Brazilian Literature

“Art,” he said, “is the dome that crowns the edifice of civilization: and only that people can have an art which is already a people, – which has already emerged triumphant from all the tests through which the character of nationalities is purified and defined…” Here again, his practice excels his theory. There is in him little Brazilianism, and even when he uses the native suggestion, as in his brilliant O Caçador de Esmeraldas (The Emerald-Hunter, an epic episode of the seventeenth-century sertão) he is, as every poet should be, first of all himself. “Perhaps in the year 2500 there will exist diverse literatures in the vast territory now comprising Brazil,” he prophesied, in disapproval of that sectionalism in letters which several times has tried to make a definite breach in the national literature. But is not all literature psychologically sectional? If the ambient is not filtered through the personality of the individual, is the product worth much more as art than a county report? In our own country, of late, there has been much futile talk of Chicago literature and New York literature, and other such really political chat. “Isms” within “isms,” which make good “copy” for the newspapers and magazines, and which, no doubt, may have a certain sociological significance. But when you or I pick up a book or a poem, what care we, after all, for the land of its origin or even the life of its author, except as both are revealed in the work? Was not one of Bilac’s own final admonitions to his nation’s youth to “Love your art above all things and have the courage, which I lacked, to die of hunger rather than prostitute your talent?” And “above all things” means above the unessential intrusion of petty sectionalism, partisan aim, political purpose, moral exhortation, national pride. I have no quarrel, then, with Bilac’s hopes for a national literature, with his aspirations for our common humanity. But I am happy that he was content to leave that part of him for public life rather than contriving to press it willy-nilly into the service of his only half Parnassian muse.

Bilac was, on the whole, less a Parnassian than was Francisca Julia. She transmuted her passion into cold, yet appealing, symbols; Machado de Assis’s feelings do not quite fill his glass to the brim; Olavo Bilac’s passion overflows the banks of his verse. Yet he remained as true as so warm a nature as his could be to the vows of his Profissão de Fe, with its numerous exclamation points that stand as visible refutation of his avowed formalism. The very epigraph of the poem – and the poem itself stands as epigraph to the collection that follows – is taken from none other than that ardent soul, Victor Hugo, with whom at first the very opponents of the Romantic movement tried to maintain relations. So true is it that we retain a little of all things that we reject.

Le poète est ciseleur,Le ciseleur est poète.

Bilac’s would-be Parnassian Profession of Faith, beginning thus inconsistently with a citation from the chief of the Romantics (a citation, it may be added, that is not all consistent with Hugo’s own characteristic labours) is the herald of his own humanness. Let us now leave the “isms” to those who love them, and seek in Bilac the distinctive personality. His Profissão de Fe is a bit dandified, snobbish, aloof, with a suggestion of a refined sensuality that is fully borne in his work.

Não quero a Zeus Capitolino,Herculeo e bello,Talhar no marmore divinoCom o camartello.Que outro – não eu! – a pedra córtePara, brutal,Erguer de Athene o altivo porteDescommunal.Mais que esse vulto extraordinario,Que assombra a vista,Seduz-me um leve relicarioDe fine artista.…Assim procedo. Minha penna,Segue esta norma,Por te servir, Deusa serena,Serena Fórma!…Vive! que eu viverei servindoTeu culto, e, obscuro,Tuas custodias esculpindoNo ouro mais puro.Celebrarei o teu officioNo altar: porem,Se inda é pequeno o sacrificio,Morra eu tambem!Caia eu tembem, sem esperanca,Porém tranquilo,Inda, ao cahir, vibrando a lança,Em prol de Estylo!118

The Poesias119 upon which Bilac’s fame rests constitute but a book of average size, and consist of the following divisions: Panoplias (Panoplies); Via Lactea (The Milky Way); Sarças de Fogo (Fire-Brambles); Alma Inquieta (Restless Soul); As Viagens (Voyages); O Caçador de Esmeraldas (The Emerald-Hunter).

The inspiration of the panoplies derives as much from the past as from the present; there is verbal coruscation aplenty, – an admirable sense of colour, imagery, fertility, symbol. Even when reading the Iliad, Bilac sees in it chiefly a poem of love:

Mais que as armas, porém, mais que a batalha,Mais que os incendios, brilha o amor que ateiaO odio e entre os povos a discordia espalha:Esse amor que ora activa, ora asserenaA guerra, e o heroico Paris encadeiaAos curvos seios da formosa Helena.120

In Delenda Carthago there is the clash of rutilant arms and the sense of war’s and glory’s vanity; this is the typical motif of the voluptuary, whether of love or of battle. It is not, however, the sorrowful conclusion of the philosopher facing the inevitable, – “the path of glory leads but to the grave.” Rather is it the weariness of the prodded senses. Scipio, victorious, grows mute and sad, and the tears run down his cheeks.

For, beholding in rapid descent,Rolling into the abyss of oblivion and annihilation,Men and traditions, reverses and victories,Battles and trophies, six centuries of gloryIn a fistful of ashes, – the general foresawThat Rome, the powerful, the unvanquished, so strong in arms,Would go perforce the selfsame way as Carthage…Nearby, the vague and noisy cracklingOf the conflagration, that still roared furiously on,Rose like the sound of convulsive weeping.

It is perhaps in Via Lactea that the book – and Bilac’s art – reaches its apex. This is a veritable miniature milky way of sonnet gems; all claims to objectivity and impersonality have been forgotten in the man’s restrained, but by no means repressed passion. His love is not the ivory-tower vapouring of the youthful would-be Maeterlinckian that infests verse in Spanish and Portuguese America; it is of the earth, earthy. When he writes of his love he mingles with the idea the thought of country, and when he writes of his country it is often in terms of carnal passion. Verissimo has noted the same phenomenon in some of the poets that preceded Bilac and, of course, it is to be verified repeatedly in the singers of every land; indeed, is not Liberty always a woman, as our national coinage proves for the millionth time, and when soldiers are urged to fight and die pro patria, is it not a beautiful lady that hovers over the fields and trenches? In these sonnets he becomes the poet-chiseller of Hugo’s distich; into a form that would seem to have lost all adaptability to new manipulation he manages to pour something new, something his own. There is, in his very attitude, a preoccupation with form for its own sake that enables him to employ the sonnet without loss of effect. His devotion to the cameo-like structure is not absolute, however. In none of these poems does one feel that he has cramped his feelings in order to mortise quatrain into tercet. When, as in A Alvorada de Amor, he feels the need of greater room, he takes it.

He is the lover weeping over gladness:

Quem ama inventa as penas em que vive:E, em lugar de acalmar as penas, antesBusca novo pezar com que as avive.Pois sabei que é por isso que assim ando:Que e dos loucos sómente e dos amantesNa maior alegria andar chorando.121

He is ill content to feed upon poetic imaginings of kiss and embrace, or to dream of heavenly beatitudes instead of earthly love:

XXXAo coração que soffre, separadoDo teu, no exilio em que a chorar me vejo,Não basta o affecto simples e sagradoCom que das desventuras me protejo.Não me basta saber que sou amado,Nem só desejo o teu amor: desejoTer nos braços teu corpo delicado,Ter na bocca a doçura do teu beijo.E as justas ambiçoes que me consomemNão me envergonham: pois maior baixezaNão ha que a terra pelo céo trocar;E mais eleva o coração de um homemSer de homem sempre e, na maior pureza,Ficar na terra e humanamente amar.122

So runs the song in his more reflective mood, which is half objection and half meditation. There are other moments, however, in Alma Inquieta when a similar passion bursts out beyond control and when, in his pride of virility, he rejects Paradise and rises superior to the Lord Himself.

The sonnet that follows this in Via Lactea is notable for its intermingling of love, country and saudade:

XXXILonge de ti, se escuto, porventura,Teu nome, que uma bocca indifferenteEntre outros nomes de mulher murmura,Sobe-me o pranto aos olhos, de repente…Tal aquelle, que, misero, a torturaSoffre de amargo exilio, e tristementeA linguagem natal, maviosa e pura,Ouve falada por estranha gente…Porque teu nome é para mim o nomeDe uma patria distante e idolatrada,Cuja saudade ardente me consome:E ouvil-o é ver a eterna primaveraE a eterna luz da terra abençoada,Onde, entre flores, teu amor me espera.123

Sarças de Fogo, as its name would imply, abandons the restraint of Via Lactea. In O Julgamento de Phryné beauty becomes not only its own excuse for being, but the excuse for wrong as well. Phryne’s judges, confronted with her unveiled beauty, tremble like lions before the calm gaze of their tamer, and she appears before the multitude “in the immortal triumph of Flesh and Beauty.” In Santania a maiden’s desires rise powerfully to the surface only to take flight in fright at their own daring. No Limiar de Morte (On The Threshold of Death) is the voluptuary’s memento mori after his carpe diem. There is a touch of irony borrowed from Machado de Assis in the closing tercets:

You, who loved and suffered, now turn your stepsToward me. O, weeping soul,You leave behind the hate of the worldly hell…Come! for at last you shall enjoy within my armsAll the wantonness, all the fascinations,All the delights of eternal rest!

This is impressed in far superior fashion by one of the best sonnets Bilac ever wrote: Sahara Vitae. Here, in the image of life’s desert, he conveys a haunting sense of helpless futility such as one gets only rarely, from such sonnets, say, as the great Shelleyan one, Ozymandias of Egypt.

Lá vão! O céo se arqueiaComo um tecto de bronze infindo e quente,E o sol fuzila e, fuzilando, ardenteCriva de flechas de aço o mar de areia…Lá vão, com os olhos onde a sêde ateiaUm fogo estranho, procurando em frenteEsse oasis do amor que, claramente,Além, bello e falaz, se delineia.Mas o simun da morte sopra: a trombaConvulsa envolve-os, prostra-os; e aplacadaSobre si mesma roda e exhausta tomba…E o sol de novo no igneo céo fuzila…E sobre a geração exterminadaA areia dorme placida e tranquila.124

For the clearness of its imagery, for the perfect progress of a symbol that is part and parcel of the poetry, this might have come out of Dante. It is not often that fourteen lines contain so complete, so devastating a commentary. Side by side with Beijo Eterno (Eternal Kiss) it occurs in the Poesias, as if to reveal its relation as reverse to the obverse of the poet’s voluptuousness. Beijo Eterno, like A Alvorada de Amor, is one of the central poems of Olavo Bilac. It is the linked sweetness of Catullus long drawn out. It is the sensuous ardour of the poet inundating all time and all space, while Sahara Vitae is the languor that follows upon the fulfilment of ardour. They are both as much a part of the poet as the two sides are part of the coin. The first and last of the ten stanzas of Beijo Eterno epitomize the Dionysiac outburst; they are alike:

Quero um beijo sem fim,Que dure a vida enteira e aplaque a meu desejo!Ferve-me o sangue. Acalma-o com teu beijo,Beija-me assim!O ouvido fecha ao rumorDo mundo, e beija-me querida!Vive so para mim, só para a minha vida,Só para o meu amor!125

In less amorous mood he can sing a serenade —A Canção de Romeu– (Romeo’s Song) to which any Juliet might well open her window:

As estrellas surgiramTodas: e o limpio veoComo lirios alvissimos, cobriramDo ceo.De todas a mais bellaNão veio ainda, porem:Falta uma estrella… És tu!.. Abre a janella,E vem!126

And if, in the closing piece of this section —A Tentação de Xenocrates– (The Temptation of Xenocrates) the courtesan’s charms seem more convincing than the resistance of the victorious philosopher, it must be because Bilac himself subtly sided with the temptress, and spoke with her when she protested that she had vowed to tame a man, not a stone. If, in the manner of the Freudians, we are to look upon the poem as a wish that the poet could on occasion show such scorn of feminine blandishments, it is doubly interesting to note that, though the moral victory lies with Xenocrates, the poet has willy-nilly made the courtesan’s case the more sympathetic. What, indeed, are the fruits of a philosophy that denies the embraces of a Laïs?

Just as Olavo Bilac’s voluptuousness brings to him inevitably thoughts of death, so does his cult of form lead him at times to a sense of the essential uselessness of all words and all forms. He has expressed this nowhere so well as in the sonnet Inania Verba from the section Alma Inquieta:

Ah! Quem ha-de exprimir, alma impotente e escrava,O que a bocca não diz, o que a mão não escreve?– Ardes, sangras, pregada á tua cruz, e, em breve,Olhas, desfeito em lodo, o que te deslumbrava…O Pensameto erve, e é um turbilhão de lava:A Fórma, fria e espessa, é um sepulcro de neve…E a Palavra pesada abafa a Idéa leve,Que, perfume e clarão, refulgia e voava.Quem o molde achara para a expressão de tudo?Ai! quem ha-de dezir as ansias infinitasDo sonho? e o céo que foge a mão que se levanta?E a ira muda? e o asco mudo? e o desespero mudo?E as palavras de fé que nunca foram ditas?E as confissões de amor que morrem na garganta?127

Alma Inquieta reaches its climax with A Alvorada de Amor (The Dawn of Love). It is important enough to be quoted in full, as one of the sincerest and most passionate outbursts of the Brazilian muse, in which Olavo Bilac’s countrymen find mirrored that sensual part of themselves which is the product of climate, racial blend and the Adam and Eve in all of us.

Um horror grande e mudo, um silencio profundoNo dia do Peccado amortalhava o mundo.E Adão, vendo fechar-se a porta do Eden, vendoQue Eva olhava o deserto e hesitava tremendo,Disse:Chega-te a mim! entra no meu amor,E á minha carne entrega a tua carne em flor!Preme contra o meu peito o teu seio agitado,E aprende a amar o Amor, renovando o peccado!Abençóo o teu crime, acolho o teu desgosto,Bebo-te, de uma em uma, as lagrimas do rosto!Ve! tudo nos repelle! a toda a creaçãoSacóde o mesmo horror e a mesma indignação…A colera de Deus torce as arvores, crestaComo um tufão de fogo o seio de floresta,Abre a terra em vulcões, encrespa a agua do rios;As estrellas estão cheias de calefrios;Ruge soturno a mar; turva-se hediondo o céo…Vamos! que importa Deus? Desate, como um véo,Sobre a tua nudez a cabelleira! Vamos!Arda em chammas o chão; rasguem-te a pelle os ramos;Morda-te o corpo o sol; inuriem-te os ninhos;Surjam féras a uivar de todos os caminhos;E vendo-te a sangrar das urzes atravez,Se enmaranhem no chão as serpes aos teus pés…Que importa? o Amor, botáo apenas entreabertoIlumina o degredo e perfume o deserto!Amo-te! sou feliz! porque do Eden perdido,Levo tudo, levando o teu corpo querido!Póde, em redor de ti, tudo se anniquilar:Tudo renascerá cantando ao teu olhar,Tudo, mares e céos, arvores e montanhas,Porque a Vida perpetuo arde em tuas entranhas!Rosas te brotarão da bocca se cantares!Rios te correrão dos olhos, se chorares!E se, em torno ao teu corpo encantador e nú,Tudo morrer, que importa? A Natureza és tu,Agora que és mulher, agora que peccaste!Ah! bemdito o momento em que me revelasteO amor com o teu peccado, e a vida com a teu crime!Porque, livre de Deus, redimido e sublime,Homem fico na terra, á luz dos olhos teus,– Terra, melhor que o Céo! homem, maior que Deus!128

So, in Peccador (Sinner) he presents the figure of a proud, unrepentant sinner – it might be the amorous Don Juan himself, – who “accepts the enormousness of the punishment with the same countenance that he wore when formerly he accepted the delight of transgression!” He is no less sincere, doubtless, when in Ultima Pagina (Final Page) he exclaims

Carne, que queres mais? Coração, que mais queres?Passam as estações, e passam as mulheres…E eu tenho amado tanto! e não conheço o Amor!Flesh, what would you more? What would you more, my heart?The seasons pass and women, too, pass with them…And I have loved so much, yet know not what is Love!

Tedio (Ennui) is the voluptuousness of Nirvana after the voluptuousness of Dionysus; like all sinners, he comes for rest to a church. “Oh, to cease dreaming of what I cannot behold! To have my blood freeze and my flesh turn cold! And, veiled in a crepuscular glow, let my soul sleep without a desire, – ample, funereal, lugubrious, empty as an abandoned cathedral!..”

The section As Viagens (Voyages) consists chiefly of twelve admirable sonnets – a form in which Bilac’s blending of intense feeling with artistic restraint seems as much at home as any modern poet – ranging from the first migration, through the Phoenicians, the Jews, Alexander, Cæsar, the Barbarians, the Crusades, the Indies, Brazil, the precursor of the airplane in Toledo, the Pole, to Death, which is the end of all voyages. At the risk of overemphasizing a point that has already been made, I would quote the sonnet on Brazil:

Pára! Uma terra nova ao teu olhar fulgura!Detem-te! Aqui, de encontro a verdejantes plagas,Em caricias se muda a inclemencia das vagas…Este é o reino da Luz, do Amor e da Fartura!Treme-te a voz affeita ás blasphemias e as pragas,Ó nauta! Olha-a, de pé, virgem morena e pura,Que aos teus beijos entrega, em plena formosura,– Os dous seios que, ardendo em desejos, afagas…Beija-a! O sol tropical deu-lhe a pelle doradaO barulho do ninho, o perfume da rosa,A frescura do rio, o esplendor da alvorada…Beija-a! é a mais bella flor da Natureza inteira!E farta-te de amor nesse carne cheirosa,Ó desvirginador da Terra Brasileira!129

What is this, indeed? Part of some ardent Song of Songs? Note how the imagery is exclusively that of burning passion. Brazil becomes a fascinating virgin who falls to the fortunate discoverer. In that sonnet, I should say, is concealed about one half the psychology of the narrower patriotism.

O Caçador de Esmeraldas is a splendid episode in four parts, containing some forty-six sextets in all, filled with movement, colour, pervading symbolism and a certain patriotic pantheism. More than a mere search for emeralds the poem recounts the good that man may work even in the vile pursuit of precious stones, – the vanity of all material quest. For sheer artistry it ranks with Bilac’s most successful accomplishments.

“His inspiration,” wrote Verissimo, considering the verse of Bilac, “is limited to a few poetic themes, all treated with a virtuosity perhaps unparalleled amongst us … but without an intensity of feeling corresponding to the brilliancy of the form, which always is more important in him. This is the characteristic defect of the Parnassian esthetics, of which Sr. Bilac is our most illustrious follower, and to which his poetic genius adjusted itself perfectly and intimately.” I believe that Verissimo was slightly misled by Bilac’s versified professions. There is no doubt that Bilac’s temperament, as I have tried to show, was eminently suited to some such orientation as was sought by those Parnassians who understood what they were about; there is as little doubt, in my mind, that his feeling was intense, though not deep. He may have spoken of the crystalline strophe and the etcher’s needle – which, indeed, he often employed with the utmost skill, – but there were moments when nothing but huge marbles and the sculptor’s chisel would do. It was with such material that he carved A Alvorada de Amor. “If Sr. Machado de Assis was,” continues Verissimo, “more than twenty years previous to Bilac, our first artist-poet, – if other contemporaries or immediate predecessors of Bilac also practised the Parnassian esthetics, none did it with such manifest purpose, and, above all with such triumphant skill…”

I am not sure whether Verissimo is right in having asked of Bilac a more contemporary concern with the currents of poetry. The critic grants that Bilac is perhaps the most brilliant poet ever produced by his nation, “but other virtues are lacking in him without which there can be no truly great poet. I do not know but that I am right in supposing that, conscious of his excellence, he remained a stranger to the social, philosophical and esthetic movement that is today everywhere renewing the sources of poetry. And it is a great pity; for he was amongst us perhaps one of the most capable of bringing to our anaemic poetry the new blood which, with more presumption than talent, some poets – or persons who think themselves such – are trying to inject, without any of the gifts that abound in him.”

Bilac, as we have seen, did, toward the end of his life, become a more social spirit. But this was not necessary to his pre-eminence as a poet. He was, superbly, himself. Rather that he should have given us so freely of the voluptuary that was in him – voluptuary of feeling, of charm, of form, of language, of taste – than that, in a mistaken attempt to be a “complete” man, he should sprawl over the varied currents of the day and hour. For it is far more certain that each current will find its masterly spokesman in art, than that each artist will become a masterly spokesman for all of the currents.

V

EUCLYDES DA CUNHA

Os Sertões, which first appeared in 1902 – a happy year for Brazilian letters, since it witnessed the publication of Graça Aranha’s Chanaan as well – is one of the outstanding works of modern Portuguese literature. At once it gave to its ill-fated author a fame to which he never aspired. His name passed from tongue to tongue, like that of some new Columbus who with his investigation of the sertão had discovered Brazil to the Brazilians. His labour quickened interest in the interior, revealed a new source of legitimate national inspiration and presented to countrymen a strange work, – disturbing, illuminating, disordered, almost a fictional forest, written in nervous, heavily-freighted prose. Yet this is harsh truth itself, stranger than the fiction of Coelho Netto, wilder than the poetry of Graça Aranha, though instinct with the imagination of the one and the beauty of the other. The highly original work struck a deep echo in English letters and if Englishmen have neglected to read Richard Cunninghame-Graham’s remarkable book called A Brazilian Mystic: The Life and Miracles of Antonio Conselheiro– a book that would never have been written had not Euclydes da Cunha toiled away in obscurity to produce Os Sertões– it is their loss rather than their fault. It is a hurried and a harried world. Who, today, has time for such beauty of thought and phrase as Richard the wandering Scots sets down almost carelessly in his books and then sends forth from the press with mildly mocking humour for his prospective, but none too surely anticipated readers? Yet it is not the least of Euclydes da Cunha’s glories that he was the prime cause of Mr. Cunninghame-Graham’s A Brazilian Mystic. Not a fault of English readers, surely; but none the less their loss.

The author of Os Sertões was born on January 20, 1866, in Santa Rita do Rio Negro, municipality of Cantagallo. Losing his mother when he was three years old, he went first to Theresopolis to an aunt, and thence, after two years, to São Fidelis to another aunt, with whom he remained until his first studies were completed. His father retiring to Rio de Janeiro in 1876, Euclydes was transported to the capital, where he attended in due course the collegios called Victorio da Costa, Anglo-Brasileiro and Aquino. Naturally, he went through his baptism of verse, preparing a collection called Ondas (Waves); since every Brazilian early suffers an attack of this literary measles – it would be almost impolite not to indite one’s obligatory number of sonnets – the notice is without any importance to a man’s later career. It was at the Escola Militar da Praia Vermelha, which he entered at the age of twenty, that he laid the foundations of his scientific studies, and it is the scientist in Euclydes da Cunha that solidifies Os Sertões.