and images and tonality of the piece exhibited the inner

and outer example of that Parnassianism which Bilac here expresses in

words rather than attains in spirit. Bilac, as we have seen, was too

passionate a nature not to warm all his statues to life; in Francisca,

as João Ribeiro said in his preface to _Marmores_, we find “ecstasy

rather than passion,”--a cold ecstasy, one might add, like the upper

regions of the atmosphere, which, though flooded with the sunlight, are

little warmed by its passage through them.

The same commentator suggests, as a possible reason for her acute

auditive sense, the short-sightedness from which she suffered. Her

poetry, indeed, is a hearing poetry, but a seeing one as well. The

few superior pieces she has left are among the rare productions of

Brazilian verse; they are, in that province, unsurpassed for their

blend of the proportion that we usually call classic with that

harmonious sensitivity which is supposedly the trait of refined

modernity. If in art it is the individual rather than the literature

that counts, and if in that individual’s labour it is only what we

consider best that really matters, I should venture the seemingly rash

statement that Francisca Julia da Silva is the equal, as a personality

in verse, of Machado de Assis. He, too, was a cold poet, even as

a Romantic, yet never attained the ecstasy of her salient pieces.

He, too, was withdrawn, aloof, and might have signed such a poem as

Francisca Julia’s _O Ribeirinho_ (The Streamlet), without any one being

the wiser. Yet his aloofness--speaking solely of his work in verse--was

on the whole lack of emotion, while hers is suppression, domination,

transmutation of it. She can be as banal as Wordsworth, and has written

in her _Inverno_ (Winter) probably two of the most prosaic lines of

verse that Brazilian poetry knows:

Das quatro estaçoes de todas,

O inverno é a peor, de certo.

Of all the four seasons

Winter’s certainly the worst.

She committed her childhood indiscretions, as do we all, though in less

abundance. At her best, however, (and neither is this too abundant)

she should rank with the few Brazilian creators who have produced a

charm that is sister to Keats’s eternal joy. She has no landscapes

labelled native; her longing is no mere conventional _saudade_; she

formed no preconceived notion of Brazilianism; she simply wrote, amidst

her labours, some two or more score lines that cannot be omitted from

any consideration of Brazilian poetry, because they enriched it with a

rare, sincere artistry that may find appreciation wherever the language

of men and women is beauty.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] These Tenth Muses are relatively common. In Portuguese letters,

among others, there are Soror Violante do Ceo (1601-93) and Bernarda

Ferreira de Lacerda (1595-1644).

[2] Mr. Havelock Ellis, with his customary lucidity and serenity,

discusses _The Mind of Woman_ (See _The Philosophy of Conflict_) in a

manner to suggest fruitful pursuit of the problem that Verissimo poses.

Had the Brazilian critic been more conversant with the newer poetry

by women--I refer to increasing frankness rather than to increasing

worth--he might have changed his mind as to the prohibitive influences

of social custom. The next fifty years will probably witness some

startling changes; among them some salutary ones.

[3] At least one Academician in Brazil has argued sensibly in favor of

woman’s admission to that body.

[4] Muse! Let not ever even a gesture of grief or of sincere feeling

spoil your serene countenance! Before a Job, preserve the same pride,

before a corpse, the same gaze, the same austere brow. I would have no

tears in your eyes; no soft, idyllic song upon your lips. Celebrate

now the serpent-like phantasm of a Dante, now the martial figure of

a Homeric warrior. Give me the hemistych of gold, the attractive

image, rhyme whose sound, like a compact harmony, sings to the ears of

the soul; the limpid, living strophe; verses that recall with their

barbarous accents now the rasping noise of breaking flint, now the

muffled sound of cracking marble.… Oh, Muse, whose stony eye that never

weeps freezes the smile upon the lip and stanches the flow of tears!

Let me go with you, in utter liberty, through those vast spaces where

the Impassive dwells. Take me far, oh white impassive Muse! Far above

the world into the immensity where, launching flames at the dawn’s

procession, the golden wain of the sun swings through the clouds.

Transport me in a flaming ascension, to the delicious peace of the

Olympic-Hearth where the pagan gods dwell eternally; and where, in a

long look, I may in your company watch pass by across the secular haze

the poets and the heroes of the great ancient days.

[5] Dona Alda rose early today. Her rich tresses flowed loosely golden

over her sides; on her lips a joyful smile; she goes for a walk in the

garden. The flowers, ranged in a long row, gleefully in chorus salute

her: “Good day!” Dona Alda continues.… A swallow follows her: the sun

bathes her in his light; and Dona Alda walks on.… A whirl of leaves

accompanies her.… She walks on.… Her glance glitters like a brilliant

flash. But--how cruel!--as she steps forward, holding up the hem of her

dress, she treads upon a tender carnation of lily whiteness.… Yet the

flower, beneath her feet, still murmurs, “Oh, thank you so much, Dona

Alda!”

[6] With their forefeet raised in the air, their mouths free of reins,

naked, interlacing their lances as they shout in their play, here

they come in all their beauty, tripping the mazes of their dance,

rudely displaying to the light the whiteness of their breasts. The

night hearkens, the moonlight shines, the tree-tops moan; a thousand

she-centaurs, laughing, playing, struggling, gallop freely on, go and

come, their bosoms filled with air, their tresses free to the blowing

of the zephyrs. The moonlight pales, night falls, and now dawn comes.…

The hyppic dance is stopped, and soon all space thunders with the mad

dash of the centaurs in flight; for, from afar, in the light of the

moon grown pale,--huge, with his eyes aflame, brave, with Argive club

hanging from his heroic arm, Hercules has appeared.

X

MONTEIRO LOBATO

Among recent literary currents that present several interesting phases

one should not overlook the nationalistic tendencies in Brazil,

championed so ardently and with such immediate effect by the most

active of the “new” spirits, Monteiro Lobato. Lobato is but little over

thirty-five and has at hand for his purpose an influential publishing

house in São Paulo; he is thus able to make himself heard and read as

well as felt; he seems to be, in the intellectual sense of the word,

a born propagandist; certainly he does not lack ink or courage and

whatever one may think of his ideas, he makes highly entertaining and

instructive reading. First and foremost he is the champion of the

national personality. And by that same token he becomes the enemy of

undue foreign influence upon the nation. As one reads his numerous

short stories, his crisp and vigorous criticisms and his essays, one

comes to the realization that, as far as Lobato is concerned, foreign

influence is chiefly French and in large measure to be condemned.

The profound effect of French literature upon Spanish and Portuguese

America is as undeniable as it is occasionally deleterious, but it

is possible to overstate the case against the French influence in

Brazil and, as one strikes in Lobato the same protest reiterated

time and again, one begins to feel that he is somewhat afflicted with

Gallophobia. Yet this is, after all, on his part, the over-emphasis of

earnestness rather than an absolute error in values. He is not lacking

in appreciation of the great Frenchmen; he does not seem to scorn the

use, as epigraph to one of his children’s books, a quotation in French

from Anatole France; he does not object to having some of his short

stories mentioned in the same breath with de Maupassant and, above all,

he recognizes the creative power of imitation, however paradoxical that

may sound. “Let us agree,” he writes, in the preface to his stimulating

collection of critiques, _Idéas de Jéca Tatú_, “that imitation is, in

fact, the greatest of creative forces. He imitates who assimilates

processes. Who copies, does not imitate; he steals. Who plagiarizes

does not imitate, he apes.” The whole book he presents as “a war-cry

in favor of personality.” At the bottom of Lobato’s nationalism is the

one valid foundation of art: sincerity. If he occasionally overdoes his

protest, he may well be forgiven for the sound basis of it; it is part

of his own personality to see things in the primary colors, to play the

national zealot not in any chauvinistic sense--he is no blind follower

of the administrative powers, no nationalist in the ugly sense of cheap

partisan drum-beating--but in the sense that true nationalism is the

logical development of the fatherland’s potentialities. A personally

independent fellow, then, who would achieve for his nation that same

independence.

* * * * *

The beginning of the World War found Monteiro Lobato established upon

a _fazenda_, far from the thoughts and centres of literature. It was

by accident that he discovered his gifts as a writer. The story is

told that one day, rendered indignant by the custom of setting fire to

the fields for cleansing purposes, and thus endangering the bordering

inhabitants, he sent a letter of protest to a large daily in São Paulo.

It seems that the letter was too important, too well-written, too

plainly indicative of natural literary talent, to be relegated to the

corner where readers’ jeremiads usually wail, and that, instead, it was

“featured” upon the first page. From that day the die was cast. The

episode, in my opinion, is far more important than it appears. For,

whatever form in which the man’s later writings are published, they

are in a more important degree just what this initial venture was: a

protest, a means of civic betterment, a national contribution. Turn

this letter and its mood into a short story and you have, say, such a

tale-message as _O Jardineiro Timotheo_, in which even a garden may

be transformed into a mute, many-hued plea for the native flora; make

politics of it, and you get such a genuinely humorous product as _A

Modern Torture_, from that strange collection called _Urupês_. Indeed

is not the piece _Urupês_ itself a critique and an exposition of the

indigenous “cobrizo”?

* * * * *

It was with the collection _Urupês_ that Monteiro Lobato definitely

established himself. In three years it has reached a sale that for

Brazil is truly phenomenal: twenty thousand copies. It has been

extravagantly praised by such divergent figures as the uncrowned

laureate Olavo Bilac (who might have had more than a few words to say

about legitimate French influence upon Brazilian poetry) and the

imposing Ruy Barbosa, who instinctively recognized the fundamentally

sociological value of Lobato’s labours. For of pure literature there

is little in the young Saint-Paulist. I fear that, together with a

similar group in Buenos Aires, he underestimates the esthetic element

in art, confusing it, perhaps, with the snobbish, aloof, vapoury

spirits who have a habit of infesting all movements with their neurotic

lucubrations. Yet such a view may do him injustice. His style, his

attitude, his product, are directly conditioned by the ambient in which

he works and the problems he has set out to solve. Less unjust, surely,

is the criticism that may be made against him when his earnestness

degenerates into special pleading, when his intense feeling tapers off

into sentimentality and when what was meant to be humour falls away

to caricature. From which it may be gathered that Lobato writes--or

rather reprints--too much; for plenty of good journalism should be left

where it first appeared and not be sent forth between covers. Also,

in an appreciable amount of his work, his execution lags behind his

intention, owing in no small measure to a lack of self-discipline and

an artistically unripe sincerity.

_Urupês_ was soon followed by _Idéas de Jéca Tatú_, his Jéca Tatú

being a fisherman of Parahyba, a “cobrizo,” first introduced in the

preceding book and symbolizing the inertia of the native. In the second

book, however, the ideas are anything but those of inertia; Lobato has

got into the skin of the fisherman and produced a series of admirable

essays and critiques. Of similar nature are the chapters embodied in

_Cidades Mortas_. _Negrinha_ is a collection of short stories. In

addition to being the author of these books, he is the editor of a

splendid magazine, _Revista do Brazil_, the publisher of volumes by

the rising generation of literary redeemers, instructor to his nation

in hygiene, and his energies flow over into yet other channels. He is

also the writer of several books for children. The best known of these

is _Narizinho Arrebitado_ or, as who should say _Little Snub-Nose_, and

with an appropriate blush I confess that the little girl’s adventures

among the flowers and creatures of her native land were responsible for

the theft of some hours from the study of fatter, less childish, tomes.

As one who would renovate the letters of his nation, Lobato naturally

has much to say, inside of Brazil and outside, of the former and

present figures of the country’s literature. His work in every phase is

first of all an act of nationalism.

From the exclusive stylistic standpoint Lobato is terse, vigorous,

intense, to the point. The chapters devoted to the creation of a style

(in _Jéca Tatú_) form a valid plea for a genuinely autochthonous art,

and it is instructive to see how he treats the question in its relation

to architecture. Brazil has native flora, fauna and mythology which

its writers are neglecting for the repetition of the hackneyed hosts

of Hellas. (Yet Lobato nods betimes and sees the Laocoön in a gnarled

tree.) He is an “anti-literary” writer, scorning the finer graces, yet,

besides betraying acute consciousness of being a writer, he employs

situations that have been overdone time and again, and worse still, in

plots that are no more Brazilian than they are Magyar or Senegalese.

Thus, in _O Bugio Moqueado_ we encounter a tale of a woman forced daily

to eat a dish prepared by her vindictive husband from the slain body of

her lover. It is characteristic that the Brazilian author heaps the

horror generously, without at all adding to the effect of the theme as

it appears in Greek mythology or in the lore of old Provence.

The truth would seem to be that at bottom Lobato is not a teller of

stories but a critic of men. His vein is distinctly satiric, ironic; he

has the gift of the caricaturist, and that is why so often his tales

run either into sentimentality or into the macabrous. When he tells a

tale of horror, it is not the uncannily graduated art of a Poe, but

rather the thing itself that is horrible. His innate didactic tendency

reveals itself not only in his frankly didactic labours, but in his

habit of prefixing to his tales a philosophical, commentative prelude.

Because he is a well-read, cosmopolitan person, his tales and comments

often possess that worldly significance which no amount of regional

outlook can wholly obscure; but because he is so intent upon sounding

the national note he spoils much of his writing by stepping onto the

pages in his own person.

At his best he suggests the arrival in Brazilian literature of a fresh,

spontaneous, creative power. Tales like _A Modern Torture_ (in which a

rural dabbler in politics, weary of his postal delivery “job,” turns

traitor to the old party and helps elect the new, only to be “rewarded”

with the same old “job”) are rare in any tongue and would not be out

of place in a collection by Chekhov or Twain. Here is humour served

by--and not in the service of--nation, nature and man. Similarly

_Choo-Pan!_ with its humorous opening and gradual progress to the

grim close, shows what can be done when a writer becomes the master

and not the slave of indigenous legend. A comparison of this tale

with a similar one, _The Tree That Kills_, may bring out the author’s

weakness and his strength. In the first, under peculiar circumstances,

a man meets his death through a tree that, according to native belief,

avenges the hewing down of its fellow. In the second, the _Tree That

Kills_ is explained as a sort of preface, then follows a tale of human

beings in which a foster-child, like the _Tree That Kills_, eats his

way into the love of a childless pair, only first to betray the husband

and then, after wearying of the woman, to attempt her life as well.

The first story, besides being well told, is made to appear intimately

Brazilian; the death of the man, who is a sot and has so bungled his

work that the structure was bound to topple over, is natural, and

actual belief in the legend is unnecessary; it colours the tale and

lends atmosphere. _The Tree That Kills_, on the other hand, is merely

another tale of the domestic triangle, no more Brazilian than anything

else, with a twist of retribution at the end that must have appealed

to the preacher hidden in Lobato; the analogy of the foster-son to the

tree is not an integral part of the tale; the story, in fact, is added

to the explanation of the tree parasite and is itself parasitical.

Lobato’s attitude toward education may be gleaned from his child’s book

_Little Snub-Nose_ and the epigraph from Anatole France. He wishes to

cultivate the imagination rather than cram the intellect. And even

in this second reader for public schools--refreshingly free of the

“I-see-a-cat” method--one can catch now and then his intention of

instructing and satirizing the elder population.

To this caustic spirit, the real Brazil--the Brazil that must set to

work stamping its impress upon the arts of the near future--lies in

the interior of the country. There he finds the genuine Brazilian,

uncontaminated by the “esperanto of ideas and customs” characteristic

of the centres that receive immigration from all over the world.

There he discovers the raw material for the real national art, as

distinguished from cities with their phantasmagoria of foreign

importations. And for that art of the interior he has found the great

precursor in Euclydes da Cunha--a truly remarkable writer upon whom

the wandering Scot, Richard Cunninghame-Graham, drew abundantly, as we

have seen, in his rare work upon that Brazilian mystic and fanatic,

Antonio Conselheiro. “It was Euclydes da Cunha,” writes Lobato in

his _Idéas de Jéca Tatú_, “who opened for us, in his _Sertões_, the

gates to the interior of the country. The Frenchified Brazilian of the

coast cities was astonished. Could there, then, be so many strong,

heroic, unpublished, formidable things back there?… He revealed us

to ourselves. We saw that Brazil isn’t São Paulo, with its Italian

contingent, nor Rio, with its Portuguese. Art beheld new perspectives

opened to it.”

* * * * *

To present a notion of Monteiro Lobato’s style and his general outlook,

I shall confine myself to translating an excerpt or two from his most

pithy volume, _Idéas de Jéca Tatú_.

One of the pivotal essays is that entitled _Esthetica Official_

(Official Esthetics). “The work of art,” it begins, “is indicated by

its coefficient of temperament, color and life--the three values that

produce its unity, deriving the one from man, the other from milieu,

the third from the moment. Art that flees this tripod of categories and

that has as its human-factor the _heimatlos_ person (the man of many

countries brought into evidence by the war); that has as _terroir_ the

world and as epoch all Time, will be a superb creation when volapuk

rules over the globe: until then, no!

“Whence we derive a logical conclusion: the artist grows in proportion

as he becomes nationalized. The work of art must reveal to the quickest

glance its origin, just as the races denote their ethnological group

through the individual type.”

Yet note how Lobato, for all his nationalism, in the very paragraph

that opens his somewhat uncritical critique, employs a German word,

soon followed by a French, and all this a few seconds before ridiculing

volapuk! Not that this need necessarily vitiate his argument, which

has, to my way of thinking, far stronger points against it. But it does

serve to indicate, I believe, that the world has grown too small for

the artificial insistence upon a nationalism in literature which only

too often proves the disguise of our primitive, unreasoned loyalties.

Lobato’s unconscious use of these foreign terms provided, at the very

moment he was denying it, a proof of the interpenetration of alien

cultures. He has, too strongly for art as we now understand it, the

regional outlook; for him Brazil is not the Brazil that we know on

the map, or know as a political entity; it is the interior. His very

nationalism refers, in this aspect, to but part of his own nation,

though, to be fair, it is his theory that sins more seriously than his

practice.

“Nietzsche,” he says elsewhere in the book, “served here as a pollen.

It is the mission of Nietzsche to fecundate whatever he touches.

No one leaves him shaped in the uniformity of a certain mould; he

leaves free, he leaves as _himself_. (The italics are Lobato’s.) His

aphorism--_Vademecum? Vadetecum!_--is the kernel of a liberating

philosophy. Would you follow me? Follow yourself!” Now this, allowing

for the personal modifications Nietzsche himself concentrates into

his crisp question and answer, is the attitude of an Ibsen, a Wagner;

in the new world, of a Darío, of a Rodó, and of all true leaders, who

would lead their followers to self-leadership. And once again Lobato

answers himself with his own citations, for he himself, showing the

effect of Nietzsche upon certain of the Brazilian writers--a liberating

effect, and one which helped them to a realization of their own

personalities--produces the most telling of arguments in favour of

legitimate foreign influences.

His characteristic attitude of indignation crops out at every turn.

In an essay upon _A Estatua do Patriarcha_, dedicated to the noble

figure of José Bonifacio de Andrade, he gives a patient summary of the

man’s achievements--as patient as his nervous manner and his trenchant

language can accomplish. As he approaches his climax, he becomes almost

telegraphic:

“He (that is, Bonifacio) works in the dark.

“His strength is faith.

“His arms, suggestion.

“His target, the cry of Ipiranga.

“The work that he is then accomplishing is too intense not to sweep

aside all obstacles thrust in his path; his power of suggestion is too

strong not to conquer the Prince Regent; his look too firm for the shot

not to hit the bull’s eye.

“He conquered.

“The fatherland went into housekeeping for itself and it was he who

ordered the arrangement of all the furniture and the standards of a

free life.

“This is José Bonifacio’s zenith. He is the Washington of the South.[1]

“Less fortunate, however, than Washington, he afterwards sees the

country take a direction that he foresaw was mistaken.

“He starts a struggle against the radical currents and against evil men.

“He loses the contest.…

“Brought to trial as a conspirator, he was absolved.

“He betook himself to the island of Paquetá and in 1838 died in the

city of Nitheroy.

“There you have José Bonifacio.”

There, incidentally, you have Monteiro Lobato, in the quivering vigour

of the phrase, in the emotional concentration. But all this has been

but the preparation for Lobato’s final coup.

“José Bonifacio is, beyond dispute, the greatest figure in our history.

“Very well: this man was a Paulist, (i. e., a native of São Paulo).

Born in Santos, in 1763. It is already a century since the Paulists

were struck with the idea of rearing him a statue. Not that he needs

the monument. In a most grandiose manner he reared one to himself

in the countless scientific memoirs that he published in Europe, the

greater part in German, never translated into his own tongue,--and in

his fecund political action in favour of the _fiat_ of nationality.

“It is we who need the monument, for its absence covers us with shame

and justifies the curse which from his place of exile he cast upon the

evil persons of the day.…”

Now, Monteiro Lobato’s nationalism, as I try to show, is not the narrow

cause that his theoretical writings would seem to indicate. It is, as

I said at the beginning, really an evidence of his eagerness for the

expansion of personality. But it is contaminated--and I believe that

is the proper word--by an intense local pride which vents itself, upon

occasion, as local scolding. The entire essay upon José Bonifacio was

written for the sake of the final sting. Not so much to exalt the great

figure as to glorify São Paulo and at the same time excoriate the

forgetful, the negligent Paulistas. It is such writing as this that

best reveals Lobato because it best expresses his central passion,

which is not the cult of artistic beauty but the criticism of social

failings.

This is at once a step backward and a step forward. Forward in the

civic sense, because Brazil needs the unflattering testimony of its own

more exigent sons and daughters,--and is Brazil alone in this need?

Backward in the artistic sense, because it tends to a confusion of

values. It vitiates, particularly in Lobato, the tales he tells until

it is difficult to say whether the tale points a moral or the moral

adorns the tale.

That Lobato is alive to the genuineness of legitimate foreign

influence he himself shows as well as any critic can for him, in the

essay upon _A Questão do Estylo_ (The Question of Style), in a succinct

paragraph upon Olavo Bilac’s poem _O Caçador de Esmeraldas_. “The poet

… when he composed The Emerald-Hunter, did not take from Corneille

a single word, nor from Anatole a single conceit, nor a night from

Musset, nor a cock from Rostand, nor frigidity from Leconte, nor an

acanthus from Greece, nor a virtue from Rome. But, without wishing it,

from the very fact that he was a modern open to all the winds that

blow, he took from Corneille the purity of language, from Musset poesy,

from Leconte elegance, from Greece the pure line, from Rome fortitude

of soul--and with the ancient-rough he made the new-beautiful.”

But what, he asks, shall we say of a poem composed of ill-assimilated

suggestions from without,--“in unskilled adaptations of foreign verses,

and with types of all the races? The ‘qu’il mourût’ of Corneille

in the mouth of a João Fernandez, who slays Ninon, mistress of the

colonel José da Silva e Souza, consul of Honduras in Thibet, because an

Egyptian fellah disagreed with Ibsen as to the action of Descartes in

the battle of Charleroi?…”

Even such a mixture does Lobato discover in the architecture of

latter-day São Paulo. But more to our present point: note how, as long

as Lobato sticks to actual example, his nationalism is a reasoned,

cautious application. As soon as he deserts fact for theory he steps

into caricature; nor is it, perhaps, by mere coincidence that the

longest essay in the book is upon Caricature in Brazil.

There can be no question as to the dynamic personality of this young

man. There can be little question as to the wholesome influence he

is wielding. Thus far, however, he is weakest when in his rôle as

short-story writer--with the important exceptions we have noted--and

strongest as a polemical critic. His personal gifts seem destined to

make of him a propagandist of the ironical, satirical sort, with a

marked inclination for caricature. One may safely hazard the opinion

that he has not yet, in the creative sense--that of transforming

reality, through imagination, into artistic life--found himself fully.

He is much more than a promise; it is only that his fulfilment is not

yet clearly defined.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Another “Washington of the South,” according to some Spanish

Americans, is Marshal Sucre Bolívar’s powerful associate. Bolívar

himself has been compared to Washington, perhaps most illuminatingly by

the notable Equatorian, Juan Montalvo, in his _Siete Tratados_.

[2] Some time after writing the article of which the above is an

amplification, I received from Senhor Lobato a letter which is of

sufficient importance to contemporary strivings in Brazil, and to the

life and purpose of Lobato himself, to merit partial translation. I

give the salient passages herewith:

“I was born on the 18th April, 1883, in Taubate, State of São Paulo,

the son of parents who owned a coffee estate. I initiated my studies

in that city and proceeded later to São Paulo, where I entered the

department of Law, being graduated, like everybody else, as a Bachelor

of Laws. Fond of literature, I read a great deal in my youth; my

favourite authors were Kipling, Maupassant, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky,

Balzac, Wells, Dickens, Camillo Castello Branco, Eça de Queiroz

and Machado de Assis … but I never let myself be dominated by any

one. I like to see with my own eyes, smell with my own nose. All my

work reveals this personal impression, almost always cruel, for, in

my opinion, we are the remnant of a race approaching elimination.

Brazil will be something in the future, but the man of today, the

Luso-Africano-Indio will pass out of existence, absorbed and eliminated

by other, stronger races … just as the primitive aborigine passed. Even

as the Portuguese caused the disappearance of the Indian, so will the

new races cause the disappearance of the hybrid Portuguese, whose rôle

in Brazilian civilization is already fulfilled, having consisted of the

vast labour of clearing the land by the destruction of the forests. The

language will remain, gradually more and more modified by the influence

of the new milieu, so different from the Lusitanian milieu.

“Brazil is an ailing country.” (In his pamphlet _Problema Vital_,

Lobato studies this problem, indicating that man will be victorious

over the tropical zone through the new arms of hygiene. The pamphlet

caused a turmoil throughout Brazil, and sides were at once formed, the

one considering Lobato a defamer of the nation, the other seeing in

it an act of sanative patriotism. As a result, a national program of

sanitation was inaugurated. This realism of approach, so characteristic

of Lobato, made of his figure Jéca Tatú a national symbol that has

in many minds replaced the idealized image of _Pery_, from Alencar’s

_Guarany_. _Jéca_ thus stands for the most recent critical reaction

against national romanticism.)

“I recognize now that I was cruel, but it was the only way of stirring

opinion in that huge whale of most rudimentary nervous system which is

my poor Brazil. I am not properly a literary man. I take no pleasure

in writing, nor do I attach the slightest importance to what is called

literary glory and similar follies. I am a particle of extremely

sensitive conscience that adopted the literary form,--fiction, the

conte, satire,--as the only means of being heard and heeded. I achieved

my aim and today I devote myself to the publishing business, where I

find a solid means of sustaining the great idea that in order to cure

an ailing person he must first be convinced that he is, in fact, a sick

man.”

Here, as elsewhere, Lobato’s theory is harsher than his practice. He

is, of course, a literary man and has achieved a distinctive style; but

he knows, as his letter hints, that his social strength is his literary

weakness.

SELECTIVE CRITICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

As the purpose of this book is largely introductory, the works listed

below have been chosen carefully as a miniature critical library for

the student. Numerous other volumes are mentioned in the footnotes of

the text. I have not considered it necessary to include here a number

of works that possess importance chiefly for the specialist.

FERDINAND DENIS. _Resumé de l’histoire littéraire du Portugal, suivi du

Resumé de l’histoire littéraire du Brésil._ Paris, 1826.

The chapters upon Brazilian letters occupy pages 513 to 601 of this

16mo book. The French cleric, with a style inclining toward eloquence,

makes highly pleasant reading, and the century that followed upon his

work has borne out more than one of his expectations. He realized, thus

early, the effect of the racial blend upon the imaginative output,

indicating the African for ardour, the Portuguese for chivalry, the

Indian native for dreaminess. As a resident upon the spot, he noted

the several-month droughts which Buckle, much to Romero’s indignation,

later failed to take into account. “America,” wrote Denis, “sparkling

with youth, ought to think thoughts as new and energetic as itself;

our literary glory cannot always illumine it with a light that grows

dim on crossing the seas, and which should vanish completely before

the primitive inspiration of a nation vibrant with energy.” Denis,

in his prophetic strain, even predicted that America would some day

visit Europe as Europe today visits Egypt, to witness the scenes of a

departed civilization. In general, he favours a distinctive, national

note. He is cursorily informative rather than critical, and susceptible

to few aesthetic values.

FERDINAND WOLF. _Le Brésil Littéraire. Histoire de la littérature

brésilienne suivie d’un choix de morceaux tires des meilleurs auteurs

b(r)ésiliens._ Berlin, 1863.

The quarto volume is dedicated to the Emperor of Brazil. Wolf, of

course, was a German; the book was translated into French at the

publisher’s request, in order to reach a larger audience. Its author

regarded it as “the first and only one to appear in Europe on the

subject.” Since Denis’s treatment forms a sort of appendix to his

Portuguese section, Wolf’s statement, understood as referring to an

independent volume upon Brazil, may be allowed to pass. The book is

chiefly one of facts and analyses of works. Of criticism in the higher

sense there is little, and what there is, is of the conventional sort.

There is a moral, anti-French outlook; a Teutonic preoccupation with

data; no glimmer of aesthetic criticism. Wolf’s style is far from the

amenable style of Denis.

FRANCISCO ADOLPHO DE VARNHAGEN. _Florilegio da Poesia Brasileira._

(Vols. I and II, Lisbon, 1850. Vol. III, Madrid, 1853.)

It is the _Introduction_ preceding the first volume of these noted

selections, together with the prefatory notes to the selections

themselves, that virtually begins the writing of Brazilian literary

history. Without this work Ferdinand Wolf could not have written his

_Le Brésil Littéraire_. All later investigators and critics have really

built upon Varnhagen’s foundations, tearing a stone away here and there

and substituting another, but leaving the structure fundamentally the

same.

SYLVIO ROMERO. _Historia da Litteratura Brasileira. 2a edição,

melhorada pelo auctor._ Rio Vol. I, 1902, Vol. II, 1903.

Romero is one of the most picturesque literary figures of the

nineteenth century. He was a born fighter, with all the traits

of the ardent polemist. Throughout a lifetime that was rife with

self-contradiction, self-repetition, and self-glorification, he fought

for Brazilian independence in the literary, scientific and political

fields. He was by no means blind to esthetic beauty, but he insisted

overmuch upon the national element and was easily lost in fogs of

irrelevancy. He was a great admirer of German methods, and--justly,

to my way of thinking--a believer in Anglo-German culture as a

complement to Latin. As his life sought to cover almost every field of

intellectual activity, so does his History of Brazilian Literature,

which was left incompleted, seek to cover altogether too much ground.

His book might more properly have been named a history of Brazilian

culture. Such, indeed, was his conception of literature, which to him,

as he states in his very first chapter, possessed “the amplitude given

to it by the critics and historians of Germany. It comprises all the

manifestations of a people’s intelligence:--politics, economics, art,

popular creations, sciences … and not, as was wont to be supposed,

in Brazil, only those entitled _belles lettres_, which finally came

to mean almost exclusively _poetry_!…” A knowledge of this important

work--important despite the list of objections that might be raised

against it--is indispensable to the student.

SYLVIO ROMERO and JOAO RIBEIRO. _Compendia da Literatura Brasileira._

2a edição refundida. Rio, 1909.

A useful compendium and condensation. The authors here consider art “a

chapter of sociology,” laying down a belief in the “consciousness of

the identity of human destinies,” which is, “in our opinion, the basis

of all sociology and morality.”

JOSÉ VERISSIMO. _Estudos de Literatura Brazileira._ Six series,

published at Rio de Janeiro and Paris, between 1901 and 1910. These

largely formed the basis for his _Historia da Literatura Brazileira_,

Rio, 1916.

Verissimo, in my opinion, is the leading critic of letters Brazil has

thus far produced, and one of the country’s greatest minds. His whole

life was a beautiful attitude,--a serene, usually unruffled spirit

open to anything that proceeded from creative sincerity. He is, as

I have tried to show in the text, the spiritual opposite of Romero.

If the student has time only for a limited reading of Brazilian

criticism, he should approach Verissimo before he goes any farther.

Verissimo had learned, or perhaps had been born with, the secret that

beauty owed allegiance to no flag; he was not bogged, as was Romero so

often, by extraneous loyalties; he erected no pompous structures of

“scientificist” criticism. He was, what every significant critic must

be, an artist.

RONALD DE CARVALHO. _Pequena Historia da Literatura Brasileira._ Rio,

1919, 1922. The book was awarded a prize by the Brazilian Academy--as

was the same author’s book of poetry _Poemas e Sonetos_--and appeared

later in a revised, augmented edition. De Carvalho is a brilliant young

man on the sunny side of thirty. His book--as, for that matter, every

other recent one upon the subject--is under great debts to Romero and

Verissimo, but it reveals an independent personality and an agreeably

cosmopolitan conception of literature.

For the facts--as distinguished from opinions--in my own book I have

relied largely upon the works of Romero, Verissimo, Lima and Carvalho.

The number of lesser books that may be read is far greater than their

individual worth. I would suggest, merely as a starting-point for more

individual delving, such informative books as the following:

VICTOR ORBAN. _Le Brésil Litteraire._ Paris, no date. An anthology with

many illustrations of authors.

M. GARCIA MEROU. _El Brasil Intelectual._ A highly diverting account by

an Argentine who was once Minister to the United States.

ENRIQUE BUSTAMANTE Y BALLIVIAN. _Poetas Brasileros._ Rio, 1922. A

translation into Spanish of a number of poems representing the various

movements since (and including) Romanticism. Bustamante is a Peruvian

poet of worth and has added short notes to his selections.

LIVRO DO CENTENARIO. Rio, 1900. As part of the celebration of the 400th

anniversary of Brazil’s discovery, the government has sponsored the

publication of four tomes, which covered the culture of the nation.

Volume I contains a resumé of Brazilian literature by the ubiquitous

Romero, in which he slashes through the field in characteristic fashion.

Very little has been translated into English from the Brazilian

authors, particularly in the United States. As an example of the

novel, there is, however, Aranha’s _Chanaan_, issued as _Canaan_ in

Boston, 1919. In Boston, too, 1921, was issued _Brazilian Tales_,

containing short stories from Machado de Assis, Coelho Netto, Medeiros

e Albuquerque and Carmen Dolores. Coelho’s fine novel _Rei Negro_ (The

Black King), may be procured in a good French translation under the

title _Macambira_.

INDEX

Abreu, Capistrano de, 36, 38

Abreu, Casimiro de, 79, 80, 85, 88-90, 113, 134, 186

Æsop, 30

Alencar, José de, 55, 92, 94-98, 121, 129, 131, 132, 247, 291

Alencar, Mario de, 97

d’Almeida, Julia Lopes, 263

Almeida, M. de, 94, 99

Alvarenga Peixoto, I. J. de, 54, 56, 62, 66, 67

Alves, Castro, 74, 85, 91, 92, 109, 117, 129-141

Amalia, Narcisa, 263

Amaral, A. de, 132

Amaral, P. de, 48

Anchieta, Jose de, 5, 31, 32, 41

Andrade, M. G. L. de, 213

d’Annunzio, 189

Apuleius, 188

Aranha, Graça, 5, 95, 98, 124, 164, 210, 234-247

Araripe Junior, 217, 239

Azevedo, Aluizio de, 117, 121, 122, 164, 258, 259

Azevedo, Alvares de, 74, 78, 79, 80, 83-85, 90, 91, 186

Bach, 40

Balbi, A., 17

Balzac, 95, 252, 253, 290

Barbacena, 54

Barreto, Tobias, 26, 91, 92, 132, 176, 243, 244

Barros, João de, 181

Basilio da Gama, J., 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 78

Beethoven, 40

Bell, A. F. G., 31, 51

Bilac, 82, 109, 113-116, 126, 188-209, 248, 273, 274, 279

Björkman, Goran, 222, 227

Björnsen, B., 227

Blanco-Fombona, 105

Bonifacio, de Andrade, Jose, 56, 69-70, 286, 287, 288

Borges, Carvalho, 223

Borges de Barros, D., 17

Botelho de Oliveira, M., 34, 39

Bouterwek, 177

Bradstreet, Anne, 262

Braga, Theophilo, 71

Brahms, 40

Branner, J. C., 229

Bridges, Robert, 21

Brito Lima, J. de, 47

Brito, Paulo, 143

Brooks, Van Wyck, 172

Brunetière, 177

Buckle, Thomas, 7, 9, 10

Buddha, 112

Byron, 83, 112, 140

Cabello de Carbonero, Mercedes, 263

Caldas Barbosa, 67

Camara, Eugenia, 132

Camões, 11, 34, 35, 55, 59, 62, 66, 74, 77, 183

Campos, Umberto de, 267

Cardim, 5, 35, 36

Carvalho, Elysio de, 1, 24

Carvalho, Ronald de, 7, 10, 13, 26, 30, 31, 37, 40, 43, 44, 46, 55,

63, 88, 91, 94, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 113,

123, 133, 177, 178

Carducci, 107

Carnaris, 140

Carneiro, Leão, A., 232

Castello Branco, C., 290

Castilho, Antonio de, 116

Castro, G. de, 37

Catherine de Medicis, 60

Catullus, 188, 201

Caviedes, 44

Cejador y Frauca, Julio, 23

Celso, Affonso, 109

Cezar de Menezes, V. F., 47

Chateaubriand, Assis, 232

Chateaubriand, René, 95, 96

Chaucer, 14

Chekhov, 282

Chocano, 105

Christ, 140, 220, 252

Cicero, 250

Comte, A., 25

Cook, F., 36

Cooper, Fenimore, 26, 95, 96, 97

Corneille, 289

Correa, Diogo Alvares de, 60

Correia, Raymundo, 109, 110-112, 114

Cortines, Julia, 265

Costa, Benedicto, 6, 19, 23, 94, 97, 121, 164, 234, 242, 243, 246,

252, 258

Costa, Claudio M. da, 54, 61, 64, 66

Crespo, Gonçalves, 109

Croce, Benedetto, 88

Cruz e Souza, 116, 122-123

Cuervo, Rufino, 14

Cunha, Euclydes da, 7, 98, 124, 210-221, 234, 284

Cunninghame-Graham, R., 6, 210, 211, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 220,

221, 284

Dante, 62, 84, 131, 200

Darío, Rubén, 104, 105, 110, 286

Deiró, E., 177

Delfino, Luiz, 116

Denis, Ferdinand, 30, 55, 177

Deus Luz, Fr. Chr., da M., 38

Dias, Gonçalves, 55, 58, 66, 74, 77-83, 85, 90, 94, 113, 134, 136,

186, 188

Dias, Theophilo, 109, 110

Dickens, 290

Dioscorides, 35

Dostoievsky, 290

Dumas, 95

Durão, Fr. J. Santa Rita de, 54, 55, 56-59, 60

Eckermann, 20

Eça de Queiroz, 121, 290

Eguren, J. M. de, 105

Ellis, Havelock, 102, 172, 266

Emanuel, King, of Portugal, 4

Enriqueta, María, 264

Fernandes, A., 232

Ferrero, G., 98, 234, 237, 238, 240

Ferreira de Lacerda, B., 262

Fitzmaurice-Kelly, 262

Flaubert, 103

France, Anatole, 144, 164, 174, 190, 191, 240, 278, 283

Franklin, 140

Freire, Junqueira, 78, 79, 80, 85, 87-88, 90, 186

Freyre, Gilberto, 232

Garrett, 58, 80, 87

Gautier, Th., 274

Girriti de Belzu, Joana Manuela, 263

Godoy, Lucilla, _see_ Mistral, G.

Goethe, 19, 21, 84, 123, 242

Gomes Carneiro, D. de, 38

Gómez de Avellaneda, 262, 263

Góngora, 39, 42, 47

Gonzaga, Thomaz Antonio, 54, 61, 63-66, 67

Gorin, B., 50

Gourmont, Remy de, 13

Gracchi, 140

Gsell, 190

Guimarães, Bernardo, 94, 98

Guimarães Junior, Luis, 91, 106, 109

Gusmão, A. de, 48, 225

Gusmão, B. L. de, 48

Hals, Frans, 231

Hawthorne, 26

Heine, 136

Henry II, (France), 60

Herculano, A. de, 80, 87

Heredia, 274

Homer, 84, 179

Horace, 87, 168

Hugo, 87, 91, 95, 130, 131, 133, 136, 141, 193, 196, 253

Ibarbourou, Juana de, 264

Ibsen, 240, 286

Ines de la Cruz, Sor Juana, 262, 263

Isaacs, Jorge, 99, 234

João, Dom, 68, 73, 226, 227

Juarez, 140

Julia, Francisca, 193, 261-276

Kant, 242

Keats, 275

Kipling, 260, 290

Klopstock, 87

Körner, T., 21

Kossuth, 140

La Fontaine, 30

Lamartine, 87

Leconte de Lisle, 274

Lemaître, 169, 174

Leopardi, 83, 112

Lewisohn, Ludwig, 170, 171, 172

Lima, M. Oliveira de, 33, 36, 37, 49, 120, 126, 222-233, 273

Lobato, Monteiro, 15, 124, 125, 273, 277-291

Longfellow, 26

Lope de Vega, 37, 42

Lopez, B., 122, 123

Lopez, Fernão, 181

Lorente, M. J., 237

Lowell, Amy, 264

Lucian, 188

Lucretius, 87

Macaulay, 177

Macedo, J. M. de, 92-94, 98, 121, 185

Machado, Gilka, 264

Machado de Assis, J. M. de, 91, 93, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 114, 116,

117, 118-121, 122, 123, 126, 129, 131,

142-164, 165, 168, 174, 193, 208, 275, 290

Maciel, A., 212, 213, 216, 218, 219, 220

Maeterlinck, 240

Maffei, 66

Magalhães, Gandavo, Pero de, 35

Magalhães, Gonçalves de, 50, 55, 58, 74-77, 79, 100, 226

Maistre, De, 87

Martí, 229

Martin, P. A., 226

Martins Junior, 105

Martins, Oliveira, 223

Martins Penna, L. C., 100

Martins, Silveira, 223

Matto, Clorinda, 263

Mattos, E. de, 38

Mattos Guerra, Gregorio de, 38, 40-45, 52, 56, 67, 114, 239

Maupassant, 278, 290

Medeiros e Albuquerque, 173

Mello, Mario, 232

Mencken, H. L., 14, 172

Mendonça, S. de, 223

Menéndez y Pelayo, R., 14

Menezes, E. de, 123

Menezes, L. da Cunha de, 54

Mérou, García, 98

Metastasio, 51

Milton, 87

Miranda, Sá de, 11

Mistral, Gabriela, pseud. of L. Godoy, 264

Mohammed, 220

Molière, 51

Montalvo, Juan, 287

Moraes, Manoel de, 38

Moraes, Prudente de, 212

More, P. E., 170, 171

Murat, Luiz, 116

Musset, 83, 145

Nabuco, J., 7, 235, 243, 244

Napoleon, 56, 140

Netto, Coelho, 24, 25, 95, 124, 164, 210, 248-260, 273

Nietzsche, 242, 286

Nobrega, 4

Norberto de Sousa, J., 50, 92

Norberto Silva, 175, 177

Offenbach, 50

Oliveira, Alberto, 109, 110, 112-113, 188

Ottoni, José Eloy, 68, 69

Ovid, 87

Palma, Angélica, 263

Pederneiras, Mario, 123

Pedro II, Dom, 93

Peixoto, Afranio, 15, 109, 131

Pereyra, Carlos, 33, 231

Petrarch, 62, 63

Pinheiro, F., 26, 175

Pliny, 35

Pocahontas, 60

Poe, 26, 123, 256, 282

Pombal, 57, 61

Pompeia, Raul, 117

Porto-Alegre, M. A. de, 55, 77, 79, 223

Pushkin, 112

Quevedo, 42, 44

Rabello, Laurindo, 78, 79, 85-87, 90, 134, 186

Renan, 164

Ribeiro, B., 11, 66, 181

Ribeiro, João, 17, 26, 33, 51, 97, 176, 274

Ribeiro, Julio, 117

Ribeiro, Thomaz, 116

Rocha Pitta, 5, 47, 48, 60, 227, 244

Rodó, 105, 166, 167, 171, 172, 173, 174, 229, 286

Rolim, Zalina, 263

Romero, Sylvio, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 20, 21, 24, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30,

33, 36, 38, 40, 41, 49, 50, 55, 62, 67, 70, 91, 106,

116, 125, 166, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178

Rotrou, 51

Rousseau, 69, 236

Sá, Antonio de, 39

Saenz-Peña, R., 231

Sainte-Beuve, 177

Salvador, Fr. V. de, 38, 180

Salvarieta, Policarpa, 261

São Carlos, 68, 69

Sánchez, L. A., 44

Santa Maria Itaparica, M. de, 47

Sayce, A. H., 16

Schopenhauer, 242

Scott, 97

Sebastian, Dom (King), 217, 218

Shaw, B., 92

Shelley, 200

Silva, A. J. da, 48, 49-51, 64

Silva Alvarenga, M. I. de, 54, 56, 62, 66

Silva, Francisca Julia da, _See_ Julia.

Silva, José Asunción, 260

Silva, J. C. da, 273

Sismondi, 177

Smith, John, 60

Soares de França, G. de, 47

Soares de Souza, Gabriel, 5, 35, 179, 182

Souza, Claudio de, 100, 124

Souza Caldas, 68, 69

Souza, Fr. Luiz de, 183

Spingarn, Joel Elias, 172

Squire, Charles, 3

Stecchetti, 107

Storni, Alfonsina, 264, 266

St. Vincent Millay, Edna, 264

Sucre, 287

Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 50

Taine, 252

Tasso, 37

Tavora, Franklin, 98

Taunay, Viscount Escragnole de, 98-99, 121

Teasdale, Sara, 264

Teixeira e Souza, 92, 94, 98

Teixeira Pinto, Bento, 31, 33, 34

Thackeray, 85

Tolstoi, 240, 290

Tucumana, Manuela la, 261

Twain, 282

Uccello, P., 190

Ureña, Salomé, 264

Valera, 14

Van Doren, Carl, 97

Varella, Fagundes, 91, 117, 134

Varnhagen, 19, 33, 35, 69, 175, 177

Vasari, 190

Vaz de Caminha, 4

Verissimo, Jose, 14, 15, 16, 33, 34, 39, 41, 42, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59,

60, 61, 64, 65, 71, 78, 80, 81, 83, 86, 88, 89, 90,

91, 98, 106, 109, 116, 118, 120, 123, 126, 133, 134,

136, 165-187, 208, 214, 219, 220, 221, 229, 240, 241,

250, 252, 265

Verlaine, 43

Vespucci, 4, 5

Vicente, G., 11, 181

Vieira, Adelina, 263

Vieira, Antonio, 38

Vigny, de, 95

Violante do Ceo, Sor, 262

Virgil, 131

Wagner, 286

Washington, 287

Wells, 290

Whitman, 26

Winchester, 169

Wolf, 10, 26, 42, 50, 55, 58, 63, 66, 69, 72, 125, 175

Wordsworth, 275

Zola, 94, 117, 121, 235, 240