The Modernist Movement in Brazil: A Literary Study 9781477304518

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

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The Texas Pan-American Series

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THE Modernist Movement in Brazil

A L I T E R A R Y S T U D Y by J Ο Η Ν N I S T

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

AUSTIN

The Texas Pan-American Series is published with the assistance of a revolving publication fund established by the Pan-American Sulphur Company and other friends of Latin America in Texas.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-27537 Copyright © 1967 by John Albert Nist All Rights Reserved

For Carlos Drummond de Andrade

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank the following Brazilians for their material help and moral encouragement during the research and composition of this present study: Manuel Bandeira, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Cecília Meireles, Vinícius de Moraes, Stella Leonardos, Renato de Almeida, Augusto Frederico Schmidt, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Déçio de Almeida Prado, Antonio Cândido de Melo e Souza, Ruy Coelho, Paulo Duarte, Paulo Bomfim, Domingos Carvalho da Silva, Steve Domansky, Fernando Tude de Souza, Paulo Sawaya, Eberaldo Telles Machado, João Fonseca, Cassiano Nunes, Francisco Pontes de Paula-Lima, Percy Garnier, Dirceu Mendes da Silva, Alicia da Gama, Milton da Lima Sousa, Flavio M. Nobre de Campos, and—above all—Yolanda Leite. I also want to thank the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies for the financial assistance which made my second stay in Brazil, and this book, possible. And finally, I want to thank Mrs. Alice Davis Day for typing the manuscript, and my wife for giving me her constant constructive advice.

Acknowledgment is made to the following publications for the use of selections, whether in whole or in part, which appear in this book: "Brazilian Concretism,"Hispania (December 1964), pp. 711-715. "Brazilian Modernism," Approach (Winter 1963), pp. 34-39. "Carlos Drummond de Andrade: Thirteen Poems," The Beloit Poetry Journal (Spring 1962), pp. 19-37. "Conscience of Brazil: Carlos Drummond de Andrade," Américas (January 1963), pp. 32-35.

"Contemporary Brazilian Poetry," Books Abroad (Summer 1963), pp. 245-251. "The Creative Force of Mário de Andrade," Américas (January 1965), pp. 27-29. In the Middle of the Road: Selected Poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1965. "Manuel Bandeira: Modern Lyric Poet of Brazil," Arizona Quarterly (Autumn 1962), pp. 217-228. "Modern Brazilian Literature: A Panorama," Arizona (Winter 1960), pp. 339-351.

Quarterly

Modern Brazilian Poetry: An Anthology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962. Έ 1 Modernismo Brasileño," Revista de Cultura Brasileña (Madrid, septiembre 1963), pp. 202-208. "The Poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade," Motive (December 1963), pp. 5-11. "The Poetry of Cecília Meireles," Hispania (May 1963), pp. 252258. "Three Brazilian Poets," The Beloit Poetry Journal (Fall 1959), pp. 11-33. "Three Poems by Manuel Bandeira," The Southern Review (Autumn 1965), pp. 876-883. "Voice from the Black Orchard—Jorge de Lima: Modern Religious Poet of Brazil," Motive (October 1962), pp. 21-25. "Homage to Manuel Bandeira at 80," Bulletin of Brazilian American Cultural Institute, Year I, No. 5 (June 1,1966), pp. 2-10.

J.N. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Sherman, Texas

CONTENTS Acknowledgments 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Toward the Modern Spirit A Gathering of Cultural Forces Discoveries and Victories Affirmations and Attacks Mário de Andrade "Centennial Dragoons" The Modern Art Week: Results and Effects Matters of Opinion Manuel Bandeira Carlos Drummond de Andrade Jorge de Lima Five Spiritual Voices João Cabral and Concretism Cecília Meireles

Bibliography Index

ix

. . .

3 18 33 46 59 71 86 101 113 129 146 161 179 190 205 211

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

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Λ Coward the Modem Spirit

on Brazilian culture what he considers to be the most significant artistic event in Brazil during this century and he will quickly reply, "The Modern Art Week Exhibition, staged in São Paulo in February, 1922." This public demonstration and aesthetic manifesto represented a cut with the past, a violent break with tradition unparalleled in Brazilian history. The fact that Brazilians still discuss the poetical renovation achieved by Modernism shows how strongly the movement attacked and questioned traditional attitudes, cherished preconceptions, prejudiced aspects of a national sensibility that still persists, in some quarters, to this day. As a movement of research and experimentation, Modernism was, in the words of its principal prophet, Mário ASK AN AUTHORITY

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de Andrade, "a rupture, a revolt against the national intelligence."1 In time it became a national affirmation that resulted in the integration of Brazilian literature into the literature of the Western world—an integration too long overlooked by members of the English-speaking community. As the only tropical nation that has yet achieved a major culture and "produced a significant literature in the modern period,"2 Brazil possesses poetry that is remarkable, rich, and varied. It was the poets of Brazil who took the literary lead in Modernism, both in aesthetic theory and in practical execution, to try to accomplish not only a new artistic attitude, but also a new age of man. In so doing they sought the conquest of a new aesthetic purity; a termination of the divorce between man and nature, between artist and man; and the discovery and establishment of a common ground between culture and spontaneity, between tradition and originality, between social and natural reality. Any cultural movement supporting such high intentions as these is worthy of study; when they concern the most important nation in South America and a key country in the democratic defense of human dignity and freedom, the study becomes imperative. Although time alone can fully sift the movement to separate the great from the good, the good from the mediocre, this critical book on the Modernist Movement in Brazil will attempt to discriminate between historical importance and artistic value. So striking was the Modern Art Week of 1922 in its breaking of formal artistic canons, its liberation from classical ideas and academic rules, that like a declaration of the rights of man it burst upon the conservative sensibility of Brazil as a revolution. Yet every revolution, when seen from the perspective of its development in time, is really the concentration of forces built by evolution. The Modernist Movement in Brazil was no exception: the forces that produced the explosion during one week in São Paulo 1

Mário de Andrade, O Movimento Modernista, p. 25. Antonio Candido de Melo e Souza, "Modern Writing in Brazil," Perspective of Brazil, p. 49. 2

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had been gathering from many quarters and for several decades. As early as 1886, in an essay about the new generation, Brazil's greatest writer and South America's finest novelist, Machado de Assis, observed that the Romantics cannot endure the Parnassians for the reason that they are unable to understand them. Too bad! They think that the human soul is nothing but tears and sentimentality, they do not speak—because their ears are not attuned to such matters—of music, rhyme, metrical harmony, variation of vowels, choice of words, everything, in short, that gives to verse its form, movement, color, a life more real than human, in the creation of that sublime, that ineffable thing that we know as— Poetry.3 Machado's implicit belief that poetry is a formation into ontology demands the label of "modern." Seven years earlier this same Machado had said that one generation is not interested in prolonging the sunset of another. In other words, each age seeks its own artistic voice, must come to speak for itself. Many times, in order to do so, it must clear its throat of phlegm from the past. Thus in the first phase, at least, every creative reaction is partially destructive: it has to be to survive. So the Parnassians, to foster a growing critical and scientific spirit, had to cut out of their Latin temperament the predilection of their Romantic predecessors for personal lyricism, hyperbole, and grandiloquence. Nor were the Brazilians alone in their anti-Romantic revolt, for "the English were quite as tired of Byronic posturings . . . as the French were of Hugo's loud bassoon and the critically studded prose and lyrics of Théophile Gautier."4 The cool marmoreal craftsmanship of the Parnassians, however, was soon to be chipped at by the Symbolists, who in turn were to yield to the Imagists and the Futurists—forerunners of the Modernist Movement. So in literature, as in nature, nothing happens in 3 4

Quoted by Samuel Putnam in Marvelous Journey, p. 167. Putnam, ibid., p. 165.

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a vacuum; to understand Modernism in Brazil, one must first examine something of the cultural climate that helped produce it. After three centuries of colonial, derivative, and imitative literature, Brazil found her first mature voice in the poetry of Gonçalves Dias (1823-1864). Noted for his "opulent pantheistic hymns, at once nostalgic and exultant, to the beauties of tropical nature . . . his passionate glorification of the red man whose blood together with that of Portuguese and Negro ran in his veins . . . his fierce Whitmanlike rejection of the Old World and his whole-souled acceptance of the New . . . his burning patriotism and love of his native soil, a sentiment that with him becomes a religion"5—Gonçalves Dias was the Bryant, Lamartine, and Keats of his country all rolled into one. Through his Indianism and Naturism, Dias became the leader of a national and popular Romanticism that was, in time, to die with its highest social achievement: the abolition of slavery in Brazil. But long before then the poet helped every schoolboy rediscover his country, that tropical giant where, as in Dias' "Song of Exile," the palm trees sway and the sabiá sings: Land of mine, with swaying palms! The sabiá is singing there; Birds do not warble as sweetly here— Not here, or anywhere. Our meadows have more and fairer flowers, More stars in the heavens above; There is more life within our woods, Within our lives more love. Alone at night and brooding deep, What pleasure this thought brings: Land of mine, with swaying palms; There where the sabiá sings. Land of mine, land of delight, Of fond and absent things, Brooding deep—alone at night— 5

Ibid., p. 111.

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My longing thought takes wings. Land of mine, with swaying palms, There where the sabiá sings. Oh, God forbid my soul take flight Before I return once more To that fair land of all delight From this far alien shore, Before I see once more those palms And hear the sound of wings, As perfect peace my heart embalms, There where the sabiá sings.6 Dead in exile at the age of forty-one, Gonçalves Dias was the forerunner of a lost generation of Romantic poets who wrote, in the words of Afrânio Peixoto, "homicidal literature" and died young. Among them were Franco de Sá, age twenty; Alvares de Azevedo, twenty-one; Junqueira Freire, Casimiro de Abreu, and Dutra e Mello, twenty-three; Castro Alves, twenty-four; Martins Penna, thirty-three; Fagundes Varella, thirty-four; Laurindo Rabello, thirty-eight. Whether it was Weltschmerz, mal de siècle, taedium vitae, Baudelairean boredom, alcoholism, drug addiction, or tuberculosis that shortened the life expectancy of these Brazilian Romantics, the fact remains that most, if not all, of them wanted to die young. Subjective in extreme, afflicted with melancholia, necrophilia, sexual impotence, decadence, and a melodramatic sense of damnation, the generation nevertheless produced within itself the highest social conscience of the time, that of the "poet of the slaves" Antônio de Castro Alves (1847-1871). To this day the most widely read and admired poet of Brazil, Castro Alves represented during his brief life the collective sentiment of his people, the national sensibility of protest against slavery. The chief apostle of abolition in poetry, as Joaquim Nabuco was in prose, Castro Alves stormed through life with a 6

Written at Coimbra in July 1843, and published as the introduction to Prímeiros Cantos in Rio de Janeiro, 1846. As translated by Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 112, with modifications by John Nist.

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passion for justice—and women. Canonized with such titles as "poet of the tropics," "poet of the race," "the first Brazilian poet," "the greatest Brazilian poet," Castro Alves is in his work simultaneously epic and lyric, all inspiration, instinct, bravura— words and feeling combined to create what Mário de Andrade called the best possible image of the national mentality of Brazil.7 Feeling that he would die young, at the age of seventeen Castro Alves wrote: "I know I am to die . . . within my breast / A terrible disease gnaws at my life."8 This sense of early doom, together with the notorious aphrodisiac that is tropic lushness and warmth, intensified his unabashedly sensual appreciation of "what aroma in a woman's bosom, / And in her fiery kisses how much of life!"9 The passionate and tender love poetry of Castro Alves, together with some of his proletarian prophecies, kept his reputation high long after his Hugoesque social-protest lines had achieved their purpose. Unsurpassed by any of his countrymen in sheer verbal power and imagic luxuriance, Castro Alves embodied in himself and in his work the Brazilians' "own fascinating, many-sided, variable, frequently self-contradictory character and temperament: their fund of sentiment and emotion; their eroticism ripened under equatorial suns; their warm, generous, human impulses; their keen sense of injustice and passion for righting social wrongs; their love of their native land, with its glowing dawns, its burning noontides, its flaming sunsets, its languorous nights that seem made for amours."10 And if Mário de Andrade could doubt the quality of the national mentality represented by this Romantic poet and the Parnassians could rebel against the rhetoric, the borderline bombast, that his eloquence entailed, so many of the Modernists 11 7

See Mário de Andrade, "Castro Alves," Revista do Brasil, II, 1-13. As translated by Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 130. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 135. 11 See, for example, Jorge Amado, ABC de Castro Alves; Heitor Ferreira Lima, Castro Alves e Sua Época; Edison Carneiro, Trajetória de Castro Alves. 8

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could return to Castro Alves and discover a towering Brazilian genius in such lines as these: The world an enormous tent for all humanity, With space for roof, the earth itself for hearth Where happy dwells the universal family— From the African Sahara, from frozen Siberia, From the Caucasus, from unhappy Iberian fields, From the hallowed marbles of Homeric land, From pampas and savannas of our great, Our proud America, there shall burst forth The hymn of freedom which is labor's own! And with the worker's song, accompanied by The hammer's audacious orchestra, shall mingle The noise of printing presses and ideas, As each out of freedom forges epic poems, Callused the hands of all, bathing their foreheads In freedom's sun above the horizon breaking.12 But the pan-American, indeed the pan-world, vision of Castro Alves in the above poem could not stop the rise of Regionalism in Brazil that was to serve during the last quarter of the nineteenth century as a bridge to Realism in the novel and Parnassianism in poetry. From both of these literary movements came the secondphase work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), the myopic, epileptic quadroon who left the slums of Rio de Janeiro to found the Brazilian Academy of Letters, after he had conquered city, nation, and continent with the greatest outpouring of literary genius in Brazilian history. Outgrowing an early period of writing Romantic and Indianistic poetry and sentimental fiction in the manner of the society romances of José de Alencar, Machado— like the historian of Hamlet—descended into the dark night of his soul, where doubt, lost illusions, shattered dreams killed off one false god after another. Courting popularity and social position in his life, in his work Machado stripped off every mask of human 12

"The Seer," translated by Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 135.

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egoism to reveal the voluptuousness of nothing in a world where the only good man, his hero Quincas Borba, is mad. But if the hero is mad, his author is eminently sane, with that sad wisdom of the ancient Greeks which can smile at human folly with serenity. In his famous sonnet "Vicious Circle," Machado shows that all nature shares man's folly; nothing in the universe is ever satisfied with what it is, with what it has; all things cry out from their personally felt imperfections: Dancing in air, a restlessfireflysighed: —"Would that I were that bright yellow star, Which burns in the endless blue, like an eternal candle!" But the star, staring at the moon, with envy: —"Would that I could copy the transparent light, Which, from the Grecian column to the Gothic window, Yearningly contemplates the beloved and beautiful forehead!" But the moon, staring at the sun, with bitterness: —"Poor me! would that I had that enormous, that Immortal splendor, which condenses all light!" But the sun, tilting his golden garland: —"This brilliant halo of a god weighs me down— This blue and measureless canopy tires me— Why wasn't I born a simple firefly?" Machado, who saw it all, did not cry out or complain. Instead he used his doubt and his disillusion as catalytic agents to induce creation of an Apollonian literary style. Limpid, concise, classically correct—the prose of Machado de Assis is one of the glories of the Portuguese language. It is also a direct denial of Romantic excess, a sharp contradiction of "that eloquence, that verbosity, of which the Latin, the man of the tropics, and the Negro are so fond."13 Although anti-Romantic in temperament and in aesthetics, Machado achieved in the thirty-one volumes of his collected works a unique place in Brazilian literature: one above and beyond all 13

Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 185.

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artistic schools and cultural movements. The same thing cannot be said about his Parnassian contemporaries. They were of a school and movement that completely crystallized with the publication of three volumes of poetry: "Sonnets and Poems" by Alberto de Oliveira, 1885; "Verses and Versions" by Raimundo Correia, 1887; "Poems" by Olavo Bilac, 1888. Excellent craftsmen, always readable, these three poets shared a common belief that Romanticism was dead. So was slavery. It is interesting to note that the year which saw Bilac's introduction to Brazil as the prince of the Parnassians also witnessed the abolition of human bondage. One year later (1889) the empire fell; Brazil became a constitutional republic. Soon thereafter, in theory at least, followed the emancipation of women, who in matters of love and sex were to consort with men on the basis of equality. The new social and political order in Brazil supported the development of a new aesthetic attitude. Against Romantic inspiration and enthusiasm, the Parnassians proposed sobriety and contiguity, rigid discipline. Strictly statuesque in metrics, these new poets "opposed all sentimental vagueness and demanded syntactical clarity and a meticulous observance of the rules of Portuguese grammar."14 Though not so cold as their French equivalents, the Brazilians believed in art for art's sake and chiseled a somewhat passionless beauty on marble. But the distinguishing characteristic of the Parnassians, according to Manuel Bandeira, obtains in the absence, not of sentimentality as sentimentality, the word being understood to mean an affectation of feeling, for that is to be found among the followers of Parnasse, but of a certain coy and plaintive tenderheartedness which is very Brazilian so far as that goes, and which is so indiscreetly to be perceived in the amorous lyricism of the Romantics. This tone disappears completely in the Parnassians, yielding place to a more realistic conception of the relations between the sexes.15 14 Ibid., p. 169. 15 Manuel Bandeira, Antologia dos Poetas Brasileiras da Fase Parnasiana, p. 17.

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While Alberto de Oliveira (1857-1937) contemplated nature and strove for perfection in his verse, Raimundo Correia (18601911) suffered from Pascalian doubt and a resignation that believed in pain as the final and futile answer to everything. Representing in poetry much the same attitude as Machado de Assis exemplified in the novel and the short story, Olavo Bilac (18651918) attained through irony and splendor the summit of Parnassian achievement. Speaking for the heart of Brazil, called "the voice of the people" in his day, Bilac was a curious mixture of the sensibilities of Keats, Goethe, de Musset, and de Vigny. As capable of passion, music, and lyricism as Castro Alves, Bilac looked upon the impermanence of all things with a deep resignation. The most read and widely imitated Brazilian poet during his lifetime, Bilac dominated the perfect Parnassian sonnet and became the personal incarnation of everything that the Modernists rebelled against. Yet so large was his genius that Mário de Andrade could praise the symbolic vibrancy of language developed by the older poet in "The Comet": A comet streaked by—In light, in the rocks, In the grass, in the insect, in everything a soul flashed again; The earth surrendered herself to the sun as a slave; Blood and sap boiled. And the comet fled— The earth was ravaged by quake, lava, Water, cyclone, war, famine, epidemics; But love was reborn, and pride revived, Religions passed—And the comet streaked by. And it fled, twisting its flaming golden tail— A race died out; the wild solitude Repopulated. And the comet returned— Day after day the gallop of centuries receded; And everything from stone to man proclaimed Its eternity! And the comet smiled— If many critics could agree that with Bilac and his Parnassian contemporaries Brazilian poetry had finally come of age, still a few

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Symbolist voices objected in a counteraction. Disliking objectivity and detachment, desiring with Verlaine "De Ia musique avant toute chose"—the Symbolist Movement in Brazil sought a dreamlike expression, indirect, surrealistic. Abhorring the photographic reality of a direct representation of things, the decadent poets near the end of the nineteenth century wanted to achieve intuitive evocation through the spontaneity of rhythm. Form for the sake of form had to go. Thus, "where the Parnassians had insisted upon the utmost lucidity in the expression of a clearly defined thought or feeling, the decadents or symbolists were vague and confused. Where the former had striven for a flawless syntax and diction, the latter were careless of both, and at times indulged in a verbal disorder, not to say riot, that to Bilac, Correia, Oliveira, and their followers was nothing short of scandalous."16 In that scandal lay the direction of a later advance from Symbolism to Futurism to Modernism. Had the greatest of the decadent Symbolists and a major modern poet of Brazil, João da Cruz e Sousa (1861-1898), Negro Satanist from the Southern state of Santa Catarina, lived longer and not suffered from a paralysis of the will—perhaps Modernism would have come to fruition sooner in Brazil. Yet such a result is doubtful, for the times were not ripe. A few things at least the Symbolists had in common with the Parnassians: the habit of doubt, the mood of pessimism, the tone of despair. Lassitude, soul-weariness, melancholy, skepticism—all were afflictions of that last decade before the start of the twentieth century. Antero de Quental, for example, the finest poet at that time in Portugal, founded the Portuguese Socialist Party, saw nothing but vanity in all his work, and committed suicide. In Brazil, even though the slaves had been freed, Cruz e Sousa burned with indignation against the injustices that his race had suffered. But the poet was helpless to do more than vent his anger. Poor, tuberculous, humiliated by his position in the social scale, out of step with the dominant aesthetics of the time, Cruz e Sousa 16

Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 173.

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wore out his life early while pacing and crying out in the "Prison of Souls": Ah! Each soul paces its prison cell, Sobbing in chains behind the bars As it looks out on the immensities: Seas, and the evenings, and the stars.17 About 1920 the young writers engaged in waging the battle in behalf of Modernism heard his cries, and Cruz e Sousa became the dead hero and revered memory of a new literary movement. While Cruz e Sousa was struggling with his morbid mysticism and Machado de Assis was creating his Olympian masterpieces along the comedy-of-ideas Unes set down by Laurence Sterne, lesser talents in Brazil were grinding out naturalistic and positivistic novels. Zola was an idol in Brazil, and the country—rapidly shedding its cultural insularity, its colonial imitativeness—looked constantly to Paris for liberation from the shackles of Lisbon. And yet, after the abolition of slavery, an end-of-the-century gloom prevailed. Under the dark clouds of decadence, Brazilian intellectuals discussed one overwhelming anthropological and ethnological problem: in a Darwinian universe of the incessant war for existence, of survival of the fittest, could men of a mixed race— mestiços—win out against a hostile land and climate, against the green hell of the tropics? Were Brazilians, in short, doomed to a national inferiority because of their blending of Portuguese, Indian, and African bloodstreams? After five years of dictatorship by Iron Marshal Floriano Peixoto (1889-1894) and the brief civil war that resulted in a duly elected president's taking office, factionalism, banditry, and a politicalspoils system ran rampant in the backlands of Brazil. Into this setting Antônio Conselheiro, a mad mystic mestiço, hurled a bomb of rebellion against the federal government that shook the new republic to its moral depths. For a year (1896-1897) Antônio the Counselor, self-appointed Messiah of the desiccate Northeast, led 17

Translated by Putnam, ibid., p. 174.

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his band of illiterate and fanatic sertanejos (backlanders) in an open defiance of and an armed combat against several military expeditions and a professional army of thousands. Before the stronghold of Canudos, in the state of Bahia, was finally wiped out by Brazilian soldiers and their heavy cannon, a reporter named Euclides da Cunha, who covered the campaigns for O Estado de São Paulo, had written (when fleshed out with later revisions and elaborations) probably the greatest single book of Brazil: Os Sertões (1902), known in the English translation by Samuel Putnam as Rebellion in the Backhnds. A massive South American analogue to Tolstoy's War and Peace, Os Sertões defies classification into any one literary genre. As Cecília Meireles, the finest woman poet in the history of Brazil, has said, the book by Da Cunha "is not a novel or a history or an epic or an essay or a drama or an economic treatise or a piece of criticism."18 Euclides' masterpiece is many things: journalism, history, military analysis, philosophy, psychology, novel, and dissertations on the geography, geology, climatology, and anthropology of the Brazilian backlands in the Northeast. Above all, it is a national portrait: it presented to Brazil, for the first time, "a picture of a large section of the country, a crude realistic picture of all its miseries, grandeurs, and despairs."19 Classified among the world's one hundred best novels, Os Sertões—by mirroring the neurasthenia of Brazil—is "the expression of the very soul of a race in all its strength and all its unconcealed weakness."20 Spiny and sharp as cactus, hot and mentally sapping as drought, hard as stone, massively moving as armies on the march, savage and fierce as the killing it describes, the book—which made Euclides' shack in São José do Rio Pardo a national shrine and the author the object of homage each year during a week in August that is named after 18

Cecília Meireles, in a private conversation in Rio de Janeiro, September 16, 1961. 19 Mário da Silva Brito, História do Modernismo Brasileiro, I: Antecedentes da Semana de Arte Moderna, 22. 20 Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 202.

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him—remains finally a lesson and a challenge. As Da Cunha himself said: This entire campaign would be a crime, a futile and barbarous one, if we were not to take advantage of the paths opened by our artillery, by following up our cannon with a constant, stubborn and persistent campaign of education, with the object of drawing these rude and backward fellow countrymen of ours into the current of our times and of our national life. Our biological evolution demands the guarantee of social evolution. We are condemned to civilization. Either we shall progress or we shall perish. So much is certain and our choice is clear.21 As of the inauguration of Brasilia as the national capital of Brazil, 21 April 1960, though the lesson of Euclides da Cunha had been learned, his challenge had not been fully answered. Some twenty-five million impoverished Brazilians of the Northeast still remained to be fully drawn into the national life, and lack of education persisted as the major problem of the federal government. Critics could seriously question Da Cunha's assertion that the humble sertanejo was the core of the nation, the bedrock of the Brazilian race. But they could have questioned that judgment before the beginning of World War I, because by then the three major streams of the national type—Portuguese, Indian, Negro— were being swollen by tributaries of German, Italian, Slavic, and other European stocks. These immigrant tides washed into the industrial heartland of São Paulo, where they would become a powerful new voice calling for social justice and the rights of labor. The union of this immigrant onslaught against the vested interests of traditional families in Brazil with such larger hemispheric and world forces as the weakening of imperial powers, the development of new political ideas in Europe, the increasing rapidity of transportation and communication, the growth of an 21

Euclides da Cunha, Rebellion in the Backhnds, translated by Samuel Putnam, pp. 54, 408.

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American and BraziHan consciousness, advancements in science, technology, and education—all these necessitated the creation of a modern spirit that could adequately interpret and evaluate the times. In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro a small band of exuberant young iconoclasts slowly came together and mustered their strength for a decade in order to create that modern spirit.

2. A fathering of Cultural forces

of slavery in Brazil, an epoch of commercial robbers and frightened politicians reduced the practice of serious reading to a minimum. In the decadent literature of the fin de siècle, a new generation, for the most part, continued to write in a dilletantish manner, without any defined ideal. The result was a poor and defective style produced by the imitation of foreign authors. Considered the perfect muse, Olavo Bilac had become a god. Canonized as sacred, he was above criticism, an object of universal praise and admiration. Critics, journalists, other important cultural names of the time, however, all deplored the degenerate national life and literature. Parnassian poetry had succeeded in creating a difficult, AFTER THE ABOLITION

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hermetic, mystical, and aristocratic art preoccupied with the music of words and the harmony of sounds. The new Symbolism in Brazil stood opposed to the Parnassian ideals of objective, descriptive, marmoreal, and sculptured beauty, to the Parnassian concern with metrics, the caesura, and immaculate and noble diction. But Brazilian Symbolism split into many sects, never operated as a whole school, and consequently exerted little influence. Nevertheless it did bequeath two major legacies to the Modernist Movement: the cadences of free verse, and the use of everyday themes as subject matter. In an age that would soon conduct "an impassioned search for native roots in a rapidly changing world," 1 the meager gifts of the Symbolists were more cherished by the Modernists than all the rich achievements of the Parnassians. Especially so since, as poet Raimundo Correia admitted, the Parnassians "needed in literature and art more of a national sense."2 Set against the rising new trends of the twentieth century—liberalism, fascism, communism—the colorless period of the Symbolists served to hasten the advent of the Modernist Movement. Sick with smugness, preciosity, and divorcement from reality, Brazilian literature after the turn of the century needed strong medicines to help cure itself. Such remedies as importation of modernity from Europe, discovery of a native art rooted in Brazilian folk speech and folklore, antibourgeois iconoclasm, revolt against academicism and tradition, and the championing of popular speech as against the literary idiom—all these could not be had from the Symbolists. It took the strength and courage of a new generation to prescribe and to provide them. At the time of the backlands rebellion in Canudos, Rubén Darío became the leader of literature in the Spanish language; poets of Metropolitan Spain began to imitate the Nicaraguan. It was a sign of the times: the Americas, with the help of the United States, were trying to free themselves from European domination. In 1898, 1

Samuel Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 207. Quoted by Mário da Silva Brito, História do Modernismo Brasileiro, I: Antecedentes da Semana de Arte Moderna, p. 19. 2

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with the aid of a war on her behalf, Cuba broke free of Spain. With the start of construction on the Panama Canal in 1903, millions of dollars began to flow into the Latin American economy. By 1910 Brazil had become the major coffee producer of the world, accounting for 82.5 per cent of the total crop. Oswaldo Cruz fought yellow fever; Pereira Passos started to urbanize Rio de Janeiro; General Rondon entered the Brazilian interior to explore and recommend the creation of an Indian Protection Service; electrification, enlarging of dock facilities, expansion of trade, growing use of the automobile—all these achievements pointed to progress and called for a Modernist spirit to celebrate them. During this period of hemispheric ferment the great Rio Branco finished the settlement of Brazil's boundary disputes with her neighbors—settlement accomplished without bloodshed and to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. Brazil had thus at last taken on her final geographic shape. With the help of Miguel Calmon's Immigration Law of 1907, the land was to be populated with new national types. By 1915 almost one million immigrants had entered Brazil, causing Modernist Ronald de Carvalho to boast, "The Brazilian is no longer the exclusive product of the intermingling of three racial groups—Indian, African, and Portuguese. . . . The Italian, the German, the Slav and the Saxon have brought the machine to our economy."3 With the introduction of the machine, life in Brazil became more active, cosmopolitan, and less conservative. Olavo Bilac called the automobile a monster, but the horseless carriage, in the words of Mário da Silva Brito, "ran over Pegasus/' 4 As a symbol of progress, a representation of the mechanical world that Mário de Andrade and his companions would sing, the automobile became an internal-combustion challenge to the domination of the Parnassian aesthetics. And in 1912 it carried about the streets of São Paulo the first importer of Futurism into Brazil, the 3 4

Ronald de Carvalho, Pequena História da Literatura Brasileña, p. 368. Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 24.

A Gathering of Cultural Forces

21

enfant terrible of the Modernist Movement: José Oswald de Sousa Andrade (1890-1954). The most combative and polemical figure among the Paulista Modernists, Oswald de Andrade had read the Italian Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto in Paris—a document upon which Mussolini based his program of fascism in 1919. The Italian announced that literature was in favor of the new technical civilization, that it was against academicism, bric-a-brac, and museums. Marinetti furthermore exalted the cult of "words in freedom." The Manifesto, together with the crowning of Paul Fort as the prince of French poets, stirred Oswald. In fact, Fort's influence on the Brazilian was much stronger than Marinetti's. Oswald reveled in the fact that Fort had never written either stanzas or sonnets. Free verse opened up a whole new realm of possibilities, for as Oswald admitted, "I could never count syllables. Metrics was a thing to which my intelligence could not adapt, a subordination to which I completely refused."5 Clinging to the word Futurist from Marinetti's manifesto with a cultural cry that "the modern world needs poets above all else,"6 and wanting to enliven the Brazilian Academy of Letters, which was living on its past glories, Oswald campaigned to have Amadeu Amaral elected a member. By this time, of course, the giants Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha were both dead. Neither had left a successor worthy of his substance or style. Oswald was convinced that Brazilian literature had grown musty, stale, out-ofdate. The country had not yet renounced its cultural past: writers still had to obey the rules, and poets were judged on the basis of their metrics. To modernize Brazilian literature and culture in general, Oswald constantly called for a transfusion from foreign sources, but "that did not imply that he wanted to renounce Brazilian sentiment."7 5 Oswald de Andrade, "Paul Fort Principe," Jornal do Comércio, 9 julho 1921. 6 See Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 20. 7 Ibid., p. 28.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

On the contrary, he screamed at Brazilian painters to wake up to the treasures of color and light in their native scenery. Too long desiring to depict things tranquil and perfect, Brazilian artists had shown little or no interest in the lush, wild, exuberant settings of their own country. Now the man who later created the Brazil Wood Movement implored them to open their eyes and truly see. Laughed at for his efforts, Oswald doggedly stuck to his principles. By so doing, from 1912 to 1915 he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But a match had been struck—all it needed now was a fuse and some dynamite to shatter the rocks of the desert. In 1915 occurred a brief flash of encouragement from Rio de Janeiro for the embattled Modernist in São Paulo. Portuguese diplomat and poet Luis da Silva Ramos joined forces with Carioca Ronald de Carvalho to launch a Luso-Brazilian review called Orfeu. The expressed purpose of the two editors was "to communicate to the readers the new European message/' 8 The cultural heroes who inspired the venture include such names as Pessanha, Verlaine, Mallarmé, Whitman, Marinetti, and Picasso. The anticlimactic shame, of course, is the fact that the journal survived two editions only. The time was still out of joint for the Modernist Movement. When Orfeu collapsed, "the group which would make the Modern Art Week, the group of which Ronald de Carvalho was a member, had not yet assembled. But two years later, at the exhibit of Anita Malfatti, all the national forces formerly isolated and dispersed would gather/' 9 If Oswald de Andrade was a match to ignite, then Anita Malfatti, daughter of an Italian-descent naturalized Brazilian who became a member of the state legislature of São Paulo (18921894), was a fuse for the explosion into Modernism. During a pre-World War I period of study at the Berlin School of Art, Anita discovered the magnificent world of color and light. In Cologne she saw the first great exhibition of the Post-Impression8 9

Hernâni Cidade, O Conceito de Poesia como Expressão de Cultura, p. 286. Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 34.

A Gathering of Cultural Forces

23

ists. So strong was the impact of the works of Pissaro, Monet, Sisley, Picasso, Henri Rousseau, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Renoir upon her that even while enjoying the treasures of the Louvre she could not forget the splendors in Cologne. Upon her return to Brazil in 1914, Anita arranged for a showing of her own works in May on the first floor of Mappin's department store in São Paulo. The newspaper O Estado, in a review of the exhibit published on May 29, saw in Anita's paintings the "influence of the modern German school, which carried Impressionism to the ultimate limits." Enthusiastically endorsing what it saw, O Estado asserted that Anita had a fine talent which needed encouragement. But the young painter did not stay in Brazil to enjoy her mild success. Soon she was enrolled in the Independence School of Art, under the direction of Homer Boss, in New England, where she began her second period of apprenticeship. According to his students, Homer Boss was a misunderstood philosopher who let people paint as they liked. A romantic, anarchistic, liberal individualist, Mr. Boss conducted classes in the open air—come sun, wind, rain, or fog. Anita relished the chance to develop self-reliance and the opportunity offered for her to meet musicians, poets, novelists, ballerinas, scenarists, choreographers, and other painters. From her four months of living in a fisherman's shack in Labrador and her social whirl in New York City, Anita felt that Homer Boss fostered an ideal kind of art education. During her year and a half in North America, she met Isadora Duncan, Maxim Gorky, Juan Gris, Marcel Deschamps, and Diaghilev; she also read from the works of Romain Rolland, Selma Lagerlof, and Persian and Hindu poets. From European refugees from World War I and the Russian Revolution, she learned about Cubism. And all the time she kept painting entirely for the sake of color. Upon her return to São Paulo late in 1917, Anita Malf atti showed her most recent works to friends and members of the family. Their reaction was a forecast of the more bitter things that lay ahead: "When people saw my paintings, they called them ugly, Dan-

24

The Modernist Movement in Brazil

tesque, and they were sad because my paintings were not little college saints."10 Nevertheless, with the help of the Count of Lara, she arranged for a showing to take place at 111 Rua Libero Badaró. Altogether she had fifty-three canvases to exhibit: portraits, scenes, sketches, watercolors, caricatures, and designs. On the afternoon of December 12,1917, the second exhibition of Anita Malfatti's paintings began. Opening day was auspicious: members of São Paulo society, journalists, writers, and artists attended. Three works sold immediately. First reactions called the collection original, bizarre, far from classical. Then a week later in the evening edition of O Estado, December 20, 1917, Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948), soon to become the famous discoverer of the mestiço of the interior, attacked with a vengeance. Excusing his criticism with the observation that flattery kills but sincerity saves, Lobato professed to see nothing in Anita's painting but a branch of caricature of color and form. So far as he was concerned it was all either paranoia or mystification. The tempest of abuse burst upon Anita Malfatti, who had to face "the intellectual and social prejudices of the time against the artist and the woman."11 She was to become the first martyr of the Modernist Movement in Brazil. Inspirer of the Lobato attack was Nestor Pestana, one of the directors of O Estado, a man who had liked Anita's first exhibit three years earlier but who was disappointed this time. His colleagues Julio Mesquita and Amadeu Amaral, more sympathetic and up-to-date, did not permit the criticism to be reprinted in the morning edition. But the offensive article had done its damage: some of the sold paintings were returned to Anita, a cloak of scandal covered her wherever she went, and critical adjectives about her work circulated throughout São Paulo. According to the artist herself, one elderly man threatened to destroy her paintings with his cane.12 Unpleasant as these consequences were, they were not nearly so serious as the fact that Lobato's mockery had shaken 10

Anita Malfatti, "1917," Revista do Salão de Maio, I (1939). Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 42. 12 Statement for Diário Carioca, 24 fevereiro 1952.

11

A Gathering of Cultural Forces

25

Anita's self-reliance, her confidence in herself as an artist. This inner damage disrupted her evolution in painting, led her into such conflict with family and self that Mário de Andrade saw in her third exhibit "the impression of an artist who had lost her own soul."13 Irony soon went to work, however, to balance the score against the cruelty and incompetence of Monteiro Lobato, proud possessor of an academic and traditionalist education in art: what he intended to destroy he consecrated. As "a great short-story writer with the reputation of being a bad painter" 14 himself, Lobato unwittingly caused the rallying of cultural forces in defense of his martyr. With a historical incomprehension comparable to that of Adolf Hitler, who once called modern art "the study of monsterism," Monteiro Lobato initiated the gathering of men into a movement that would soon attack traditionalism in Brazil and eventually ensure its downfall. Because of Anita Malfatti, for the first time several outstanding names of the Modernist Movement in Brazil began to coalesce into a group: Oswald de Andrade, Di Cavalcanti, Mário de Andrade, Guilherme de Almeida, Agenor Barbosa, Ribeiro Couto, George Przyrembel, Cândido Mota Filho, and João Fernando de Almeida Prado. A hard core of cultural rebellion had been formed. On the day after the close of the second Malfatti exhibit (January 11, 1918), Oswald de Andrade defended Anita in an article in the Jornal do Comércio. Mário de Andrade, who had visited the exhibit several times and written a rather regular and Parnassian sonnet about one of the paintings, was enthusiastic in the extreme. Hailing Anita as "one of the most restless, lofty and serious artistic temperaments of our time in Brazil," as "a master of color," and as "an exalted lyricist that Brazil ought to make a cult of," Mário thought of her as "the awakener of the Modernist Movement."15 13

See Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 52. Menotti del Picchia, "Uma Palestra de Arte," Correio Paulistano, 29 novembro 1920. 15 See Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 56, 62. 14

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

Menotti del Picchia, who first opposed and then repented, echoed Mário by saying that Anita broke the "retarded and paralytic" 16 tradition of Brazilian painting. So strong was the impact of Anita upon her generation that Mário de Andrade continued to praise her a quarter of a century later: "I cannot speak for my companions of that time, but personally I owe the revelation of the new and the conviction of rebellion to her and to the strength of her paintings." 17 Although the art of Anita Malfatti "was received with stones,"18 several of her contemporaries had begun to gather their own stones for an assault upon the stained-glass windows of hallowed tradition. On November 21, 1917, Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade met for the first time. During a political rally in favor of the Allies held at the Dramatic and Musical Conservatory of São Paulo, Mário delivered a speech on behalf of the Conservatory. For Oswald the speech was the revelation of a fine literary talent. He published the speech in the Jornal do Comércio, became friends with Mário, and the two joined forces in behalf of Modernism. In 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany and Brazil was finally forced by submarine activity against her shipping to do the same—in that year Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) published a volume of poems entitled "There Is a Drop of Blood in Each Poem," under the pen name of Mário Sobral. The pseudonym, used only this once in his career, was a cover for shyness, an admission of the inferiority complex induced by Vicente de Carvalho. Mário had sent fifteen of his finest sonnets to this leading Parnassian in São Paulo, and had received no reply. Pacifist in nature, the poems were to be a source of embarrassment later on, but Mário would never deny having written them, because he felt that they were more useful than his sonnets and rhymed verse, that 16

Picchia, "Uma Palestra de Arte." Mário de Andrade, "Fazer a História," Folha da Manhã, 24 agosto 1944. 18 Menotti deI Picchia, "Anita Malfatti," Correio Paulistano, 20 fevereiro L929. 17

A Gathering of Cultural Forces

27

they helped him discover himself and to make a clean break with the past. 19 Disgusted eventually with Brazilians who continued to remain pro-German, Mário outgrew his reserve and was soon ready to fight for all things new, for any rebellion. Amid all the news about the war in Europe, notices about some new poets broke into the Brazilian journals in 1917. Menotti del Picchia published his verse play "Moses," praised by Oswald de Andrade for its few signs, even if vague and indistinct, of renovation. But Menotti's big hit in 1917 was Juca Mulato ("J o e Mulatto"), a poem that appeared at the right moment in the nationalistic climate and was well received by both the public and the critics. For the first time in Brazilian literature a poem portrayed a mulatto in the role of a hero and, furthermore, let him fall tragically in love with a white woman. The sensational subject called forth ecstatic reviews not only in Brazil but also in Argentina and Portugal. Menotti's Modernist stroke was "an audacious and difficult graft of popular poetry onto the highest level of poetry."20 At the very beginning of his career as a literary critic, in 1919, Modernist Tristão de Ataíde believed that "Joe Mulatto," rooted in the native soil, represented "the ideal reconciliation of man with himself, of the Brazilian with his country, of the barbarian with his isolation."21 Jackson de Figueiredo was to ask, in the name of the cultural forces gathering for Modernism: "A few years ago, who would have had the courage to publish a poem with such a title?"22 While "Joe Mulatto" was causing such a storm of critical attention, a talent far greater than Menotti's was making his debut in Rio de Janeiro, with a slender volume entitled "The Ash of Hours." This was the first book by a sad-eyed tubercular from Recife, the man who was to become one of the greatest poets of Modernism 19 For Mário de Andrade's views on usefulness in poetry and his opinion of his first volume, see Francisco de Assis Barbosa, Testamento de Mário de Andrade e Outras Reportagens. 20 Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 73. 21 Tristão de Ataíde, Primeiros Estudos, p. 132. 22 Jackson de Figueireido, Discursos Acadêmicos, XI: 1938-43, p. 341.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

in Brazil, a living classic by the time he was fifty—Manuel Bandeira (b. 1886). Ascetic and sensual at the same time, passionate of heart and critical of mind, Bandeira explained to the world his manner of creation in a life that, for him, was suffering and peril: I write poetry like one who weeps For dejection—for disenchantmentClose my book, if as of now You have no cause for crying. My verse is blood. Burning sensualityScattered sorrow—useless remorseAching in my veins. Bitter and hot, Drop by drop it falls from my heart. And thus in these lines of hoarse agony Lifeflowsfrom the lips, Leaving an acid taste in the mouth. —I write poetry like one who dies. ("Desencanto") These lines are confession and admission in the neo-romantic mood of a twentieth-century Brazilian Keats. Bandeira, naming one of his poems in the volume "Verses Written In Water," was aware of his personal analogue with the great English Romantic, but so vast were the diflFerences that they ruled out any possibility of imitation. The same richness of concretion is in both poets, but whereas the voluptuousness of the Englishman is suspended like a saturated solution, in the Brazilian it is capable of precipitation: Rosebed burnt by summer, Petal-fall into perfumeIn every moment I see it— Your body—the unique island In the ocean of my desire— Your body is everything that shines, Your body is everything that smells sweetRose, blossom of the orange tree— ("Poemeto Erótico")

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Even in Bandeira's first volume, the lushness was never allowed to flow into sentimentality or melodramatic self-pity. From the outset, Bandeira maintained his life and his art by a discipline that produced a simplicity of vision and truth that remind one of the lyric power of Villon and last-period Yeats. As early as 1917, what was erotic one moment for Bandeira could in another turn immediately ironic: And your hot useless desires Beat their wings in unreality— What you call your passion Is merely curiosity. ("Poemeto Irônico") A new poetic voice was speaking in Brazil, a voice that would support the Modernist Movement and yet remain free of its excesses and detached from its naive enthusiasms. Monteiro Lobato received "The Ash of Hours" with moderate praise: "Today in Brazil as far as poets are concerned, there is a group of half a dozen supreme ones; a second group of a hundred aristocrats; at the bottom a thousand plebeians. Bandeira belongs among the hundred/' 23 Critic João Ribeiro was far more enthusiastic. Although Bandeira's volume was small, Ribeiro saw it as a great one, needed at that moment because the traditionalist imitators of the Parnassians had spoiled our taste to such an extent with their abuse of conventions, of artificialities, and the most extravagant necromancy that this return to simplicity and to the natural is a consoling and healthy reparation. Leaving the giddiness of multicolored lights, of Japanese lanterns, we return with the poet to the pleasant freshness of shadows.24 "The Ash of Hours," besides its promise of greater things to come from the author, was a volume of transition toward a new era in Brazilian literature. 23 24

Statement to Revista do Brasil, VIII, 3 (junho 1918), 177-178. Quoted by Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 75.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

Other poets also were publishing in 1917. In his "Gospel of Pan," Cassiano Ricardo (b. 1895), who was to become in time one of the finest modern poets of Brazil, "deserted a somber mysticism made of ashes, sadness, and pessimism, and joined Parnassianism."25 His Paulista contemporary Guilherme de Almeida (b. 1890), prince of society poets, published "We," a book that was greeted with mixed critical reaction. Other poets who saw work into print during the year included Da Costa e Silva, Gilberto Amado, Pereira da Silva, and Murilo Araújo. For present-day American criticism, the most interesting figure of this group was Araújo, who employed, somewhat in the manner of e. e. cummings, typographical tricks—a process which the Futurists would carry to ultimate limits. A forerunner of Brazilian Concretism, a movement that started with the Generation of 1945, Murilo stated his literary principles of 1917 as follows: My verses present themselves on certain pages in forms hitherto unused, forms intermediate between the old stanzas and the new metrics: Apparently free at times or complementary-free, or forming series of decasyllables with primary stresses symmetrically dislocated line for line; they are attempts born not from extravagance but from the dissatisfaction that other forms of expression caused in us.26 The curious language of the poet seems to indicate a Brazilian striving for the equivalent of Gerard Manley Hopkins' sprung rhythm. By this time the work of the Parnassians Bilac, Correia, and Oliveira could no longer exert any serious influence on the new poetry. Just what this new poetry was no Brazilian critic dared to assert without qualification. Victor Viana thought that the new poets, with few exceptions, were pantheists. 27 In his critical book "Some New Poets" (1918), Andrade Muricy saw in their work the death of Parnassianism and the abandonment of Symbolism. De25 Ibid., p. 77. 26

27

Murilo Araújo, Frontispiece to Carrilhões. Victor Viana, "O Ano Literário," Jornal do Comércio, 25 dezembro 1917.

A Gathering of Cultural Forces

31

ploring the "amorphous and unharmonious verse which they call free, but which they should call rhythmic prose,"28 Muricy ticked off a list of abuses to which he felt the younger poetic generation was susceptible: 1) preciosity, 2) goldsmith hammering of cold lines, 3) senseless and emotionless expressions that resulted in a frigidity of texture, 4) failure to understand their social and artistic roles, 5) lack of effort to keep up with the evolution of art in important cultural centers abroad, and 6) a use of typographical trickery (different sizes and colors of type, winding and undulating lines) that was only a ridiculous remnant of decadent practices. In agreement with Muricy over some of the formlessness of the time, Tristão de Ataíde looked upon the new work as representing "a poetic period without a name, which extends from the end of Symbolism to the beginning of Modernism.,,29 The transition period was as shapeless as its free verse. Fed up with "an excess of perfect and useless sonnets by the thousands, by the millions" on the part of the imitators of Parnassianism, João Ribeiro welcomed this new poetry and its characteristics: "Free in meter and expression, its rhythm has the slovenliness of prose, varied and profuse; it also possesses its own vocabulary and favorite themes."30 Undisciplined inspiration at this time was infinitely preferable to a masterful, dead technique. Victor Viana hailed the new writers for trying to make words realize their full potential: "They speak in order to act."31 But not only poets and their words. In 1917 an entire generation in Brazil was preparing to speak in order to act, a generation that would soon revise politics, economics, and aesthetics. The keynote of the Generation of 1917 was confidence in the future and in the enormous possibilities for the development of Brazil. The Russian Revolution of 1917 excited the Brazilian intel28

Andrade Muricy, Alguns Poetas Novos, p. 5. Tristão de Ataíde, Estudos, p. 113. 30 João Ribeiro, "A Nossa Poesia: O Imparciàl," Revista do Brasil, V (maio 1917), 116. 31 Viana, "O Ano Literário." 29

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

ligentsia, who began to see and feel their own country with a growing sense of nationalism and a strengthened civic pride. With the failure of the first general strike in Brazil, a strike which involved seventy-thousand workers in São Paulo—who asked for a 20-per-cent increase in salary, a shorter work week, and the enforcement of a law to prohibit children under eighteen and women from working in unhealthy places—the Communist Party was founded in the country. Poet Ricardo Gonçalves sympathized with the strikers and gave Oswald de Andrade his first lessons in political nonconformism. As Astrogildo Pereira said, the strike signified the beginning of the industrial ascension in Brazilian politics and of the end of the rule by the landed aristocracy.32 It was now five years since the return of Oswald the iconoclast from Europe. Strides had been made toward realizing his dream of creating a modern spirit that would overthrow the old and establish the new. Cultural forces had begun to gather, and if the pace of their coalescence must have seemed terribly slow to him and the maligned Anita Malfatti, the next five years would lead to the Modern Art Week and an explosive revolution into Modernism at an ever quickening pace and with constantly increasing power. 32

Astrogildo Pereira, Interpretações, p. 175.

3. Discoveries and Victories

1920 Oswald de Andrade, under the pen name of Ivan, wrote an article for the bimonthly journal Papel e Tinta (Paper and Ink), edited by himself and Menotti del Picchia, in which he praised both the work and the principles of a young Brazilian sculptor, Victor Brecheret. Seeing Brecheret's contemporaries as fifty years behind the times in the plastic arts, Oswald waxed enthusiastic over Victor: "He is not a mirror, he is a living fountain of creation, impressive in the coherence with which he joins to the eloquent use of symbols the healthy innocence of the primitive." Menotti del Picchia saw in Brecheret a Brazilian Rodin. In one of his many articles on the young sculptor, written over a period of a year, Menotti said: I N JUNE OF

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

Brecheret is Brazilian, Paulista, the fruit of the mixture of races, welded in our climate, profoundly moved by environmental forces. Hence his art—even in the deep mysticism that envelops it, it keeps something viscerally ours, tropical and indigenous, both in the anatomic expression of his figures and in the barbaric and interior movement that animates them.1 A little over two years after the martyrdom of Anita Malfatti, the literary Modernists had discovered a new hero for their cause. The first inspiration had come from painting; the second and stronger was now to be had from sculpture. Victor Brecheret was a poor Paulista who, admiring photographs of the works of Rodin, had wanted to go to France to see the originals. Go he did, but also to Rome, where from 1913 to 1919 he studied in the School of Fine Arts. Upon Victor's return to São Paulo in 1919, architect Ramos de Azevedo gave the sculptor a studio in the unfinished Palace of Industries. Here Brecheret worked in solitude and silence, earning the reputation of being a strange fellow who spoke little and made enormous odd statues. One day in 1920, during an exhibition of models for monuments to celebrate the Centennial of Brazilian Independence which was to take place in 1922, Oswald de Andrade, in the company of Di Cavalcanti and Menotti del Picchia, decided to have a look at the strange fellow upstairs. What Oswald saw "was a blinding revelation for us, because we were in the presence of an original and powerful sculptor." Later on Monteiro Lobato, who had so cruelly attacked the painting of Anita Malfatti, went to see for himself the work of the "crazy Futurist," the "Bolshevist." Despite the shyness, the suspicion of Brecheret himself—for only Ramos de Azevedo had given him any encouragement before—Lobato admired wholeheartedly what he saw. So strong was his enthusiasm for Brecheret that Lobato advised the young sculptor to return to Europe: São Paulo was too small a place for his genius. 1

Menotti del Picchia, "Victor Brecheret," Correio Paulistano, 26 fevereiro 1920.

Discoveries and Victories

35

Thus three years later, the same Monteiro Lobato who had refused Anita Malfatti the right to break with "classic authoritarianism" now saw in the sculpture of Victor Brecheret the need for an entire generation of artists to do so. Though Lobato would never retract what he had once written about Anita, his conversion to the cause of the Modernist Movement in Brazil was an important one. With the publication of his series of sketches entitled Urupês in 1918, Monteiro with "the new note of caboclismo . . . a fresh and different emphasis upon the mestizo of the interior, [had] set Brazilian writers upon a new track."2 The nationalist climate that would celebrate the Centennial of Brazilian Independence in 1922 was about to produce a Regionalist literature that focused attention upon the poor peasant of the interior. Jeca Tatu, the hero of Lobato's stories in Urupês, became a symbol not only of the rising regionalist nationalism but also of hardheaded realism in the Brazilian peasant. In this latter respect, Jeca Tatu differed greatly from Menotti del Picchia's Juca Mulato, who was little more than a sentimental idealization, "the product of an agrarian era that was ending, of the man emotionally attached to the land and who would very soon undergo the seductions of the industrial city."3 But the conversion of Monteiro Lobato to the Modernist cause was not the only immediate effect of the discovery of Brecheret. Oswald de Andrade used the young sculptor as the model of a character in his new book "Trilogy of Exile." Mário de Andrade admitted that it was Brecheret's sculpture which inspired him to the mood that helped him write his famous Modernist volume of poems "Hallucinated City." For Mário and his companions, Brecheret represented the first outright victory for the Modernist cause and spirit. So the Modernists became the heralds of his glory, because they "all considered Brecheret a genius."4 During the Modernist eulogies of Brecheret, the state of São 2

Samuel Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 207. Mário da Silva Brito, História do Modernismo Brasileiro, I: Antecedentes da Semana de Arte Moderna, 123. 4 Mário de Andrade, O Movimento Modernista, p. 18. 3

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

Paulo continued to make ready for the Centennial of Brazilian National Independence. A committee—consisting of Modernists Monteiro Lobato, Menotti del Picchia, and Oswald de Andrade— asked Brecheret to submit a model for a vast new monument of the Bandeirantes (flag bearers), those Paulista pioneers who had explored the interior of the country and finally succeeded in extending the borders of Brazil to envelop half the continent of South America. When Governor Washington Luís saw the model submitted by Brecheret, he became enthusiastic about it and wanted to see the dramatically new art executed in all its enormous proportions. In its night edition of July 28, 1920, O Estado shared the Governor's initial enthusiasm: "The monument is for every reason —for its power of conception and for its daring technique—well worthy of the great epic we want to celebrate. It is the Paulista epic in a Paulista work of art." But the Portuguese colony in São Paulo thought otherwise. This powerful force for conservatism and Old World tradition wanted to donate a monument on the same theme, but executed by a Portuguese sculptor, Teixeira Lopes. Not wanting Brecheret to miss his big chance, which was in turn the biggest chance to date for the cause of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, Menotti del Picchia took to polemics: "A Brazilian monument should be completely Brazilian."5 So hot was the argument he generated, however, that Governor Luís decided to postpone the project. Brecheret had to rest content for the time being with giving his model to the state government, which sent it to the São Paulo Public Museum. Thus the new art made its first entrance into the academic world, but the entrance was only half a victory for the Modernists. The next important event in Brecheret's impact on the Modernist Movement in Brazil took place on April 24, 1921: the exhibit of his marble statue "Eva," which had already been enthusiastically received during an earlier showing in Rome. The first work by 5

Menotti del Picchia, "Monumentos Nacionais," Correio Paulistano, 15 setembro 1920.

Discoveries and Victories

37

Brecheret to be seen by the Paulista public, "Eva" was universally applauded. The style of execution in the statue, however, was classic and very much under the influence of Rodin. But the Modernists had two objectives which prompted the shy and somewhat reluctant sculptor to show the work to the home folks: they wanted the city of São Paulo to purchase the statue, and they wanted the state government to grant their idol a scholarship that would enable him to return to Europe. The exhibition of "Eva" achieved both aims: the city bought the statue and mounted it in Anhangabaú Valley, the very heart of the metropolis, and Brecheret received a state grant which enabled him to leave for France in June of 1921, after arranging through an uncle for several more of his works to be exhibited later under the sponsorship of his Modernist friends. A few months after Brecheret's departure for France, the Modernist group in São Paulo went wild with ecstasy. In Paris, submitting only a part of his massive work "The Temple of My Race," the Brazilian sculptor had triumphed over four thousand competitors in the Salon d'Automne. This latest victory by Brecheret greatly encouraged the Modernist Movement in Brazil. Contemplating the importance of the triumph in Paris, Menotti del Picchia made a judgment that was a ringing challenge to the pale traditionalists of academic art: 1) That there are many backward spirits among us. 2) These spirits represent the majority. 3) So far as art is concerned, we are still in the Stone Age. 4) There is a small group, the calumniated "Futurist" group, that seems to see further than the others. 5) Our government—though it does not belong to this group—knows how to appreciate artists of value.6 Meanwhile Brecheret kept in touch with his Paulista friends, informing them of what he was learning from his association with Picasso, Léger, Brancousie, Satie, Stravinsky, and Cocteau. Then, 6

Picchia, "Palestra das Segundas," Correio Paulistano, 14 novembro 1921.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

on a trip to Switzerland, he discovered a new process of sculpturing, a process based upon what he observed had happened to stones rounded, indeed shaped, by the waters of a river. The stones had lost their primitive form, and Brecheret felt their modified new strength, their strange beauty. He decided to use them for his Modernist work, for he now realized that above all else he must be a man of the time and create his own destiny. Back in Brazil there were growing signs that others wanted to be men of the time and to create their own destiny. During the three years between the martyrdom of Anita Malfatti and the discovery of Victor Brecheret, the old and the new had been in constant conflict. Out of that conflict Tristão de Ataíde saw come important consequences that had brought an end to Naturalism in the novel, Ornamentalism in prose, Parnassianism in poetry, Symbolism, rationalistic criticism, and Positivism in philosophy.7 By this time the Modernists had no acknowledged masters in Brazil, either because the masters were dead or because the Modernists chose to ignore those who were still living. The liberalism of Ruy Barbosa, as a political example, had already been buried by the rise of fascism and communism. Ever since 1915 the League of National Defense had opposed the domination of Brazilian life by the Portuguese conservatives and traditionalists. In 1917 a journal named Brazilea was founded with the express purpose of combating this domination. For generations the Portuguese had controlled industry, commerce, letters, the press—and therefore political circles. Now in an aesthetic war the Modernists wanted to rid Brazilian literature of Portuguese influence. Such a campaign entailed two separate but coordinated attacks: to create in the language of the Brazilian people, and to break the stuffy grammatical rules that reflected the Portuguese usage of Lisbon. 7

Statement made in O Jornal sometime in 1938. Taken from a scrapbook of Carlos Drummond de Andrade.

Discoveries and Victories

39

The first Modernist desire—to create in the language of the Brazilian people—was later underscored by Manuel Bandeira in a few lines from his elegiac "Remembrance of Recife" in the 1930 collection entitled Libertinagem: Life did not come to me through newspapers or books It came from the mouth of the people on the ungrammatical tongue of the people The genuine idiom of the people Because it is the people who relish so the Portuguese of Brazil While we What we do Is merely to ape The syntax of Camoens— The irony, born of humility, in these lines is the fact that Bandeira never aped the syntax of Camoens. In diction he is the most Brazilian of all the modern poets, full of coinages from popular usage and terms from African and Indian dialects. At times his terms are so Brazilian as to be the despair of metropolitan interpreters whose vocabularies are more literary. The second Modernist desire—to break the stuffy grammatical rules that reflected the Portuguese usage of Lisbon—was executed by all the gay iconoclasts of the 1922 revolution. Oswald de Andrade, for example, accepted typographical mistakes as permanent changes in his texts. Mário de Andrade reveled in syntactical and mental ellipses, wild and startling imagery, vulgarisms, violent juxtapositions of romantic sentiment and earthy reality, ironic twists, and irreverent laughter. At times in his attack on the sensibility of the bourgeois, Mário was, as he meant to be, downright insulting: I insult the bourgeois! O nickel-plated bourgeois, O bourgeois-bourgeois! The well-made digestion of São Paulo!

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Movement

in Brazil

O man-ham! O man-buttocks! O man who, being French, Brazilian, or Italian, Is always a cautious little watch-your-step. 8 Guilherme d e Almeida, Cassiano Ricardo, a n d others joined t h e general assault on grammatical and syntactical proprieties, b u t once again it was M a n u e l Bandeira w h o accomplished in one p o e m , "Poética," a complete s u m m a r y of w h a t t h e Modernists opposed: 1 am sick of limited lyricism Of well-behaved lyricism Of public-servant lyricism With its time-clock card And its clerkly protocol And its ass-kissing flattery of the boss. I am sick of halting lyricism That has to look up in the dictionary The vernacular meaning of a word. Down with the purists! I want all the words Chiefly the universal barbarisms I want all the constructions Chiefly the syntactical ones of exception I want all the rhythms Chiefly the unnumbered. I am sick of flirting lyricism Of political lyricism Of rickety lyricism Of syphilitic lyricism Of all lyricism which surrenders To anything which is not its true self. After all, that is not lyricism That is only bookkeeping 8 From Mário de Andrade, "Hallucinated City," translated by Samuel Putnam.

Discoveries and Victories

41

A table of co-sines A handbook for the perfect lover With a hundred models of letters And the different ways to please the ladies. I prefer the lyricism of madmen The lyricism of drunkards The difficult and poignant lyricism of drunkards The lyricism of Shakespeare's fools. I will have nothing more to do With a lyricism which is not freedom. The last translated word from this poem in the Libertinagem collection is the key word in the vocabulary of the 1922 Generation of the Modernist Movement in Brazil: "freedom." The demand for control and mastery in the kingdom of the word would come later, with Carlos Drummond de Andrade and the second-phase rebellion of 1930. While the Modernists were engaged in destroying the old language in order to create an idiom more native and direct, the agrarian era in São Paulo had already entered into a process of disintegration. Nationalism, an excuse for expelling dangerous foreigners from Brazil, was in reality the last defense of the agrarian era, for "the state founded on rural aristocracy tried to survive by means of the myth of the country/' 9 Through the character Jeca Tatu in Urupês, Monteiro Lobato shattered this mythical idealization of country life. Soon Lobato, calling for a Brazil for the Brazilians, was strengthening the growing interest in the plurality of races forming the nation. In an exaltation of miscegenation, which later was to be carried almost to the point of mysticism by the sociologist Gilberto Freyre, the Modernists joined with Lobato in calling for a blending of all heterogeneous races to create an original nation, unified and strong. Such creation, however, was a difficult task, because of the continuous influx of other new racial stocks and 9

Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 123.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil

the strong prejudice among the wealthy conservatives against mestiçoism. Both of these reasons are implicit in the following lines from Bandeira's poem "Não Sei Dançar": This ballroom of mixed bloods is the true image of Brazil— Now the yellow fraction begins In the figure of a Japanese. The Japanese also dance the mashishe: Acugêlê banzai! The daughter of a sugar refiner from Campos Looks with disgust At an immoral Creole girl. And yet what is indecent in another Is merely languorous in the marvelous eyes of the girl. And that snuggle-curve of shoulders— But she doesn't realizeSo Brazil! Despite anarchists, strikes, financial difficulties, Communistinduced restlessness, and the need felt by Brazilian congressmen to defend the right to own property as the basis for liberty—the Modernists in 1920 were optimistic in the extreme. Because of the collapse of Germany and the general war-weariness of Europe, these enthusiastic intellectuals believed that the leadership of the world was shifting to the Americas. Desiring closer working relations among all the nations of the hemisphere, the Modernists urged Brazil to get ready to play an important role in future world politics. Pointing to the great growth in industry, commerce, and foreign exports during the past five years, the Modernists called São Paulo the pride of Brazil. So much was São Paulo the pride of Brazil that it alone among all the cities of South America's biggest nation felt the social problems of class struggle. Traditional Paulista families tried to keep newly arrived immigrant families from owning land and thereby getting into politics. The Zumbi Group, named after a Negro leader who had rebelled against the whites under the empire, was a coalition of progressive writers and workers who showed "that

Discoveries and Victories

43

there was the beginning of a proletarian conscience in São Paulo."10 With more than a 300-per-cent increase in the number of new houses built in the twenty years since the turn of the century, with constantly developing importance as the leading center for economics, industry, and finance in Brazil—São Paulo was in 1920 a metropolis in ferment. Though it was not, in the words of Pierre Denis, "the capital of Brazilian letters," 11 it was a more active city than Rio de Janeiro and therefore a perfect place for the development of the most combative elements of the Modernist Movement. The Modernists defended São Paulo for its progress in two fields: financial and cultural. Was it not the strong economic condition of the city, they asked, which made possible the flourishing of an editorial and publishing business? Where else in Brazil did people read more books? The Monteiro Lobato who had shattered the sentimental myth about the ideal of country living was also responsible for a revolution in the distribution of books. Creating an outright scandal among the academic elite, Lobato initiated the habit of advertising books for sale in the newspapers and made it possible for the books to be bought, far and near, through such odd agencies as drugstores, groceries, barbershops, and post offices. One can imagine what a great commercial breakthrough Lobato's initiative achieved for the twenty major and minor publishers of São Paulo. According to statistics available through O Estado and Revista do Brasil, in São Paulo in 1920 fifteen publishers brought out 203 books with a total number of copies set at 901,000. Twothirds of these were textbooks, but in the field of belles lettres, Menotti del Picchia's Juca Mulato and "Masks" were best-sellers, and Brazilians bought 8,000 copies of Lobato's Urupês in one year. The Paulistas who watched these new events in publishing gloried in the fact that they were advanced over the rest of the country. They despised anything that was backward. In 1920, thanks to the importation of Marinetti by Oswald de 10 11

Ibid., p. 132. Pierre Denis, O Brasil no Século Vinte, p. 147.

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Andrade, the word Futurist was widespread—and misused. A derogatory term, "Futurist" had come to mean anything unbalanced, different, offbeat. For public and critics alike, it was synonymous with the gauche. Considered Futurists by nearly everybody, such artists as Brecheret, Vicente de Rego Monteiro, Di Cavalcanti, Anita Malfatti, and John Graz shared only one common denominator: they all stood opposed to academicism and its out-of-date aesthetics. Yet in order to achieve their revolution against the national intelligence, the Modernists were willing to wear any label. If people thought of them as Futurists, then Futurists they were. But one thing they believed wholeheartedly, a thing that had nothing to do with labels: "São Paulo will very soon be the intellectual leader of our country. . . . We will create a completely original aesthetics."12 Thus 1920, the year of the discovery of Brecheret, was the year of consolidation of forces and planning for the battles of 1921 that, so the Modernists hoped, would end with victory in 1922. The target date for victory was chosen by Oswald de Andrade to coincide with the Centennial of Brazilian Independence. Oswald wanted to demonstrate to the world the cultural emancipation of his city on the hundredth anniversary of the political liberation of his country. It is no wonder that the leader of the Modernist Movement, Mário de Andrade, himself praised by Menotti del Picchia for having "one of the most solid and well-balanced minds of the new Paulista generation,"13 should call Oswald "the most characteristic and dynamic figure in the movement."14 As the year of battle approached, Oswald, Mário, and Menotti were joined by Cândido Mota Filho and Sérgio Milliet in their newspaper campaign to defend the new literary and artistic principles. These five Modernists, with the help of others, kept calling 12 Menotti del Picchia, in "Cerebro Paulista," and "Novas Correntes Estéticas," Correio Paulistano, 23 fevereiro 1920 and 3 março 1920. 13 Picchia, "Cartas a Crispim: Mário Morais de Andrade," Correio Paulistano, 14 novembro 1920. 14 Andrade, O Movimento Modernista, p. 31.

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through their writings for the execution of the program of new directions as outlined by Menotti: 1) The development of neo-spiritualism, as represented and expressed by Romain Holland. This would mean the establishment of a deeper and loftier philosophy in Brazil. 2) An intensification of attachment to the native land and to its psychological and social problems. 3) A realistic adjustment to the contemporary historical scene. 4) The fostering in modern art of an intuition of the tragic spirit of the octopus-like big city.15 So striking were the new directions pointed out by Menotti that critic, essayist, and historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda dared to cry out this prophecy: "Brazil will have sooner or later a national literature, an original literature. Seeking inspiration in national themes, respecting our traditions, and submitting to the deep voice of our race will hasten that final result" 16 As 1920 came to an end it was clear that the deepening voice of the Modernist Movement would be thundering out its principles in one major engagement after another, for the war with the timetable of triumph set for 1922 had been declared. 15

See Picchia, "Novas Correntes Estéticas," and "Da Estética: seremos plagiaros," Correio Paulistano, 3 março 1920 and 10 abril 1920. 16 Picchia, "Originalidade Literária," Correio Paulistano, 22 abril 1920.

4. Affírmations and Attacks

BY 1921 THE HARD CORE of Modernists in São Paulo was no

longer in doubt about principles. Filled with naive enthusiasm about the dawn of American life and the end of European domination, Oswald de Andrade and his friends looked upon São Paulo as the promised land of art that called for novelists and poets. After the publication of Menotti del Picchia's "Masks," a half dozen of the new generation gathered with politicians, older writers, and socialites at the Trianon Restaurant in São Paulo. What started out as a dinner party to honor Menotti ended up as the famous "Trianon Manifesto" of Oswald, who delivered a speech because he did not want his friend to be considered a member of the conservative group. It was a discourse designed not to

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47

praise Menotti but to remind him of his Modernist responsibilities: to continue the struggle against all those who would oppose the artistic and literary revolution. As a surprise attack in the camp of an unprepared enemy, Oswald's address was superb tactics. In asserting that the past was dead and that only the future had importance, Oswald re-emphasized the revolutionary vocation of São Paulo and indicated that even greater battles lay ahead for the city that possessed "one of the strongest, most expressive, and proud generations of supreme creators." 1 The "Trianon Manifesto" was a success. It called forth an answer from Menotti del Picchia that confirmed the Modernist sentiments of Oswald de Andrade. In an article entitled "Na Maré das Reformas" ("In the Tide of Reforms"), published on January 24, 1921, in the Correio Paulistano Menotti claimed that Brazil had rarely achieved great personalities in literature. Only the very great—Machado de Assis and Euclides da Cunha—would the Modernists keep. Most of the other Brazilian writers, in Menotti's opinion, were a bunch of colorless imitators. With few exceptions, he said, the Modernist Movement would destroy the past. In the course of this essay Menotti proposed a program that included the key principles of reformist doctrine, to be explained and defended time and again by all members of the Modernist group. Here in essence is the program that Menotti proposed: 1) In a break with the past, a repudiation of Romantic, Parnassian, and Realistic concepts. 2) The achievement of mental independence for Brazil through the abandonment of European suggestions, mainly the Portuguese and the French. 3) The development of new techniques for the artistic representation of life, since the old processes are no longer capable of apprehending contemporary problems. 4) Establishing a different verbal expression for literary crea1 See Mário da Silva Brito, História do Modernismo Brasileiro, I: Antecedentes da Semana de Arte Moderna, 161.

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tion, which is no longer a mere Naturalistic transcription but an artistic recreation, transposing a vital reality to the level of art. 5) A fight in favor of the principles which are the aim of the reform, in a reaction against the status quo. From this program flowed other affirmations and attacks in 1921. Convinced that the noble savage was a symbol of an outmoded era, Menotti wrote an article entitled "Let's Kill peri." Agreeing that the concept of the noble savage was an archaic academicism, and equally despising the outworn past, Cândido Mota Filho said: "Life is climbing. In order to go one step up, you have to keep one foot on the step below. B u t . . . you don't have to adore fanatically, stupidly, what is left behind."2 The growing Modernist opposition to Realism also produced articles of attack against Zola and the Portuguese novelist Eça de Queirós. The continuing reaction against Parnassianism led to assaults on the use of rhyme and regularized meter. In these mounting attacks, Symbolism escaped with praise, because its free alexandrine abolished half-line caesuras and thereby gave new dimensions to the line, based upon variation of rhythms. Revival of the world of symbols and the use of assonance and consonance in place of rhyme were two more attributes admired by the Modernists, whose foreign heroes were Verlaine and Mallarmé. Attacking the rules of composition, the Modernists despised above all things else the form, the predetermined recipe of the Parnassians. The visit of Paul Fort to Brazil in 1921 served as a further excuse for the Modernists to defend their new aesthetics and to try to destroy the old. At this time Regionalism in Brazil was fashionable. Perhaps for this reason it fell under the angry eye of the Modernists. At any rate, they thought there had been too many books on Brazilian hillbilly themes. So Monteiro Lobato, who had attacked Anita 2 Cândido Mota Filho, "A Moderna Orientação Estética," Jornal do Comércio, 17 outubro 1921.

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Malfatti in 1917, now came under assault in 1921. Cândido Mota Filho, for one, thought Lobato's hero was a lazy, indifferent, and degenerate obstacle to progress and could not therefore "represent the national soul."3 Thus narrow-minded preconceptions blurred critical perceptions, and "Regionalism was repudiated by the Modernists because it gave an idea of the Brazilian world which did not correspond with the vision of progress produced by São Paulo. The hillbilly was backwardness, misery, in short, the exact opposite of Paulista grandeur." 4 It was not the first time that the city mouse had sniffed at his country cousin. Preoccupied with the idea of forming a truly Brazilian race, the Modernists criticized the famous Bilac sonnet "Música Brasileira," which upheld the concept of an ethnic trinity, "the amorous flower of three sad races." Though the Modernists agreed that the new national type had not yet been blended, the cosmopolitanism of São Paulo seemed to indicate that such a type would soon emerge. Anything, in short, which could serve as a transition to a Futurism that did not confine itself to the narrow manifesto of Marinetti was welcomed by the Paulista group. That is why, in the wake of general negation and iconoclasm, Symbolism remained in favor with the Modernists as "the most serious reaction against Parnassianism and Realism."5 Opposed to a minute and literal transcription of reality, Oswald de Andrade began to argue in print for the support of Mário de Andrade's new aesthetics. Life, said Oswald, must not be photographed, because art is not journalism, a kind of perfect reporting. Seeking to create an illusion of reality, rather than reality itself, art, according to Oswald, "tries to create the beautiful as distinct from the beautiful in nature." The artist therefore "is a privileged creature who produces a transcendent world, anti-photographic, maybe even unreal, but an existing world shocking and profound, 3 4 5

Mota Filho, "A Literatura Nacional," Jornal do Comércio, 3 outubro 1921. Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 177. Mota Filho, "A Moderna Orientação Estética."

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which bursts forth with any interior, obscure and divine flash."6 It was the marvelous detachment from reality in Brecheret's model of the proposed monument "Bandeirantes" that caused Oswald to sneer at a public which could not understand how the sculptor "can make horses and men with extremely long necks, cyclopic with majestic and quick strength, without any ventral softness, or any other devaluating organic details."7 Exulting in the fact that Brecheret's sculpture was not descriptive Realism because Victor knew that "art is not rough and useless reproduction of zoological specimens," Oswald asserted with challenging certitude that "art is not photography, never was. Art is expression, is moving symbol."8 Thus it was becoming increasingly clear that in their struggle to establish the freedom of art by the destruction of rules and systems, that in their fight to achieve a full means of expression and communication, the Modernists were revising the classical concept "that beauty was immutable, founded upon Plato's philosophy, according to what the academic theorists claimed."9 Seeing change in everything, from the seasons of the year to the tides of the sea, Cândido Mota Filho asked: Why should art be mummified, why should it dry up before the Chinese Wall? He went on to answer his rhetorical question: Art will be, as it always has been, the mirror of an epoch. It will change with all the incomprehensible whims of life; but in all its manifestations, it will enjoy liberty, immense liberty. To imitate the classics, to copy the past, to stick strictly to the past is to kill art.10 6 Oswald de Andrade, "Questões de Arte," Jornal do Comércio, 25 julho 1921. 7 Ibid, 8 sibid. 9 Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 184. 10 Mota Filho, "A Moderna Orientação Estética."

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51

For the embattled Paulistas of 1921 aesthetic stasis meant literary death. The removal of beauty from the transcendental plane of the Romantic Neo-Platonists to the inner world of the person by the Modernists is nowhere better implied than in the opening lines of Manuel Bandeira's "Melancholy Madrigal": What I adore in you Is not your beauty. Beauty exists only in us. Beauty is merely a notion. And beauty is sad. Not sad in itself, But by what it has: frailty and doubt. As the inner province of beauty became a part of the new aesthetics, so Oswald de Andrade became the high priest of its propagation, not only through his polemical articles but also by means of his new novel "The Condemned Ones"—hailed in 1921 as a powerful manifestation of the Modernist Movement. At the same time, Agenor Barbosa was publishing his "Poems of Life and of Cities," and Menotti del Picchia was introducing the Italian poet Govoni to São Paulo in Portuguese translation. Menotti also translated and published some selections from Marinettfs prose and converted the fascist Parnassian poet Plínio Salgado to Futurism. As the label Futurism became a rallying point for the Modernist group, Oswald de Andrade took to praising any work of art which he thought to be Futuristic. Thus in 1921 the volume of poetry "Greek Songs" by Guilherme de Almeida was blessed as one of the first fruits of Paulista Futurism. 11 The poem "Epigraph" merited special attention on the part of Oswald: I lost my wild flute Among the reeds of the glassy lake. 11

Oswald de Andrade, "Literatura Contemporânea," Jornal do Comércio,

12 junho 1921.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil Restless rushes of the margin, Silver and polished copper fish, Which live in the moving currents of the water; Cicadas in the tall trees; Dead leaves that waken under the winged steps of the nymphs, Algae, Beautiful clean algae: —If you find The flute that I lost, come every evening, Lean over it! And you will hear the sonorous Secrets that my lips and fingers Have left forgotten among The shy silences of its womb.

The critic waxed ecstatic over the fact that (in the Portuguese original) a line of fifteen syllables introduced a line of two syllables into the poem. Any breaking away from regular metrics was welcomed by the Modernists, but Oswald noticed that Guilherme maintained one restriction from the past: preservation of rhyme. Guilherme's excuse was: "Rhyme is the only chord we have added to the Greek lyre."12 But the praise of Guilherme de Almeida was as nothing when compared with Oswald de Andrade's extravaganza of some two weeks earlier. In a famous article entitled "O Meu Poeta Futurista" ("My Futurist Poet"), Oswald wrote an encomium of the stillunpublished volume "Hallucinated City" by Mário de Andrade: "Fifty pages of perhaps the richest, the most unheard of, the most beautiful city poetry."13 With boundless enthusiasm, Oswald quoted Mário's poem "You" as an outstanding example of the avant garde in Brazilian letters: Dying slender Flame, but still more dead in the spirit!— Spirit of an aristocrat 12 13

See Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 212. Oswald de Andrade in Jornal do Comércio, 27 maio 1921.

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53

who lives on a yawn between two courting compliments and from time to time on a cup of very strong Darkness! Woman taller than the hallucinated astonishments of the towers of St. Benedict! Woman made of asphalt and the mud of the valley, complete insult in the eyes, every invitation in that crazy mouth of blushes! Apprentice dressmaker of Sao Paulo, Italian-French-Portuguese-Brazilian-Saxon, I love your twilight ardors, twilight and therefore more burning, pioneeringly Paulista-like!— Lady Macbeth made of thin mist, pure morning mist! Woman, you are my stepmother and my sister! Ascensional grinding of my senses! Vapor-trail of an airplane between Moji and Paris! Pure morning mist!— I like your desires for Turkish crime and your ambitions, twisted like thefts! I love you with silent nightmares, materialization of the Canaan of my Poe!— Never More— —Emilio de Menezes insulted the memory of my Poe— —Oh! incendiary of my sonorous beyonds, you are my Black Cat! You crushed yourself against the walls of my Dream, this fearful Dream!— And you will always be, dying slender Flame, half aristocrat, half prostitute, the crucifying hallucinations of all the dawns of my garden!— T h e referential joining of Shakespeare a n d Poe, t h e free association of imagery, the mental and syntactical ellipses, the Whitman-like

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conjunction of such diverse terms as "aristocrat" and "prostitute," the use of vulgar slang, and the underlying sensibility of Surrealism—all these elements in the poem by Mário must have united to convince the conservative and traditional reader that the author had composed these lines quoted by Oswald in a seizure of delirium tremens. The immediate result of Oswald's article was a literary scandal. Perhaps if Oswald had not quoted from Mário, he could have reduced the sensational impact on the public and hence the violent reaction of criticism directed against Mário. But quote Oswald did, and thereby caused Mário de Andrade to suffer in the name of literature "the same things suffered three years before by Anita Malfatti in the name of advanced painting." 14 The public immediately thought that Mário de Andrade was insane. People would stop, stare, and point at him on the street. Everywhere he went, he was greeted with sarcastic looks and mocking smiles. Parents began removing their children from courses in the musical conservatory where Mário taught, because it was "dangerous to leave them under the influence of a crazy 'Futurist'." 15 Even the members of his own family turned on Mário; arguments over the Modernist Movement embittered life at home. The scandal grew so bad that Mário himself admitted that "I wished for the end of the world."16 What hurt the young poet most of all was the fact that "I thought they would discuss my ideas (which were not even mine): but they discussed my intentions."17 Under the circumstances of such notoriety, the only recourse Mário had was to try to set the record straight about his ideas. On June 6, 1921, therefore, he published an article entitled "Futurista?" in the São Paulo edition of the Jornal do Comércio. Writing in the third person, as though he were an intimate friend of the poet, Mário defended this assertion that was to appear in the 14 15 16 17

Brito, História, I: Antecedentes, 202. Ibid., p. 202. Mário de Andrade, Paulicéia Desvairada, p. 12. Ibid.

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preface to his "Hallucinated City": "I am no Futurist (of Marinetti). I have said it and I repeat it. I have points of contact with Futurism, but Oswald de Andrade, by calling me a Futurist, was wrong. It is my fault, because I knew about the article and I let it appear." 18 In the dramatic role of the friend, Mário said that Mário was not happy, that after much study, he still had not found a satisfactory aesthetics. Having passed through periods of flirtation with Parnassianism, Symbolism, the dropping of poetry, the hating of stanzas, the writing of hillbilly stories and phantasmical tales, he had returned to poetry and begun to write "Hallucinated City." But, as the author friend of the article piously asserted: He did not mean and does not mean to have it published. "Hallucinated City" is an intimate book, a book of life, an entirely lyrical (musical, I should say) poem, wet with tears, rough with insult, luminous with soul, laughing with sarcasm—verses, but are they really verses? of suffering and revolt, an expression of a solitary self, incomprehensible and completely unimportant for humanity in general. Finally a free book (at least from the aesthetic point of view), more romantic than classic, but where a soul cries upon itself without any concern for doctrine or even for art. One can imagine the fun Mário must have had in writing the article: he could praise and deprecate, love and reject, defend and condemn his work at the same time. It was a literary way of eating one's cake and having it too, for the crowning irony was that the book which was written never to be published would see print in less than a year. The imaginary friend went on in the article to ask what constituted the Futurism in Mário's "Hallucinated City." Was it the lack of stereotyped rhythms? Or the denial of the vulgar leisure of rhyme, "useless in a language vibrant, varied and sonorous like ours?" Or the violation of certain rules of syntax? Or the ideal conception of the book? After thus outlining the attributes of 18

Ibid.

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Mário's poems, the friend asserted that the poet's champions of freedom did not include one Futurist—neither Heine, nor Stechetti, nor Whitman, nor Verlaine, nor Verhaeren. Thus Mário wrote of himself that "our poet is not tied to international Futurism or to any other school. . . . He is just a son of our day, anxious to adjust his own soul to life, marked by unrest and suffering. . . . He will never be a reformer, a revolutionary, an iconoclast; and he assures that he will not destroy anything without being certain that he can reconstruct something better." Mário was serious when he asked whether Oswald was really convinced that a Paulista Futurism existed. If it did, then what were its works, its ideas, its aims? The author friend himself understood some of the principal tenets of Oswald's Futurism and shared his poet-hero's sense of repugnance for "the complete banishment of the remembrance of God, a total disrespect for our gentle language, and the abandonment of the ideas of patriotism and principally of tradition." As a daily practicing Catholic, "one of those who cry over the sins that human imperfection caused him to commit," Mário—so his friend said—loved and respected with passion both his native tongue and his fatherland. Thus the poet believed that those who preached a "chimeric and characterless internationalism" were just being "thoughtless." Though he understood the fact of evolution in language, he also knew that evolution "does not authorize anybody to write a kind of African dialect" as a substitute for Portuguese. In sum, then, the article "Futurista?" by Mário claimed that the author of "Hallucinated City" was no Futurist, that he had never been interested in making Futurism work in Brazil. Admitting to having felt abused by such epithets as "extravagant," "original," "modern," and "crazy," the author nevertheless refused "to be imprisoned in the ill-smelling stables of any schools." He would remain content to be himself, his own free personality—with one request: that others leave him alone. Ingenious as was the defense, it did not convince Oswald de Andrade, who in the verses of "Hallucinated City" saw "the most

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shocking, the most astonishing, and . . . the most blessed examples of Futurism, in relation to the narrow aesthetic views and the traditional ignorance" of Brazil.19 Believing that Mário was too modest to say to his contemporaries, as Walt Whitman once said to a citizen of Manhattan, "Leave my works and go lull yourself with something you can understand," Oswald saw in Mário some of the grandeur of the author of Song of Myself. Though his poetry was a revolution, the trouble with Mário, according to Oswald, was that he exaggerated his respect for the past out of all proportion to what he actually felt. As for Oswald himself, he was fiercely adamant in his opposition to a literature imitative of, or in any way dependent upon, the past. Contemporary traditionalists for him were "the born old, the castrated, the cowardly, the ignorant, and the stupid."20 As for Paulista Futurism, it existed— and Mário de Andrade was its leader, followed by Guilherme de Almeida, Menotti del Picchia, and Agenor Barbosa. If many of the so-called Futurist writings praised by Oswald de Andrade in 1921 seem merely quaint and pale by present-day standards, it should be remembered that these writings were very advanced for their time, widely discussed, and provocative of scandal. In some quarters they were considered to be even pathological. Yet through such writings new prospects were opened up for Brazilian literature and new methods developed for the artists with words. The immediate effect of Oswald's praise of "Hallucinated City," beyond the personal notoriety and discomfort caused the author of the book, was to draw Mário de Andrade out of his shy reserve and force him to assume the leadership of the Modernist revolution. Mário needed encouragement to draw him out into the open. In a character summary of himself, in his poem "Variation on the Bad Friend," Mário admitted that in contrast to a friend who could "walk easily, lightly / In the labyrinth of complications"— 19 20

Oswald de Andrade, "Literatura Contemporânea." Ibid.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil I am not like that. I am heavy, I am rather clumsy, I have no wings and not much breeding. I need a broad and straight road. If I lack space, I break everything, I get hurt, I get tired—I finally fall. In the middle of the road I stop, unable to go on.

By pushing Mário into the forefront of the modernist struggle, Oswald refused to let the poet stop in the middle of the road. The choice of Mário de Andrade to head the Modernist Movement in São Paulo was a happy one. Despite his shyness, his modesty, his self-styled heavy clumsiness, Mário was the most refined and well-read Paulista of his generation. An expert in aesthetic theory and a practicing musician, he was also a specialist in Brazilian folklore and literature. Although he fell short of achieving the highest artistic expressions of his generation, Mário became, as the great catalytic jack-of-all-trades, the embodiment of the Modernist Movement, its incarnate genius, the most important single person in its historical development. Because its affirmations and attacks of 1921 helped to produce him, literary criticism has the right to ask: "Who was Mário de Andrade?"

5. Mário de Andrade

MÁRIO RAUL DE MORAIS ANDRADE, born in the city of São Paulo on October 9,1893, was a perfect example of the ethnic trinity of Brazil—the very concept that, as a Modernist, he opposed. From the Indian he got his copper coloring, his physical stature, his strength, his formidable lower jaw and chin (subject of many a newspaper caricature), his high cheekbones, his Antaeus-like love of the earth, his tropical folklore and intuitive wisdom; from the Negro, his massive head, his thick lips, his heavy skeleton and large extremities, his gentleness, his flashes of humor, his talent for music, his impeccable sense of rhythm; from the Portuguese, his language, his saudade, his cultural heritage, his Catholic faith, his philosophic mind, his civilized soul. Combine all these

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gifts with an enormous gusto for life, a rare capacity for forming friendships, an enthusiasm for art, a dedication to truth and beauty, a dynamic ability to work at a Herculean pace—and one can see why Mário de Andrade exerted such a magnetic influence upon his contemporaries. He was an overwhelming personality. In the words of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, in many ways his exact temperamental opposite, "Mário was the greatest many-talented creative force that I have ever known in my life."1 The multiracial stock that made Mário de Andrade a kind of Homo brasiliensis was also a forecast of the varied types of creativity that would shape his career. As Otto Maria Carpeaux has said, Mário "was the chief of the most impetuous literary movement that Brazil has ever seen; and he was, in all Brazilian history, the most multiform literary personality, cultivating all the genres."2 His complete works, nineteen volumes, include poetry, short stories, novels; criticism on literature, folklore, music, dramatic dances, and the plastic arts; literary theory; general aesthetics; philology; and linguistics. Mário's biggest weakness was that of his nation as a whole: the drama. His private correspondence with Manuel Bandeira constitutes the most important exchange of letters in the history of Brazilian literature. And when one considers his impact upon and championing of such other Brazilian geniuses as sculptor Victor Brecheret, painter Cândido Portinari, architects Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, and composer Heitor VillaLobos—then the stature of Mário de Andrade as the guiding spirit of his times stands forth. Never a narrow-minded nationalist, Mário tried constantly to define the Modernist Movement as a universal moment in the history of Brazilian poetry. Thanks to him, the movement survived its early destructive phase and went on to become the central cause of a complete renovation of Brazilian literature. The multiplicity 1

In private conversation at the Ministério da Educação, Rio de Janeiro, June 27, 1959. 2 Otto Maria Carpeaux, Pequena Bibliografia Crítica da Literatura Brasileira, p. 249.

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of artistic approaches opened up by Mário continues to operate in Brazilian literature today, demanding the abolition of all restrictions that would limit the field of poetical themes or subjects, the appropriation of everyday life into all art forms, and the acknowledgment of the supremacy of poetry over what is merely verse.3 As Mário helped to sift many of the less important elements from the movement, so he directed energies that had tried to find expression in poetry to release themselves in the more appropriate channel of the novel. By its appeal to Brazilian earth and man, the novel, as developed by the Regionalists, in turn assured the triumph of the authentic over the exotic. Believing always that "the pure intellectuals have sold themselves to the owners of life,"4 Mário sought from the first to create a pragmatic aesthetics. Above all else, he wanted his writing to be useful. In an interview shortly before his death in 1945, Mário admitted that "when I discovered that my poetry had the power to irritate the bourgeois, I decided to publish 'Hallucinated City'."5 The power to irritate was perhaps the power to change the national sensibility. At any rate, he destroyed his aesthetic speculations which had only a narrowly personal interest. Out of his universal interest, his sense of artistic responsibility, his belief that no artist should be completely disinterested, Mário defined the main problem of the Brazilian intellectuals: how to create an instrument of expression that would bring them closer to the people. As he said, "The proletarian conception of art made me search from the beginning for a Brazilian means of expression/' 6 Wanting to write a book in all the regional dialects of Brazil, a task that amounted to the creation of a new national language to take the place of the old Portuguese, Mário brought forth his experimental folkloric novel Maeunaíma (1928). The result was 3

See Adolfo Casais Monteiro, A Moderna Poesia Brasileira, p. 21. In Prefácio to Otávio de Freitas Júnior, Ensaios de Nosso Tempo. 5 See Francisco de Assis Barbosa, Testamento de Mário de Andrade e Outras Reportagens, p. 13. 6 Ibid., p. 14. 4

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chaos. He who wanted to communicate with the people found out that his new language was mainly unintelligible to the Brazilians. His enormous ambition for the good of his country's language and literature, like that of a child wanting to hold the moon in his hand, ended in frustration with the failure to establish a new language he called "Brazilian." Yet despite the immediate failure of Macunaima, with the passage of time this novel has gradually received the universal acclaim that it deserves. It is the masterpiece of Mário de Andrade. This story of a hero without a backbone gives Mário "a place by himself in Brazilian literature." 7 "A kind of Peer Gynt of the tropics/' 8 Macunaima—a legendary figure drawn from Brazil's earliest folklore—is an engaging rascal who "epitomizes some of the qualities and defects of his race. He is imaginative, restless, roguish, sensual, tricky, tender, and humorous." 9 Characteristics of the hero may be seen in the following opening passages from the novel: In the depths of the jungle, Macunaima, one of our folk heroes, was born. He was black—jet black—the child of midnight. . . . Even as an infant he did amazing things.. .. When he went to bed he climbed up into his little hammock, always forgetting to pass water first. His mother's hammock was under his cradle, and our hero pissed down on the old woman, scaring away the mosquitoes. Then he fell asleep, dreaming bad words, shocking things, and kicking his feet in the air.10 Transcending limitations of time and space, in Macunaima Mário makes his hero completely modern. The literary result is "an insuperable record of Brazilian myths, symbols, and customs, filled with riotous humor and written in a language that is typically, authentically Brazilian."11 A language that novelist Érico Verí7

Harriet de Onis, The Golden Land, p. 391. Érico Veríssimo, Brazilian Literature, p. 122. 9 Ibid. 10 Translated by Harriet de Onis. 11 Onis, Golden Land, p. 391. 8

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ssimo enjoys as "a curious lingo full of idiomatic expressions and picturesquely rich and flexible, colorful and informal."12 Much of the work of Mário de Andrade, however, suffers from the fact that it is experimental. As Manuel Bandeira said, in a press interview on the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of the Modern Art Week, Mário "took his task of renovator, to Brazilianize Brazil, so seriously that he sacrificed to that pragmatic end the beauty of his work by writing in an extremely artificial language. . . . His mannerisms were plebeian forms from the four corners of Brazil."13 Yet if Mário marred many of his writings, he was always perfecting his social conscience, his sense of responsibility. It was he who first (around 1940) warned the young writers of Brazil against the misunderstandings generated by the Modernist Movement. He told them that freedom never implies the condonement of ignorance or lack of skill, that they should first master their craft if they intended to write anything worthwhile. Slovenliness, he said again and again, does not imply sincerity. The sacrifices which Mário made in his private achievement for the sake of his public role should not lead one to believe that his importance is solely a historical one. As a short-story writer Mário ranks with João Guimarães Rosa and Machado de Assis as among the three best that Brazil offers. Although his friends Manuel Bandeira and Carlos Drummond de Andrade outstripped him in poetry, at his best Mário was capable of such excellence as this haunting ballad entitled "The Mountains of Rolling-Girr: The Mountains of Rolling-Girl Had not that name before— They were from the other side, They rode to town to marry. And they crossed the mountains, The bridegroom with his bride, Each one on a horse. 12

Veríssimo, Brazilian Literature, p. 122. Manuel Bandeira, in a statement to one of the Rio journals, February 10, 1952. Found in a scrapbook of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 13

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in Brazil

Both of them were happy. In the heavens all was peace. Along the narrow trails He rode ahead and she behind. And they laughed. O how they laughed! They laughed for no reason at all. The Mountains of Rolling-Girl Had not that name before. The red tribes of evening Rapidly rode away And hurriedly hid themselves Down down in the caves, Afraid of the coming night. But both of them continued, Each one on a horse, And they laughed. O how they laughed! And their laughter married With laughter of the pebbles Which leaped so lightly From the narrow path Towards the precipice. Ah, Fortune inviolate! One hoof has stepped in error. The bride and her horse vaulted Headlong down the chasm. Not even the thud was heard. There is only the silence of death. In the heavens all was p e a c e Spurring and whipping his horse, The bridegroom vaulted headlong Into the void of the chasm. And the Mountains of Rolling-Girl Rolling-Girl were named. As a Brazilian E z r a Pound, Mário was a national catalytic agent and professor-at-large. W i t h Ronald d e Carvalho, h e opposed the

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old classical concepts of beauty, order, proportion, and harmony. For Mário these artistic values were not frozen ideograms but warm and living ideas in constant motion and change. Their dynamism demands, so Mário thought, different methods of expression in every age. As material progress was, in his opinion, only the concrete formula of spiritual growth and inner development, so the doctrine of art for the sake of art was but a sophism of confusion. When an artist shuns his moral duties, according to Mário, he seeks to protect himself in a pseudo freedom that enables him to leave "out of his intellectual production all the momentous problems or themes of a social interest which would make him unpopular with his boss, or would cause trouble for him with the Gestapo."14 Mário thought, through his pragmatic aesthetics, that there is no such thing as pure art, that all art is interested, because "every work of art is at bottom 'a work of circumstance,' i.e., born of an occasional circumstance, social or individual. In this respect it is not art that changes, but the quality of the interest that leads the artist to create." 15 Although he wanted to write a grammar of the Brazilian version of Portuguese, Mário de Andrade thought his lifetime too early for the undertaking of such a task. But he was the activating force that led to the establishment of sociology and folklore as scientific studies worthy of serious attention in Brazil. From inspiring artists of all disciplines to express and interpret the primitive souls of children, Indians, Negroes, and hillbillies, to calling upon poets and novelists to renounce themselves as specialists when the problems of the man outweighed those of the professional—Mário was a gadfly for the creative conscience of his contemporaries. For him, artistic responsibility was always answered properly with the practice of nonconformity. Well aware that any artist can unwittingly become the tool of the powerful—because though an artist may be nonpolitical, his v/ork can be appropriated for politi14 15

Barbosa, Testamento de Mário Andrade, p. 18. Ibid., pp. 16-17.

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cal ends—Mário remained an outstanding example of a free man creating in a free society. Perhaps that example, more than his many influences, is Mário's greatest legacy to the Brazilian writers who are to come after him. Working in his modestly comfortable home on Rua Lopes Chaves in São Paulo—where over the years he gathered paintings by Lhote, Picasso, Portinari, Segall, and Anita Malfatti; a collection of eight hundred drawings, both in black and white and in color; numerous books, mostly on art and literature; and twenty thousand pieces of music, with a catalogue in the library—Mário de Andrade reached out in spirit and touched the creative lives of scores of Brazilian artists. Like Yeats, Mário could say that his greatest glory in living was that he had made such friends. His death on February 25, 1945, inspired one of them, Manuel Bandeira, to write the most deeply moving personal tribute in Brazilian literature, "A Mário de Andrade Ausente": It was announced that you had died. My eyes, my ears bore witness: Not the deep soul. This is why I don't miss you now. I know well that the loss will come (By the persuasive power of time). One day it will come suddenly, Unnoticed by the others. For example, thus: At table people will talk of one thing and another, And a carelessly tossed word Will draw some of the blood in mourning; Somebody will ask me of what I am thinking; I will smile without saying: of you Profoundly. But I don't miss you now. (It is always so when the absent one Has left without saying goodbye: You have not said goodbye.)

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You didn't die: you went away. I will say: He hasn't written for a long time. I will go to São Paulo: you won't come to my hotel. I will imagine: He is at his countryhouse in São Roque. I will know better: you have gone. To another life? Life is one only. Yours continues In the life you lived. This is why I don't miss you now. In 1921, however, when the big literary question in São Paulo was "To be or not to be a Futurist?" the absence of Mário de Andrade from the Modernist Movement would have caused him to be greatly missed. Not only did his "Hallucinated City" initiate the storm of debate about Paulista Futurism, but also his prose writings of the time hastened the revolution into Modernism. In an opening battle that would lead to the major campaign of the Modern Art Week the following year, Mário wrote a series of seven articles entitled "Masters of the Past,"16 in which he assayed the value of five Parnassian poets: Francisca Júlia, Raimundo Correia, Alberto de Oliveira, Olavo Bilac, and Vicente de Carvalho. In order to reread the Parnassians so that he could write the series, Mário admitted that he had to put aside his "varied, boyish, and phantasmic soul" of the present and put on the Parnassian soul of the past. From this study Mário saw that these five Parnassian poets were large in their achievements of preserving the language and of singing their country, but small in their imitation of monotonous and frozen French mannerisms. Enslaved by the aesthetic prejudice of their time, the Parnassians honored nature, dreams, and youth. With hosannas dripping irony and sarcasm, Mário laid them to rest for such accomplishments. Although he could admire 16

Mário de Andrade, "Mestres do Passado'' Jornal do Comércio—"!: Glorificação," 2 agosto 1921; " I I : Francisca Julia," 12 agosto 1921; " I I I : Raimundo Correia" 15 agosto 1921; "IV: Alberto de Oliveira'' 16 agosto 1921; "V: Olavo Bilac," 20 agosto 1921; "VI: Vicente de Carvalho," 23 agosto 1921; "VII: Prelúdio, Coral e Fuga," 1 setembro 1921.

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the Parnassians for their effort, for their patience, Mário could not bring himself to love their work. With the narrow and intense interest of the young poet needing to launch out on his own career (T. S. Eliot presents a twentieth-century parallel in the English language), Mário blamed the Parnassians for obstructing "our literary past and future with their misleading productions." 17 Mário de Andrade was not content merely to embalm the ghosts of an earlier literary movement. He had to affirm what he believed as well as negate what he opposed. From his study "Masters of the Past," Mário developed aesthetic ideas that were to form the basis of revolt in the first phase of Modernist Brazilian poetry, in which the emphasis was on originality, spontaneity, liberty, expressiveness, inspiration, and emotional strength. These ideas may be summarized as follows: 1) Art is not solely concerned with the fashioning of beauty; indeed the fashioning of beauty is not even the major end of art. 2) Art arises from the need of man to express himself. 3) It was the original desire of man to express feelings and thoughts of lyrical value that led him to create the arts. 4) True art, then, is the expression of feelings and thoughts by way of the vehicle of a concrete beauty. 5) Young writers should create, as artists, with the sense of life and liberty. 6) Above all else, young poets and novelists must develop their own personal artistic principles; the rest is application by study and practice. In a kind of compendium of what he had said in the seven essays, Mário summed up his aesthetic position with one short sentence which stressed three key words: "A Hymn to Life and Joy." These three "marvelous and beautiful words," he thought, constituted a criticism of his own work. They certainly formed the 17

Ibid., "VII: Prelúdio, Coral e Fuga.5

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basis of his Catholic happiness. He wished "the young writers my happiness: Hymn, Life, and Joy. But they should not confuse Hymn with a toast, Life with a brothel, Joy with a binge."18 Within the responsible limitations of religious decency, art was an exciting adventure for Mário de Andrade. The publication of "Masters of the Past"—together with Oswald de Andrade's ecstatic praise of "Hallucinated City"—brought Mário de Andrade to the position of acknowledged leader of the Modernist Movement in São Paulo. It would be nearly another generation before Carlos Drummond de Andrade could cry for a new discipline of form in such lines (from "Procura da Poesia") as Penetrate deftly the kingdom of words: here lie the poems that wait to be written. Or before Cecília Meireles could claim (in "Motivo") a lyric freedom from the doctrine of art as self-expression: I sing because the moment exists and my life is complete. I am not gay, I am not sad: I am a poet. Until then Mário de Andrade would remain the leading exegete of the philosophy of Modernism in Brazil. And in mid-1921 the Mário de Andrade who wrote in the little poem "The Girl and the Goat": Near the stones moved by the little lizards, Where the hot sun flounders in the troubled water, Fixes his teeth in the golden cheese Licias, the herdsman. felt more than a hot sun on troubled water, fixed his eyes upon a golden treasure that was more than cheese, because dragoons, not lizards, were destroying massive battlements of resistance, rather than merely moving little stones. As chief of the "Centennial 18

Ibid.

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Dragoons," Mário told his critics, he was entering the battle, where he and his army would prove to be "superior men, more handsome, more terrible, because we do not lie, because we are sincere, because we have no literary prejudices, because we know how to love giddy youth, defenseless childhood, the Januaries and the dawns/'19 In the final stages of the intensifying campaign that would result in the victory of the Modern Art Week, Mário de Andrade supplied what the Modernist Movement needed: a coherent rationale, an inexhaustible enthusiasm, and high-minded bravado. 19 Ibid.

6, "Centennial Dragoons"

AFTER THE PUBLICATION of Oswald de Andrade's article "My

Futurist Poet," the Paulistas no longer thought of Futurism as a foreign cultural movement; it was obviously local as well. Foreign or local, it was also clearly a bit daft. São Paulo newspapers treated the words Futurism and Futurist with sarcasm, irony, and general disrespect. For the sole sake of making fun, journalists distorted the meanings of the terms, and they came to signify anything odd and unusual, if not outright mad. The new Brazilian writers, meanwhile, hesitated over whether they should adopt Futurism. Willing to accept the innovations that Marinetti offered, they still wanted to preserve their own personalities as the creative basis for their

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literary careers. Those writers who might have wanted to break away from the influences of Marinetti were called back by Oswald de Andrade, who believed that Futurism agreed with the Paulista temperament and landscape. "What are we, indisputably'' cried Oswald, "but Futurists?—a people of a thousand origins, who landed here in a thousand boats, with accidents and anxieties/' 1 Agenor Barbosa supported Oswald by claiming that "Futurism as we know it, that is through Papini's and Seffici's ideas, is the bearer of the purest aesthetic doctrine, perfectly adjusted to our time and to our mentality."2 Cândido Mota Filho invoked the spirit of Augustine, who denied the present and "affirmed that only the past and the future existed. And St. Augustine told us to look ahead. Let us, then, be Futurists!" 3 Mário de Andrade did not count himself as one of the followers of Marinetti or as a member of Paulista Futurism, but Mário led the group in its war on the Parnassians, journeyed to Rio de Janeiro to enlist the aid of the intellectuals there, and finally took part in the Modern Art Week. If not a Futurist, Mário was at least in sympathy with those who were willing to go by that name. Time and again Menotti del Picchia argued against labeling the São Paulo revolutionaries as Futurists. In Brazil, so Menotti thought, the term had lost its original meaning and had come to represent only the beginning of a new aesthetic feeling. "Futurism has been dead in Italy and in Europe," wrote Menotti, "for a long time now. . . . But it left in its wake a formidable impulse of aesthetic renovation . . . even in Brazil, where a group of young men cultivate spontaneity, to develop their personality to the full."4 Without sharing either the intentions or the dogmatic principles of 1

Oswald de Andrade, "Reforma Literária," Jornal do Comércio, 19 maio 1921. 2 Agenor Barbosa, "Os Novos'' Correio Paulistano, 14 maio 1921. 3 Cândido Mota Filho, "A Moderna Orientação Estética," Jornal do Comércio, 17 outubro 1921. 4 Menotti deI Picchia, "O Futurismo Paulista," Correio Paulistano, 8 novembro 1921.

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the Marinetti school, the Paulista Modernists gathered together as a protest against organized aesthetic rites and liturgies. The formula for the first phase of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, destructive in attitude and tactics, was simply this: "A maximum of liberty within the most spontaneous originality/' 5 After the discovery of the sculpture of Victor Brecheret and the poetry of Mário de Andrade, the young writers of São Paulo in 1921 were engaged in defending their maximum of liberty with, so they hoped, the most spontaneous originality. Several victories had already been won in a year of battle: First, a public declaration of freedom from the intellectual tenets of the past in the "Trianon Manifesto" of Oswald de Andrade. Second, a settling of the basic points of the new aesthetic program by Menotti del Picchia's article "In the Tide of Reforms." Third, polemical attacks on academicism and tradition by many young revolutionaries. Fourth, a publication of fresh creative work in the Modernist style. Fifth, an explanation of position with regard to Futurism after Oswald de Andrade's praise of Mário de Andrade's "Hallucinated City." Finally, assumption of leadership among the Paulista Modernists by Mário de Andrade with his seven essays, "Masters of the Past." The essays of Mário caused a storm of conservative howls, but they also drew the band of cultural rebels closer together. For them, Mário had not blasphemed; he had spoken the truth. The Parnassian masters of Brazilian literature were dead men who had accomplished their missions and now had nothing of aesthetic importance to offer the new generation. If Mário's articles were somewhat immature, they at least were filled with ideas that developed the problems of poetry in terms hitherto unknown in Brazilian criticism. The rebel group that would stage the Modern Art Week six months later was enthusiastic. By the second half of 1921, the Centennial Dragoons of São Paulo included writers Mário de Andrade, Menotti del Picchia, 5 Picchia, "O Movimento Literário Paulista," Correio Paulistano, 13 dezembro 1921.

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Guilherme de Almeida, Agenor Barbosa, Plínio Salgado, Oswald de Andrade, Cândido Mota Filho, and Sérgio Milliet; painters Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Vicente do Rego Monteiro, and John Graz; sculptor Victor Brecheret; architect Antônio Moya; and cinematist Armando Pamplona. These knights of the Modernist Movement frequented two bookshops in the city—that of the Italian Tisi, located on Largo de São Bento, where they found all the new European publications, which carried the work of such writers as Marinetti, Soffici, Palazzeschi, and Papini; and O Livro, on Rua 15 de Novembro, a store owned by Jacinto Silva, who befriended Mário's Dragoons and often let his shop be used for art exhibits. Before deciding upon the Municipal Theatre, the Paulista avant garde had entertained the idea of staging the Modern Art Week Exhibition at Jacinto Silva's bookshop. Several art exhibits, special lectures, and poetry readings were held at Jacinto Silva's in 1921. On November 15, for example, Di Cavalcanti showed some of his Modernist oil paintings there. One of these canvases was of special artistic interest—the painting inspired by Manuel Bandeira's poem "Ballad of St. Mary the

Egyptian":

St. Mary the Egyptian was traveling On a pilgrimage to the Holy land. Twilight was falling, like the sad smile of a martyr. St. Mary the Egyptian reached The bank of a big river. How far it was to the other side! And close to shore, In a boat, Stood a hard-eyed man. St. Mary the Egyptian begged: —Take me to the other side. I have no money. The Lord bless you. The cruel man eyed her without pity. Twilight was falling, like the sad smile of a martyr.

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—I have no money. The Lord bless you. Take me to the other side. The pitiless man jeered: You have no money, Woman, but you have your body. Give me your body, and I will carry you over. And he gestured. And the saint smiled, With divine grace, at his gesture. St. Mary the Egyptian removed Her cape, and entrusted the boatman With the sanctity of her nakedness. Di Cavalcanti's painting, based on this poem by Bandeira, was demonstration that the Modernist Movement could cross-fertilize itself from one art form to another. Sometime before Di Cavalcanti's exhibit, several of the Centennial Dragoons had left on a campaign to win over the Carioca intellectuals. The Paulista high command for this cultural invasion of Rio de Janeiro, according to Menotti del Picchia, was a strange quasi-religious trinity consisting of Mário de Andrade as Pope of the new creed, Oswald de Andrade as Bishop, and Armando Pamplona as Apostle.6 Rio de Janeiro proved to be fertile ground for missionary labor. Restless and in rebellion against academic tradition, the Carioca Modernist group, not nearly so cohesive and well-organized as its São Paulo counterpart, boasted such members as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Manuel Bandeira, Ribeiro Couto, Renato de Almeida, Ronald de Carvalho, Alvaro Moreira, and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. One night at the home of Ronald de Carvalho, Mário de Andrade read from his "Hallucinated City" in the presence of Manuel Bandeira. Upon hearing some of the verses that broke out of Mário in a "noisy and exaggerated freedom" after "the suffering of twenty months spent between uncertainty and wrath," 7 Bandeira understood the destructive Surrealism that made his friend boast: 6 7

Picchia, "A Bandeira Futurista'' Correio Paulistano, 22 outubro 1921. Manuel Bandeira, Apresentação da Poesia Brasileira, p. 133.

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When I feel a lyrical impulse, I write, without thinking, everything that my subconscious cries. Later on I think: not only in order to correct, but also in order to justify what I have written. I believe that lyricism born in the subconscious, refined in clear or confused thought, creates phrases that are complete verses.8 The aesthetic tactics of automatic writing, as expressed by Mário, met with a favorable response from Manuel, the most careful and dedicated poetic craftsman of his generation in Brazil. For the Bandeira who had joined Romantic sentiment with Symbolistic inhibition of personal feelings9 in "The Ash of Hours" was now ready to move into a wildly liberating phase that would lead to the coinciding of two situations: personal and historical. When the inner world of a creative man unites with the outer world of a creative culture, then a great artist, as well as a great movement, is in the making. In 1921, thanks to the inspiration of Mário de Andrade, a great poet, Manuel Bandeira, was in the making. Although Mário did not write "Hallucinated City" for publication, he decided to publish it in order to clear the way for the new poets, to make their new methods more acceptable. That Mário's volume did clear the way is the contention of Bandeira himself, who admitted twenty years later: "I owe my poetic expression to Modernism. Before its advent I felt somewhat restricted, embarrassed in my poetry."10 The Bandeira of Carnaval (1919) was already playing with irregular rhythms, with a melancholy accompanied by bravado and destructive humor. Although he showed a marked growth in craftsmanship over his first volume, still the author of this controlled and at the same time orgiastically free "Bacchanal" needed the larger aesthetics of a general cultural movement in which to exercise his genius: 8

Mário de Andrade, Prefácio to Paulicéia Desvairada. See Otto Maria Carpeaux, "Notícia sobre Manuel Bandeira," the Prefácio to Bandeira's Apresentação, p. 8. 10 Manuel Bandeira, in a statement to one of the Rio newspapers, September 12, 1942. Found in a scrapbook of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 9

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I want to drink! to sing stupidities In the brutish flush of drunkenness That tipsy-turvies everything into a messWhoopee, Bacchus! There the soul leaves me, carried away In the whirlwind of the masquerade, To laugh convulsively in a mad fitWhoopee, Mimic-It! Everywhere now twist the many-colored Carnaval streamers of love, Those snakes so lividly venomousWhoopee, Venus! If somebody asks: What more do you want, Besides verses and tootsies?— —Wines!—the wine that's my weakness!— Whoopee, Bacchus! The golden scimitar of the moon, To cut off at the naked neck this head That hallucinates and I control not a bit!— Whoopee, Mimic-It! The ethereal Lyre, the great Lyre!— On which ecstatically I would strum and fire In its high honor—obscene verses: Whoopee, Venus! While Mário de Andrade was enlisting Manuel Bandeira into the company of the Centennial Dragoons, these lines and others from the Carnaval volume, through the discovery made by Guilherme de Almeida, were being read and appreciated by the Modernists in São Paulo. Winning Bandeira over to the cause of Modernism was a tactical victory, but the tuberculous poet from Recife was not the only important weapon in the arsenal of the Centennial Dragoons. There was Mário, of course, who believed that "we will become universal only by being Brazilian—that is, by acquiring a racial and patriotic personality; for thus we shall contribute a new con-

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tingent, a new association of spiritual characteristics, to the enrichment of the human universe."11 Dissatisfied with Regionalism, Mário wanted Brazil to contribute to world civilization. To that end Mário made his work, full of fresh images and sensations, serve as example rather than as the absolute value of finished art. Mário was all the more willing to live by a pragmatic aesthetics because of his love for his country: Brazil that I love, not because it is my country: One's country is the accident of migrations and our daily bread where the Lord gives i t Brazil that I love because it is the rhythm of my adventurous arm, The taste of my relaxations, The swing of my songs, loves, and dances. Brazil that is me because it is my very funny expression, Because it is my sluggish feeling, Because it is my way of earning money, of eating and sleeping. (From Clã do Jabotí) Oswald de Andrade, Mário's co-captain of the Centennial Dragoons, was at his creative best in the genre of the short story. But this most iconoclastic of the Modernists also wrote poetry. Later on in the Modernist Movement, his "Brazil Wood" (1925) and "First Notebook of the Student of Poetry Oswald de Andrade" (1927) created the current of Primitivism. It was Oswald's intention to rid poetry of the pedantry of culture, of the "vines of metrification"; he wanted to express "the joy of ignorance discovering itself," to return to what was barbarous and truly Brazilian.12 Satirically humorous, Oswald was capable of poetry only in rapid descriptive flashes, as in "Nocturne": Outside, moonlight continues And the train divides Brazil Like a meridian. 11 12

Quoted by Bandeira in Apresentação, p. 133. See ibid., p. 137.

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The poems in "Brazil Wood" and "First Notebook" are for the most part those written "by a novelist taking a vacation, by a man very much concerned with the problems of his country and of the world, but who expresses himself ironically, as though he were joking, out of a deep aversion for indignant eloquence and sentimentality."13 Becoming more aggressive with the years, Oswald founded, in May of 1928, the "Review of Cannibalism," a journal that carried the negative and destructive elements of Brazilian Modernism to the ultimate limits and helped to ensure Oswald's becoming "the enduring playboy of Brazilian letters."14 One of the outstanding lieutenants among the Centennial Dragoons was Ronald de Carvalho (1893-1935). A graduate in law before he was twenty, Ronald traveled to Europe and met the Lisbon group that founded the review Orfeu and started the Modernist Movement in Portugal. Author of the Parnassian volume "Poems and Sonnets" (1919) and the critical study "A Small History of Brazilian Literature" (1919), Carvalho was at first a young darling of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, who in his critical articles for the newspapers heaped scorn upon Apollinaire and other vanguard poets of Europe. In 1921, however, Ronald de Carvalho met Di Cavalcanti, Villa-Lobos, Ribeiro Couto, and Mário and Oswald de Andrade. From these meetings he became so strong a disciple of the new movement that he was soon writing such rebellious aesthetic observations as: Art is an aspiration for liberty. What we wish—poets, musicians, painters, sculptors, and architects—is to create our own personal rhythm and express our interior harmony. Each of us is an instrument through which the current of life passes. We do not want rules or prejudices. No specious theories. The artist's logic does not fit within the boundaries of a theorem, the artist's logic is a problem whose data change every minute and whose solution varies accordingly. . . . To quote Nietzsche: "We dance in chains."15 13

Ibid., pp. 139-140. Samuel Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 211. 15 Quoted by Bandeira in Apresentação, pp. 140-141. 14

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Seeking to divine and transform nature, to formalize the energy of Ufe as an artist, Ronald de Carvalho advised himself and other poets to Look at life first, long, compassionately, As one who wishes to surmise i t Look at li]fe, smiling or crying, face to face, And then let your heart speak.16 In this newly found Modernist understanding of art, Carvalho would write his most characteristic books: "Ironic and Sentimental Epigrams" (1922) and "Childish Games" (1926). Deeply impressed during his travels with the civilization of Mexico, the vast pampas of Argentina, the majestic solitudes of the Andes Mountains, Ronald aspired to become the universal poet of the hemisphere, the new poet that he envisioned in "All America" (1926): Your poet will be nimble and innocent, America! Joy will be your wisdom, Liberty will be your wisdom His poetry will be the childlike crying of your own substance, America, of your substance lyrical and varied. Despite the sublimity of his artistic ambition, Ronald de Carvalho forgot, as Manuel Bandeira has indicated, that the freedom, joy, and lyrical and varied substance of the Americas had already been expressed and almost exhausted by the truly continental voice of Walt Whitman. Hence the ample rhythms and the sparkling images of his [Carvalho's] American poems sound to us like echoes, maybe more harmonious, but less naive, less "innocent" than the more powerful accents, the more genial accents of Leaves of Grass. It could not be helped, since by temperament, by his strict education and his own concept of art, Ronald was that "dancer in chains" of Nietzsche's image.17 16 17

Ibid., p. 141. Bandeira, Apresentação,

p. 142.

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Adhering to the Modernist Movement because he hated rhetorical eloquence and had come to accept free verse, Rui Ribeiro Couto was the leading Intimist poet among the Centennial Dragoons. Born in Santos, the great seaport city of São Paulo State, on March 12, 1898, Ribeiro Couto has remained faithful throughout his literary career to the minor mood and humble themes of his first volume: "The Garden of Secret Disclosures" (1921). The musical creation of atmosphere by means of alliteration and repetition gave most of Ribeiro's early poems the character of songs. His lyricism on the everyday life of little towns, his irony and tenderness, as seen in the volume "A Man in the Crowd" (1926), helped feed the later and larger elegiac poetry of Manuel Bandeira. After having sung his city of Santos, where he learned "the poetry of commerce" and felt in his blood the "instinct for departure," Ribeiro Couto became a diplomat in order to satisfy his hunger for adventure. 18 Upon return to his own garden, tired from travel, disenchanted with adventure in foreign lands, he confided his sense of experience to his Brazilian friends in "Songbook of the Absent" (1943): I traveled over seas And in strange lands Which I found sad. And now longings! Fields and mountains Beaches and cities From here and beyond— But distance is a good thingDiscolored tone That awakens colors In the dead memory— And the recollection Of I know not what loves, Of I know not what life In I know not what ground18 Ibid., pp. 144-145.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil And a poignant voice Nevermore heard, Nevermore absent.

The goldsmith of verse among the Centennial Dragoons was Guilherme de Almeida. Born in the town of Campinas, São Paulo, on July 24, 1890, Guilherme de Andrade e Almeida became the moderate element among the Paulista Modernists. Holding fast to loftiness of theme and language, to refinement of technique, in his Modernist volumes "The Flute I Lost" (1924), "Mine" (1925), and "Race" (1925), Guilherme achieved a compromise between regular and free versification. In "Race," especially, he demonstrated his virtuosity at varying cadences while maintaining an underlying rhythm. His mastery of technique has made Guilherme the best Brazilian translator of poetry; it has also helped to thin his substance to the point where he cannot be considered among the few supreme poets of the Modernist Movement. Faithful to the conservative element in himself, after a brief period of creativity in the new movement, Guilherme returned to the themes and forms of his early books. A Paulista poet with a larger genius than that of Guilherme de Almeida is Cassiano Ricardo Leite. Today a recognized poetic master, whose reputation has been constantly ascending, Cassiano Ricardo was born in the town of São José dos Campos on July 26, 1895. As a member of the Green and Yellow Group (Brazil's national colors) of the Modernist Movement, Cassiano stood opposed to the kind of Primitivism championed by Oswald de Andrade. Ricardo favored the study of Indian contributions to the structure of Brazilian civilization and wanted to give art a social and political function. Denying his early Parnassian verse and his Modernistic volumes, Cassiano matured into a poet of the primitive land, of the subjective world of the self, where with a profusion of images his best poems were "like snapshots taken under the raw light of midday." 19 The following lines from his poem 19

Ibid., p. 149.

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"Flash," in the volume Martim Cererê (1928), serve as an example of his imagistic technique: The spotted jaguar pounced on the tree trunk like a long-tailed and yellow-headed lightning bolt: Zip! But an arrow even quicker than lightning made him roll up on the very spotThat early electric and mustachioed big cat Who lay flat on the ground, like a colored fruit fallen from a tree! Although born in Tupacereta, Rio Grande do Sul, on August 4, 1898, in 1921 Raul Bopp was living in São Paulo. A late recruit among the Centennial Dragoons, Raul was to take part in the Modern Art Week and later to follow the cannibalism current of Oswald de Andrade and the nationalist trend of Menotti del Picchia and Cassiano Ricardo. Original in imagination, yet attracted by every shade of aesthetic opinion, Raul Bopp traveled the length and breadth of Brazil and roamed extensively, by boat and on foot, over the vast "green hell" of the Amazon River Basin. The result of such exploration was Cobra Norato (1931), about which the author himself said: "For me, it is the equivalent of the tragedy of fever, Amazonian cocaine. . . . Sexual obsession. Druidic. Esoteric. Looking like a book for children. Burning and full of color. But at bottom it represents my tragedy of the fevers."20 In this work Bopp united the vision of a world still in the process of generation with the folklore of the savage Indian soul to produce a powerful myth "expressed in a strong and tasteful language, a harmonious synthesis of the educated diction and the popular speech."21 Into the company of these Centennial Dragoons entered, as a rallying point and a sanctifying conversion, the famous Academician and author of the social-ideas novel Canaan (1902)— José Pereira de Graça Aranha. Returning to Brazil from Europe in 20 21

Quoted in ibid., p. 150. Bandeira, Apresentação, p. 150.

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October of 1921, Graça Aranha (1868-1931) immediately got in touch with the leaders of the Modernist Movement and threw the weight of his great prestige into the momentum that had developed. Within a few weeks after Graça's return to Rio de Janeiro, Menotti del Picchia was writing that the Carioca capital was an ideal place to foster the flourishing of the Paulista Movement. Many good young writers and poets were in Rio, and yet "not only the young are welcome," said Menotti, "but also the consecrated intellectuals who possess an open mind."22 One of the "consecrated intellectuals" mentioned for his having "modernity and vigor" was Graça Aranha. A little over a month after this first reference to the man who was to carry the Modernist cause into the hallowed halls of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, Menotti called Graça "one of the most brilliant spirits of our race." 23 The Modernist interest in Graça Aranha, "somewhat of a Nietzschean with a touch of Barrès, Renan, and Goethe," a social fascist "who tended toward a beyond-good-and-evil philosophy of life as applied to the problem of Brazilian nationalism,"24 concentrated in his most recent book, "Aesthetics of Life" (1920). Happy to have so big a national name as that of Graça on the side of the Modernists, Cândido Mota Filho used "Aesthetics of Life" as a basis for attack upon all opponents of the new ideas. He praised the book because in it the author "preached rebellion, the most intelligent and scholarly rebellion against the artistic prejudices of our milieu. . . . Graça Aranha . . . speaks about dissonant music for the souls lulled by Verdi's melodies and by the sentimental Romanticism of Chopin; he speaks about Cubism for those who copy the old art."25 In an ecstatic conclusion, Mota Filho contended that "Aesthetics of Life" would "remain in our literary history as one of the good 22

Picchia, "O Movimento Literário Paulista." Ibid. 24 Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 205. 25 Cândido Mota Filho, "Graça Aranha, Esteta," Correio Paulistano, 19 dezembro 1921. 23

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works of reaction against the inexpressive routine in which we lived."26 With the entrance of the name of Graça Aranha upon the list of the Centennial Dragoons at the end of 1921, the young generation of revolutionary Brazilian writers and artists enjoyed some of the prestige of their elders as they gathered forces for a major assault upon tradition and the past. By the turn of the hundredth year of national independence the Modernist writers and artists were only marking time for the staging of the already planned Modern Art Week, when they hoped to gain outright cultural leadership in Brazil. Oswald de Andrade had said, long before, that the Centennial offered an excellent opportunity for the achieving of something important on behalf of the Modernist Movement. It was with the hope that the seed sown at Anita Malfatti's second exhibit in December of 1917 would come to harvest in February of 1922 that the Modernists were to stage their Week. And with that staging, truly "a new phase of Brazilian cultural history was about to start."27 26 27

Ibid.

Mário da Silva Brito, História do Modernismo Brasileiro, I: Antecedentes da Semana de Arte Moderna, 287.

7. Che Modem Art Week Results and Sffeets

Modern Art Week (originally the idea of painter Di Cavalcanti) burst upon the Brazilian cultural scene with all the force of a revolution, February 11-17,1922. Sympathetic with the new cultural movement, the mayor of São Paulo, Dr. Fermiano Pinto, allowed the exhibition of the Week to be held in the Municipal Theatre. Not to be outdone in generous hospitality by the Mayor, the governor of São Paulo State, Dr. Washington Luís, contributed part of the hotel fees for the writer and artist guests from Rio de Janeiro. The staging of the entire affair was under the direction of Rene Thiollier, much decorated member of the Paulista Academy of Letters and founder of its Revista, with the help of a committee of sponsors consisting of the following T H E FAMOUS

El

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well-known Brazilian intellectuals of that time: Paulo Prado, Antonio Prado Júnior, Armando Penteado, Edgard Conceição, José Carlos de Macedo Soares, Oscar Rodrigues Alves, Alberto Penteado, and Alfredo do Pujol. The Week itself supported three separate festivals, two of which were held on the evenings of February 11 and 17, and the other on the afternoon of February 15. The hall of the Municipal Theatre, which contained the sculpture, painting, and architecture exhibits, stayed open to the public for eight days. Calling themselves "vanguard" artists, those who exhibited in the hall were as follows: Sculpture: Victor Brecheret, Hildegardo Leão Veloso, and Haarberg; Painting: Anita Malfatti, Di Cavalcanti, Ferrignac (Ignácio da Costa Ferreira), Zina Aita, Martins Ribeiro, Oswaldo Gueldi, Regina Graz, J. F. de Almeida Prado (Yan), and Rego Monteiro; Architecture: A. Moya and George Przyrembel. Graça Aranha, Paulo Prado, and Ronald de Carvalho organized the program for the three separate festivals, a program which ran like this: Night of February 11—Painting and Sculpture: 1) "The Aesthetic Emotion In Modern Art"—a lecture by Graça Aranha. 2) Music played by Ernani Braga and poetry read by Guilherme de Almeida and Ronald de Carvalho. 3) An analysis of the painting and sculpture exhibit by Ronald de Carvalho. 4) A concert from the music of Villa-Lobos. Afternoon of February 15—Literature and Poetry: 1) The modern Brazilian novel as represented in pages read from the work of Menotti del Picchia and Oswald de Andrade. 2) Modern Brazilian poetry as represented in readings by Alvaro Moreira, Mário de Andrade, Ribeiro Couto, Manuel Bandeira, Sérgio Milliet, Luiz Aranha, Afonso Schmidt, and Plínio Salgado.

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3) Modern Brazilian music as represented by the performance of pianist Guiomar Novais. Night of February 17—Philosophy and Music: 1) "Modern Philosophy In Brazil"—a lecture by Renato de Almeida. 2) "The Music of Villa-Lobos"—a lecture by Ronald de Carvalho. 3) A concert from the music of Villa-Lobos. Such a skeleton outline of what constituted the Modern Art Week cannot begin to convey the sense of public scandal, the attitude of near riot which it generated in the oflEended sensibility of a nation. What today seems an innocent relic from the past was then a living force, the object of millions of spoken and written words of outrage. According to eyewitnesses of that time, people jammed into the Municipal Theatre to stare at Anita Malfatti's paintings, to laugh at them, and to make fun of the artist herself. Two of Victor Brecheret's sculptures—his "Return from the Battle" and "Genius" —endured special storms of criticism. The music of Villa-Lobos had to compete against a concert of goose-tongued hisses from vox populi. As a kind of rule for the Week, general misunderstanding and confusion prevailed. 1 Despite the hisses, the protests, the boos, Villa-Lobos imposed his music on the audience, and poets Ronald de Carvalho and Guilherme de Almeida read from their works until they finally drew applause. The real shocker of the first festival, and of the entire Week for that matter, was the lecture delivered by Graça Aranha—in English. Here was a member of the exalted Brazilian Academy of Letters vociferating against the Academy and its conservative, if not reactionary, stifling of free inspiration and imaginative expression. The Aranha lecture was a kind of dress rehearsal for his assumption of the role of "bringing about a fusion of the nationalistic current with that of a post-war modernism, accomplished through the 'tumultuous literary episode , of his defiant 1

See René Thiollier, A Semana de Arte Moderna, pp. 27 ff.

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address before the Brazilian Academy of Letters of 1924, seven years before his death." 2 Important as Graça Aranha was to the cause of the Modernist Movement at that moment, he was nevertheless a Johnny-ComeLately and in no sense indispensable for its ultimate vindication. In fact, Brazilian literary criticism has leveled a charge of insincerity against the Academician. Opposed to nationalism in literature ("Art has no mother country") and negative toward subjectivism ("A Romantic remnant which should be banished from the new literature"), Graça Aranha was the kind of aesthetic opportunist for whom, in the words of Murilo Araújo, "Modernism was a rejuvenating tonic for the muse's hair."3 It is interesting to note that nationalism and subjectivism, so strongly criticized by Aranha, won out in the Brazilian Modernist Movement—nationalism in the various currents started by Plínio Salgado, Cassiano Ricardo, and Oswald de Andrade; subjectivism in the surrealistic and expressionistic social-protest novels and stories by José Américo, Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos, Amando Fontes, José Lins do Rego, Marques Rebelo, and Peregrino Júnior. The other two lectures, by Ronald de Carvalho and Renato de Almeida, if not well received by the general public, were considered magnificent by those who staged the Modern Art Week. Although most of the poets present for the festivals received no applause, Oswald de Andrade—the iconoclast, the heathen, the jolly devil—enjoyed an immense notoriety. When Oswald read from his prose work, the public listened to his every syllable, conveying a kind of success within the Week, which many of its most ardent supporters thought a failure. Time, of course, was to vindicate those who looked upon the Week, despite its difficulties and temporary setbacks, as an unprecedented success. One of the most enthusiastic observers of the Modern Art Week was Paulo Prado, who saw it as 2 3

Samuel Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 205. Murilo Araújo, Quadrantes do Modernismo Brasileiro, p. 10.

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a reaction against artistic and political oligarchies, against bad taste and bad politics. . . . An attempt at renovation and freedom. . . . Modern art, pure art, without schools or programs, without prejudices. . . . Art open to all, provided they have talent, free and even anarchic, but lively and fecund with all the charm of merry and rebellious youth.4 As the beginning of what Teixeira Soares called "the greatest intellectual orgy" in Brazilian literature, the Modern Art Week was responsible for many results and effects, some immediate, others long-range. The breaking of formal canons, which the Week represented, was for the poets a symbol of freedom, "a declaration of the rights of man; the canons meant the idea of poetry as an instrument; leaving them was to affirm poetry as a value on its own, as its own law."5 Demanding the elimination of the traditional idea of poetry, the Modernists at the same time wanted to establish the fundamental elements of poetry. In the creative work that flowed out from the Modern Art Week, Sérgio Milliet, in his "Panorama of Modern Brazilian Poetry," sees the following attributes: predominance of free verse, courage to break with conventional syntax, abolishment of the falsely "poetic," employment of humor, establishment of the right to exchange the comparative or allegorical image for the direct image, and re-evaluation of the proper use of qualifiers and adjectives. To these six attributes, Soares Amora and Adolfo Casais Monteiro would add the desire to achieve the highest correspondence between form and emotion, a simultaneity of the lyrical state and its expression. Such correspondence and simultaneity constituted the formal revolution of the first phase of the Modernist Movement, which until 1930 witnessed a total warfare to destroy the sonnet, rhyme, regular meter, conventional symmetry of composition, standard collocation of pronouns, academic phraseology, Parnassian rhetoric, Portuguese-of-Lisbon constructions, and matters of small philosophical and psychological concern.6 This warfare was 4

Paulo Prado, letter to René Thiollier, 27 março 1922. Adolfo Casais Monteiro, A Moderna Poesia Brasileira, p. 12. 6 See Peregrino Júnior, O Movimento Modernista, p. 33. 5

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predicted as early as 1919 by Manuel Bandeira. In his volume Carnaval, published that year, Bandeira included a powerful piece of satire—called "The Frogs"—on the Hterary taste of the day: Swelling their sacs And hopping along, The frogs jump out of the shadows. The light blinds them. In a frightening roar, The bullfrog bellows: —"My father was in the war!" -"Wasntr-"Wasr-"Wasn'tr The cooperfrog, A watered-down Parnassian, Says:—"My songbook Is well hammered. "See how I excel In eating the hiati! What art! And I never rhyme On the cognate terms. "My verse is good Wheat without weeds. I make rhymes on The basis of consonants. "It isfiftyyears now Since I gave them the rule: I reduced without harm The form to forms. "Call the frogschool Into skeptical criticism: Poetry no longer exists, Only the poetic arts—" Bellows the bullfrog: "My father was king!"-"Wasr -"Wasntr-"Wasr-"Wasntr

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil The cooperfrog Squalls in a fit of passion: —"Great art is like A jeweler's delicate carving. "Or better yet, that of a sculptor. Everything that is beautiful, Everything that is different, Sings on the hammer." Others, barrelfrogs (One scarcely containing himself), Grumble in their guts: —"Know!"—"Don't know!"—"Know!" * Far from this outcry, Where the immense shadow Spills into the denser, Infinite night; Fled from the world, Without glory, without faith, In the depths profound And solitary, there it is That you sob, Chilled to the soul, Landfrog On the bank of the river—

This Bandeira poem is an example of the author's dramatic control of the lyric, of his stripped simplicity and direct intensity, of his mastery of climax and the idiom of everyday speech. The arguments among the frogs are those of street urchins everywhere: they transcend the limitations of time, location, and language. The three-stanza ending of "The Frogs," as impressive as the famous close of T. S. Eliot's "Sweeney Among The Nightingales," moves beyond the tactics of supreme local satire to the strategic level of accomplishing what Adolfo Casais Monteiro calls a primary key

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to the whole meaning of the Modernist Movement in Brazil: "The fusion of two states of mind until then divorced in Brazilian literature: Universalist and Modernist."7 From the deeply human affirmation contained in the fusion of the modern with the universal, the Brazilian poetry written after the Modern Art Week united childhood with the world by means of the nation. In this poetry three outstanding attributes, reminiscent of the aesthetics of Wordsworth and Coleridge, prevailed: everyday things took on the quality of magic, triviality became transfigured into the marvelous, and mysterious truth lay at the heart of all appeals to childhood or to primitive and natural man. When joined with the positive elements of Regionalism, these three attributes of the union of childhood with the world produced some of the greatest lines in the history of Brazilian literature. In the Recife of Bandeira, for example, "Everything there seemed to be mothering eternity." Although the Itabira of Carlos Drummond de Andrade became only a picture on the wall to hurt a public official, it was originally the scene of a "Childhood" that is unsurpassed in Brazilian poetry for its sense of simplicity, melancholy remembrance, and magic beauty: My father mounted and rode to the fields. My mother sat sewing at home. My little brother slept. Alone, a boy among mango trees, I read the story of Robinson Crusoe. A long story that never ends. At noon, white with light, a voice that learned to lullaby in long-ago slavery—and never forgot— called us for coffee. Coffee black as the black old woman, tasty coffee, good coffee. 7

Monteiro, A Moderna Poesia, p. 15.

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in Brazil

My mother kept sitting and sewing, looking at me: —Shhh . . . Don't wake the baby. Then at the cradle where a mosquito whined. And she sighed—how deeply! Far away my father rode in the endless brush of the farm. And I didn't know that my story was more beautiful than Robinson Crusoe's. W i t h Jorge d e L i m a t h e poverty a n d suffering of t h e Northeast t u r n e d to Christian mysticism in order to sanctify even t h e objects of childhood. N o w h e r e in m o d e r n Brazilian poetry can one find a b e t t e r example of t h e compassion t h a t canonizes t h a n in Jorge's simple p o e m "Rag Doll": Rag doll with eyes of bead, a dress of chintz, hair of ribbons, stuffed with wool. Day and night, her opened eyes, looking at the toy soldiers that can march, at the jacks-in-the-box that can jump. Rag doll that falls down: she does not break, she costs a penny. Rag doll of the unhappy girls who lead the cripples, who pick u p cigarette butts, who beg at the corners, poor things! Rag doll with an impassive face like those girls. Dirty little doll, stuffed with wool.— The eyes of bead have fallen off. Blind she rolls in the gutter. The garbage man takes her away, covered with mud, naked, Just as our Lord had intended. T h e very mentioning of these t h r e e poets from t h e three different states of Pernambuco, Minas Gerais, a n d Alagoas serves as a re-

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minder of the fact that the movement generated by the Modern Art Week stimulated creative work in every region of Brazil. From that stimulation flowed a richer poetry that succeeded in changing folklore into psychological truth, in transforming the anecdote into social truth, and in creating a cosmic vision out of legends from the Amazon Basin. The intellectual decentralization inherent in the movement, in turn, assured the flourishing of provincial values and independent creativity in cities other than the cosmopolitan giants Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Even a partial listing of the new cultural centers arising from the Modernist Movement and of their outstanding contributors to the intellectual life of the country becomes an impressive catalogue of Brazilian geography and recent artistic achievement: Recife: Gilberto Freyre, Alvaro Lins, Luiz Delgado, José Lins do Rego, and Olívio Montenegro Belo Horizonte: Emílio Moura, Cyro dos Anjos, João Alfonsus, and Henriqueta Lisboa Fortaleza: Raquel de Queiroz, Permínio Asfora, Braga Montenegro, and Fran Martins Natal: Jorge Fernandes, José Bezerra Gomes, and Câmara Cascudo Porto Alegre: Érico Veríssimo, Moisés Vellinho, Augusto Meyer, Teimo Vergara, Mário Quintana, Rinaldo Moura, Darcy Azambuja, Teodemiro Tostes, and Viana Moog Maceió: Jorge de Lima, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Graciliano Ramos, and Waldemar Cavalcanti Salvador: Jorge Amado, Carlos Chiachio, Dias de Costa, Godofredo Filho, Luiz Viana Filho, Afrânio Coutinho, Adonias Filho, Arthur Ramos, and Edison Carneiro. One of the immediate results of the Modern Art Week was the founding of literary reviews designed to insult bourgeois prejudices and help re-form the sensibility of Brazil in the Modernist image. Some of the leading journals of the 1920's bore such interesting names as "Aesthetic," "Purple Land," "Klaxon," "Electric,"

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"Green," and "Review of Cannibalism." In these publications and others like them, "manifestoes and professions of modernist faith . . . were all but innumerable in this period, and schools of poetry of every shade, green, yellow, violet . . . blossomed overnight."8 Of the many literary schools that developed within the Modernist Movement, at least five were of major importance: The Dynamists. An artistic group in Rio de Janeiro that looked to Graça Aranha for leadership, the Dynamists included Ronald de Carvalho, Guilherme de Almeida, Felipe d'Oliveira, Renato de Almeida, Onestaldo Pennafort, Alvaro Moreira, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Paulo da Silveira, and Agripino Grieco. This group of intellectuals took pride in what they saw as the growing material progress, developing technology, and cosmic destiny of Brazil. In the hermetic jargon of Graça Aranha, the Dynamists spoke of "cosmic terror," "infinite all," "perpetual joy," and "dynamic objectivism." At their socially reactionary worst, they represented a kind of literary fascism. The Hallucinists. An artistic group in São Paulo, with affiliates in Rio de Janeiro, the Hallucinists took their name to signify their devotion to the aesthetic principles of Mário de Andrade, as demonstrated in his revolutionary volume of poetry "Hallucinated City." Including such cultural leaders as Mário himself, Couto de Barros, Rubem Borba de Morais, Antônio de Alcântara Machado, Sérgio Milliet, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Prudente de Morais Neto, Rodrigo M. F. de Andrade, and Américo Facó, the Hallucinists supported such projects as the complete renovation of poetry, the establishment of absolute freedom in aesthetic research, and the creation of a national language with a grammar of the Brazilian tongue. The Primitivists. A literary group in São Paulo associated with the Brazil-Wood Poetry Movement and the journal "Review of Cannibalism," the Primitivists sought a return to the innocent origins of Brazil, repudiated all alien influences, fled from old and 8

Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 211.

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illustrious cultures, and assumed a deliberate attitude of liberation in order "to consult the forest, to take the pulse of the earth." The three leading Primitivists were Oswald de Andrade, Raul Bopp, and Jaime Adour da Câmara. The Nationalists. A literary group in São Paulo that supported the Green and Yellow Movement and later joined the Tapir Movement and the Integralist Movement, the Nationalists declared war on all racial and cultural preconceptions, fought against negativism, irony, and despair. Highly political in their creative outlook, the leaders among the Nationalists—Plínio Salgado, Cassiano Ricardo, Menotti del Picchia, and Cândido Mota Filho—wanted to reform Brazil. The Spiritualists. A literary group in Rio de Janeiro that wrote for such journals as "Feast," "New Tree," "Latin America," and "Land of Sun," the Spiritualists were direct descendants of the Symbolists of Paraná. Including among their members Tasso da Silveira, Mestor Victor, Cecília Meireles, Murilo Araújo, Brasílio Itiberê, Barreto Filho, and Adelino Magalhães, the Spiritualists represented two great aesthetic forces in Brazilian literature: tradition, as realized in the profound cries of people from the past, and mystery, as expressed in an infinite anxiety for the remote, the beyond. 9 United more by what they denied than by what they affirmed, the Spiritualists opposed the "superficial and childish" dynamism of the Futurists, did not care to write in the so-called language of the people, and abhorred the humor of the joke-poem. The main artistic principles of the Spiritualists were summed up in four words: "speed," "totality," "Brazilianism," and "universality." By speed the Spiritualists meant the use of strong and unexpected expressions, capable of condensing emotive material and avoiding through sudden and daring transitions the sense of the hackneyed; by totality, the absolute mastery in the artist of all reality—human 9 For an excellent account of these five groups, see Peregrino Júnior, O Movimento Modernista, pp. 36-38.

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and transcendental, material and spiritual; by Brazilianism, the conferring of brilliant artistic life on all things Brazilian; by universality, the integration of Brazilian art into that perennial exchange of inner forces among people which constitutes world culture. 10 Despite the anti-Primitivist manifestoes published in "Feast," one of the leading Spiritualists—the Byzantine stylist and precious ornamentalist Murilo Araújo—published in "Illumination of Life" (1927) and in "The Seven Colors of the Sky" (1933) some poems of Negro inspiration, in which predominate, as in Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo," musical imitation, onomatopoeia, and alliteration. Araújo also made artistic use of Caçanje, the popular folk speech of Angola. Araújo's Primitivist tendencies underline the fact that the Modernist Movement in Brazil was multiform, full of contradictions and confusion—because so full of life. As in any rebellious movement of this kind, there was "a large element of what the French call blague and the Brazilians cabotinismo, or clowning, but the serious aspect is not to be overlooked or minimized."11 Looking at the Modern Art Week from its most serious aspect, one is forced to agree with Peregrino Júnior that its greatest contribution to the cause of the Modernist Movement was "a consciousness of and a conscience for literary problems in Brazil."12 That contribution, however, was not the only result of the Week; other important results were the stirring up of public opinion in all fields, including that of politics, thereby proving the social unrest in Brazil; inciting the Rebellion of Copacabana Fort in 1922; creating an enthusiasm for literature and the other arts; producing the habit of national introspection in all intellectual fields; and opening up a freedom of expression by ridding contemporary writing of classical rules and mere verbalism. As leader of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, Mário de Andrade worked constantly for a complete break with academic 10

See Manuel Bandeira, Apresentação da Poesia Brasileira, pp. 153-155. Putnam, Marvelous Journey, p. 211. 12 Peregrino Júnior, O Movimento Modernista, p. 15.

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subordinations and for the destruction of the conservative and conformist spirit. Seeking the demolition of taboos and preconceptions, he was dedicated to the pursuit of three fundamental principles: the right to free aesthetic research, actuaUzation of the artistic Brazilian intelligence, and establishment of a national creative conscience. When realized within the Modernist Movement itself, Mário's objectives were responsible for many effects: 1) The formation of provincial groups of intellectuals within the structure of the total movement. 2) The development of an interest in Brazilian man that led to the social novel and the documentary on his origins, conditions of life, and sociological problems. 3) Revitalization of the best features of Regionalism. 4) Transformation of the growing interest in folklore into a scientific study worthy of national support. 5) In the attempt to create a Brazilian language in order to free Brazilian writers from the canons of Portuguese classicism, the establishment of the supremacy of the popular idiom and of linguistic verisimilitude for the purposes of literature. 6) The fostering of artistic identification with social, political, and economic problems. 7) Introduction of the Brazilian intellectuals into a full participation in the life of the nation. 8) The exercising of healthy and dynamic reciprocal influences among all the various fine arts. As for the movement which developed out of the Modern Art Week, authorities on Brazilian literature disagree about its historical extension. Some see the movement as having been contained between 1922 and the 1930 revolution, when Getúlio Vargas seized the executive power of the federal government. Others agree with the time sequence of 1922-1930, but they see this span also as representing only the first phase of the movement. In the phases that followed 1930, the Brazilian writers continued to work

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with the same problems that were either explicit or implicit in the creative outlook of the Generation of 1922. Some of the corruptions of the Modernist Movement—in which simplicity became deficiency, spontaneity became improvisation, and liberation of rhythm became abolition of rhythm—seem to indicate its continuation, in different phases, beyond the end of World War II. What the Modernist Movement was and what it achieved are, in a personal sense, matters of opinion among those who participated in the movement. These matters of opinion, in turn, form an interesting chapter in themselves and enable the critic to develop a clearer view of the movement.

8. Matters of Opinion

I N THE LATTER HALF of the 1920's, many critical opinions added impetus to the movement generated by the Modern Art Week. In a criticism directed at Graça Aranha, who had delivered his famous address of rebellion to the Brazilian Academy of Letters the year before, Ronald de Carvalho said: "To think automatically is to separate oneself from the universe." 1 A few months later, the grandson of a former President of the Republic of Brazil—Prudente de Moraes 1 Ronald de Carvalho in a statement to Gazeta de Notícias, 25 março 1925.

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Neto—indicated that "Modernism is not a school: it is a state of mind."2 Aníbal Machado agreed: Modernism, which the national stupidity called Futurism, being not a school but a state of mind, did not put up with the literary lie in the country and reacted. . . . The modern vision deforms because it does not accept the official deformation of habit. . . . He who is a Classicist now will be telling lies; he who is a Romanticist will be declaiming.3 Not wishing to think automatically or to separate himself from the universe, Ribeiro Couto saw the Modernist Movement in Brazilian literature as "one of the aspects of the moral restlessness, of the profound psychological crisis that the country is going through." 4 Sounding like a Brazilian T. S. Eliot in search of the maturity which lies beyond imitation, Manuel Bandeira called upon his Modernist compatriots to engage in mutual literary theft: "What is important at this moment is not to avoid the reciprocal influences that we can exert on one another. In my opinion, we ought to plagiarize each other shamelessly. Rest assured that it was by shameless plagiarism that the great national literary schools began."5 Ronald de Carvalho, on the other hand, called for a kind of cultural immersion: "In order to create a human, therefore universal, art, the Brazilian artist must discipline his intelligence with culture, the only element capable of giving him a direct knowledge of his environment, as well as of freeing him from the confusion of all bookish theory, more pernicious than simple ignorance." 6 Antônio de Alcântara Machado, however, saw the theory and the ignorance as the two main evils of the Modernist Movement: "Brazilian Modernism nowadays seems to be more a center for debating than a creative movement. . . . On one side: 2 Prudente de Morais Neto in a statement to Correio da Manhã, 19 junho 1925. 3 Aníbal Machado in a statement to O Jornal, n.d. Found in a scrapbook of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 4 Ribeiro Couto in a statement to ibid., 30 janeiro 1927. 5 Manuel Bandeira in a statement to ibid., 8 setembro 1925. 6 Ronald de Carvalho in a statement to ibid., 21 julho 1925.

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bookish exuberance; on the other: fraudulent ignorance."7 In at least an implied agreement with the criticism of Carvalho and Machado, poet Emílio Moura thought it was necessary "to personalize and harmonize Brazil. God forbid a bookish and pedantic Brazil. Brazil is now out here agile and strong, training its muscles and feeling the creative power of its intelligence." 8 Despite the generally optimistic attitude on the part of the Brazilian Modernists about their movement, some negative voices spoke out during the late 1920's. Guilherme de Almeida, for example, could not believe the term "modern" itself: "I don't think we have or can have anything perfectly modern on our own. So far Brazil has not invented anything. If we want to be modern, we must have at least one foreign introducer." 9 Admitting the disorientation within the movement itself, João Alphonsus de Guimaraens responded nevertheless with typical Brazilian enthusiasm for the seemingly contradictory: "I don't want to be paradoxical, but I consider it a very well oriented disorientation, a thousand times preferable to the stagnation of the most recent past."10 While Ronald de Carvalho was lamenting the fact that his contemporaries had made the naive mistake of trying to appropriate Futurism as the basis for the Modernist spirit,11 Mário Mattos, a poet and critic from Minas Gerais, came to believe that "the modern generation has already succeeded . . . in completely abolishing the obsession with form. . . . Literary form sterilized a whole generation of intelligent Brazilians."12 Even Mário de Andrade, he of the sanguine temperament and positive outlook, found fault with some aspects of the Modernist Movement. In analyzing the growing trend toward Regionalism, 7

Antônio de Alcântara Machado in a statement to ibid., n.d. Found in a scrapbook of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 8 Emílio Mouro in a statement to ibid., 24 abril 1927. 9 Guilherme de Almeida in a statement to ibid., 2 janeiro 1927. 10 João Alphonsus de Guimaraens in a statement to ibid., 2 maio 1927. 11 Carvalho in a statement to ibid., 22 janeiro 1927. 12 Mário Mattos in a statement to Diário de Minas, 3 março 1929.

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Mário said: "Regionalism is poverty without humility. . . . It is the poverty that comes from so few means of expression and from narrow concepts/' 13 But most of the literary figures of the time agreed with Guilhermino Cesar, who proudly claimed that "the Modernist Movement is a cry that finds an answer in the subconscious mind of everybody."14 In about as enthusiastic a statement as one can expect from a Mineiro, novelist Cyro dos Anjos said that he saw the Modernist Movement as "an adventure that already today offers a serious possibility for the creation of a truly Brazilian art."15 That Brazilian art was to have, according to Carlos Dante de Moraes, the characteristics of the movement that fostered it: the search for personality, the loving soul of country, and a conscience both Brazilian and American.16 Those who produced the new art were to become the leaders of the nation—at least that is the way Oswald de Andrade, the perennial optimist of the movement, predicted things: "The Brazilian generation of intellectuals that leads the movement of renovation shall direct the country's destinies."17 As a kind of humorous intimation of the fact that such intellectuals would not direct the country's destinies, however, when Oswald de Andrade made his exuberant prediction he was embarking for Europe. With the coming of the Great Depression in the United States and the seizure of dictatorial powers by Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, the Modernist Movement quietly left behind its most destructive elements and entered into a second phase. When the champagne laughter from 1922 stopped, the year was 1930 and Carlos Drummond de Andrade had joined with Manuel Bandeira to continue the movement in a more serious vein, along different and exciting lines. In the 1930 rebellion of facility against poetic 13

Mário de Andrade, "Regionalismo," Diário Nacional, 14 fevereiro 1928. Guilhermino Cesar in a statement to Diario de Minas, 7 abril 1929. 15 Cyro dos Anjos in a statement to ibid., 14 abril 1929. 16 Carlos Dante de Moraes in a statement to O Paiz, n.d. Found in a scrapbook of Carlos Drummond de Andrade. 17 Oswald de Andrade in a statement to O Estado de Minas, 13 maio 1928. 14

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art, of the uncharacteristic against rigid expression, the word itself became a concrete thing with special weight, sound, unique meaning—an irreplaceable entity. In Drummond especially, the word meant more than merely a tool and a means; it was an end in itself and the very basis of poetry: Come closer and contemplate the words. Each one has a thousand secret faces under a neutral face and asks you, without interest in the answer, poor or terrible, which you will give it: Have you brought the key? Please note: barren of melody and meaning, the words have taken refuge in the night. Still humid and saturated with sleep, they roll in a difficult river and turn themselves into despising. ("Procura da Poesia") The conversion of Jorge de Lima and Murilo Mendes to the Modernist Movement, and their subsequent mystical Christian influence on the work of such poets as Augusto Frederico Schmidt and Vinícius de Morais, enriched the second phase to such an extent that it altered the initial impetus to the point where at the time of World War II it seemed Modernism in Brazil had died. In 1942, on the twentieth anniversary of the Modern Art Week, the Brazilian intellectuals were faced with the question: "Is the Modernist Movement dead?" Many and varied were the answers. Seeing the movement as having neither been born nor killed, as being only a moment of expression that permitted a more truly Brazilian thought and literature, Oswaldo Orico said that "Modernism ended up by siding with the schools it had repudiated." 18 Certain that the movement was triumphant in its twenty years of powerful contributions, which finally found Jeca Tatu with his feet 18

Oswaldo Orico in a statement to Dom Casmurro, 26 novembro 1942.

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on the ground, Ribeiro Couto believed Modernism to be still alive and "the culminating step in the rediscovery of Brazil."19 Tristão de Ataíde, however, could not agree with Couto. Although the Modernist Movement "marked the beginning of the end of bourgeois civilization" in Brazil, for Tristão "it was superseded by the new generation." Stating that Graça Aranha had been comtemplating literary reform as early as 1913, Tristão went on to criticize the poetry of Modernism as being that of "the disturbers of shallow waters." For him, who believed in the death of the movement, "Post-Modernism is more vigorous and human. Augusto Frederico Schmidt is the poet of this moment of anguish and transition."20 Sharing Ataíde's opinion about the importance of Schmidt as a poet, Eloy Pontes denied that the Modernist Movement had died: "A thing which never existed cannot be dead." 21 Oswald de Andrade, as one might expect, was vehement in his defense of the life of the movement: "No. It was the Brazilian Academy of Letters that died. Graça Aranha opened the paths of freedom. Jorge Amado is now the successor of Castro Alves."22 The great Northeastern novelist and finest prose stylist of his generation in Brazil, Graciliano Ramos, was adamant, however, in his opposition to the views of Oswald. For Ramos, the movement disappeared in 1930, after having paved the way for the new generation. But that wasn't all—Graciliano could not drop the subject without having stuck a cactus-spur of criticism into the movement: "It gave a chance to the stupid and the mediocre. Maybe a new revolution against the grammarians is necessary."23 Carlos Drummond de Andrade, perhaps the man most responsible for the felt need to ask the question about whether the Modernist Movement had died, resorted to ironic wit in his refutation of the position of Ramos: "Several undertakers claim that it has died: the grave19

Couto in a statement to ibid., 3 outubro 1942. Tristão de Ataíde in a statement to ibid., 9 junho 1942. 21 Eloy Pontes in a statement to ibid., 2 fevereiro 1943. 22 Oswald de Andrade in a statement to ibid., 28 novembro 1942. 23 Graciliano Ramos in a statement to ibid., 12 dezembro 1942. 20

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diggers without a clientele and the stupidity of the years before 1922. Modernism has but completed one of its cycles; it resurrects continuously."24 By the beginning of 1943, eleven out of twenty intellectuals and artists interviewed on the subject believed that Brazilian Modernism was dead. Those who held this opinion included Augusto Frederico Schmidt, Tristão de Ataíde, Oswaldo Orico, Eleazar de Carvalho, Eloy Pontes, Cassiano Ricardo, Agripino Grieco, Jayme Cardoso, Graciliano Ramos, Renato de Almeida, and Lorenzo Fernandez. Considering the achievements of the dead movement, Cassiano Ricardo said that "sometimes metered verse is less restrictive than free verse, but free verse and the recovery of mystery in poetry were the primary achievements of Modernism."25 In agreement with Ricardo, Graciliano Ramos saw poetry as the best fruit of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, because "it did nothing for prose."26 Renato de Almeida, leading folklorist of the country, thought that the movement was dead because it had accomplished its mission: "The period to destroy prejudice is over because its work is completed. And today, as a result of the preachings of Modernism, Brazilians are creating new and national expressions in art."27 Of the remaining nine interviewees, five denied outright that Modernism was dead: Ribeiro Couto, Oswald de Andrade, Francisco Mignone, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and Heitor VillaLobos. Jorge de Lima and Cândido Portinari joined together in a kind of abstention of opinion. In one of his statements, however, Portinari sounded something like Carlos Drummond: "What has always existed cannot die. In every epoch there is a movement of renovation. The advent of photography necessitated a change in painting. Picasso is as good as Goya or El Greco."28 Although 24

Carlos Drummond de Andrade in a statement to ibid., 15 novembro 1942. Cassiano Ricardo in a statement to ibid., 30 janeiro 1943. 26 Ramos in a statement to ibid., 30 janeiro 1943. 27 Renato de Almeida in a statement to ibid., 30 janeiro 1943. 28 Cândido Portinari in a statement to ibid., 30 janeiro 1943. 25

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he denied that Modernism was dead, Oswaldo Teixeira believed that it was in a process of dying. Manuel Bandeira, on the other hand, stood alone in his opinion that the Modernist Movement was very much alive and in a state of evolution "towards more liberty and greater expressiveness."29 The passage of time seems to confirm the simple statement of Bandeira. By 1940 a third phase within the Modernist Movement had begun, a phase that can be seen rather clearly now and one which would indicate a true process of evolution. Concern with form, with rhythm and words, under the leadership of Cecília Meireles, joined with the influence of T. S. Eliot and the New Criticism in America to produce an aesthetics in favor of the creation of pure poetry. Seeking classical control over the new language given them by the Generation of 1922, such Brazilian poets as Jorge de Lima, Vinícius de Moraes, Domingos Carvalho da Silva, and João Cabral de Melo Neto sought to make their work highly imagistic, metaphorical, and symbolic. As a kind of spokesman for what was to become known as the Generation of 1945, João Cabral saw no reason why he and his contemporaries should rebel against the poetry that had preceded their own. Understanding that radical reforms prevailed in his nation's literature in movements rather than in generations, Melo Neto believed that one generation can continue the work of another. It was for this reason, he thought, that the poetry of Brazilian poets who had their debut in 1930, when the most demolishing phase of the Modernists had been superseded, was not directed against the ideas of the Modern Art Week. On the contrary, these poets started from those ideas, and nobody demanded that they should go back to what existed before 1922. What these poets did was to get the utmost out of the conquests of Modernism. Having found the ground cleared, they were able to start their creative work right away, with the advantage of perspective. 30 29

Bandeira in a statement to ibid., 30 janeiro 1943. João Cabral de Melo Neto, "A Geração de 45—1," Diário Carioca, 23 novembro 1952. 30

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The advantage of perspective so clearly seen by João Cabral was responsible in part for the fact of evolution. By 1950 Melo Neto's belief that "the possibilities opened up by the Modernists are not yet exhausted" 31 was being proved true by the commencement of a fourth phase within the movement. At this time the aesthetics of Ezra Pound, the weird typography of e. e. cummings, Swiss Concretism, and the calligrammes of Apollinaire were exerting tremendous influences upon the young Brazilian poets, who, in turn, sought to change a temporal art into a spatial. Wanting to disintegrate syntax into sight-pattern elements, the Brazilian Concretists believed, above all else, that a poem is a graphic thing. By extending the achievements of their predecessors, the Concretists remained a part of the evolving pattern of the Modernist Movement in Brazil. And the foreign influences upon the fourth phase did not became a source of that distressing process known as imitation. As João Cabral has said: The fact that a young poet takes an older one as a sort of model, in the initial phase of his career, is less an act of submission of one poet to another than an act of adherence of a poet to a mode of poetry . . . which he finds more congenial with his personality. For there is not one poetry, there are many poetries.32 The various kinds of poetry generated by the Modernist Movement were, for Euryala Cannabrava, its chief glory and a cause for its failure at philosophic speculation: Modernism provoked a reform in the technique of poetic composition but did not bring about any innovation in the criteria that inform the artistic judgment and literary criticism. . . . The pioneers of that movement lacked the necessary vigor or intellectual capacity to amplify the renovating movement into the sphere of philosophy and cultural values.33 31

Ibid. Ibid., "A Geração de 45—II," Diario Carioca, 30 novembro 1952. 33 Euryala Cannabrava in a statement to Jornal de Letras, novembro 1949.

32

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This inability to amplify, in the eyes of Cannabrava, made the movement antiphilosophical and caused in it an absence of the humanistic sense. Because Modernism would not tolerate an exaltation of either the past or the province (as is most clearly seen in the work of Mário de Andrade and Ronald de Carvalho), Gilberto Freyre believed that the movement "sacrificed regionalism and traditionalism for the sake of cosmopolitanism."34 In contradiction of the viewpoint of Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda believed that "because Modernism fought routine, it was called anti-traditionalist; because it tried to absorb the advanced currents of literature and the arts in other countries, it was called internationalist and anti-nationalist."35 Anyone who knew the central motives of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, thought Sérgio, would easily see the errors involved in such critical labeling, because "the search for the traditional, the national, and regional in the popular arts, tastes, and folkloric manifestations was in fact inseparable from the effort at renovation, and from the very beginning."36 Three decades after the beginning known as the Modern Art Week, the Brazilian Academy of Letters voted a unanimous approval of Cassiano Ricardo's proposal to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of this most famous single event in the history of the Modernist Movement. The Ministry of Education joined with the Academy in the celebration. There were several reasons why the Academy, once so conservatively opposed to the Centennial Dragoons, should have enthusiastically endorsed Ricardo's proposal. The Academy itself was by 1952 well tied to the movement in several ways: by Graça Aranha's famous speech in 1924; through the names of Academicians João Ribeiro and Amadeu Amaral, who, though representatives of the past, had applauded 34

Gilberto Freyre, " 'Modernismo' e Suas Relações com Outros 'Ismos'," O Jornal, 29 junho 1952. 35 Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, "Depois da Semana," Diário Carioca, 24 fevereiro1952.36Ibid.

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the Modern Art Week and encouraged the "new" writers; and by the fact that some of the most distinguished of the Modernists— for example, Manuel Bandeira, Menotti del Picchia, and Guilherme de Almeida—had become members of the Academy. The first winner of the Academy's coveted Machado de Assis Prize was Jorge de Lima, an outstanding convert to and one of the greatest poets of the Modernist Movement. The Academy, furthermore, had always recognized the freedom of literary and artistic creation as a condition for its own survival in a democratic world.37 In an interview for the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Modern Art Week, the Cassiano Ricardo so responsible for its celebration admitted that he had originally not approved of the Futuristic tendencies of the Week and its movement. Believing with André Gide that one has to be nationalist before he can be universalis, Ricardo said: "I always was against the imitation of European 'isms/ I wanted, with my group, a genuinely Brazilian modern art. . . . My slogan was 'Let's go hunt parrots,' meaning those who imported ideas from abroad." 38 The group that Ricardo formed with Menotti del Picchia, Plínio Salgado, Cândido Mota Filho, and Raul Bopp passed through three distinct phases: the hunt for the imported "isms"; the tapir (totem of the Tupi Indians) phase, which sought to convey artistically the barbaric and original strength of the country; the bandeira (flag) phase, which defended the specifically American cultural values of Brazil. For the Cassiano who had originally opposed it, the Modern Art Week represented "the victory of free verse; of the subconscious mind, with its surrealistic lesson; of the freedom of rhythm, which had been a slave to metrics; of the re-creation of words, which became the new lyrical dialect; of freedom for aesthetic research." The poem itself was to become "what it is today, that is, something autonomous and complex, with all the Various dimensions and many voices' that Ezra Pound talks about."39 37 38

Ricardo in a statement to A Noite, 18 janeiro 1952. Ricardo in a statement to Diário Carioca, 30 março 1952.

39 Ibid.

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The many-faceted victory that Cassiano Ricardo saw in the Modernist Movement was made possible by an evolution from the nationalistic and polemical spirit of the Romantic to the formalistic and aesthetic spirit of the Neo-Classic. The development has been one from a world of feelings to a world of words, from adolescent enthusiasm to mature doubt, from revelry in shapelessness to the exaltation of pattern and form. Although the Modernist Movement fostered the work of such important figures as sociologist Gilberto Freyre, folklorist Renato de Almeida, and Northeastern novelists José Lins do Rego, Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos, and Rachel de Queiroz,40 its finest achievements have been in poetry. To understand and appreciate these achievements, one must look more closely at the work of the outstanding poets of the various phases of the movement itself. 40

For a study of the four Northeastern novelists, see Fred P. Ellison, Brazil's New Novel.

9. Manuel Bandeira

IN A WORLD where twentieth-century art has tended to become more and more intellectual, abstract, and cold, where man suffers daily from machinitis and his sensibility grows flabby from lack of exercise—it is good to discover the passionate and three-dimensional reality of a great lyric poet. Such a poet is Manuel Bandeira, born in Recife, April 19, 1886, the most important voice in the first phase of Brazilian Modernism. The most representative poet of his generation in Brazil, Bandeira has devoted a precarious and uncertain lifetime to the mastery of his art. Precarious and uncertain because, as he says in "Testament": One day I lost my health forever.

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The tuberculosis that struck him in youth and kept him from becoming the architect his father had envisioned matured his romantic sentiments into intense and dramatic needs which called for classical control for the sake of survival. The tension between the knowledge of death in him and the love of life in him forced Bandeira into adopting the strategy of sarcasm and humor by which he could escape self-pity and sentimentality and transform personal despair into universal elegy.1 This transformation is the substance of his most memorable moments as lyric artist. The knowledge of death is paramount in the poetry of Manuel Bandeira. From his earliest verses, in which he admitted "I write poetry like one who dies" ("Desencanto"), to his latest lines, which praise everything in life as a miracle except "Blessed death, which is the end of all miracles" ("Preparação para a Morte")—Bandeira has created in such a way as to call forth the following appraisal by Carlos Drummond de Andrade: This incessant dying that I find in your verses is your life, poet, and through it you communicate with the world in which you fade away. ("Ode no Cinqüentenário do Poeta Brasileiro") This incessant dying has given Bandeira the terrible strength of the hopeless, that strength which in its isolation can dare to be witty and flippant, as in "Pneumothorax": Fever, lung-coughing blood, gasping, and night-sweats. A whole life that could have been, but was not. Cough, cough, cough. He sent for the doctor: —Say thirty-three. 1 See Otto Mario Carpeaux, Prefácio to Manuel Bandeira's Apresentação da Poesia Brasileira, p. 8.

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]—Thirty-three—thirty-three—thirty-three— —Breathe. —You have a hole in the left lung and seepage into the right. —Well, doctor, isn't it possible to try a pneumothorax? —No. The only thing you can do is play an Argentine tango. Manuel Bandeira, however, was not content merely to exhibit the bravado of playing an Argentine tango, for like the man in his "Moment in a Cafe," he knew —that life is a fierce and aimless agitation That life is a treason And he paid his respect to the flesh which passed by Forever freed from the dead soul. From this knowledge that made him sarcastic, acidic, half diabolical at times, Manuel could wish for an absolute death that would leave neither a "bloodless mask of wax" nor a "pilgrim soul" nor the slightest trace of remembrance in any human heart. Because he felt that no heaven could fulfill his dream of heaven, Bandeira wanted To die so completely That one day when somebody sees your name on a page He will ask: "Who was he?—" To die still more completely: Without leaving even this name. ("A Morte Absoluta") Yet, even though the poet's song was sadder than the swallow's, which said, "My day passes all in vain, all in vain," the poetry assured a kind of immortality, life proved to be a miracle, and there was always the joy of loving. From that immortality, that miracle, that joy, Manuel Bandeira went on to create with what Drummond calls

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his elegiac world of the universal self that transcends every imperfection in this world of appearances. As one might expect, the strength that produced the art preserved the artist: the discipline that Bandeira put into his poetry he also kept for his life. The personal result of an incessant dying has been a continual rebirth: in middle life the tuberculosis was arrested, and today, in his eighties, Bandeira is in better health than he ever was before. Compassion, tenderness, and a lust for life combine in Bandeira to make him that magnetic personality so much admired by poetdiplomat Vinícius de Moraes: You were not merely a secret Of poetry and of emotion: You were the star in my exilePoet, father! stern brother. You not only took me to your bosom, But you also gave me your hand: I very small—you, elect Poet! father, stern brother. Clear, tall and ascetic friend Of the sad and pure heart: What do you dream so much all by yourself— Poet, father, stern brother? ("Saudade de Manuel Bandeira") The stern quality that Vinícius sees in Bandeira is that of discipline, of devotion to creative principles that will not countenance the soft, the easy, the sentimental, the sloppy. In a simplicity that reminds one of the stripped nakedness of the late-period Yeats, Bandeira has continually stood opposed to the rhetorically complex which permits the will to do the work of the imagination and

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allows the nearly genuine to appear for the real. It is his dissatisfaction with the nearly genuine that constitutes Bandeira's clearness, his artistic asceticism, his spiritual purity. His personal life and matters of the flesh constitute a different order of being and, as Vinícius himself knows, to think of Bandeira as puritanical or ascetic in this order is to err completely. To attain to Christ at one level, Bandeira has lived like Dionysus at another. In his "Reply to Vinícius," Manuel shows his melancholy humility and his frustrated drive for the absolute independence which no man can achieve: Poet I am; father, little; brother, more. Lucid, yes; elect, no. And very sad from so many sighs That fill my imagination. What do I dream of? I don't know very well. Maybe of being self-sufficient, happy —Ah, happy as I'Ve never been!— Pulling out of the heart —Pulling out by its roots— This infinite and vain yearning To possess what possesses me. What has possessed Bandeira, despite the melancholy and the incessant dying, is the love of life. Love of life supplies the positive pole in opposition to that negative one of the knowledge of death; between these two poles flows the current of tension to flash forth in great lyric expression. In "Melancholy Madrigal," Bandeira admits to his beloved of the moment that what he adores in her is not beauty or intelligence or subtle spirit or knowledge or musical grace or dead mother, sister, and father. On the contrary, in the final stanza he says: What I adore in your nature Is not the deep maternal instinct Opened in your side like a wound. Is not your purity. Is not your impurity.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil What I adore in you—comfort me, pardon me! What I adore in you: is life.

In the poetry of Manuel Bandeira much is forgiven because people have lived much, because "life . . . is holy / No matter how many its falls" ("Última Canção do Beco"). Thus in "Last Song of the Dead End," the poet is not at all distressed to contemplate the fact that his beloved neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro is infamous for having sinned so much, for the whores who once crowded his street "are all daughters of God." With a Whitmanlike sympathy and the democracy of seemingly outlandish juxtaposition, Bandeira personally canonizes a Negress servant. "Irene in Heaven" is a masterpiece of compassion, tenderness, and that sunny spirit of charity that triumphs over all the dark recesses of evil. This poem also demonstrates the economy and compression Bandeira can employ: Black Irene Good Irene Always sweet-natured Irene. I picture Irene entering heaven: —Permission, my white one! And happy-go-lucky St. Peter: —Come in, Irene. You don't have to ask for permission. The slightest intrusion of rhetoric or of the moral will upon this poem would shatter it. Where most poets would preach, Bandeira merely states; where they would exclaim and judge, he is content to move and to touch—simply and with a delicate shading of humor. Economy of means to ends is one of the key tests of lyric genius. One need only think of the flawed diction of Byron, the digressive philosophizing of Wordsworth, the hysterical self-attitudinizing of Shelley, the repetitive themes and rhetorical constructions of Housman—for example—to see how difficult it is to maintain the

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true lyric intensity of economy. Time and again, as a measure of his greatness, Manuel Bandeira cuts diamond to perfection in the manner of a Villon, a Blake, a Heine, a Baudelaire. Nothing is more classically cold and hauntingly simple than the ceremonial of death in Bandeira's poem "The Major": The major died. Retired. Veteran of the war with Paraguay. Hero at the Bridge of Itororo. He didn't want military honors. He didn't want speeches. Only this— At the moment of burial A bugler from a battalion of the line Gave the mouth of his grave A touch of silence. Join Bandeira's sense of economy, his flawless diction, his mastery of rhythm in his native tongue, join these to his mystical contemplation of the symbolic meaning of a woman's pubic region— because for Bandeira, as for Yeats, all subjects are pure and the vision of reality must include everything—and the result becomes an intellectually tantalizing poem ("Agua-Forte"): The black on the white, The hairs on the flesh: Bird wing-flattened out In a nearly white sky. In the middle of the hairs, A double-valved shell On a scarlet-cloth sea. Shell, rose or date? In the dark hiding place, The fountains of life Bleeding in vain From two wounds.

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So fine are the technical gifts of the author of this "Etching" that he shares the following encomium of Cecília Meireles: "I can think of only two supreme artistic geniuses in Brazil today who have completely mastered their medium and can do anything they want with it: one is the painter Cândido Portinari and the other is the poet Manuel Bandeira."2 Along with his technical gifts, Bandeira brings to his poetry a capacity for many moods and tones. Never restricted to the narrow range of a few sad melodies on a gypsy violin, he can be surrealistic, as in "Song of Lucas Station," in which the speaker, maddened by the remembrance of a terrible crime, wants the train to stop so that he can ask the night for two untouched breasts or for a sleep in the dead waters of a dark marsh; or all sound pattern, as in "Iron Train," a poem that imitates the steamy churning of a locomotive and the rattling along the rails of the boxcars; or cryptically and wittily obscene, as in "Nocturne of Lapa Street," in which a state of masculine tumescence unites with erudite allusions to "The Raven" of Edgar Allan Poe; or tenderly funny, as in "Sweethearts," where the teenage boy wants to express his admiration for the newly discovered beauty of his girlfriend and can do so only by comparing her with a striped caterpillar. Throughout the various moods and tones there is always Bandeira's self-confident independence, his I-don'tgive-a-damn-about-the-critics attitude, sharply conveyed, for example, in his poem "A New Poetics": 1 am going to launch the theory of the sordid poet. Sordid poet: That one whose poetry has the dirty mark of life. 2 Cecília Meireles in a private conversion in Rio de Janeiro, September 16, 1961.

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A person goes, A person goes out of the house in a very well-starched white linen suit, and at the first corner a truck passes, splashing the jacket or the trousers with a blob of mud: It is life. A poem ought to be like a stain on linen: To irritate the self-satisfied reader. I know that poetry is also dew. But it remains this for little girls, for alpha stars, for one hundred percent virgins, and for mistresses who grow old without malice. Through half a century of evolution that has taken him from a personally romantic symbolism to a detached mastery of the principles of Brazilian Concretism, Manuel Bandeira has moved through every phase of the Modernist Movement, always maintaining his lyric supremacy to all the isms. During the fifty years of developing and deepening his genius, he has remained in some part of his soul The boy who does not want to die, Who will die only when I do, The boy who every year on Christmas Eve Still thinks of putting his slippers behind the door. ("Versos de Natal") The perennial boyhood in Bandeira has kept his art from becoming jaded with the self-satisfaction of success. Because he remains something of a child at heart, the poet sees things simply, freshly, with the pristine power of the innocent and uncorrupted sensibility; for him magic continues to live at the core of everything. Because of his childlike simplicity and honesty with the sensuous fact, Bandeira consistently has been able to say more with less than any other Brazilian poet of this century. Because the sensuous facts he conveys are true to the universal in human experience, they in turn transfuse that emotional glow without which all art remains lifeless technique. Upon reading "Guinea Pig," for example, every-

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body is six years old again and tastes that bittersweet of life known as first frustrated love: When I was six years old I got a guinea pig. What heartache I had Because the little beast wanted only to hide under the stove! I carried it to the living room, To prettier, cleaner places, But it couldn't have cared less: It wanted only to hide under the stove. It didn't give a damn for my little kindnesses— —My guinea pig was my first sweetheart. In "Guinea Pig" the tone of the poet is that of a six-year-old boy at heart, even to the one line of tough talk—to prove the maturity that isn't there—before the simple admission of love. This poem is but one example of what a critic might call the "verisimilitude of tone" in Bandeira's poetry, meaning that the voice of the speaker corresponds with his subject matter so completely as to constitute the very sense of reality. Bandeira is a master at tone because of his childlike simplicity of heart that permits no complex sophistication or intellectualism to muddy the pure springs of his lyric art. An illustration of this simplicity is in the poem "Little Balloons," which has as setting the streetfair, where three kinds of circles—the balloons, the wide eyes of the poor little boys, and the ring they form about the talkative vendor—oppose the sharp edges of the women who are shopping, because At the fish stalls, At the cereal bins, Near the vegetable baskets, They haggle bitterly over pennies. The poor little boys are oblivious to the women. Indeed, as the

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poet says, they don't see the peas, tomatoes, fruit, or anything. They are, in a sense, blind as well as deaf, because It's perfectly clear that for them the little colored balloons are the only useful and truly indispensable article in the market. It is equally clear that the balloons are the only indispensable article for the poet also. Bandeira implies his position on the value of the balloons, which the talkative vendor calls "the best amusement for children!" by means of a fourth circle, a halo, upon the subtle suggestion of which the poem ends: And about the talkative man the poor little boys form an unmovable circle of desire and awe. Those who live by the practical will, who are forever haggling over pennies, can never enter into the unmovable circle of the sanctified imagination. The Manuel Bandeira who has said, "I want the delight of being able to feel the simplest things" ("Belo Belo"), can find the inspiration for creativity in almost anything. One day he read about the death of a slum dweller from one of the hills in Leme (a district in Rio de Janeiro that borders on Copacabana); the facts of the case patterned themselves into verses, and the result was "Poem Based on a Notice in the Newspaper": John Joyful was a carryout boy for the Farmers' Market and lived on Babylonia Hill in a shack without a number One night he went to the Twentieth of November Bar He drank He sang He danced Then he threw himself in the Lagoon Rodrigo de Freitas and drowned. The selective cataloguing in this poem—a general artistic habit with Bandeira—shows the role of the poet to be, like Adam's with the animals, that of namer as well as of maker. Indeed, if the poet

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names well, he makes well, and has no need for description. Aesthetic delight in the simplest things reduces qualifying adjectives and adverbs, modifications of essential reality, to a minimum. With his ability to enjoy simple things Manuel Bandeira has trained his ear to the voice of the people in Brazil. No other poet of his time has a better feel of the oral idiom of Brazilian Portuguese, or takes keener pleasure in the flavor of folk speech, whether it be African dialect or immigrant Orientalisms or Indian place-names or Carioca babytalk. When he joins this mastery of oral tradition with his selective cataloguing of some of the most simple and intense memories of childhood, the result is the elegiac masterpiece "Remembrance of Recife." The Recife that Bandeira loves is not the famous city of legend and history, the commercial heart of the Northeast and the center of the liberation revolutions. No, that Recife is too complex, too literary, therefore melodramatic, histrionic, and unreal. The Recife that Bandeira loves is a transcendent world of memory, a place where he once played crack-the-whip, broke the windows in one of his neighbors' houses, shouted in the game of rabbit-come-out, and listened to the singing voices of the rosebud girls who would die before womanhood. It is the Recife of fires in the night, of the delicious sins of sneaking off to smoke and to go fishing when one should be running errands or attending school. It is the Recife of that emotional vision which isolates objects into flashes of overwhelming reality: Far away the little backwoods of Caxangá Straw bathhouses One day I saw a maiden naked in her bath I stopped still my heart pounding She laughed It was my first illumination The very term "illumination," the second step in the saint's way of charity toward mystical union with God, indicates the kind of transfiguration that Bandeira achieves in the isolating light of his

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emotional vision. With a few simple lines of lyric catalogue, for example, the sights, the sounds, the smells of Union Street in Recife combine with nostalgia to create an artistic unity that is universal and eternal: Union Street where every afternoon the black banana woman passed With the loud calico shawl And the seller of sugarcane slices The vendor of peanuts that were called peanooties and were not roasted but boiled I remember all the hucksters: Fresh eggs cheap Ten eggs for a nickel That was a long time ago— In this passage the naming is the making, which results in a synaesthesia that becomes the metaphysics of a value judgment so subtle as to be nearly imperceptible. That is the way the simplicity of Bandeira likes to create: isolating things in the unique glory of their own illumination. For him the simple beauty of a white rose alone on a branch becomes a sanctity alone in the garden, in the street, in the world, in time. All nature, as he knows, in the light of noon shines forth in the magnificent radiance of multiform color and shape and sound. So much splendor the poet believes is too much, because The essential grace, Ineffable mystery —Supernatural— Of life and of the world, Was there in that rose Alone on the branch. Alone in time. ("EuVi Uma Rosa") Such grace and mystery in the white rose is like the modest purity

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of the Virgin Mary; these qualities in the humble flower indicate to Bandeira that it can hear the holy words of another Annunciation. The ability of Manuel Bandeira to see through the world of appearances to the heart of a reality that remains forever mystery is never more clearly demonstrated than in the following few lines of contemplation on an "Apple": From one angle I see you just like a dried-up breast From another just like a belly from whose navel still hangs the umbilical cord You are red as the divine love Inside you in the little seeds Palpitates a prodigious life Infinitely And you remain so simple Beside a knife In a poor hotel room. The union of divine and human, to be severed by the knife on the umbilical cord, is fleeting and hidden in mystery. Such a union underlines, moreover, the contrast between time and eternity, between the finite and the infinite, the particular and the universal. These contrasts form the tension between the knowledge of death and the love of life, between that which passes and that which remains, the tension that informs Bandeira's elegiac poems with their great lyric power. Thus the tuberculous poet, who wanted either to die completely or to go to a mythic and fleshly paradise where he could have the woman he wanted on the bed that he would choose ("Vou-Me Embora P'ra Pasárgada"), comes finally to transfigure his agony into a hymn of praise for that eternal world where everything lost remains "Intact, suspended in air!" ("Última Canção do Beco"). It is a world where death intrudes not, a world where the memory of an old man blends with the experience of a six-year-old boy at the Feast of St. John to discover that the loved ones from the past

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—Grandmother, Grandfather, Totônio Rodrigues, Tomásia, Rosa —are merely, like the celebrants of the night before, all asleep, all lying down Sleeping Oh, so profoundly.

("Profundamente")

It is a compassionately triumphant world where the silk-paper balloon trimmed by the typesetter José rises on his consumptive gasps beyond the hisses, hoots, and thrown stones of hateful deadend kids, beyond the pontificating sermons of officious busybodies, to fall at last "in the pure waters of the high sea" ("Na Rua do Sabão"). It is the richest lyric world of modern Brazilian literature. Perhaps it is the incessant dying that makes for such intensity in the poetry of Manuel Bandeira. When every word may be the last, a man is usually careful about what he says; in a poet this care extends to include how he says it. At any rate, if one were to write the epitaph of the man who, in "Flower of All Ages," said: Before your skin had wrinkles, Your health Concealed what was Your true self. he would fall back on the poet's own work for his lines. The poem that best summarizes the struggle of Bandeira with health and art, with the love of life and the knowledge of death, is a sonnet that, after an inspiring talk with a cousin who is a Carmelite nun, he composed in his sleep during the night of September 30October 1, 1945.3 Here is that sonnet about "The Fighter": He sought in love the balm of life, He found nothing but poison and death. He built in the desert his rock-fort Of egoism, and the rock sank in the sea! 3 Manuel Bandeira in a private conversation in Rio de Janeiro, December 6, 1961.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil After much work and a good deal of pain, After the dreadful chase for every kind of luck, He conquered the monster of outlandish behavior —The howling and terrified Chimera! When he died, tongues of burning blood, Alleluias of fire rushed to attack, Took all heaven from horizon to horizon, And prolongedly, almost unendingly, Shook like a choir of winds His great translacerated heart!

Such emotional intensity as this Brazilian poet achieves in "The Fighter" is one reason why Carlos Drummond de Andrade believes that Manuel Bandeira should have won the Nobel Prize long ago.4 4

Carlos Drummond de Andrade in a private conversation in Rio de Janeiro, September 13, 1961.

10. Carlos Drummond de Andrade

born in Itabira, in the state of Minas Gerais, on October 31, 1902, is the most important poet of the second phase of Brazilian Modernism, a literary trend that began with him in 1930. Today a recently retired archivist at the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro, Drummond has provoked more passionate discussion and a wider range of difiFering interpretations than any other modern poet in Brazil.1 Among younger Brazilian artists, writers, poets, and critics, Drummond—even more than worldfamous sociologist Gilberto Freyre—is undoubtedly the most admired intellectual of his generation. Whereas Bandeira is CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE,

1 See Otto Maria Carpeaux, Pequena Bibliografia Crítica da Liter1 atura Brasileira, p. 269.

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extroverted, gregarious, even Bohemian by nature, Drummond is temperamentally reserved and shy, a true introvert. Alienated, as he himself admits, from "everything in life that is open and talkative" ("Confidencia do Itabirano"), Drummond is hard as diamond in his sarcasm and irony: that is the Mineiro in him. He is economical of means that persevere to heroic ends: that is the Scottish ancestry in his blood. He is grateful for little things, wants to live and love "without mystification" ("Os Ombros Suportam O Mundo"): that is the Carioca he would like to become. After a generation of constant literary growth, Drummond has achieved in his poetry a complete fusion of sensibility and reason: that is the history of his genius. In his first volume, "Some Poetry," published in Belo Horizonte in 1930, Carlos Drummond represented the general aesthetic position, accepted in Brazil ever since the Symbolists, of opposition to the cliché, stylized "poetic" diction, and "appropriate" literary convention. Like the Modernists, however, in his work he united the universal with the intimately personal, without permitting "any musical, rhythmical, conceptual, social, or euphemistic limitation."2 Believing at this time that rhyme is useless unless the words agree in an association of ideas, Drummond dropped his new approach to poetry into the Modernist Movement like the stone he saw "In the Middle of the Road": In the middle of the road was a stone was a stone in the middle of the road was a stone in the middle of the road was a stone. I shall never forget that event in the life of my so tired eyes. I shall never forget that in the middle of the road was a stone was a stone in the middle of the road in the middle of the road was a stone. 2

Antonio Houaiss, Seis Poetas e Um Problema, p. 50.

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As the most popular of present-day Brazilian novelists, Érico Veríssimo, has said, the reaction to Drummond's stone lying in the middle of the road was to call its author mad from schizophrenia. The Modernists who came to the defense of Drummond, however, hurled back their contention that the poem is psychologically sound. For them it represented the "drama of obsessing ideas."3 Much of the poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade moves upon the drama of obsessing ideas, for he is obsessed with several convictions of the perfectionist: That he is impossible. That language is absolutely insufficient for the needs of communication. That life is ineffable. That the social order is filled with an injustice for which there is no final resolution. That even though love turns out to be useless, one must love in order that existence may become its own essence. These ideas, and others like them, flow from the soul of a man who will admit of no compromise with what should be in the name of what is. Perhaps the sense of incorruptibility in Drummond and in his poetry stems from the fact that he grew up where it was Ninety per cent iron in the sidewalks. Eighty per cent iron in the souls. ("Confidencia do Itabirano") Sad and proud, this Brazilian poet is also strong in his creative dedication to an unattainable perfection which demands from him a personal humility that operates by the tactics of irony and humor. In a poem that illustrates the thesis "You cannot communicate poetry," Drummond says, "Everything is possible, only I am impossible" ("Segredo"). A much later poem, entitled "Science Fiction," glosses his sense of impossibility as follows: A man from Mars met me on the street and backed away from my human impossibility. Afraid, he thought: How can such a being, who annuls his life 3

See Érico Veríssimo, Brazilian Literature, p. 112.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil in the very process of living, exist? The man from Mars walked off, and I followed. I wanted him for a witness. But refusing to enter a dialogue, he evaporated into the problem-starred air. And I stood alone in myself, abandoned by myself.

From this sense of human impossibility, of personal isolation and abstraction, comes Drummond's emphasis upon the internal and psychological state, upon the confessional soliloquy as perhaps the best means of expression. Expression, because communication is an entirely different matter: But if I try to break through to another, what I find is only the night and a terrible loneliness. ("A Bruxa") With a parenthesis in the poem "Big World," Drummond admits that in the solitude of his private person he has forgotten the language men use to communicate. Thus art becomes a factor of isolation for the artist, and the man who contains the artist in himself must try to break out of that isolation: That's why I prefer to tell about me. That's why I strip myself, that's why I shout for attention, that's why I haunt the newspapers, expose myself crudely in bookshops: I need everybody. ("Mundo Grande") From the admission of this enormous need, Carlos Drummond led himself into the situation ineffable, where he became dissatisfied with the inadequacy of language. Again in the poem "Big World," when he tries to shut his eyes and forget, letting the

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water from the windowpanes flow onto his hands, the association of ideas presents him with the overwhelming questions: Will the sunken cities be reborn? The drowned men—will they come back? And he has to answer with the admission that his heart doesn't know: Stupid, foolish and fragile my heart. Only now do I see how sad it is not to know certain things. What he does not know he cannot express; what he cannot express he cannot communicate. It is the ineffable that helps to trap him, isolate him, in his own human impossibility. For Drummond, even those experiences which one can communicate are difficult to achieve because of the weakness of language. In the poem "Poetry," he says: I spent one hour thinking up a verse that my pen refuses to write. And yet the verse is here inside me, restless, alive. It is here inside and refuses to come out. When the verses refuse to come out, Drummond has to enter deep into his sensibility to try to force them out. The result is the most meditative lyricism in modern Brazilian literature. No other poet of his time brings more mental power to bear upon his work than does Carlos Drummond de Andrade. So great is the struggle at times that he thinks of composition in the physical terms of wrestling. "To wrestle with words," he says, "is the vainest of struggles" ("O Lutador"). Yet, so soon as the day breaks, he takes up the challenge and pursues it back into darkness and the streets of sleep "with no more profit / than that of chasing the wind." At times, after all the bullying and sweating, the coaxing and wooing,

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he thinks that he has forced the enemy words into surrender, wherein each one will yield to him its warmth or glory or mystery or scorn or jealousy, because his wise love has taught him how to enjoy properly the captured essence. At that very moment when he is about to make the most of the capitulation of the word, however, he finds that it is the time to half-open the eyes: between kiss and mouth everything evaporates. ("O Lutador") From the frustration of the perfectionist who saw what immense passion abides potentially in language and which was lacking in his own account because of his failure to master that language, Drummond took up the tactics of combative affirmations in that "aggression of one who accepts defeat in the social realm because he is only interested in victory in the individual."4 To further the cause of that victory, the vocabulary of Drummond became increasingly colloquial, realistic, almost naive, and full of verbal repetition. That repetition, in turn, moved from simple imitation to rhetorical linking, poetical leitmotiv, and philosophical refrain. Whereas Bandeira builds language associations around proverbs, popular expressions, and fashionable phrases, Drummond executes mechanical associations on different models in order to indicate the states of surrender in a "multiple personality which moves from the rational to the automatic." 5 All these qualities in the creative process of Drummond can be seen in "José," one of the most Brazilian of all modern poems and so popular as to have become a national institution: What now, José? The party's over, the lights are off, the gang has gone, 4

Houaiss, Seis Poetas, p. 52. 5 Ibid., p. 74.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade the night's grown cold, what now, José? what now, Joaquim? what now, you? you who are nameless, who make fun of others, you who write verses, who love, protest, what now, José? Got no woman, got no speech, got no love, can't drink, can't smoke, can't even spit, the night's grown cold, daybreak has stalled, the streetcar has stalled, laughter has stalled, utopia has stalled, and everything's over, and everything's fled, and everything's mouldy, what now, José? What now, José? Your sweet talk, your moment of fever, your feasting and fasting, your library, your gold mine, your suit of glass, your incoherence, your hatred—what now? Key in hand, you want to open the d o o r there is no door; you want to drown in the sea,

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil but the sea has dried up; you want to go to MinasMinas no longer exists; José, what now? If you could scream, if you could groan, if you could play a Viennese waltz, if you could sleep, if you could tire, if you could dieBut you don't die— you are tough, José. Alone in the dark like a beast of the wild, without any theory of gods, without even a naked wall to lean against, without a black horse to gallop away, you march, José! Whereto, José?

Whereto indeed! one might ask the human symbol of a Brazil in constant struggle with her problems of imbalance of trade, onecrop domination of the agricultural economy, depreciation of the value of the cruzeiro, continual escalation in the cost of living, inadequate transportation and communication systems, grossly unequal distribution of national wealth, underdevelopment of the interior, corruption among government officials, and widespread illiteracy and poverty and disease, with their resultant effect of drastically lowering the life-expectancy. The utter exhaustion of hope and the attendant strength of despair in "José" are typical of the vision of Drummond in his sociopolitical poetry; they are also indicative of the antibourgeois tone of a whole generation of dis-

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illusioned Brazilian intellectuals who, theoretically at least, are concerned with the sufferings of the poor. Fostering a sentimental optimism to combat the disillusion, many of these intellectuals believe in the achievement of a better world and in the ending of social injustice by means of organization in communism or socialism. They support any movement to the left, under the leadership of a Luiz Carlos Prestes or a Francisco Juliao. Once in agreement with such leftist sentiments, Carlos Drummond became disillusioned with his early political beliefs. This much is certain: had the United States seen the implicit peril underlying the social criticism of "José," her government would have initiated an Alliance for Progress much sooner and with a more certain hope for salutary results. The poem "José" is an excellent example of Drummond's belief that there is no resolution for injustice in this world. Failure in the social order is to be expected. As Drummond says in "The Ox," there is a profound aloneness, the suffering of millions without a curse, the writhing of men who do not let a word of complaint pass their lips. Injustice produces a heroic stoicism in the suffering men that isolates them, like Drummond, in the ineffable experience: The city cannot be explained and the houses have no meaning. The only means of attaining explanation and meaning is love, but love does not blow up its storm into the crowded human street. For Drummond, the weather of profiteering, of materialism, remains steady. Because it does, the ox—symbol of exploited man— remains alone, and In the immense field: the oil derrick. The materialism represented by the oil derrick joins with the inadequacy of language, for Drummond, to make it "Impossible to compose a poem at this point in the evolution of mankind." That is the ironic contention of the poet in "The Survivor." Since the death

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of the last troubadour in 1914, terribly complicated machines take care of the most basic needs: If you want to smoke a cigar, push a knob. Coats button themselves by electricity. Love is made via radiogram. Digestion requires no stomach. ("O Sobrevivente") In an uninhabitable world that becomes more and more crowded, Drummond is glad that he will be dead before civilization reaches a reasonable standard of culture. Glad, because seriously, tragically, he sees that Men do not improve and they kill one another like bugs. That sight is enough to make eyes cry so as to produce a second flood. From those tears, Drummond suspects that he has done the impossible: written a poem. The criticism and the satire underlying the tactics of irony and humility in Drummond are those of an idealist who avoids being completely crushed by the oppressive sense of reality through an oblique approach to it, a reversal statement of it, a passiveresistance surrender in it. Nowhere can these methods of avoidance be more clearly seen than in his "Cradle Song," where, like Shakespeare's Antony, Drummond states the direct opposite of what he intends. In a world that bears the alias Not Important, love and flesh and Ufe are of little value: artificial insemination takes the place of the first, death dissolves the second, and not even suffering remains constant in the third. Under such a devastating reduction of everything to the meanest level of existence, it follows that Kisses are not important. In your time there will be no kisses. Lips will be metallic;

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civil, and nothing else, will be the love of personalities lost in the great blob— The crowning irony, of course, is that under the guise of prophecy the poet has succeeded in describing the present in a dehumanized world devoid of compassion. In such a world of continual failure in the social order, the only hope for success remains with the individual, who in "a time of absolute purification" comes to realize, as Drummond does in "Shoulders Bear the World," that "to die is useless," that "life is an order." What kind of life? "Merely life, without mystification." The kind of elemental identity in existence that remains after a man has suffered the devastating reduction through all outward appearances back to his soul, "stripped of ornament and musical commentary" ("Vida Menor"). Such a reduction proves to a man The comfort of getting drunk. The comfort of dancing and shouting, the comfort of the bright red ball, the comfort of Kant and poetry, all of them—and none is a solution. ("Passagem do Ano") Since life is "fat, oily, deadly, unauthorized" ("Passagem do Ano"), the only hope for a solution lies in a surrender to life: To exist: no matter how. The fraternal delivery of bread. To love: even in songs. To walk again: the distances, the colors, the possessions of streets. Everything we lost at night is ours in trust once more. Thank you, faithful things! To know that still there are forests, bells, words; that the earth continues to rotate, and time

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has not withered; that we are not dissolved! To suck the taste of day! Thank you, bright morning: how essential it is to live! ("Passagem da Noite") Only in this kind of surrender to life can a man come to sing a hymn in its praise. This surrender to life in Carlos Drummond de Andrade permits him to look at potentially tragic situations with a touch of humor. Thus in "Consolation at the Beach," he can remind one who has lost childhood, youth, three love affairs, and his best friend that he owns a dog. In the poem "Dawn," the world is going to end at 7:45, but the poet, drunk in a streetcar, listens to an invitation to go dancing, even though there is no music. Despite the fact that the world is beyond repair and everybody (grammarian, lover, playboy, recluse) is about to set sail for eternity, the drunken poet extends the heard invitation to dance, because Children are being born with such spontaneity Death will come later, like a sacrament. Out of his humor and irony, Drummond creates with a curious juxtaposition of the scholarly word with the vulgar. It is especially in his poetry that modern Brazilian literature achieves the ennoblement of regionalistic and popular expressions. As a master of the delayed cultural envelope, the interpretive reference, Drummond delights in partial and temporary obscurity before everything becomes clear by the last line. His fellow countrymen enjoy in his poetry the following qualities also: sensuous correspondences, synaesthesias, apparent contradictions, anthropomorphizations, dehumanizations, objectifications of the abstract, and subjectifications of the concrete. More impressive than any technical virtuosity in his poetry is Drummond's utterly courageous and incorruptible honesty with the human situation, the word, and himself.

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If he lacks the lyric gusto and dazzling verbal mastery of Manuel Bandeira, Carlos Drummond takes the prize from his elder in social consciousness, in the sense of being vitally involved in the deeper contemporary issues of life. From this involvement, Drummond refuses to play the role of the romantic, the gossipmonger, the decadent, or the escapist: I will not be the singer of a woman, of a fable, I will not speak of the sighs at nightfall, of the view from a window, I will not pass out drugs or a suicide's letters, I will not flee to the islands or be kidnaped by seraphs. Time is my matter, time now, men now, life now. ("Mãos Dadas") From this sense of social involvement, Drummond in his honesty to the word has become, with both courage and humility, the much-needed and much-admired professor of aesthetics to the younger Brazilian writers of his own time and for those who will create in the Portuguese language long after he is dead. In "Search for Poetry," the most remarkable poem about the writing of poetry in the history of Brazilian literature, a work that for its nation has the same cultural importance as Whitman's "By Blue Ontario's Shore" has for the United States, Carlos Drummond de Andrade tells the young poet to beware of confusing art with personal history or with the doctrine of self-expression: Your drop of gall, your face-making of pleasure or of pain in the dark are of no account. Do not tell me your feelings, which capitalize on ambiguity and attempt the long journey. What you think and feel, that is not yet poetry. Because poetry eliminates both subject and object, Drummond

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advises the young writer not to try to make poetry out of things. He must not attempt to sing his city or his melancholy childhood. It is also a waste of time to dramatize, invoke, investigate, tell lies. The poet must not allow himself to become anxious over his family skeletons, because they are worthless for the purpose of creativity. By way of contrast, however, Drummond believes that Before you write them, live with your poems. If they are obscure, be patient. If they provoke you, hold your temper. Wait for each one to actualize and to consume itself in the power of language and the power of silence. Do not force the poem to come out of Limbo. Do not pick from the ground the poem that was lost. Do not flatter the poem. Accept it as it will accept its own form, final and concentrated in space. All this sound advice from "Search for Poetry" is part of a criticism that defines poetry as a language art rather than as an overflow of powerful feelings, whether recollected in tranquillity or otherwise. And in a nation that prides itself on poetic sentiment, it is good to have the sober voice of Drummond to remind immature sensibilities that artistic dedication and achievement involve more than merely putting a pen to paper and letting the ink run. Drummond's honesty both with the human situation and with the word is but an exterior expression of the deeper, interior honesty with himself. It is this Drummond of the absolute personal integrity who admits that his song which may move men to wake may also put children to sleep ("Canção Amiga"). It is this Drummond who manufactures out of his meager resources the elephant, whose pure ivory tusks he cannot imitate. As he says in his poem "The Elephant," the eyes of his manufactured beast, his symbolic disguise, are innocent of all fraud. Out goes this poor and clumsy animal, ridiculous enough to make people laugh at him if they would only look at him, with allusions stitched into his hide "to a

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more poetic world / where love reassembles / the natural forms" to look for friends in a world that "no longer believes in animals / and places no trust in things." The result of the elephant's search (and of Drummond's), of course, is failure; nobody cares to take to himself the fugitive image, the gait so clumsy— but hungry and touching. Men ignore the elephant, and therefore the work of the poet, because . . . they dare show themselves under a curtained peace and only to lid-blinded eyes. But it is this Drummond of the admission in "Confession" that he did not love his fellow man or himself enough who promises to rebuild his elephant again, after all his inner stuff— forgiveness, tenderness, feather, cottongushes out on the carpet like a dismantled myth. At the spiritual core of Carlos Drummond de Andrade is the sublime belief that love, though materially useless and often unreciprocated, constitutes the one essence underlying all existence. From this belief, Drummond achieves his personal victory in a world of social failure, derives his strength to endure every surrender to reality, and earns the right in "Aspiration" to dismiss the moral briberies of the world. In this poem especially, Drummond demonstrates the independence that has kept, and will continue to keep, him from applying for membership in the Brazilian Academy of Letters. That independence does not want maternal adoration, the smother love of a Katherine Kippenburg, the simple rose of sex, or the election of a geometric friendship into a society of melancholy needs. It aspires rather

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Because he can dismiss rewards as corruptions of moral integrity, Drummond exalts love as its own justification. In the poem "To Love" he shows most clearly his capacity for compassion and tenderness and forgiveness, those highest proofs of his personal honesty: What else can a creature do among creatures but love? love and forget, love and love poorly, love, cease to love, love? love always—even with glassy eyes? What else, I ask, can the loving person do, alone in the universal rotation, but rotate also—and love? love what the sea washes up on the beach, what it buries, and what in the sea breeze becomes salt, or compulsion of love, or a simple longing? To love solemnly the desert palms, what is surrender or expectant adoration, and to love the inhospitable, the crude, aflowerlessvase, an exhausted soil, and the sluggish heart, and the street imagined in dream, and the circling vulture. That is our destiny: measureless love, to be shared amongfickleor frivolous things, unlimited gift to a complete ingratitude, and in the empty shell of love—the fearful, patient search for more and more love. To love our very lack of love, and in our dryness— to love the implicit water, the tacit kiss, the infinite thirst.

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The man who wrote these lines is one who has befriended many a young writer in his eighth-floor office in the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro. He is also the greatest reflective poet of modern Brazilian literature and one of the very few major lyric voices in the Western Hemisphere during the twentieth century.

11.Jorgede Líma

T H E MOST VERSATILE of all modern Brazilian poets was the many-faceted mulatto from the Northeast: Jorge de Lima (1893-1953). Born in União, Alagoas, on April 23, 1893, Jorge was to become, after a brief period of fame as a NeoParnassian, the chief representative of lyric poetry within the Northeast Regionalist Movement. Author also of neo-naturalistic novels, Jorge was finally drawn into surrealistic prose and Christian poetry. So great were his lyric achievements that Brazilian criticism finds it difiBcult to choose which part of his work deserves the larger admiration, the Christian or the Regional.1 1

See Otto Maria Carpeaux, Pequena Bibliografia Crítica da Literatura Brasileira, p. 276.

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A simple man, described as kindness itself by his friends, Jorge de Lima usually gave more than he received. In order to fulfill a childhood dream, he kept trying to be elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters; with each failure he tried again. Upon final success, he bore no grudge against any of the members who had previously voted against him. 2 With this simplicity and kindness Jorge enjoyed a folkloric genius that could recite thousands of stories—some heard, some read, some invented—about men and animals. From his natural love for mankind, indeed for all animate and inanimate things, 3 Jorge developed a supernatural charity based upon a Christian mysticism that permitted him to see the universe in the eternal sacrifice of Calvary: Because the blood of Christ spurted over my eyes, my vision is universal and has dimensions that nobody knows. ("Poema do Cristão") In his last volume, "Invention of Orpheus" (1952), a single manysectioned poem summarizing his life and his work, Jorge confessed his sins with such personal humility that José Fernando Carneiro, for one, could see "in his case how man had really been made to the image and likeness of God."4 The Negro poetry of Jorge de Lima is different from that of his Modernist contemporary Raul Bopp and from that of the great Romantic Castro Alves. Whereas Bopp emphasizes folklore and Alves social protest, Jorge writes of the African soul itself, without any sense of an inferiority complex. Not interested in the African apart from his abuse by society, Castro Alves wanted to see the abolition of slavery; Jorge de Lima, though very much aware of the inferior social position of the Negro, of how much the development of the Brazilian economy owes to the Negro, celebrates the 2 3 4

See José Femando Carneiro, Apresentação de Jorge de Lima, p. 4. See Carlos Dante de Moraes, Três Fases da Poesia, p. 118. Carneiro, Apresentação de Jorge de Lima, p. 5.

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Negro as person, as individual, his identity, his superstitions, his simple nature and mysterious spirit. In "That Negress Fulô," for example, Jorge has created a folklike ballad that his countrymen quickly came to appreciate as a masterpiece. The story line of the poem is quite simple and melodramatic, with sadism finding resolution in a slightly humorous application of poetic justice to the eternal-triangle theme. Fulô makes the bed of her mistress, combs her mistress' hair, puts the children to bed, does all sorts of odd chores about the household, and is beaten by the slave driver whenever anything is stolen. One day, however, her master watches her get whipped; one look at her naked beauty, and he decides that next time he personally will deal out the punishment for her theft. The poem ends, as one would expect, with the cruel and selfish wife left to lament another kind of stealing: O Fulô? O Fulô? Where, where is your master whom our Lord gave to me? Ah, it was you who stole him, it was you, Negress Fulô I That Negress Fulô! Fully as good a work as "That Negress Fulô" is the poem "Papa John." As one of the selections in "Negro Poems," a volume published in 1946 with an introduction by Gilberto Freyre, "Papa John" demonstrates not only the social and economic abuses of slavery, the indomitable spirit of the exploited Negro, but also the immense gift for simple and compassionate portraiture that was Jorge de Lima's: Papa John withered like a rootless stick.— Papa John is going to die. Papa John rowed the boats.— He dug the earth. He made spring from the ground the emerald of leaves—coffee, cane, cotton.

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Papa John dug up more emeralds than pioneer Paes Leme. Papa John's daughters had the breasts of a cow for his master's children to suck: when her breasts dried up, Papa John's daughter also withered while fastened to a pressing iron. Papa John's skin stuck to the tips of whips. Papa John's wife the white man stole and made her a nurse. Papa John's blood dissolved in the good blood like a lump of crude sugar in a pan of milk.— Papa John was a horse for his master's children to mount. Papa John could tell such beautiful stories that you felt like crying. Papa John is going to die. The night outside is as black as Papa John's skin. Not one star in the sky. It looks like the witchcraft of Papa John. The witchcraft of Papa John is an indication of the sense of mystery that permeates the poetry of Jorge de Lima. This mystery, not any lack of simplicity or clarity, is responsible for the obscurity, where it exists, in his work. In the volume "Seamless Tunic" (1938), for example, Jorge created a supernatural world of phantasmic creatures who became so real for him that they made him suffer. Unable to sleep at night, he could see and feel these bodiless inventions of his imagination. One of these horrible apparitions may be encountered in "Death of the Mad Woman," a poem he wrote for Maria Helena Nelson Pinto: Mad woman, where can you be in the storm? Are you laughing, mad woman? Or is it the wind or some strange unknown bird?

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Are you, crowned withflowers,floatingnaked in some river? Or in the sea are the jellyfish and the starfish fumbling over your breasts and your thighs? Mad woman, you who were taken by vagabonds under the river bridges, are you being slapped by the great natural forces? Is some dog licking your eyes, which nobody thought of kissing? Or are you talking with the wind as if you were chatting with your older sister? Or are you laughing at the sea as if you were mocking a prison comrade? Mad woman, where can you be in the storm? As an overpowering flow of poetic vision, "Seamless Tunic" found the free verse of "Time and Eternity" (1935), a book that Jorge wrote in collaboration with Murilo Mendes on the theme of the constant warfare between the flesh and the spirit, inadequate for its prophetic and psalmistic ideas. In the apocalyptic atmosphere of "Seamless Tunic," the slow and stately rhythm of biblical verse forms becomes the vehicle for symbols inspired by religious dogma and spiritual mystery. In this volume, from his vision of Paradise before the entrance of sin and the Fall of man, Jorge depicts the deep chasm that subsequently developed between the body, subject to concupiscence and treason, and the conscious mind, receptacle of grace. Out of this deep chasm springs the mystery of regeneration, in which the flesh is transfigured because it is "tatooed" by God. The concept of tatooing, by which naked woman recovers her sacramental quality, is Oriental and primitive. When Jorge de Lima joins it with the sanctity of Mary in "Poem of Any Virgin," the concept becomes Christian as well: The generations of the Virgin are tatooed in her straight womb, for the Virgin represents all that is to come. There are rainbows tatooed in her hands, Babels tatooed in her arms.

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The Virgin's body has been tatooed by God because it is the seed of the world to come. Not one millimeter of her body is without a drawing or future plants. Not a pore is without tatoos: this is why the Virgin is so beautiful. In "Seamless Tunic" the union of contemplation and revelation demonstrates the spiritual congruity of poetic and mystical aims. In this book the poet appears as an instrument of God, the exceptional creature, the chosen one, the Lord's anointed. For it is the poet, so says Jorge in "The Words Will Resurrect," whose great task it is to restore the essence and the magic content of the word: The words have grown old inside men and separated into islands. The words have mummified in the mouths of legislators; the words have rotted in the promises of tyrants; the words mean nothing in the speeches of politicians. And the Word of God is one despite the sacrilege of the men of Babel, despite the sacrilege of the men of today. And can it be that the immortal word will disappear? And can it be that the poet was not designated to give the word new life? To pick it from the surface of the waters and offer it again to the men of the continent? Does the poet not see the communion of languages, when men will reconquer the attributes lost with The Fall, and when the nations founded after Babel will be destroyed? When all the confusion is undone, will the poet not speak from wherever he is, to all the men on earth, in one single language— the language of the Spirit? But should you live sunk in time and in space, you will not understand me, brother! Most of his brothers in the arid Northeast did not understand Jorge de Lima, the wealthy landowners because of their self-

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satisfied brutality and materialistic corruption, the impoverished peasants because of their hunger and ignorance. Though man cannot live by bread alone, it takes more than poetry, no matter how religious and compassionate, to satisfy an empty stomach. And Jorge, who said in "Distribution of Poetry" that "Life is a failure / I believe in the magic of God," felt all the more heavily the burden of his Christ-like love for the destitute poor. All the more heavily because nothing is more humiliating than the knowledge that all the sympathy and compassion in the world are often of little avail, that the very time when a man wants most to help another is the very time he is least able to do so. Saddened at the moral and the physical changes that were taking place in his section of Brazil under the impact of an inequitable industrialization, Jorge saw that factories were destroying even the crude joy of work felt in former days. Thus the poet who could fabricate distances to keep peddlers and bankers away from himself was unable to do the same for the peasants with regard to the social injustice which persecuted them: All men have their believers, O well-beloved: —those who preach love for their fellow man and those who preach his death. But everything is small and fleeting in the world, O well-beloved. Only the outcry of the unhappy grows more immense every day! ("Poema Relativo") The "well-beloved" referred to in this poem is one of the names Jorge used to symbolize poetry "purified in Christ."5 Indeed Jorge believed that one of his roles as a poet was to reconstitute poetry in Christ, because, as he says in "Goodbye to Poetry," this century is rotten. The avarice which binds the spirit of man to things divorces him from God. So strong is materialism in the world that when in 5

See Moraes, Três Fases da Poesia, p. 125.

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Jorge's poem "Skyscraper" the champion of mysticism reaches the hundredth floor of an immense modern building, where all the aces of standardization are gathered, he becomes panic-stricken: On the lastfloorhe stopped: not even an angel. Then he came down, down, down, and he crossed the asphalt terribly afraid of being run over by the automobiles, of dying without a last confession. In O d e on the Communion of Saints," the final poem of "Seamless Tunic," Jorge de Lima abandoned the last semblance of verse and turned completely to a poetic prose "as burning as lava."6 It was to be the style of "Annunciation and Encounter of Mira-Celi," a volume of prose-poems which constitute the uncircumscribed mystery of wedding march, elegy, priestess, muse, mad woman, shepherd, bird. In this religious prose-poetry of liturgic sonority, Jorge admits that Few people will find the key to this mystery. And the eyes that pass through so many poems, which do not end and which change from moment to moment, will not understand the constant movement— ("Poema 2") The movement of the "Mira-Celi" is Christocentric, cycling about the main themes of the Fall as the origin of human misery and sorrow, the humility of the sinner who cries over his spiritual mutilation, the anguish-producing limits of the temporal, and the awe induced by the mystery of the Trinity. In this volume Jorge achieves an unprecedented interplay of images, uses adjectives with a new tonal quality, and unites contrasting words in that 6

Ibid., p. 133.

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resolution of opposites which Coleridge saw as the essence of poetry. The essential conditions of "Mira-Celi," those of ubiquity and transformation, are illustrated in the following lines: He saw the tree: it was enormous and it walked with its feet of roots; in its crown were nests where life sprang up and from it slithered down snakes to kill life. He saw the tree: it was impelled by the forces of Spirit: rains fell from it to water the land, thunderbolts ripped out of it to split the world. He saw the tree walking loose. There were fruits in it that contained the night and other fruits that included the day. He saw the tree: its sap was blood: there were cups of gall among its branches and buds of light flashing in its trunk. And from it reached down hands to distribute fruit and other hands to harvest men. ("Poema 44") As dense and suggestive as any lines in Brazilian literature, this passage shows Jorge de Lima to be a twentieth-century kinsman of that unknown Anglo-Saxon genius who wrote "The Dream of the Rood." In his "Book of Sonnets" (1949), Jorge returned to metrical discipline, with a polyphonic symbolism reminiscent of the work of Cruz e Sousa. Partially obscure at times because of their timeless and spaceless mystery, the sonnets show that the creative vision of their author had ceased to be Christocentric, that it had expanded into the lyrically eccentric and esoteric. In an emphatic return to the temporal for subject matter, Jorge evokes in these sonnets his Portuguese and Northeastern origins, his memories of childhood and everyday life. Suffering from long periods of anguish before and during their composition, the poet wrote many

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of his hundred sonnets in the brief span of ten days. Often rising at dawn, he would write two or three sonnets at a time. The speed with which he wrote his sonnets is an indication of the self-hypnosis that helped him draw upon their dream-world origins. In a return to his earliest memories, where lay deeply ingrained in his mind the stories of the discovery, the conquest, and the Christianizing of Brazil, Jorge called forth from his subconscious the peace and grace of a profound religious faith. The creative approach that was to take him even further into the world of dreams in "Invention of Orpheus'' is demonstrated in the following sonnet: The cliff of sleep, like the rock of Esau, is shut so tight, is sofilledwith being that it achieves in life a tremendous fate, —that of sheltering an unpunished Oedipus. Always in its belly is a fallen-asleep angel and a boy cuddled up in a well; the nocturnal dog barks, and his barking is the cry of the boy already drowned. At night, sleeping Bluebeard throws seven pale princesses into the well, and the well swallows them most voraciously. And it swallows indifferently the man who drowns himself, —seven stones tied around his neckso that rock and sea are the same in its gulp. ("O Rochedo do Sono é Tão Fechado") The entrance of Jorge de Lima into unconscious states of mind in "Invention of Orpheus" demanded from his poetry special symbols and laws. When he failed to supply them, the result was obscurity. Not an artificial obscurity, but a natural one inherent in the mystery attendant upon his attempt to reach unknown lands,

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to find, as he indicates in the opening stanza of the second poem in the volume, the island that nobody else had found: Nobody found the island because we all knew it. Even in the eyes there was a clear geography. With more varied cadences than in the sonnets, with echoes from Camões and Dante, Jorge dissolved all logical, physical, spatial, and temporal connections within the structure of his last volume. In an attempt to identify himself with all created things, he destroyed every barrier of individuality. What he achieved in "Invention of Orpheus" is a lucid kind of delirium, in which the metaphysical atmosphere is more Oriental than European. Esoteric as it is, a book not recommended for the unprepared reader, "Invention of Orpheus" is perhaps the most daring poetic adventure in modern Brazilian literature. As a cosmic vision of mysticism, this final volume from the pen of Jorge de Lima conveys the impression "of something plastic and airy, muddy and stellar, diffuse and gleaming, thick and winding, cannibalesque and spiritual, human and superhuman." 7 It is a work in which the author continually displays the simultaneous presence of many different identities, impulses, and voices in the soul of a poet: How many savage things I hide! I am a horse, I run upon my steppes, I run in myself, I feel my hoofs, I hear my whinnying, I fall headlong in the waters, I am a drove of wild boars; I am also tiger and underbrush; and birds and my flight and I go lost, perching in myself, perching in God and the devil. I am born a forest, I spread great plagues— ("Audição de Orfeu") 7

Ibid., p, 153.

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The Whitmanesque search for the universal self in these lines is typical of Jorge. Unlike the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, Jorge de Lima conducted his search for universal selfhood with hope. Accepting mystery in life, as well as in literature, the Brazilian poet did not care to write polemical or sociological verse. His poetry is constantly an overflowing of genius reduced to the simplicity of the automatic. Not always certain about what he wanted to say, Jorge lacked the technical control of Pessoa and was often content to let musical phrases and rhythmical sound-patterns convey the mystery, much in the manner of allowing African drumbeats to substitute for melody. Ever imminent in Jorge's work, the faith and the hope, however, produced a kind of Messianic love that transcends all flaws of artistic execution. Nowhere in his work can such faith, such love be better seen than in the prose-poem "I Announce Consolation to You," an exalted passage that might very well be called The Beatitudes of Jorge de Lima: 1-The poor who possess only their poverty and nothing else; the dying who count on their end only and nothing else; the weak who possess only their weakness and nothing else, can walk on the waters of the sea. 2-Those who possess herds of machines, those who are heavy with crimes and gold, men of hatred or of pride; those will sink. 3—We will call the man whom war has almost devoured and to whom it has left only his knees on the ground. That man will run faster than light. 4-We will call the man who blew out the life that God gave him, and whom the evil of the earth has spoiled with its vices. That man, God will give him new life.

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Perhaps only a mulatto from the Northeast of Brazil, where social and economic injustices find partial relief and temporary comfort in a folk mysticism of African origins, could write such beatitudes as these. At any rate, they spring from a soul unparalleled for simplicity in the entire range of modern Brazilian literature. The simplicity of Manuel Bandeira, for example, is one of creative tactics; it is therefore sophisticated. The simplicity of Jorge de Lima, on the other hand, is that of an elemental spiritual vision ingenuous and innocent. Only a humiliating sense of sin saves his poetry at times from the charge of naiveté. By way of contrast, whereas the simplicity of Bandeira is that of a François Villon, the simplicity of Jorge is that of a St. Francis of Assisi. None of Jorge's fellow countrymen can address the infant Son of God with the irreducible faith, childlike sweetness, and older-brother tenderness found in "Christmas Poem": O, my Jesus, as soon as you grow a little bit older, come take a walk with me, for I too am fond of children. We shall go see the tame beasts in the zoological garden. And on any holiday we shall then go, for example, to see Christ King of Corcovado. And those who pass upon seeing the boy will certainly say: There goes the son of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception!

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Jorge de Lima —That little boy who goes there (several men will then add) knows more things than all of us. —Good morning, Jesus—a voice will say. And other voices will whisper: —It is the handsome boy who is in the book of my First Communion. —How strong he looks!—Nothing changed! —How healthy he looks! What fine coloring! (other gentlemen will say a little later on.) But other people of different appearance will surely say on seeing You: —It is the son of the carpenter! And on seeing the custom of a working man to take a walk on a Sunday, they will invite us to go together to visit our fellow workers. And when we come back home, at night, and the sinners turn to their vices, they will undoubtedly ask me. And I will invent subtle excuses for You to let me go alone. Child Jesus, have mercy on us, hold my hand very tight.

If much of Jorge's Northeastern poetry is filled with lyrical criticism, with social denunciations and complaints, his Christian poetry conveys such a spirit of sanguine hope as to deny the accusation that the author was basically a doubter, a pessimist. Love is at heart an optimist, and Jorge de Lima was the poet of love. Perhaps the best summary of his work and the finest tribute to its value are to be had in the following lines from Carlos Drummond de Andrade, published during the year of Jorge's death (1953) in the volume entitled "Planter of Air:"

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil It was the Negress Fulô who was calling us from her black orchard. And it was bugles, psalms,fierychariots, those murmurs of God to his chosen, it was songs of laundresses beside the spring, it was the spring itself, it was nostalgic emanations from childhood and the future, it was a Portuguese cry broken in sugar cane. It was aflowingof essences and it was shapes beyond the earthly color and around the man, it was the invention of love in the atomic age, the mythic and moonlike consulting room (poetry before the light and after it), it was Jorge de Lima and it was his angels. ("Conhecimento de Jorge de Lima")

As Carlos Drummond knows, Jorge de Lima was one of his own angels. He was the beautiful black angel of the Modernist Movement in Brazil.

12, five Spiritual Voices

or directly influenced by it are five spiritual voices of primary importance to the history of Brazilian literature: Murilo Mendes, Augusto Frederico Schmidt, Vinícius de Moraes, Cassiano Ricardo, and Domingos Carvalho da Silva. With an amplitude of major proportions these poets have created their artistic worlds with a sustained quality comparable to that of Manuel Bandeira, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Jorge de Lima, and the greatest woman poet in the Portuguese language, Cecília Meireles. The factors which subordinate the five to the superior four in absolute value are unevenness of execution, sentimentality of theme, and failure at textural intensity. At WITHIN THE MODERNIST MOVEMENT

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his best, however, each of these five spiritual voices speaks with mature lyric power and control. Of the five, the most Brazilian in his work is Murilo Mendes. Born in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, on May 13,1902, Murilo Monteiro Mendes looks upon poetry as "an everyday, constant, permanent, eternal and universal phenomenon." 1 He considers his own poems as studies that other men can develop, because he believes that "the germ of poetry exists in all men."2 For the growth of that germ in himself, Mendes credits three events as primary in importance: the passage of Halley's Comet in 1910, two Russian ballets, featuring Nijinsky, in 1916, and Murilo's own meeting with Ismael Nery in 1921. From the comet came the two planes of vision in Mendes' poetry: that of reality and the natural and that of imagination and the supernatural; also the atmosphere of intense light and panic frequently seen in his most inspired moments. The two Nijinsky ballets influenced the young Brazilian poet to achieve a kind of dancing quality in his rhythms. The meeting with Ismael Nery proved to be the decisive encounter in Murilo's life, a climax which led to his conversion to Catholicism. Dead at the early age of thirty-four, Ismael Nery—artistically gifted in many fields, with a penchant for poetry and a preference for painting—had devoted his brief lifetime to the development of a personal philosophy that might be called Catholic Essentialism. According to Nery, man should eliminate the superfluous, which always hinders his knowledge of the essence. Since stationary position at a given moment contradicts one of the conditions of life, that of motion, Nery believed that man can attain to the essence of all things only through an abstraction of space and time. In order to see the perfect relationship of ideas with facts, an Essentialist must place himself in life as though he were its center. The influence of Nery's philosophy on the poetry of Murilo Mendes may be seen in his abstraction of space and time, his 1

Quoted by Manuel Bandeira, Apresentação da Poesia Brasileira, p. 166. 2 Ibid.

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incorporation of the eternal into the contingent. For his rebellious efforts to place himself at the center of life, Murilo suffered, as he says in "Newest Prometheus," like the hero who stole fire from heaven: I wanted to kindle the spirit of life, I wanted to recast my own mold, I wanted to know the truth of things, of the elements; I rebelled against God, Against the pope, the bankers, the ancient school, Against my family, against my love, Then against work, Then against laziness, Then against myself, Against my three dimensions: Then the dictator of the world Had me imprisoned on Sugar Loaf; Come, squadrons of planes, Beak away my poor liver— I vomit gallons of gall, I contemplate down there the daughters of the sea Dressed in bathing suits, singing sambas, I see the dawns, the evenings break —Purity and simplicity of life!— But I cannot ask for forgiveness. Dialectical in both his poetry and his religion, Murilo Mendes came to believe that the essence of truth is Christian love, divine charity. In all his major works—"Poems," 1930; "History of Brazil," 1932; "Time and Eternity" (with Jorge de Lima), 1935; "Poetry in Panic," 1938; "The Visionary'' 1941; "The Metamorphoses," 1944; "Riddle World," 1945; "Liberty Poetry," 1947—he has been acutely aware of the oppositions that need to be reconciled, of the constant struggle of duality in himself and in the world. This eternal warfare of contraries is illustrated with clarity and simplicity in the poem entitled "Gambling":

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil Heads or tails? God or the devil? Love or desertion? Activity or solitude? The hand opens: tails. God and the devil. Love and desertion. Activity and solitude.

When Murilo applies, in the poem "USSR," Christian love to the warfare of contraries, he sees that the Soviet Union, whose dialectical evolution is still imperfect, is merely the sister gone astray. When she finally returns to her Father's house, she will find what she has been looking for, that which she does not see has existed in her from the beginning: USSR USSR USSR Foolish virgin Why don't you buy oil for your lamp? Why do you think only of immediate and finite things? USSR USSR One day the Bridegroom will come, He will give a great cry and it will be late. You were dealing with your tractors, You were busy only with the production of your collective farms, And you did not notice that the Bridegroom was coming: He shut Himself up in the red room with your sisters. USSR USSR USSR Sweep your houses, your parks, of culture. Send up in space your planes, light your reflectors, Call your neighbors because you have found the lost ruble, The Eternal Word that nourished you without your knowing it. USSR USSR

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USSR You have already scattered your goods To seek what has existed in you since the beginning. Return to your Father's house, where there are many mansions. Return to the communion of the sons of God, O Prodigal, O generous. You will hear the great symphony of the organs, of the bells, Mixed with the whistles of the sirens of ships and of factories, O sister gone astray. USSR USSR USSR While the free world waits for the Soviet Union to fulfill this prophetic exhortation of Murilo Mendes, the Brazilian poet waits for his countrymen to appreciate his lyric enthusiasms, to explicate his hermetic mysticism, and to demonstrate the philosophical unity underlying his multiform work.3 Essentially pragmatic and experimental in nature, the first phase of the Modernist Movement in Brazil was also destructive. The poets of this phase distrusted the sublime, pretentious forms of consecrated literature, and self-satisfied bourgeois patriotism. The religio-mystical trend of the second phase of Brazilian Modernism, however, rebelled against the bitter and negative spirit of the first phase, which expressed its patriotism in the geographically and socially picturesque, and initiated a return to religious prophecy and the biblical in tone. In addition to Jorge de Lima and Murilo Mendes, one of the leaders of this religio-mystical trend was Augusto Frederico Schmidt. Born in Rio de Janeiro, April 20, 1906, Augusto Frederico Schmidt enjoyed the rank and title of ambassador until his death in 1964. As economic adviser in the Administration of President 3 See Otto Maria Carpeaux, Pequena Bibliografia Crítica da Literatura Brasileira, p. 268.

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Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961), Ambassador Schmidt was largely responsible for the political planning that led to the development of the Organization of American States. His prophetic fears of the Communist overthrow of democratic governments in a terribly underdeveloped Latin America had direct bearing upon the decision of President Kennedy to launch the Alliance for Progress. In addition to his success in the world of diplomacy, Schmidt was prolific as a poet. Beginning with the Romantic and narcissistic volumes "Song of the Brazilian Augusto Frederico Schmidt" (1928) and "Song of the Freed Man Augusto Frederico Schmidt" (1929), his outstanding works include "Lost Ship" (1929), "Blind Bird" (1930), "Song of Night" (1934), "The Solitary Star" (1940), "Unknown Sea" (1942), "Selected Poems" (1946), "The White Cock" (1948), and "Invisible Fountain" (1949). After his early work in Romanticism, both in form and in feeling, Schmidt found that he had an affinity with Charles Péguy, the French religious poet who lost his life as a soldier in World War I. As a consequence of this affinity, Schmidt "passed through the Modernist experience, profited from some of its lessons, and separated from it by expressing himself in a constantly serious and grave tone, like a biblical prophet." 4 It is the return to the sublime that constitutes the primary quality of Schmidt's poetry. This return can be seen at every level of his work: in the Whitmanesque rhythms of his Old Testament-like versicles, in his predominant use of the future tense, in his beginning a poem as if it were already halfway completed, in his textural appropriations of indeterminate time and space, in his frequent introduction of characters whose identities remain unclear for a while, in his insistence upon universal themes, and in his obsession with such mysteries as those of death, night, the sea, and the beloved woman. Many of the qualities that characterize Schmidt's poetry may be seen in "Someone Is Sleeping in the Road...": 4

Bandeira, Apresentação, p. 171.

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Someone is sleeping in the road. I don't know who he is. I can only guess that he is a creature without worries. —Free from death and the feeling of doubt and despair. I know that he is a creature exempt from ambitions and desires. His sleep is as serene as the twilight strolling through the wheat fields. His sleep is as simple as the unknown springs. I don't see his face. But he must have a long nose, And the wrinkled forehead of a patriarch. The wind, a fresh wind, full of the scent of the flowers in the field, Caresses his white beard. Perhaps it was because of his Jewish ancestry that Augusto Frederico Schmidt could address God with a serene dignity. Manuel Bandeira thinks so.5 At least, like the ancient Hebrews, Schmidt was neither sentimental nor begging in his poetic apostrophes to the Deity; he seemed to assume the proper tone, to find the right words of respect and trust. Yet, although a Catholic by faith, Schmidt did not evidence in his poetry a religious feeling that one might call tranquil. On the contrary, he suffered from an obsession with the idea of death. At its agitated worst, this obsession, as demonstrated in "I Have Seen the Sea," is the continual wail of an exclamation point for the punctuation of life: I have seen the sea! Not this, but another! I have seen the sea—a sea dark and without redemption. I have seen the sea! The waves like useless words Rising! I have seen the sea! It was an immense sea without skies. A naked sea, with huge arms! 5 Ibid., p. 172.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil A sea of despair, now running, Now motionless, in the silence of an open grave! I have seen the sea, the great sea! My eyes have journeyed over the moving masses! I have seen the sea! Oh! it was terrible as an unforgiving love! I have seen the sea! It had a vast likeness unto death. It looked like the bed where death rests in her nights. I have seen the sea! It was the revelation of Death. My heart was suspended. My eyes wept! I have seen the sea without heaven!

By way of contrast, at its quiet best this obsession takes on the tone of mature resignation, as in the poem "Not to Die": Not to die—but to be picked by death. To be picked, because ripe, for silence. Not to die—but to bend toward death, Like the fruit which, touched by time, Bows toward the moist earth. Not to die—but to be with death ample and serene In the eyes, in the heart and the body and the soul. To be for the End, ripe as mulberries in season, Like the mountain mulberries. To feel in yourself the harmony of the ultimate pace And the consolation of looks that do not want to see any more. To be taken by the hand of death, And to be with death in yourself, like hope, like the only hope. In Schmidt's obsession with death, there is not, as Mário de Andrade once observed, "any yearning for a future life, any cry of

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hope. . . . The death that Augusto Frederico Schmidt sings is an end, a full stop, a kind of paralyzing terror produced by the idea of the end. It is above all the arid vision of the end."6 One must admit that the chill of despair in "Birth of Sleep" makes the poem a strange kind of prophecy, that of a religion without God: From the depth of the sky sleep will come. Sleep will come growing through space, Sleep will come walking through the earth, And it will steal unawares upon the tired birds And theflowers,the fish, and the old men. Sleep will come from the sky and will glide, Thickening, in the abandoned valleys. Sleep will come soft and terrible, And its hands will freeze the water of the rivers And the petals of roses. Its hands will undress the trees And the bodies of children. From the depth of the sky sleep will come; And the throat of every man will cry silently, And everything will fall asleep, Head turned toward the abyss. More Virgilian than spectral in his last poems, Augusto Frederico Schmidt was disciplining himself, in form and feeling, for a fuller commitment to the natural universe and the world of man. With the same gravity of tone and the same Whitmanesque rhythms as those of Schmidt, Vinícius de Moraes published his early work in three volumes: "The Road for Distance" (1933), "Form and Exegesis" (1935), and "Ariana, The Woman" (1936). Whereas Schmidt's personal drama was that of obsession with death, Vinícius' has been that of the eternal conflict of life: the constant warfare between the flesh and the spirit. In both his person and his poetry, Vinícius de Moraes has waged a continual 6

Quoted in ibid., pp. 172-173.

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struggle to resolve, in the words of Carioca novelist Otávio de Faria, that perplexity which exists between "the impossible purity and the inacceptable impurity." 7 Born in Rio de Janeiro on October 19, 1913, Vinícius de Moraes is today one of the most celebrated of creative artists in Brazil. A master of lyrics for the samba and the popular song, Vinícius is also the author of Orfeu da Conceição (1956), a folk tragedy based upon Carnaval macumba (African spiritism) that as the movie Black Orpheus won the Gold Medal at the 1959 Cannes International Film Festival and the 1960 Hollywood Oscar as the best foreign film of the preceding year. Despite the popularity of his songs and the immense fame of his play, the glory of Vinícius' work has been his poetry. With the publication of "New Poems" (1938) and "Five Elegies" (1943), Vinícius gave evidence of the growth that was to make him a major poet of his generation in Brazil. In these two volumes his work became more virile, less literary and more colloquial; he expunged prosaic expressions, returned to strength and economy of form, enriched his rhythms with regular meters and his sound patterns with the use of rhyme. In a personal synthesis of the lessons of the earlier phases of Modernism with the sensibility of his generation, Vinícius wrote, in "New Poems," some of the finest sonnets in Brazilian literature. With his sight patterns in the elegies, he became a bridge to the Concretist Movement. Vinícius begins the last of his "Five Elegies" in a visual patterning of English that is designed to signify what it spells:

O

R

O

O

F

S

O F C

Η

Ε

L

S

Ε

A

The creative method here and in the following lines of the same poem shows Vinícius as an authentic forerunner of the Concretists: 7

Ibid., p. 174.

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the wa t e r

I

Am I p a Spider? i Am I p a Mirror? e Am I s an X Ray? No, I'm the Three Musketeers rolled in a Romeo. More important than their demonstration of either his mastery of English or his Concretist bent is the fact that these lines indicate much of the rollicking sense of adventure and romantic need of love that have led Vinícius de Moraes through the passionate world of the heart into the compassionate world of the soul. The personal history of Vinícius as man and poet, in his struggle between flesh and spirit, has been one of evolution from one imperfect moment of ecstasy to the next in a constant search for the perfect moment of peace. This evolution in the life and work of Vinícius de Moraes has led the poet beyond the orgasmic heights of the lovers in his poem "The Acrobats," has led him Farther than Betelgeuse's veil After Altair's country On God's brain In a last impetus Freed from the spirit Stripped from the flesh.— where he possesses not the perfumed body of another affair but the faded petals of a Christian sympathy with the abused prostitutes of Rio,

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil Poor gonorrhetic flowersOrchids of shamelessness— Dahlias cut from the stalk, Discolored corollas Cloistered without faith. ("Balada do Mangue")

This evolution, after a kind of mystical circumcision of the heart, has led Vinícius, like the Dylan Thomas whom he admired, into a world of faith where death shall have no dominion. It is in this world that Vinícius addresses some of the most moving lines in the history of Brazilian poetry to a father who has sat up all night rocking his dead son: But let me tell you, awe-struck man Sitting in the rocking chair, I who live in the abyss, I who know The insides of the guts of women, I who lie at night with the corpses And deliver the dawns from my breast! Your son is not dead! faith saves you For the contemplation of his face That was turned today into the little star Of evening, into the young tree that grows In your hand; your son is not dead! An eternal child is being born From the hope of a world in freedom; They will all be your sons, just man, Exactly like your own son; take off your tie, Clean your dirty nails, get up, shave, Go comfort your wife who is crying— And let the rocking chair remain In the room, now alive, rocking The final rock of the dead son. ("Balanço do Filho Morto") Of the many voices he sings with—lyrically tender and nostalgic, boisterously humorous and plagiaristic, symbolically amorous,

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satirically bitter and ironic, popularly rhythmical and easy of imagic texture—it is the spiritual voice in Vinícius de Moraes that will prevail. It is this voice in him, in contrast to the deathobsession of Augusto Frederico Schmidt, which says that man was made for death as well as life, that death in fact is nothing but another, larger kind of birth: Thus for this we were made: For the hope in miracle, For the sharing in poetry, For looking upon the face of death— Suddenly, we shall wait no longerToday the night is young; only from death Are we born, immensely. ("Poema de Natal") The Vinícius who wrote these lines is a poet whose continual struggle between flesh and spirit will one day end in the unconditional surrender of the flesh. Then will come that perfect moment of peace which he has long sought. Outgrowing his early experimentalism and Green and Yellow nationalism, the Centennial Dragoon Cassiano Ricardo has matured into a major poet of the Modernist Movement in Brazil. His "Complete Poems" (São Paulo, 1947), runs to three volumes, quantitatively an indication of a lyric production of the first order. The same thing, however, may be said of the quality of Cassiano's work, especially of his personal lyricism that reflectively probes the psychological depths of a beautiful soul encased in an ugly body. It is this Cassiano Ricardo who, in "The Banquet," prefers to grow like "a cactus with leaves of silence," because he is a "stepson of joy," whose daily bread is sadness. In the world of this poem, where people entertain one another at the party, the poet feels that he would be A stone for those who have wings on their shoulders. A lump of coal when everything there is aflame.

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Though content to drink the dawn like a rose in a tumbler in preference to the wine of any human society, in his later poetry Cassiano Ricardo is obsessed with a sense of personal ugliness. This obsession informs his poetry with the power of anguish and the direct honesty of a Roman stoicism. These two qualities may be seen in his epigrammatic "The Other Life": I do not hope for another life, after this one. If this one is bad why should it not please the gods, the pain I have already suffered? If life is good, it will cease to be good if repeated. When this obsession joins with a sense of spiritual unworthiness, Cassiano wants to strip himself of the things he loves best. This need for self-punishment leads to masochism, but it is also responsible for some fine imagery. In the poem "Masochism," for example, Cassiano begs: O blind wave, take me, in your fierce emerald, as a drunkard is taken, into the green darkness. The nauseating and liquid suffocation of all the senses in these lines is the very essence of being blindly drunk, or blindly drowned. It is the cool diamond-hard perfection of Cassiano Ricardo's imagery that makes it so valuable a model for younger Brazilian poets. In "Tantalus," Ricardo develops the motif of dehydration for eleven lines; then he brings absolute desiccation to a climax: From lack of water the clepsydra dies. An awful gravel glasses my eyes.

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As further witness to his mastery of imagic content, in "MOrpheus" Cassiano demonstrates that the god of poetry and the god of sleep are separated only by a secret M. By an Μ that only the dead man knows after he has understood nothing. (Because it is labial, and grave.) The linguistic accuracy of the pun is excellent. From his imagic control in "Zoo," Cassiano Ricardo develops an "exact geometry" with the linear necks, the cubic bodies, and rhomboid feet of the animals in captivity. With the help of botany and geography, he creates a world in the poem where wild animals areflowers—patheticflowers that the uranium sun will make innocent. For what is today a zoological garden, finally, what is it but a lesson of universal love? If poetry is the reconciliation of opposites, then Ricardo illustrates his ability as a poet in "Zoo." By uniting the animals to the innocence of plants, he separates even lion and tiger from that most ferocious of all animals—man, he who may some day obliterate life on earth with his thermonuclear weapons. As Cassiano indicates in his poem, the one hope for avoiding such a catastrophe is universal love. Much like Cassiano Ricardo in the power of his imagery, in his psychological probing, in his compassionate concern for the fate of the world is the naturalized Paulista poet Domingos Carvalho da Silva. Born in Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, in 1915, as a boy Domingos came to Brazil with his parents and took up residence in São Paulo in 1924; in 1937 he acquired Brazilian citizenship. A kind of adopted member of the Generation of 1945, friend of João Cabral de Melo Neto, Carvalho da Silva is a man with great capacity for work. As poet, critic, essayist, and one-time director of Revista de Poesia Brasileira, his literary output has been impres-

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sive. In addition to his published translations from the poetry of Pablo Neruda (1946), his several volumes of prose, his countless critical articles in O Estado de São Paulo, Diário de São Paulo, Anhembi, and other leading Brazilian journals and newspapers, Domingos has published seven volumes of his own poetry: "WellBeloved Iphigenia" (1943), "Extinct Rose" (1945), "Occult Beach" (1949), "The Book of Lourdes" (1952), "Sunflower of Autumn" (1952), "Selected Poems" (1956), and "The Refractory Phoenix" (1959). 8 In his best poetry Domingos Carvalho da Silva is very much aware of the oceanic origins of life, of the evolution that has produced human soul from gill and fin. From the temporal process known as death, he believes that man will be reduced back to the basic elements, which in their eternity constitute a kind of immortality. In "Message,'' he shows this immortality asserting itself in a personal resurrection of the mineral world: There we shall be, my love, and in wineskins of burning oil we will enter the mineral world. And then the earth will blossom. And from your body will germinate gardenias and swallows, and the world will resurrect from the abolition of death. These beautiful and weird lines represent but a part of the strange power that Domingos wields over his imagery—imagery that often is haunting and hypnotic in effect. In "Elegy for the Viaduct Suicides," he sees that those who jumped to their death from the Viaduct of Tea, in the heart of São Paulo, were already dead "to dream and to voyage": Their bodies were cold water without nuptial tides. Lifeless as trees, they had green hair and feet furrowing the earth and hands jailing the sun. 8

See Alberto da Costa e Silva, A Nova Poesia Brasileira, p. 270.

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For them suicide was merely the gesture of a seagull settling upon an asphalt beach. The resolution of oppositions in these lines, so that one of the most violent of human acts appears casually serene, occurs by means of a universalizing of the particular, a universalizing in which exterior and subhuman objects recapitulate interior and human death. The strength of Domingos' imagery comes from the fact that an unsqueamish and psychologically sound imagination fashions it. In the poem "The Unrevealed Rose," Domingos disdains the mediocre sentimentality and the traditional vision that seek poetry in the hackneyed phrase, the standardized simile and metaphor. For this reason, he advises the would-be poet: Do not look for longings and tenderness or for a singing bird in a cage. It is much better for the sake of art to Return with the shipwrecked woman, her eyes devoured by seagulls. The shipwrecked woman with breasts like moons among the cypress-like seaweeds. The shipwrecked woman with thighs like beaches where desire spumes and faints. The author of these lines, unlike Augusto Frederico Schmidt, feeds upon the idea of death rather than let that idea feed upon him. Thus the poet who in his "Pastor of Hyenas" sees the dawn as a "Sponge that wipes out the stars" can in "Tertiary Poem" create the potentiality of an entirely human identity from seaweed, oyster, and starfish: Your hair was still moss. Your eyes the cold body of a half-alive oyster. And your ever-living soul floated on the ocean like a lost star.

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Domingos can create this potentiality from such slender resources because for him death is but a means of regeneration to a higher evolutional stage; it is but a phase in the larger process of life. Perhaps Carvalho da Silva devotes a meticulous love to the objects of his imagery because, as he says in "Apocalypse": —we are dancing a ballet on the trigger of an Η bombIn any case, he has created a surrealistic world of imagination whose scientific accuracy assures its continuous contact with evolutionary reality. That contact and his honesty with the sources of his imagery place the poetry of Domingos among the most strange and exciting products of the Modernist Movement in Brazil.

13. floao Cabral and Concretise

As UNDISPUTED LEADER of the Generation of 1945 in Brazil, poet-diplomat João Cabral de Melo Neto, who was born in Recife, Pernambuco, in January of 1920, has evolved into one of the most exciting literary artists of his time. The term "evolution" is appropriate for the career of this intellectual ascetic who, in the words of Vinícius de Moraes, in his late thirties "finally discovered woman in his life and in his poetry." 1 In his early work João Cabral changed his conception of poetry with each new volume. In "Stone of Sleep" (1942), for example, he looked upon poetry as sleep and dream, as hallucination and the beautiful free play of words. Something of his 1 Vinícius de Moraes in a private conversation in Rio de Janeiro, October 6, 1961.

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method in this volume may be seen in the strange little poem "Nocturne": The sea blew bells, The bells withered the flowers, Theflowerswere heads of saints. My memory full of words, My thoughts seeking ghosts, My nightmares many nights late. At dawn, my pure thoughts Flew like telegrams: In the windows lit up all night The portrait of the dead woman Made desperate efforts to flee. In "The Engineer" (1945), however, Melo Neto shifted away from the free associations of his earlier book and built poetry as one would construct a bridge, rigidly, mathematically. In the poems of this volume there is neither revelation nor inspiration, but reasoning with words for the sole sake of the reasoning. In "The Girl and the Train," João Cabral created a poem like a geometrical demonstration, with compass and ruler. Here is none of Bandeira's delight in sound pattern; here is rather the intellectualizing of an experience for the sake of enjoying the pattern of ideas: The iron train Passes through the fields Between telegraph poles. Unable to flee Unable to fly Unable to dream Unable to be a telegraph pole. The girl at the window Sees the train run Hears the time pass. There is so much time For one to hear

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And she listens to it pass Like another train. The elastic cult Of gestures—grows: The girl at the window Sees the plant grow Feels the earth roll: Because there is so much time For one to see. The syntactical repetitions in this poem are reminiscent of the style of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, but whereas Drummond's verbal patterns have referential bearing upon an exterior world of philosophical criticism and social protest, those of João Cabral tend to cohere in an internal world of their own experiential being. In "Psychology of Composition" (1947), Melo Neto abandons almost all his earlier taboos and retains only those few that seem natural to him. In a penetrating self-analysis, he demonstrates his whole process of thinking and feeling that leads to the composition of poetry. His volume "The Featherless Dog" (1950), as a result of his rethinking what poetry should be, shows classical rational content. His movement of inspiration in this volume follows a plan, an outline; much of the work develops upon thesis and affirmation. João Cabral also shows here his deepening concern for the social problems in his native Northeast. In the four volumes of poetry that he has published since 1950 —"The River" (1954), "Reunited Poems" (1954), "Two Waters" (1956), and "Quaderna" (I960)—João Cabral has developed a formal imagery and symbolism, noted for their hermetically intellectual dryness, that are especially celebrated by the younger Brazilian poets. The Concretists, above all others, are extremely fond of his "Only the Blade of a Knife," which appears in "Two Waters"; they like this poem for its "verbal selection, graphic disposition, assonance, alliteration, and anaphora." 2 The poem itself 2

Antônio Houaiss, Seis Poetas e Um Problema, p. 136.

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is a tour de force upon three basic images: bullet, clock, and knife. Each of these concrete objects stands for the spiritual skeleton of a man, that mysteriously dynamic force that makes him a creative personality and without which he remains as characterless as mud. He who suffers from the internal bullet, clock, or knife, however, becomes electric: He passes, lucid and sleepless, He goes, cutting edge against cutting edge. At last to reality, The first and of such violence That in trying to apprehend it Every image shatters. In his attempts to create images that will not shatter under the burden of reality, João Cabral has been a formal influence upon the course of the fourth phase of the Modernist Movement in Brazil, that of Concretism. As such an influence, he becomes a fellow forerunner with Vinícius de Moraes and with Oswald de Andrade, whose play on three basic Portuguese words—sul, sol, and sal—was a pioneering example of Concretist poetry: South America Sun America Salt America3 In the following four lines, João Cabral illustrates the nonlogical play of sound and sight so admired by the Concretists: all the fluid flowers of haste all the humid flowers of dream4 3

4

Quoted in ibid. In Portuguese the poem reads: América do Sul América do Sol America do Sal Houaiss, Seis Poetas.

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Interesting as these examples are, however, one must look further than Oswald de Andrade and João Cabral de Melo Neto for the origins of Concretism in Brazil. A careful study of the formal development of this fourth phase of the Modernist Movement in Brazil reveals several sources, drawn from different cultures and time sequences, for the flourishing of Concretism: 1) Chinese ideograms. 2) The crisis in Western poetry marked by Stéphane Mallarmé's poem "Un coup de dés," which advocated a symphonic structure for the poem and thereby started a new era for poetics. 3) The calligrammatic experiences of Guillaume Apollinaire. 4) The innovations and discoveries of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and e.e. cummings in their search for the pure verbum. 5) The introduction, by Webern, of the reality of space in music into the line. 6) The researches and achievements of Boulez and Schaeffer with electronic and stereophonic sound. 7) The aesthetic needs of the modern world, which demand a poem of perfect precision in the transcription of intimate and essential reality, a poem capable of offering a global and immediate perception like the technique of a billboard, the neon advertisement, or the Eisenstein gestalt setting. 8) The proscription of prosaic and logical language, with the consequent revitalizing of words as the bases for the poem. 5 In their struggle against myth, symbol, mystery—everything in fact which smacks of the lyric jargon—the Brazilian Concretists foster a swarm of cerebral meanings in which rhythm in its essence, the music of poetry itself, can be denoted and connoted by graphic dispositions, use of colors, and material forms of typog5 Ibid., pp. 137-139.

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raphy (e.g., roman, boldface, and italics). As a consequence of their struggle to reduce lyric jargon to zero, the Concretists have achieved several fairly well-defined general aims for the furtherance of their aesthetics. They want to free poetry from argument, connotation, and determination, which serve, they hold, to make the syntax of the current language an instrument adequate for practical and logical ends, but not for poetical ends. Although they realize that there may exist a prose with much poetry in it (as in that of James Joyce, for example), the Brazilian Concretists try to separate poetry completely from prose. They attempt to fulfill a contemporary need for directness, objectivity, and lucidity, free from nonfunctional (things which do not carry poetry) excrescences. They believe that values and functions must be structured according to their own internal dynamics, through the achievement of a simultaneous verbal-musical-plastic impression or meaning, so that poetry becomes either verbal-vocal-visual or vocalaudio-visual. As a consequence of these aims on the part of the poets themselves, Concretist poetry has taken on the following attributes: Concretist poetry tries to elaborate itself as an autogenous creation, without an expressed beginning, middle, or end, but with a nodal point or focal center of radiation that is its ponderal nucleus (audio or vocal or visual or all together), a nucleus which may produce, by the necessity of its structure, forms that may at times coincide with those of painting, drawing, and sculpture. Concretist poetry presents the conceptual concretion of the Chinese ideogram. Concretist poetry creates a rich substitute for discursive syntax in its use of spatial-temporal and chromatic-on-white word designs that represent transitions from one word-concept to another, from one syllable-sound to another, from one visual-particle to another. Thanks to the differences in colors or in genres, families, and designs of typographical characters, Concretist poetry permits a notation for musical themes and for the auditory values of words. Because it has the efficiency of the gestalt, already achieved by the

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cinema, by billboards and neon advertisements, Concretist poetry produces a direct and immediate impact. As a complete creation which restores to words their concrete and original significance, Concretist poetry rids language of connotations and other verbal complications for the comprehension of which one must expend a long effort of logic, logic that deprives poetry of its aesthetic essence. Concretist poetry seeks to evolve by practice so as to become constantly more lucid, direct, and concrete. 6 Voci.ferous in their critical debates in the Jornal do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro), the Concretists influence painters and sculptors to assume their artistic principles and demand that their new poetry appear as murals in the new Brazilian capital, Brasilia. The three outstanding members of the avant garde in Concretism are Ferreira Gullar, Augusto de Campos, and Décio Pignatari. Gullar, whose real name is José Ribamar Ferreira, was born in São Luiz, Maranhão, in 1930. Before taking up residence in Rio de Janeiro, he edited in his native northern state several literary reviews with Lago Burnett. Author of "A Little above the Ground" (1948), "The Bodily Struggle" (1954), and the completely Concretist volume "Poems" (1960), Ferreira Gullar has an unpublished poem of 120 pages, entitled "The Anteater," which represents impossible typographical problems; in 1957 this poem was exhibited in the First Exposition of Concretist Art. In the First Neo-Concretist Exposition in the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Gullar showed what many Brazilians considered to be a new artistic experience: a book-poem.7 Essayist and critic on the plastic arts, as well as a poet, Ferreira is the acknowledged leader of NeoConcretism in Brazil. One of his tame adventures with words may be translated as follows (retaining mar, the Portuguese word for sea, as necessary for the sound pattern, which is otherwise very nearly identical in both languages): 6 7

See Houaiss, Seis Poetas, pp. 141-143. See Alberto da Costa e Silva, A Nova Poesia Brasileira, p. 271.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil blue mar blue mar blue mark blue mar blue mark blue barque blue mar blue mark blue barque blue arc blue mar blue mark blue barque blue arc blue air ("Mar Azul")

Born in São Paulo in 1931, Augusto de Campos, with his brother Haroldo (b. 1929) and Décio Pignatari, has sustained a lively journal of poetry called noigandres. As one of the animators of the Paulista Concretists, Augusto has translated from the poetry of Ezra Pound, e. e. cummings, and the prose of James Joyce; he has also published five experimental volumes, noteworthy at times for their crossword-puzzle effects: "The King Minus the Kingdom ,, (1951), "To Augusto through Augusto" (1952), "The Sun for Natural" (1952), "Poetless" (1955), and "Eggthread" (1956). As with Augusto, many of the most graphically interesting poems of Décio Pignatari, who was born in jundiaí, São Paulo, in 1927, are absolutely untranslatable. Also a translator from the poetry of Pound, Décio often writes as if he were laying tiles for a wall mosaic. A leading theorist of Concretism, Pignatari has published three volumes of experimental poetry: "The Merry-Go-Round" (1950), "Course to Nausicaa" (1952), and "Vertebra" (1956). So strong has been the impact of the Concretists upon Brazilian poetry since 1950 that even so august a figure as Manuel Bandeira has been moved to demonstrate his mastery of their new technique. In a play upon four words of similar sound in Portuguese—onda (wave), anda (wallow), aonde (where), and ainda (still, yet)— Bandeira creates the following Concretist poem, "A Onda": the wave wallows where wallows the wave? the wave still still a wave still wallows where?

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Just as this poem by Bandeira uses sound as its nucleus, so the following lines of Ronaldo Azevedo employ color, as well as the letter ζ in the Portuguese original, for their nodal center. The poem is entitled "z": 9 believe in like the in fish

blue hook

In 1961 the leading critical authority on the Modernist Movement in Brazil, poet and essayist Mário da Silva Brito, won the Francisco de Paula Ferraiol Poetry Prize with a slender fourteenpoem volume of Concretist verses. This book, "The Universe of 8

In Portuguese the poem reads: a onda anda aonde anda a onda? a onda ainda ainda onda ainda anda aonde? aonde? a onda a onda 9 In Portuguese, "z" reads: crê no azul como o anzol no peixe

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Mário da Silva Brito," illustrates the great differential between the cerebral and high-sounding theory and the often primitive and juvenile practice of the Concretists. In their opposition to lyric jargon, reminiscent of Pound's attacks on "emotional slither," the Concretists have created their own kind of aesthetic slang, so scientific in nature as to be almost anti-artistic. The following poem, from the "Universe" collection, shows the kind of intellectual trifling that Concretism sanctifies under the name of art: fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear fear death ("Temor")

Even when the literary critic takes into account the fact that the poem plays upon two Portuguese words of identical letters (temor and morte), he still must marvel at the author's agonized decision to repeat the first term ten times instead of only nine—an artistic decision of the same quality with that of the painter who chooses to ride his bicycle fifteen, instead of fourteen, times over his impressionistic canvas. The primary difficulty and main danger with Concretism is its attempt to turn a temporal art into a spatial, to make poetry do the work of painting or sculpture. In its achieved simultaneity, Concretist poetry, like the billboard or neon advertisement, takes on the vulgarity of propaganda. It suffers from being largely the work of young rebels who take themselves so seriously that they have no severity of judgment left with which to inform their poems. The result seems to be the death of the Modernist Movement in Brazil,

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for from Concretism and Neo-Concretism future poets can go nowhere but back to an earlier tradition in which classical control operates within form without drawing attention to the form alone. Should such a return to tradition take place soon in Brazil, one of the models for lyric sanity working upon timeless themes will be the example of Cecília Meireles.

14. Cecília Meireles

T H E INTRODUCTION OF Cecília Meireles into Brazilian literature coincided with the birth of the Modernist Movement, for it was in 1922 that she joined that group of Catholic writers, known as the Spiritualists, who wanted to achieve a literary reform based upon balance and philosophical thought. By remaining faithful to herself, to her own intimate motives, however, Cecília maintained an independence from the chief artistic currents of her time. Inclined more toward traditional forms than toward revolutionary experiments, she exhibited a lyric virtuosity that mastered the various meters of the Portuguese language and created songs of vague music and dense spirituality. Her example from 1940 on, moreover, was one of increasing inspiration for the younger Brazilian

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poets in behalf of mysticism, tradition, universality, aesthetic control of form, and art purified of extraneous motives. Thus, though Cecília did not agree with the principal tenets of the Centennial Dragoons who staged the Modern Art Week in São Paulo, by means of her influence on the later phases of the Modernist Movement she nevertheless became, before her death in January 1965, one of the outstanding figures of twentieth-century Brazilian poetry. Born in Rio de Janeiro on November 7,1901, three months after the death of her father, Cecília Meireles was also to lose her mother by the time she was three years old. Nurtured and educated by her maternal grandmother, Cecília informed her most impressionable years with the knowledge of sorrow and the need for independence. The result of her upbringing was the development of two spiritual traits, evident in herself and in her work: delicacy and strength, attributes seen by Manuel Bandeira in his poem to her, "Improviso": Cecília, you are as independent and exact As a seashell. But a seashell is too much matter, And matter kills. Cecília, you are as strong and fragile As a wave at the height of its struggle. But a wave is water that drowns: You—no, you are dry. Cecília, you are like the air: Transparent, clean through. But the air has its limits: You, who can limit you? Definition: Seashell, but of an ear; Water, but of tears; Air with feeling. —Breeze, ripple of breath From the wing of a bee.

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The delicacy and strength, purity and independence seen in Cecília by Bandeira were largely responsible for her aesthetics. Cecilia's vision of art can be clearly seen in these recent lines of her still-in-manuscript poem "Poetry": The Chinese left on the table a puff of pastry: dry, fragile, slightly sweet, in which you found little messages. Nothing is more like poetry than this. From the outset of her literary career Cecília Meireles was an admirer of Cruz e Sousa and the Brazilian Symbolists. Because of this admiration, the spiritual character of her work, oddly enough, favored its appreciation in Portugal while at the same time militating against its full comprehension in Brazil. Less Brazilian, less Modernist than that of her contemporaries, the poetry of Cecília seems less dated and more timeless.1 In the early volumes "Nevermore and Poem of Poems" (1923) and "Ballads for the King" (1925), Cecília employed traditional rhythms upon themes of disenchantment and renunciation, nostalgia for another world, mystic anxiety. With a kind of tribal language, she achieved the expressive effects of smoky tones and misty atmospheres. Abstract adjectives, superlatives, and nasal rhymes contributed to the twilight solitude, the insularity, and grave beauty of these first two books. In addition to the mainspring of Cecilia's lyricism—consciousness of the brevity of life, the swiftness of time—these early volumes demonstrated the dreamlike quality of the world and described melancholy and shadowy places much in the manner of Verlaine. Despite her natural preference for octosyllabic verse, Cecília used some alexandrines and attempted a mastery of free verse as an exercise for the evolution that was to follow. In the poems Cecília Meireles wrote between 1925 and 1929, 1 See Otto Maria Carpeaux, Pequena Bibliografia Crítica da Literatura Brasileira, p. 266.

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poems which she published in various newspapers and literary journals, Andrade Murici saw "the most steep and wild solitude of the soul, the most atonal poetic music" of her generation, and in that poetry of austerity "no traces of its visual spendor: only the lost flame of despair, mysticism in an empty universe."2 Through personal suffering (she was left a widow with three young daughters), Cecília turned to her art, which she purified and deepened by expunging sentimentality, by reducing a predilection for abstract nouns, double adjectives, and rhythmical monotony, by altering formal parallelisms, by avoiding constant repetitions, and by lightening the obsessive tone of litany found in the works of her literary apprenticeship. The outcome of her four years of aesthetic growth was the creative period from 1929 to 1937, which saw her write "Voyage," a volume honored in 1938 by a prize from the Brazilian Academy of Letters. With the publication of this volume in 1939, Cecília Meireles gained recognition as one of the finest Brazilian poets and, at the same time, "as the only figure of the Modernist Movement who had a universal concern."3 At the time of the publication of "Voyage" many of the Brazilian Modernists were still caught in the vices of Expressionism, the anecdotal and the nationalistic. The poems in this volume, reflecting a slow and diligent growth in craftsmanship, an application of hard work to the substance of a larger vision, opened up wider horizons for the further evolution of that literary movement which began in 1922. With "Voyage" Cecília was to renew Brazilian literature on a philosophical basis by means of tradition and universality. The poems in it sang for the sole sake of the singing: I sing because the moment exists and my life is complete. I am not gay, I am not sad: I am a poet. 2

Quoted by Darcy Damasceno, "Poesia do Sensível e do Imaginário," in the Introdução Geral to Cecília Meireles, Obra Poetica, p. xvii. 3 Ibid., p. xviii.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil Brother of fugitive things, I feel no delight or torment. I cross nights and days in the wind. Whether I destroy or build, whether I persist or disperse, —I don't know, I don't know. I don't know if I stay or go. I know that I sing. The song is everything. The rhythmic wing has eternal blood, and I know that one day I shall be dumb: —nothing more. ("Motivo")

As an answer to the aesthetics of self-expression, this poem by Cecília Meireles speaks of purified motive. As an example of literary craftsmanship, it also shows "that a perfect technique, understood as informing and not merely decorating the substance, never hinders or damages the poet's message."4 In the three volumes that followed—"Vague Music" (1942), "Absolute Sea and Other Poems" (1945), and "Natural Portrait" (1949)—Cecília Meireles developed a multiplicity of themes based upon her studies of the humblest manifestations of life, the smallest creatures, and the simplest episodes. From her philosophical reflection upon such subjects, she came to see "that everything exists because it does not depend upon itself and that everything therefore is subordinated to the mechanics of the universe."5 Because the world of the senses is worth contemplating, it is also worth loving; since love demands loyalty to reality, Cecília refined her sensibility in order to make the world of the senses a matter of pure song, which can depict inexorable mutation and immortalize perishable beauty. She created a sensorial universe in which sub4 5

Manuel Bandeira, Apresentação da Poesia Brasileira, p. 156. Damasceno, "Poesia" in Meireles, Obra Poetica, p. xix.

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ject and object nevertheless remain distinctly separate and the poet never loses consciousness of art. Thus the Cecília who said in a poem in "Voyage" that I untied my eyes in the electric blue sea, full of music. ("Terra") developed a visual chain of natural images in her work which included such sensuous snapshots as "the work of earth, the bird's flight, the child under the sun, the singing woman, the night's journey, the solitary animal, the orphan girl, the carter on the road, the rain on the corpse, the body in the waves."6 As a visual poet with a strong tendency toward description, Cecília Meireles often alternated the pictorial with the conceptual point of view. Apprehending the physical world with the refined instruments of the poetic imagination, she achieved synaesthesias in which "things are reborn by the power of the artisan: color liquifies, light becomes sonorous, smell becomes tangible, and the air curls."7 In her poetry sensorial associations combine in metaphorical relations; so long as they carry their own reacting charge, sensuous impressions multiply, as in the following lines from "Voyage": My hands are still wet with the blue of half-opened waves, and the color that trickles down from my fingers colors the desert sands. ("Canção") Such visual acuteness she often combines with graphic representation, by means of adjectives like "neat," "exact," "whole," "clear," and of nouns like "design," "measure," "geometry." Due to its fusion of sensorial and conceptual elements, the poem "Cantarão Os Galos" from "Natural Portrait" shows her graphic representation at its best: 6

Ibid., p. xxi.

7

Ibid., p. xxii.

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The roosters will crow when we die, and a soft breeze, with delicate hands, will touch the fringes, the silken shrouds. And the sleep of night will cloud the clear windows. And the crickets, far off, will saw silences: stalks of crystal, cold long solitudes, and the enormous perfume of trees. Ah, what sweet moon will look upon our calm face, even yet more calm than her great mirror of silver. What thick freshness upon our hair, as free as the fields at sunrise. From the mist of dawn, one last star will ascend: pale. What immense peace, without human voice, without the lip of wolfish faces, without hatred, without love, without anything! Like dark lost prophets, only the dogs will talk through the valleys. Strong questions. Vast pauses. W e shall lie in death in that soft contour of a shell in the water. Often in the poetry of Cecília Meireles t h e visual i m a g e combines w i t h an aural impression to p r o d u c e a sight-sound s y n e s thesia, as in these lines from "A D o v e on Broadway": The sound of its feathers was a murmur of white springs in dark afternoons. At other times t h e aesthetic fusion m a y b e tactile-aural, as in these lines in "A Visinha C a n t a " from "Vague Music":

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From which wave does your voice come, that comes still humid and trembling, —body of crystal, —heart of a star—? where sensations of humidity and movement, together with that of sonority, lead to a visual type of metaphor in which "voice = body of crystal, due to purity and limpidity; voice = heart of a star, due to the flickering, the throbbing." 8 Elsewhere in Cecilia's poetry a visual sensation may be confirmed by an olfactory one, for always in her work there is an interpenetration of the senses. Detailed as physical nature is in the poetry of Cecília Meireles, it is at the same time panoramic. In addition to the minute enumeration of things, she also employs polychromatic portraiture of landscape, animals, and people. A personal pantheism is responsible for her preference for a rural world, where pastoral poetry celebrates nature with short phrases, slow rhythms, and gradually unfolding comprehension. These techniques may be seen in the following lines from "Lembrança Rural" in her "Vague Music": Ground green and soft. Forest smells. Drivels of mud. All naked, the clay slope accepts the cold. Oxcarts, voices in the wind, arms, scythes. The birds drink raindrops from the sky. The presence of man in her nature poetry, furthermore, is a point of emphasis in a series of seventeen poems entitled "The Happy Days" in the volume "Absolute Sea"; this series exalts rural life with a profusion of colors, rhythmical arrangements, and such expressive effects as alliteration and imitative harmony. The optimism produced by contact with physical nature leads Cecília Meireles to the contemplation of reality, which results in the acute awareness that life is a constant flux and that time is the great decayer of everything. The tension which emerges from the conflict between fleeting reality and the soul that yearns to perpetuate life is a source of the baroque vein in her poetry. Some of 8

Ibid., p. xxvii.

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Cecilia's key themes are the instability of fortune, the vanity of human wishes, the dissatisfaction of love, and pain as the price of happiness. These themes, in turn, derive from her awareness of the brevity of life, the swift passage of time, which Cecília treats under different aspects. Sometimes she is admonitory: Listen to the exact gallop of days jumping over the purple barriers of dawn. ("Cavalgada") At other times she is filled with anxiety: Make haste, my love, for tomorrow I will die. ("Canção") Still at other times she may be ironically melancholy: Unerring watches: the bride descends now, and the dead woman is ready. ("Tempo Celeste") Or, again, desperately bitter: I want a day to cry. But life goes so quickly! ("Canção") Regardless of her tone, Cecília celebrates transient beauty. In her "Five motives of the Rose," she demonstrates that "as the flower dies in form but lives on in perfume, so living and dying are different forms of life; changed into perfume and memory, we too live on in what is lost to us."9 Thus for Cecília "only contemplation, because it is love, gives us a touch of eternity; only recollection sums up and perpetuates all that is consumed."10 Often joining the sensuous and the conceptual in her poetry, Cecília philosophically accepts the fact that life lacks meaning. 9

Ibid., p. xxxix.

10

Ibid.

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Since time flies and life at best remains uncertain, skepticism darkens metaphysical reflection. Under the gray skies of that skepticism, Cecília observes that men are insecure and spiritually isolated, that words fail and thereby make communication impossible, that doubt assails the human heart every moment, and that reality and imagination are so alike, so easily confused, that life seems to be but a dream: What's the harm of this false color of my hair, and of my face, if everything is dye: the world, life, satisfaction, and regret? ("Mulher ao Espelho") Many times, like John Keats 11 before her, Cecília asks the basic question: "Do I wake or sleep?" Because man is in a state of becoming rather than in a state of being, he is and he is not. Thus the dream of life passes through life, which is itself a dream: As in a dream here you see me: water flowing through these nets night and day. My speech appears indeed to come from my lips and hovers in the room suspended on wings of allegory. ("Irrealidade") Because she is helpless to hold the fleeting moment, in her lyric sadness Cecília is fond of contemplating the past, of entertaining a retrospective vision of facts, things, events, and the pain of their absence. She also likes to project the present into the future after a traditional development of the ubi sunt theme. Such an anticipat11

"Ode to a Nightingale.'

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ing technique may be seen in the following passage from "Domingo na Praça" in "Absolute Sea": The waters were not the same, a year, a month, a day ago— Nor the children, nor the flowers, nor the face of loves— Where are former waters and festivals? And the image of the square, now, what will it be like within a year, a month, a day, an hour?— In the oscillation between exaltation and disbelief, Cecilia finally reaches an equilibrium in which "everything becomes present and time is unified."12 In that equilibrium, perishable beauty and man's conscience become reconciled, and what was once grief for the transitory is transfigured into eternal song. Thus in the artistry of Cecília, things undergo a process of reinvention that makes Ufe possible and in which the poet can accept renunciation with selfless love: Branch of my tallest trees, let go the blossom! for time, upon loosening it, turns it in the mold of nights and dawns, where each star rotates and sighs. ("Renuncia") In the several volumes that followed "Natural Portrait," the finest late-period work of Cecília Meireles is to be found in her Metal Rosicler (1960). The word-smithery of her earlier poetry remains, but it has grown less repetitious and more exact. What was once thickly scented sentiment becomes mature emotion. The poems show classic control, won by a process of long and slow artistic evolution. This new approach is seen in her poem "The Gates of Midnight": 12

Ibid., p. xlii.

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The angels come to open the gates of midnight, at that very moment when sleep is deepest and silence most pervasive. The gates wheel open and unexpectedly we sigh. The angels come with their golden music, their tunics billowing with celestial breezes, and they sing in their fluid incomprehensible tongue. Then the trees burst forth with blossoms and fruit, the moon and the sun intertwine their beams, the rainbow unwinds its ribbons and all the animals appear, mingled with the stars. The angels come to open the gates of midnight. And we understand that there is no more time, that this is the last vision, that our hands are already lifted for goodbyes, that our feet at last are freed from the earth, freed for that flight, announced and dreamed since the beginning of births. The angels extend us their divine invitations. And we dream that we are no longer dreaming. In this poem sings the most mature voice of the greatest woman poet in the Portuguese language. After forty years of a dedicated craftsmanship Cecília Meireles now created with a hard and epigrammatic economy. As this recent manuscript poem "Championships" shows, Cecília had come full circle back to her two outstanding attributes, delicacy and strength: The champion lifts in his hands 1100 pounds. And he sweats. Another champion lifts in his eyes two rivers of tears. And he smiles. A champion who lifts in his soul total hell. And he loves.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil He loves, he forgets, he takes no applause or laurels. He is silent. And he lifts the weight of star-studded heaven in his small heart.

As assessed by Brazilian criticism, the poetry of Cecília Meireles is especially noteworthy for its aesthetic independence, its spiritualistic and idealistic trends. Mário de Andrade saw in her work an outstanding eclecticism, " a. mysterious ability to succeed . . . which selects among all existing trends only what enriches or makes expression easier."13 Osmar Pimental believes that because she repeals the accidental and anecdotal, she can concentrate her attention "on the fundamental themes of lyricism."14 Classically balanced in its metrical architecture, modern in its appeal to the sensibility of the twentieth century, Cecilia's poetry seeks original solutions for lucid suffering and constitutes a lyrical geography that "belongs both to everyday life and to dreamland/' 15 In her language she "instinctively seeks what can give transparency, pureness, fluidity and transformation, and she goes, with her naked soul, through the world with her freedom and lucid dream."16 The two favorite paths of Cecilia's art, as seen by José Paulo Moreira da Fonseca, are confession and song. Finding her musical treatment more Portuguese than Brazilian, Fonseca believes that Cecília "likes to dilute the poem-thought in an atmosphere, with a continuous intermingling of images, ideas and feelings, in an almost seamless flow."17 She does not isolate her imagery into neatly designed outlines; this lack of isolation allows the intermingling 13 Mário de Andrade, "Sobre Viagem'' O Empalhador de Passarinho, 26 novembro 1939. 14 Osmar Pimental, "Cecília e a Poesia," Diário de São Paulo, 6 novembro 1943. " Ibid. 16 Cunha Leão, "Um Caso de Poesia Absoluta," Folha do Norte, 10 abril 1949. 17 José Paulo Moreira da Fonseca, "Canções de Cecília Meireles," Correio da Manhã, 6 abril 1957.

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of both the external and the internal world, an intermingling which permits her metaphysics to reduce everything to the universal essence, "where nothing fights, where nothing suffers, where nothing stirs."18 This reduction is part of what Nuno de Sampaio calls her mysticism, which prefers prophecy to defined truth, instruction to thought, and adoration to explanation. This mysticism in Cecília is evident in the following passage: The more I hunt for me, before everything was made, I was love. That's all I find. I walk, I sail, I fly, —always love. Diverted river, exiled arrow, wave contrarily blown, —but always the same result: direction and ecstasy. ("Contemplação'') Through her constant intuition of the marvelous and the transcendent, Cecília Meireles gave direction to the third phase of the Modernist Movement in Brazil. The finest compliment that can be paid her craftsmanship is that of her younger compatriots in poetry: admiration and emulation. An appropriate poetic tribute to her can be drawn, with selective rearrangements, from her own fine "Elegy on the Death of Gandhi," dated January 30, 1948: —I am nothing but a clay vessel kneaded by the Divine Potter. When he no longer needs me, he will let me fall. He let you fall. Abruptly. Abruptly. A sip of blood was still left inside. Your heart had not yet dried up, heroic ghost. Little rose dispetaled in a sheet, among sacred words. "The tea of Darjeeling, Madam, has a scent of white roses." From my arms falls a renunciation of beauty and heroism. What were the currents between your heart and mine, That my blood should suffer, knowing yours was spilt? 18 Nuno de Sampaio, "O Purismo Lírico de Cecília Meireles," O Comércio do Porto, 16 agosto 1949.

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The Modernist Movement in Brazil The wind is scattering the words of God among the thousand tongues of fire. Les hommes sont des brutes, madame. "You, Tagore, sing like the birds that receive food in the morning, But there are hungry birds, that cannot sing." It is necessary to go back to the beginning.19

The basic difference between Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Cecília Meireles is seen in their individual interpretations of the rose: for Drummond the rose is a symbol of communion with men; for Cecília it was an image of disinterested beauty. The world of Drummond is one primarily of social conscience and moral involvement; the world of Cecília, on the other hand, was one of unceasing natural motion, "continuous replacement of forms and appearances" transcending "the limits of individual life before and after."20 Yet despite their differences, temperamental and aesthetic, Drummond and Cecília were alike in the fact of their supremacy: each dominated his phase of the Modernist Movement. In Brazil in the 1960's three poetic voices have been pre-eminent in accomplishment, prestige, and influence, and the leaders of the three major schools of modern Brazilian poetry: Manuel Bandeira, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and—Cecília Meireles. 19

For the original poem from which this rearrangement is made, see Meireles, Obra Poética, pp. 975-978. 20 See Paulo Rónai, "Mar Absoluto," Perspectiva, fevereiro 1947.

BIBLIOGRAPHY PUBLISHED MATERIAL

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INDEX Abreu, Casimiro de: 7 Adonais, Filho: 95 Aita, Zina: 87 Alencar, José de: 9 Alfonsus, João: 95 Almeida, Guilherme de: 25; "We," 30; "Greek Songs" as first fruit of Futurism, 51; "Epigraph," 51-52; his preservation of rhyme, 52; as a leader of Futurism, 57, 74; as champion of Bandeira's Carnaval, 77; his mastery of poetic technique, 82; on Modern Art Week program, 87-88, 96, 103; as member of Brazilian Academy, 111 Almeida, Renato de: 75; "Modern Philosophy in Brazil" and its reception, 88-89, 96, 107, 112 Alves, Antônio de Castro: attributes of his poetry, 7-8; "The Seer," 9, 106; his Negro poetry, 147 Alves, Oscar Rodrigues: 87 Amado, Gilberto: 30 Amado, Jorge: 8 η., 89, 95, 106, 112 Amaral, Amadeu: 21, 24; as Academician in favor of Modernist Movement, 110-111 Américo, José: 89 Amora, Soares: 90 Andrade, Carlos Drummond de: 41, 60; his importance as a poet, 63; from "Procura da Poesia," 69; "Childhood," 93-94; as leader of 1930 rebellion in Modernist Movement, 104-105; his belief in word as end in itself, 105; as ironic defender of Modernism, 106-107; "Ode no Cinqüentenário do Poeta Brasileiro," 114, 116; as admired

intellectual, 129; contrasted with Bandeira, 129-130; his introverted temperament, 130; his new approach to poetry, 130; "In the Middle of the Road," 130-131; his "drama of obsessing ideas," 131; "Confidencia do Itabirano," 131; his irony and humor, 131; "Segredo," 131; "Science Fiction," 131-132; his emphasis on the psychological state, 132; "A Bruxa," 132; his sense of artistic isolation, 132; "Big World," 132-133; his sense of the ineffable, 133; "Poetry," 133; his meditative lyricism, 133; "O Lutador," 133-134; his frustration as a perfectionist, 134; contrasted with Bandeira, 134; "José," 134-137; his sociopolitical vision, 136-137, 141; "The Ox," 137; "O Sobrevivente," 137138; his tactics of irony and humility, 138; "Cradle Song," 138139; "Shoulders Bear the World," 139; "Vida Menor," 139; "Passagem do Ano," 139; "Passagem da Noite," 139-140; his surrender to life, 140; "Consolation at the Beach," 140; "Dawn," 140; chief characteristics of his poetry, 140; "Mãos Dadas," 141; importance of his "Search for Poetry," 141-142; "The Elephant," 142-143; his belief in love as essence, 143; "Aspiration," 143-144; "To Love," 144; his position in modern Brazilian literature, 145, 204; "Conhecimento de Jorge de Lima," 1 5 9 160; quality of his poetry, 161;

212 contrasted with João Cabral de Melo Neto, 181; contrasted with Cecília Meireles, 204 Andrade, Mário de: 3-4, 8, 12, 20, 24; in praise of Anita Malfatti, 2 5 26; first meeting with Oswald de Andrade, 26; Mário Sobral as pseudonym of, 26; publication of "There Is a Drop of Blood in Each Poem," 26-27; as influenced by Brecheret, 36; is insulter of bourgeois sensibility, 39; lines from "Hallucinated City," 39-40; in praise of Oswald de Andrade, 44; "You," 52-53; compared with Whitman, 53-54; his surrealism, 54; considered insane, 54; "Futurista?" as defense of himself, 54-56; "Variation on the Bad Friend," 5 7 58; ethnic trinity of, 59; his creativity, 60; his influence, 60; his universalist ambition, 60-61; his pragmatic aesthetics, 61; Brazilian language of, 61-63; Macunaíma, 61-62; his experimental sacrifices, 61; his importance as short-story writer, 63; "The Mountains of Rolling-Girl," 63-64; as national catalytic agent, 64-66; "Masters of the Past," 67-70; summary of his revolutionary ideas, 68-69; his emergence as leader of Modernist Movement, 69; "The Girl and the Goat," 69; as chief of "Centennial Dragoons," 69-70; as leader of war on Parnassianism, 72; reads from "Hallucinated City" for Bandeira, 75; clears way for new poets, 76; his patriotism, 77-78; lines from Clã do Jabotí, 78; on Modern Art Week program, 87; as leader of the Hallucinists, 96; effects of his aesthetic objectives, 98-99; as critic of Regionalism, 103-104; his cosmopolitanism, 110; as critic of Augusto Frederico Schmidt's obsession with

Index death, 168-169; as critic of Cecília Meireles' eclecticism, 202 Andrade, Oswald de: as importer of Futurism, 21-22; as defender of Anita Malfatti, 25; as publisher of a Mário de Andrade speech, 26; in praise of "Moses," 27, 32; as champion of Brecheret, 33-36; "Trilogy of Exile," 35; as grammatical iconoclast, 39, 43-44; "Trianon Manifesto," 46-47, 73; as supporter of Mário de Andrade's new aesthetics, 49; in favor of Brecheret's nonRealism in "Os Bandeirantes," 50; "The Condemned Ones," 51; "My Futurist Poet," 52, 71; causes Mário de Andrade's public persecution, 54-56; supports Mário de Andrade's leadership in Modernist Movement, 56-58; his enthusiasm for "Hallucinated City," 69; as champion of Futurists, 72; 74; as cultural missionary to Rio, 75; his Primitivism, 78; from "Nocturne," 78; as "enduring playboy of Brazilian letters," 79; his influence on Raul Bopp, 83; as prophet of Centennial, 85; on Modern Art Week program, 87; his notoriety, 89; as leader of Primitivists, 97; as perennial optimist, 104; as defender of Modernist Movement, 106-107. Andrade, Rodrigo Μ. F. de: 96 Anjos, Cyro dos: 95, 104 Antônio Conselheiro: in rebellion of Canudos, 14-15. ApoUinaire, Guillaume: 79; his influence on Concretism, 183 Aranha, Graça: fame of his Canaan, 83; his conversion to Modernist Movement, 83-85; rebellion in "Aesthetics of Life," 84; as organizer of Modern Art Week program, 87; "Aesthetic Emotion in Modern Art," 87-89; as Johnny-ComeLately to Modernist Movement, 89; as leader of the Dynamists, 96; as

Index object of criticism, 101; as literary reformer, 106; his 1924 speech, 110 Aranha, Luiz: 87 Araújo, Murilo: attributes of his experimental poetry, 30; as critic of Graça Aranha, 89, 97; Primitivist qualities in his poetry, 98 Asfora, Permínio: 95 Assis, Machado de: his critical opinion on Romantics and Parnassians, 5; his literary evolution, 9-10; "Vicious Circle," 10; his classic style, 10; his unique achievement, 10-11; his comedy of ideas, 14; his death, 21, 47; his importance as shortstory writer, 63 Ataíde, Tristão de: 27, 31, 38, 106107 Azambuja, Darcy: 95 Azeredo, Ronaldo: as Concrètist poet, 187; his "ζ," 187 Azevedo, Alvares de: 7 Azevedo, Ramos de: 34 Bandeira, Manuel: 11; "The Ash of Hours," 27, 76; "Desencanto," 28; compared with Keats, 28; "Poemeto Erótico," 28; compared with Villon and Yeats, 28; "Poemeto Irônico," 29; as transition to new era, 29; his Brazilian diction, 39; "Remembrance of Recife," 39, 124-125; "Poetica," 40-41; as leader of freedom drive in Libertinagem, 41; "Não Sei Dançar," 42; "Melancholy Madrigal," 51, 117-118; his correspondence with Mário de Andrade, 60; his criticism of Mário de Andrade's experimentalism, 63; his importance as poet, 63; "A Mário de Andrade Ausente," 66-67; "Ballad of St. Marv the Egyptian," 74-75; Carnaval, 7 6 77; "Bacchanal," 77; his conversion to Modernism, 77; his criticism of Ronald de Carvalho's Whitman-

213 esque poetry, 80; as influenced by Ribeiro Couto, 81; on Modern Art Week program, 87; "The Frogs," 91-92; his control of the lyric, 9 2 93; his poetic Recife, 93, 98 n.; as champion of literary plagiarism, 102; as ally of Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 104; as prophet of Modernist evolution, 108; as member of Brazilian Academy, 111; as most important poet in first phase of Modernism, 113; "Testament," 113; his transformation of personal despair, 114; "Preparação para a Morte," 114; "Pneumothorax," 114-115; "Moment in a Café," 115; "A Morte Absoluta," 115; his elegiac world, 116; admired by Vinícius de Moraes, 116; compared to late-period Yeats, 116; his artistic asceticism, 117; "Reply to Vinícius," 117; his love of life, 117118; "Ultima Canção do Beco," 118; his Whitmanlike sympathy, 118; "Irene in Heaven," 118; his intense economy, 118-119; "The Major," 119; "Água-Forte," 1 1 9 120; praised by Cecília Meireles, 120; his many moods and tones, 120; "A New Poetics," 120-121; his Modernist evolution, 121; "Versos de Natal," 121; his perennial boyhood, 121; "Guiena Pig," 1 2 1 112; his verisimilitude of tone, 122; "Little Balloons," 122-123; "Belo Belo," 123; "Poem Based on a Notice in the Newspaper," 123; his selective cataloguing, 123-124; his mastery of oral idiom, 124; "Eu Vi Uma Rosa," 125-126; "Apple," 126; his transfiguration of agony, 126-127; "Profundamente," 127; "Na Rua do Sabão," 127; "Flower of All Ages," 127; "The Fighter," 127-128; praised by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 128; his temperament contrasted with Drum-

214 mond's, 129-130; his verbal mastery, 141; his simplicity in creative tactics, 158; quality of his poetry, 161, 167; as influenced by Concretism, 186; "A Onda," 186-187; praises Cecília Meireles in "Improviso," 191, 194 η.; as leader in modern Brazilian poetry, 204 Bandeirantes: as monument to Paulista pioneers, 36; non-Realism in Brecheret's model of, 50 Barbosa, Agenor: 25; "Poems of Life and of Cities," 5 1 ; as leader of Futurism, 57, 72, 74 Barbosa, Ruy: 38 Barret Filho: 97 Barros, Couto de: 96 Baudelaire, Charles: compared with Bandeira, 119 Belo Horizonte: as new cultural center, 95 Bilac, Olavo: 11; as prince of Parnassianism, 12; "The Comet," 12, 13; critical canonization of, 18; his opposition to automobile, 20, 30, 67 Blake, William: compared with Bandeira, 119 Bopp, Raul: his poetic evolution, 83; as leader of Primitivists, 97; as a member of the Nationalists, 111; his Negro poetry, 147 Borba, Quincas: as symbol of innocent madness, 10 Boss, Homer: his influence on Anita Malfatti, 23 Boulez, Pierre: his influence on Concretism, 183 Braga, Ernâni: 87 Brazilea: founding of, 38 Brazilian Academy of Letters: founding of, 9; conservatism of, 2 1 ; as champion of Ronald de Carvalho, 79, 84; as attacked by Graça Aranha, 88-89, 101, 106; approves thirtieth anniversary of Modern Art Week, 110; its ties with Modernist Movement, 110-111; not joined by

Index Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 143; its prize to Cecília Meireles* "Voyage," 193 Brazil Wood Movement: 22, 96 Brecheret, Victor: as leader of second great influence on Modernism, 33— 37; his victory in Paris, 37; his new round-stone style, 38; as Futurist, 44, 60, 74, 87; his sculpture criticized during Modern Art Week, 88 Brito, Mário da Silva: 20; as Concretist poet, 187-188; wins Francisco de Paula Ferraiol Poetry Prize, 187; "The Universe of Mário da Silva Brito," 187-188; "Temor," 188 Burnett, Lago: 185 Byron, Lord: 118 Calmon, Miguel: his Immigration Law of 1907, 20 Câmara, Jaime Adour da: 97 Camões, Luis Vaz de: 39; echoes of, in poetry of Jorge de Lima, 156 Campos, Augusto de: as leader of Concretism, 185; as editor of noigandres, 186; as an animator of the Paulista Concretists, 186; his translations, 186; his five experimental volumes, 186 Campos, Haroldo de: as leader of Concretism, 186 Cannabrava, Euryala: his criticism of Modernist Movement, 109 Cardoso, Jayme: 107 Carneiro, Edison: 8 n., 95 Carpeaux, Otto Maria: 60 Carvalho, Eleazar de: 107 Carvalho, Ronald de: in praise of the machine, 20, 22, 64, 75; as a favorite of the Brazilian Academy, 79; as disciple of Modernism, 79-80; compared with Whitman, 80; as "dancer in chains," 80; as organizer of Modern Art Week program, 87; "The Music of Villa-Lobos," 88; as reader of own poetry, 88, 96; as

Index prophet of cultural immersion, 101-103; his cosmopolitanism, 110 Carvalho, Vicente de: 26, 67 Cascudo, Câmara: 95 Catholic Essentialism: as philosophic system of Ismael Nery, 162; as dialectic influence on poetry of Murilo Mendes, 162-163 Cavalcanti, Di: 25, 34, 44, 74; his painting as inspired by Bandeira's "Ballad of St. Mary the Egyptian," 74-75; 79; as originator of Modern Art Week, 86, 87 Cavalcanti, Waldemar: 95 "Centennial Dragoons": 69-70; as gathering of champions of Modernist Movement, 71-85; the Paulista group of 1921, 73-75; the Carioca group of 1921, 75, 191 Cesar, Guilhermino: 104 Chiachio, Carlos: 95 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: 93, 154 Communist Party: its founding in Brazil, 32 Conceição, Edgard: 87 Concretism: Murilo Araújo as forerunner of, 30; as fourth phase of Modernist Movement, 109; influence of Vinícius de Moraes on, 170-171, 182; influence of João Cabral de Melo Neto on, 181-182; influence of Oswald de Andrade on, 182-183; several sources of, 183; methods of, 183-184; aesthetic aims of, 184; attributes of its poetry, 184-185; its influence on Manuel Bandeira, 186-187; discrepancy between theory and practice of, 188; its anti-artistic intellectual trifling, 188; dangers and difficulties of, 188-189; as death of Modernist Movement, 188-189 Concretists: aesthetic aims of, 184; attributes of their poetry, 184-185; their influence on Brazilian poetry, 186-188; juvenile practice of, 188; their overseriousness, 188

215 Correia, Raimundo: 11-13,19, 30, 67 Costa, Dias de: 95 Costa, Lúcio: 60 Coutinho, Afrânio: 95 Couto, Ribeiro: 25, 75, 79; his Intimist poetry, 81; from "Songbook of the Absent," 81-82, 87, 102, 106-107 Cruz, Oswaldo: 20 Cubism: its influence on Anita Malfatti, 23 cummings, e. e.: 30; his influence on Concretism, 109, 183; as translated by Augusto de Campos, 186 Cunha, Euclides da: 15-16, 21, 47 Damasceno, Darcy: 194 n., 195 n., 197 n., 198 n. Dante Alighieri: echoes of, in poetry of Jorge de Lima, 156 Darío, Rubén: 19 Delgado, Luiz: 95 Denis, Pierre: 43 Dias, Gonçalves: attributes of his poetry, 6; "Song of Exile," 6-7; as forerunner of Brazilian Romanticism, 7 "Dream of the Rood": 154 Dynamists: 96 Eisenstein gestalt setting: influence of, on Concretism, 183 Eliot, T. S.: 68, 92, 102; his influence on third phase of Modernist Movement, 108 "Eva": Modernist reception of, 36-37 Expressionism: vices of, among Brazilian Modernists, 193 Facó, Américo: 96 "Feast": 97-98 Fernandes, Jorge: 95 Fernandes, Lorenzo: 107 Ferreira, José Ribamar. SEE Gullar, Ferreira Ferrignac (Ignacio da Costa Ferreira): 87

216 Figueiredo, Jackson de: 27 First Exposition of Concretist Art: 185 First Neo-Concretist Exposition: 185 Fonseca, José Paulo Moreira da: 202 Fontes, Amando: 89 Fort, Paul: his influence on Oswald de Andrade, 21; his visit to Brazil, 48 Fortaleza: as new cultural center, 95 Francisco de Paula Ferraiol Poetry Prize: 187 Freire, Junqueira: 7 Freyre, Gilberto: 41, 95, 110, 112, 129, 148 Futurism: 13; as imported by Oswald de Andrade, 20-21; as rallying point for São Paulo Modernists, 51; Mário de Andrade's denial of, 55; existence of, 57; debate about, 67; as local movement, 71, 103 Futurists: 5, 30; their attempts to create an original aesthetics, 4 4 45; as opposed by the Spiritualists, 97 Generation of 1917: influence upon, 31-32 gestalt. SEE Eisenstein gestalt setting Gide, André: 111 Godofredo Filho: 95 Gomes, José Bezerra: 95 Gonçalves, Ricardo: 32 Graz, John: 44, 74 Graz, Regina: 87 Green and Yellow Movement: 9 7 , 1 7 3 Grieco, Agripino: 96, 107 Gueldi, Oswaldo: 87 Guimaraens, Joáo Alphonsus de: 103 Gullar, Ferreira: as leader of Concretism and Neo-Concretism, 185; his typographically weird work, 185; his various volumes, 185; "Mar Azul," 186 Haarberg, 87

Index Halley's Comet: its influence on Murilo Mendes, 162 "Hallucinated City": lines from, 4 0 41; Oswaldo de Andrade's praise of, 52, 56-57, 69, 73; "You," 5 2 53; attributes of, 53-54; question of Futurism in, 55-57; its power to irritate the bourgeois, 61; as initiator of debate about Futurism, 67; as read to Bandeira, 75; publication of, 76, 96 Hallucinists: 96 Heine, Heinrich: 56; compared with Bandeira, 119 Holanda, Aurélio Buarque de: 95 Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de: as prophet of new national literature, 45, 75, 96, 110 Hopkins, Gerard Manley: 30 Housman, A. E.: 118 Imagists: 5 immigration: into São Paulo, 16; cosmopolitan character of, 20 Impressionism: in Anita Malfatti's paintings, 23 Integralist Movement: 97 Itibirê, Brasílio: 97 "José": as symbol of social evils in Brazil, 136 Joyce, James: his influence on Concretism, 183-184; as translated by Augusto de Campos, 186 Julia, Francisca: 67 Julião, Francisco: 137 Keats, John: compared with Cecília Meireles, 199 Kippenburg, Katherine: 143 Lara, Count of: 24 Lima, Heitor Ferreira: 8 η. Lima, Jorge de: his Christian mysticism; 94, 147; "Rag Doll," 94, 95; his conversion to Modernist Move-

Index ment, 105, 107-108; as first winner of Machado de Assis Prize, 111; his surrealistic prose and Christian poetry, 146; his simplicity and kindness, 147; his folkloric genius, 147; "Poema do Cristão," 147; "Invention of Orpheus," 147, 1 5 5 156; his personal sanctity, 147; his Negro poetry, 147-148; "That Negress Fulô," 148; "Papa John," 148-149; his sense of mystery, 149; "Seamless Tunic," 149-151, 153; "Death of the Mad Woman," 1 4 9 150; "Time and Eternity," 150; his collaboration with Murilo Mendes, 150; "Poem of Any Virgin," 1 5 0 151; "The Words Will Resurrect," 151; his love for the poor, 1 5 1 152; "Distribution of Poetry," 152; "Poema Relativo," 152; his purification of poetry in Christ, 152; "Goodbye to Poetry," 152; "Skyscraper," 153; "Ode on the Communion of Saints," 153; his return to poetic prose, 153; "Annunciation and Encounter of Mira-Celi," 1 5 3 154; "Poema 2," 153; his Christocentricity, 153-154; "Poema 44," 154; compared with author of "Dream of the Rood," 154; "Book of Sonnets," 154-155; his polyphonic symbolism, 154; his return to temporal subject matter, 1 5 4 155; his entrance into world of dreams, 155-156; "O Rochedo do Sono é Tão Fechado," 155; his lucid kind of delirium, 156; his cosmic vision, 156; "Audição de Orfeu," 156; his Whitmanesque search for universal self, 156-157; his Messianic love, 157; "I Announce Consolation to You," 1 5 7 158; his simplicity, 158; "Christmas Poem," 158-159; his optimism, 159; as praised by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 159-160; qual-

217 ity of his poetry, 161; as leader of religio-mystical trend in Modernist Movement, 165 Lins, Alvaro: 95 Lisboa, Heriqueta: 95 Lobato, Monteiro: his critical attack on Anita Malfatti, 24; as cause of Modernist coalescence, 25; his moderate praise of Bandeira's "The Ash of Hours," 29; as champion of Brecheret, 34-35; his conversion to Modernism, 35; as leader of Regionalism, 35, 36; as exalter of miscegenation, 41; as revolutionary in distribution of books, 43; comes under attack by Modernists, 4 8 - 4 9 Lopes, Teixeira: 36 Luís, Washington: 36, 86 Maceió: as new cultural center, 95 Machado, Aníbal: 102 Machado, Antonio de Alcântara: 96, 102 Macunaíma: language of, 61-62 Magalhães, Adelino: 97 Malfatti, Anita: as pioneer of Modernism, 22-23; her first exhibition of paintings, 23; her second exhibition, 24; critical storm against, 24; her loss of self-confidence, 24-25; various defenses of, 25-26, 28, 32, 44, 48-49, 54, 74; as symbol of hope, 85, 87; her paintings ridiculed during Modern Art Week, 88 Mallarmé, Stephane: 22, 48; his influence on Concretism, 183 Marinetti, Filippo: his Futurist Manifesto, 21, 22, 43, 55, 7 1 - 7 2 Martins, Fran: 95 "Masters of the Past": as summary of Mário de Andrade's aesthetic position, 67-70, 73 Mattos, Mário: 103 Meireles, Cecília: 15; from "Motivo," 69, 193-194; as leader of the Spiritualists, 97; as leader of third phase

218 of Modernist Movement, 108; her praise of Cândido Portinari and Manuel Bandeira, 120; quality of her poetry, 161; as worker on timeless themes, 189; her independence, 190; her lyric virtuosity, 190; as inspiration to later phases of Modernist Movement, 190-191; her aesthetic attributes, 191; her knowledge of sorrow, 191; her delicacy and strength, 191; as seen by Manuel Bandeira in his "Improviso," 191; her philosophy of poetry, 192; "Poetry," 192; as admirer of Cruz e Sousa, 192; timeless quality of her work, 192; attributes of her early volumes, 192; her aesthetic growth between 1925 and 1929,192-193; "Voyage," 193; her renewal of Brazilian literature on a philosophical basis, 193; her anti-self-expressionism, 194; her multiplicity of themes, 194-195, 198; her sensorial universe, 194— 195; "Terra," 195; her chain of natural images, 195; her visual description, 195; "Canção," 195; her use of adjectives, 195; "Cantarão Os Galos," 195-196; synaesthesias in her poetry, 1 9 6 - 197; "A Dove on Broadway," 196; "A Visinha Canta," 196-197; her personal pantheism, 197; her pastoralism, 197; "Lembrança Rural," 197; her baroque vein, 197-198; her various tones, 198; "Five Motives of the Rose," 198; her skepticism, 199; her sense of life as a dream, 199; "Mulher ao Espelho," 199; compared with John Keats, 199; "Irrealidade," 199; her lyric sadness, 199-200; "Domingo na Praça," 200; her philosophical equilibrium, 200; "Renuncia," 200; Metal Rosiclear, 200; "The Gates of Midnight," 200-201; her epigrammatic econ-

Index omy, 200; "Championships," 2 0 1 202; as assessed by Brazilian criticism, 202-203; her mysticism, 203; "Contemplação," 203; from "Elegy on the Death of Gandhi," 203-204; contrasted with Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 204; as leader in modern Brazilian poetry, 204 Mello, Dutra e: 7 Melo Neto, João Cabral de: as spokesman for Generation of 1945, 1 0 8 109; as friend of Domingos Carvalho de Silva, 175; his poetic evolution, 179-181; his discovery of woman, 179; "Stone of Sleep," 179-180; "Nocturne," 180; "The Engineer," 180; his intellectuality, 180; "The Girl and the Train, 180-181; his syntactical repetitions, 181; contrasted with Carlos Drummond de Andrade, 181; "Psychology of Composition," 181; "The Featherless Dog," 181; his four volumes of poetry to 1960, 181; his influence on the Concretists, 181-183; "Only the Blade of a Knife," 181-182; his nonlogical play of sight and sound, 182 Mendes, Murilo: his conversion to Modernist Movement, 105; his collaboration with Jorge de Lima, 150; as one of five spiritual voices, 1 6 1 162; three major influences upon, 162; his Catholic EssentiaÈsm, 162-163; "Newest Prometheus," 163; his dialectical qualities, 163; his major works, 163; "Gambling," 163-164; "USSR," 164-165; unactualized criticism upon, 165 Mesquita, Julio: 24 mestiçoism: problems of, 14 Meyer, Augusto: 95 Mignone, Francisco: 107 Milliet, Sérgio: 44, 74, 87, 90, 96 Modern Art Week Exhibition: its importance, 3; effects of, 3-4; its in-

Index ception, 86; its direction, 86-87; its three festivals, 87-89; public scandal of, 88; its immediate results, 90, 95-98; its long-range results, 90-95, 98-100, 191 Modernism: its attributes, 4; its technological pressures in Sao Paulo, 16-17; its transition from Symbolism, 3 1 ; its gathering momentum, 32; its first-phase iconoclasm, 38— 4 1 ; its political activities, 4 2 - 4 3 ; its opposition to Bilac's ethnic trinity, 49; its favoring of Symbolism, 49 Modernist Movement: its evolution, 4 - 6 ; its Symbolist advent, 19; first group of, in São Paulo, 25; its cultural leadership in São Paulo, 4 2 44; its Universalist and Regionalist attributes, 93; its intellectual decentralization, 95; its journals, 9 5 96; its five literary schools, 96-98; its historical extension, 99-100; critical opinions concerning, 1 0 1 104; its second phase, 104-105; twentieth-anniversary discussions of, 105-108; its third phase, 108; its fourth phase, 109; its poetic strength and philosophic weakness, 109-110; its thirtieth-anniversary celebration, 110-111; its manyfaceted victory, 112; comparison of first and second phases of, 165; death of, 188-189; influence of Cecília Meireles upon, 191 Monteiro, Adolfo Casais: 90, 92 Monteiro, Vicente de Rego: 44, 74, 87 Montenegro, Braga: 95 Montenegro, Olívio: 95 Moog, Viana: 95 Moraes, Carlos Dante de: 104, 153 n., 156 n. Moraes, Vinícius de: Christian influence on, 105; 108; "Saudade de Manuel Bandeira," 116-117; as one of five spiritual voices, 161; his early work, 169; his warfare be-

219 tween flesh and spirit, 169-170; his popular lyrics, 170; his Black Orpheus, 170; his mature poetry, 170; his aesthetic growth, 170; as bridge to Concretism in last of his "Five Elegies," 170-171; romantic evolution of, 171-172; "The Acrobats," 171; his Christian sympathy, 1 7 1 172; "Balada do Mangue," 172; compared with Dylan Thomas, 172; "Balanço do Filho Morto," 172; his lyric versatility, 172-173; his prevalent spirituality, 172-173; contrasted with Augusto Frederico Schmidt, 173; "Poema de Natal," 173; his critical comment on João Cabral de Melo Neto, 179 Morais, Rubem Borba de: 96 Morais Neto, Prudente de: 96, 1 0 1 102 Moreira, Alvaro: 75, 87, 96 Mota Filho, Cândido: 25, 44; his opposition to Regionalism, 48-49; as champion of artistic liberty, 50; as supporter of Futurism, 72, 74; as champion of Graça Aranha's "Aesthetics of Life," 84, 97; as member of the Nationalists, 111 Moura, Emílio: 95, 103 Moura, Rinaldo: 95 Moya, Antonio: 74, 87 Mulato, Juca: as a sentimental idealization, 35 Muricy, Andrade: his criticism in "Some New Poets," 3 0 - 3 1 ; on Cecília Meireles' early poetry, 193 Nabuco, Joaquim: 7 Natal: as new cultural center, 95 Nationalists: 97; their three aesthetic phases, 111 Naturalism: end of, in novel, 38; repudiation of, 47 Neo-Concretism: 185; as death of Modernist Movement, 189

220 Nery, Ismael: his influence on Murilo Mendes, 162 New Criticism: its influence on third phase of Modernist Movement, 108 Niemeyer, Oscar: 60 Nietzsche, Friedrich: his influence on Ronald de Carvalho, 79-80 Nijinsky, Vaslav: his influence on Murilo Mendes, 162 Northeast Regionalist Movement: 146 Novais, Guiomar: 88 Oliveira, Alberto de: 11-13, 30, 67 Oliveira, Felipe de: 96 Orfeu: foundation and collapse of, 22 Orico, Oswaldo: 105, 107 Ornamentalism: end of, in prose, 38 Os Sertões: its attributes, 15; its challenge, 16 Pamplona, Armando: 74-75 Parnassianism: in poetry, 9; ideals of, 18-19; in early poetry of Cassiano Ricardo, 30; death of, 30, 38; repudiation of, 47; as phase of Mário de Andrade's early work, 55; as criticized in Mário de Andrade's "Masters of the Past," 67-68; NeoParnassianism in Jorge de Lima's poetry, 146 Parnassians: 5; their aesthetic attitudes, 11; decadence of, with Symbolists, 13; poor taste in imitators of, 29; loss of influence of, 30; their achievements as seen by Mário de Andrade, 67-68 Passos, Pereira: 20 Péguy, Charles: 166 Peixoto, Afrânio: 7 Peixoto, Floriano: 14 Pennafort, Onestaldo: 96 Penteado, Alberto: 87 Penteado, Armando: 87 Peregrino Júnior: 89, 98

Index Pereira, Astrogildo: 32 Pessoa, Fernando: 157 Pestana, Nestor: 24 Picasso, Pablo: 22 Picchia, Menotti del: 26; his publication of "Moses," 27; Juca Mulato, 27; as champion of Brecheret, 3 3 34; his agrarian sentimentality, 35; his polemics for "Os Bandeirantes," 36; his challenge to traditional academicism, 37; popularity of his Juca Mulato and "Masks," 43; as leader of new aesthetic currents, 44-45; "In the Tide of Reforms," 47-48, 73; "Let's Kill Peri," 48; his translation of Govoni's poetry, 5 1 ; as leader of Futurism, 57; against label of Futurism, 72; on cultural invasion of Rio de Janeiro, 75; his influence on Raul Bopp, 83; in praise of Graça Aranha, 84; on Modern Art Week program, 87; as leader of the Nationalists, 97; as member of the Brazilian Academy, 111 Pignatari, Décio: as leader of Concretism, 186; mosaic quality of his work, 186; his three experimental volumes, 186 Pimental, Osmar: 202 Pinto, Fermiano: 86 Pinto, Maria Helena Nelson: 149 Poe, Edgar Allan: 53 Ponets, Eloy: 106-107 Portinari, Cândido: 60, 107; as praised by Cecília Meireles, 120 Porto Alegre: as new cultural center, 95 Positivism: end of, in philosophy, 38 Post-Impressionists: their influence on Anita Malfatti, 2 2 - 2 3 Pound, Ezra: 64; his influence on Concretism, 109, 183; as symbol of the autonomous and complex in modern poetry, 111; as translated by Augusto de Campos and Décio

Index Pignatari, 186; his attacks on "emotional slither' 188 Prado, João Fernando de Almeida: 25,87 Prado, Paulo: 87; his enthusiasm for Modern Art Week, 89-90 Prado Júnior, Antonio: 87 Prestes, Luiz Carlos: 137 Primitivists: 96-97 Przyrembel, George: 25, 87 Pujol, Alfredo do: 87 Queirós, Eça de: attacks against, 48 Queiroz, Raquel de: 95, 112 Quental, Antero de: 13 Quintana, Mário: 95 Ramos, Arthur: 95 Ramos, Graciliano: 89, 95; as critic of Modernist Movement, 106-107; 112 Ramos, Luis da Silva: 22 Realism: in the novel, 9; repudiation of, 4 7 - 4 9 Rebellion of Copacabana Fort: 98 Robelo, Marques: 89 Recife: as new cultural center, 95 Regionalism: 9; fashionability of, 48; influence of Mário de Andrade on, 61; revitalization of, 99; aesthetic poverty of, 103-104 Rego, José Lins do: 89, 95, 112 "Review of Cannibalism": 96 Ribeiro, João: in praise of Bandeira's "The Ash of Hours," 29; as welcomer of the new poetry, 31; in favor of Modernist Movement, 110-111 Ribeiro, Martins: 87 Ricardo, Cassiano: "Gospel of Pan," 30, 40; his opposition to Primitivism, 82; his poetic evolution, 82— 83; from "Flash," 83; his influence on Raul Bopp, 83; as a leader of

221 the Nationalists, 89, 97, 107, 1 1 1 112; as initiator of thirtieth-anniversary celebration of Modern Art Week, 110-111; as one of five spiritual voices, 161-162; his maturation as a major Brazilian poet, 173; "The Banquet," 173-174; his obsession with personal ugliness, 174; his Roman stoicism, 174; "The Other Life," 174; his sense of spiritual unworthiness, 174; "Masochism," 174; "Tantalus," 174; his mastery of imagery, 174-175; "M'Orpheus," 175; "Zoo," 175, his reconciliation of opposites, 175; his hope in universal love, 175; compared with Domingos Carvalho da Silva, 175 Rodin, Auguste: his influence on Brecheret, 33-34, 37 Rolland, Romain: 45 Romantic Neo-Platonists: 51 Romanticism: in Gonçalves Dias, 6; repudiation of, 47; evolution from, 112 Romantics: 5; early deaths of, 7; attributes of their subjectivism Rónai, Paulo: 204 η. Rondon, General: 20 Rosa, João Guimarães: his importance as short-story writer, 63 Russian Revolution: its effect in Brazil, 31-32 Sá, Franco de: 7 Salgado, Plínio: his conversion to Futurism, 51, 74, 87, 97; as a member of the Nationalists, 111 Salvador: as a new cultural center, 95 Sampaio, Nuno de: 203 Schaeffer, Pierre: his influence on Concretism, 183 Schmidt, Afonso: 87 Schmidt, Augusto Frederico: Christian influence upon, 105; as a Post-

222 Modernist, 106, 107; as a leader of religio-mystical trend in Modernist Movement, 165; his political career, 165-166; his outstanding works, 166; his affinity with Charles Péguy, 166; his poetic return to the sublime, 166; "Someone Is Sleeping in the Road . . .," 166-167; his obsession with death, 167-169; "I Have Seen the Seas," 167-168; "Not To Die," 168; "Birth of Sleep," 169; his chill of despair, 169; his Virgilian evolution, 169 Shakespeare, William: 53, 138 Shelley, Percy Bysshe: 118 Silva, Da Costa e: 30 Silva, Domingos Carvalho da: 108; as one of five spiritual voices, 1 6 1 162; his acquisition of Brazilian citizenship, 175; his adoption into Generation of 1945, 175; his great capacity for work, 175-176; his translations from poetry of Pablo Neruda, 176; extent of his publications, 176; his awareness of cosmic evolution, 176; "Message," 176; his imagery, 176; "Elegy for the Viaduct Suicides," 176-177; strength of his imagination, 177; "The Unrevealed Rose," 177; contrasted with Augusto Frederico Schmidt, 177; "Tertiary Poem," 177-178; "Apocalypse," 178; his surrealistic world, 178 Silva, Jacinto: as friend of "Centennial Dragoons," 74 Silva, Pereira da: 30 Silveira, Paulo da: 96 Silveira, Tasso da: 97 slavery: abolition of, 6; protest against, 7, 14, 18 Soares, José Carlos de Macedo: 87 Soares, Teixeira: 90 Sobral, Mário. SEE Andrade, Mário de Sousa, João da Cruz e: his decadence and indignation, 13-14; "Prison of

Index Souls," 14; compared with Jorge de Lima, 154; admired by Cecília Meireles, 192 Spiritualists: 97-98; 190 Sterne, Laurence: his influence on Machado de Assis, 14 Surrealism: in sensibility of Mário de Andrade, 54, 7 4 - 7 5 Swiss Concretism: 109 Symbolism: attributes of, 13; its opposition to Parnassianism, 19; abandonment of, 30; end of, in poetry, 38; praise of, 48; as a phase in early work of Mário de Andrade, 55 Symbolists: 5, 13; of Paraná, 96, 130; admired by Cecília Meireles, 192 Tapir Movement: 97 Tatu, Jeca: as symbol of Regionalist realism: 35, 105 Teixeira, Oswaldo: 108 "Temple of My Race": as international victory for Brecheret, 37 Thiollier, Rene: as director of Modern Art Week Exhibition, 86 Thomas, Dylan: compared with Vinícius de Moraes, 172 Tostes, Teodemiro: 95 "Trianon Manifesto": 46-47, 73 Urupês: 35, 41 Vargas, Getúlio: 99, 104 Vellinho, Moises: 95 Veloso, Hildegardo Leão: 87 Vergara, Teimo: 95 Verhaeren, Emile: 56 Veríssimo, Érico: 95, 131 Verlaine, Paul: his influence on Symbolists, 13, 22, 48, 56; compared with Cecília Meireles, 192 Viana, Victor: 30-31 Viana Filho, Luiz: 95

Index

223 Whitman, Walt: 22, 56-57, 141; compared with Jorge de Lima, 157; his rhythmical influence, 166, 169 Wordsworth, William: 93, 118

Victor, Mestor: 97 Villa-Lobos, Heitor: 60, 75, 79; his music on Modern Art Week program, 87-88; as a Dynamist, 96, 107 Villon, François: compared with Manuel Bandeira, 119, 158

Yeats, W. B.: compared with Manuel Bandeira, 116, 119

Webern, Anton von: his influence on Concretism, 183

Zola, Emile: popularity of, 14; attacks against, 48 Zumbi Group: 42