Brazilian Literature

92

Op. Cit. Page 307. The italics are mine.

93

The first dove, awakened, flies off, then another and another. Finally they leave the cote by tens, as soon as the fresh, red, dawn appears. And at evening, when the bitter north-wind blows, fluttering their wings and shaking their feathers, they all return to the cote in a flock. So, from our hearts, where they burgeon, our dreams, one by one, depart in flight like the doves from the cote. They spread their wings in the azure of youth, and fly off… But the doves return to the dovecote, while our dreams return nevermore.

94

I see that everything loves. And I, I alone, love not. This soil I tread loves, – the tree against which I lean, this gentle zephyr that fans my cheek, – these wings that flutter in the air, – this foliage, – the beasts who, in rut, leave their wild lairs to gaze upon the light that magnetizes them, – the crags of the desert, – the river, the forest, the tree-trunks, the children, the bird, the leaf, the flower, the fruit, the branch… And I alone love not! I alone love not! I alone love not!

95

Oh, nature! O pure, piteous mother! oh, cruel, implacable assassin! Hand that proffers both poison and balm, and blends smiles with tears. The cradle, where the infant opens her tiny mouth to smile, is the miniature, the vague image of a coffin, – the living germ of a frightful end! Eternal contrast. Birds twittering upon tombs … flowers floating upon the surface of ugly, putrid waters… Sadness walks at the side of joy… And this your bosom, wherein night is born, is the selfsame bosom whence is born the day…

96

See the chapter devoted to him in Part Two of this book.

97

See Part Two for a special chapter on Machado de Assis.

98

See, for a good study of Emilio de Menezes, Elysio de Carvalho’s As Modernas Correntes Esthéticas na Literatura Braziléira. Rio, 1907. Pp. 62-74.

99

See Part Two for chapters on Graça Aranha, Monteiro Lobato, Euclydes da Cunha and Coelho Netto.

100

“It has already been said,” writes Verissimo, “that the Latins have no poetry, but rather eloquence; they confound sentimental emotion, which is the predicate of poetry, with intellectual sensation, which is the attribute of eloquence. There is in the poetry of the so-called Latin peoples more rhetoric than spontaneity, more art than nature, more artifice than simplicity. It is more erudite, more ‘laboured,’ more intellectual, and for that reason less felt, less sincere, less ingenuous than that of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, for example. I do not discuss this notion. We Brazilians, who are scarcely half Latin, are highly sensitive, I know, to poetic rhetoric, – which does not prevent us, however, from being moved by the sentimentalism of poetry – though superficially – when it comes in the simple form of popular lyrism and sings, as that does, with its naïve rhetoric, the sensual passions of our amorous ardor, which is characteristic of hybrids. Examples of this are Casimiro de Abreu, Laurindo Rabello, Varella and Gonçalves Dias himself. When the poets became refined, and wrapped their passion, real or feigned – and in fact rather feigned than real – in the sightly and false externals of the Parnassian rhetoric, bending all their efforts toward meticulous perfection of form, rhyme, metre, sound, they ceased to move the people, or impressed it only by the outer aspect of their perfect poems through the sonority of their verses. For at bottom, what we prefer is form, but form that is rhetorical and eloquent, or what seems to us such, —palavrão (wordiness), emphasis, beautiful images…”

101

Christ! In vain you died upon a mountain… Your blood did not erase the original spot upon my forehead. Even today, through adverse fate, my children are the cattle of the universe, and I – universal pasture. Today America feeds on my blood. – A condor transformed into a vulture, bird of slavery. She has joined the rest … treacherous sister! Like the base brothers of Joseph who in ancient days sold their brother… Enough, O Lord. With your powerful arm send through the planets and through space pardon for my crimes! For two thousand years I have been wailing a cry… Hear my call yonder in the infinite, my God, Lord my God!

102

There exists a people who lends its flag to cover such infamy and cowardice!.. And allows it to be transformed, in this feast, into the impure cloak of a heartless bacchante!.. My God! my God! but what flag is this that flutters impudently at the masthead? Silence, Muse … weep and weep so much that the banner will be bathed in your tears!.. Green-gold banner of my country, kissed and blown by the breezes of Brazil, standard that enfolds in the light of the sun the divine promise of hope… You who, after the war, was flown by the heroes at the head of their lances, rather had they shattered you in battle than that you should serve as a race’s shroud!.. Horrible fatality that overwhelms the mind! Let the path that Columbus opened in the waves like a rainbow in the immense deep, shatter in this hour the polluted ship! This infamy is too much!.. From your ethereal realm, O heroes of the New World, arise! Andrade! Tear that banner from the sky! Columbus! shut the fates of your sea!

103

No matter! Liberty is like the hydra, or like Antheus. If, exhausted, it rolls in the dust, it rises stronger than ever from the earth… Its bleeding members are terrible, thirsting swords, and from the ashes cast upon the winds a new Gracchus arose!

104

The occasion was the Fête de l’Intellectualité Brésilenne, celebrated on April 3, 1909, at the Sorbonne in the Richelieu amphitheatre. Anatole France delivered a short, characteristic speech upon Le Génie Latin, emphasizing his disbelief in the idea of race. “Je dis le génie latin, je dis les peuples latins, parce que l’idée de race n’est le plus souvent qu’une vision de l’orgueil et de l’erreur, et parce que la civilization hellénique et romaine, comme la Jérusalem nouvelle, a vu venir de toutes parts à elle des enfants qu’elle n’avait point portés dans son sein. Et c’est sa gloire de gagner l’univers… Latins des deux mondes, soyons fiers de notre commun heritage. Mais sachons le partager avec l’univers entier; sachons que la beauté antique, l’éternelle Hélène, plus auguste, plus chaste d’enlèvement en enlèvement, a pour destinée de se donner à des ravisseurs étrangers, et d’enfanter dans toutes les races, sous tous les climats, de nouveaux Euphorions, toujours plus savants et plus beaux.”

105

“I do not like tears,” he says, in his last novel, Memorial de Ayres, “even in the eyes of women, whether or not they be pretty; they are confessions of weakness, and I was born with an abhorrence for the weak.”

106

It was a blue fly, with wings of gold and carmine, daughter of China or of Hindustan, who was born on a certain summer’s night amid the petals of a red, red rose. And she buzzed and flew, and flew and buzzed, glittering in the light of the sun and the moon – brighter than a gem of the Grand Mogul. A humble toiler saw her, and was struck with amazement and sadness. A humble toiler, asking: “Fly, this glitter that seems rather a dream, say, who taught it to you?” Then she, flying around and about, replied: “I am life, I am the flower of grace, the paragon of earthly youth, – I am glory, I am love.” And he stood there, contemplating her, wrapt like a fakir, like one utterly dazed beyond power of comparison or reflection. Between the wings of the insect, as she flew in space, appeared something that rose with all the splendour of a palace, and he beheld a face that was his own. It was he, – he was a king, – the king of Cashmire, who wore upon his bare neck a huge necklace of opals, and a sapphire taken from the body of Vishnu. One hundred radiant women, a hundred exquisite nayras, smilingly display their rare graces at his feet upon the polished floor, and all the love they have they give to him. Mute, gravely on foot, a hundred ugly Ethiopians, with large ostrich fans, refresh their perfumed breasts, voluptuously nude. Then came glory, – forty conquered kings, and at last the triumphal tribute of three hundred nations, and the united felicitations of western crowns. But best of all is, that in the open face of the women and the men, as in water that shows the clear bottom, he saw into their hearts. Then he, extending his callous, rough hand that was accustomed only to carpentry, seized the glittering fly, curious to examine it. He wished to see it, to discover the cause of the mystery, and closing his fist around it, smiled with contentment to think that he held there an empire. He left for home. He arrives in excitement, examines and his mute behaviour is that of a man about to dissect his illusion. He dissected it, to such a point, and with such art, that the fly, broken, repellent, succumbed; and at this there vanished that fantastic, subtle vision. Today, when he passes, anointed with aloes and cardamom, with an affected air, they say that he went crazy, and that he doesn’t known how he lost his blue fly.

107

Dancing in the air, a restless glow-worm wailed, “Oh, that I might be that radiant star which burns in the eternal blue, like a perpetual candle!” But the star: “Oh, that I might copy the transparent light that, at the gothic window of a Greek column the beloved, beautiful one sighingly contemplated!” But the moon, gazing at the sun, peevishly: “Wretched I! Would that I had that vast, undying refulgence which resumes all light in itself!” But the sun, bowing its rutilant crown: “This brilliant heavenly aureole wearies me… I am burdened by this vast blue canopy… Why was I not born a simple glow-worm?”

108

The excerpts from Viver! and O Infermeiro are taken from my Brazilian Tales, Boston, 1921.

109

See Part One of this book, Chapter V, § III, for the more romantic aspects of Machado de Assis.

110

Many cultured Brazilians know English literature in the original. The essay here referred to was suggested to Verissimo by the book of a United States professor, Winchester, on Some Principles of Literary Criticism.

111

A Modern Book of Criticism, New York, 1919. Page iii. The italics are mine.

112

Mr. Havelock Ellis, writing in 1917 upon Rodó, (the article may be found in his book entitled The Philosophy of Conflict), expressed an opinion that comes pat to our present purpose. “ … Rodó has perhaps attributed too fixed a character to North American civilization, and has hardly taken into account those germs of recent expansion which may well bring the future development of the United States nearer to his ideals. It must be admitted, however, that if he had lived a few months longer Rodó might have seen confirmation in the swift thoroughness, even exceeding that of England, with which the United States on entering the war sought to suppress that toleration for freedom of thought and speech that he counted so precious, shouting with characteristic energy the battle-cry of all the belligerents, ‘Hush! Don’t think, only feel and act!’ with a pathetic faith that the affectation of external uniformity means inward cohesion… Still, Rodó himself recognised that, even as already manifested, the work of the United States is not entirely lost for what he would call the ‘interests of the soul.’”

113

For this discussion, which is of primary importance to students of Brazilian letters, see Verissimo’s Estudos, 6a serie, pages 1-14, and his Que é Literatura, Rio de Janeiro, 1907, pages 230-292.

114

Pequena Historia da Literatura Brasileira. 2a Ed. Revista e augmentada. Rio, 1922. Pp. 344-345.

115

This opinion he later rectified.

116

In Studies in Spanish-American Literature (pages 98-99) I have discussed briefly this attitude of Verissimo’s. I do not believe the entire question to be of primary literary importance. It is the noun literature that is of chief interest; not the adjective of nationality that precedes it.

117

Verissimo was born at Belem, Para, on April 8, 1857. He initiated his career as a public official in his native province, but soon made his way to the directorship of the Gymnasio Nacional, and then the Normal School of Rio de Janeiro. For a long time, concurrently with his scholarly labors, he edited the famous Revista Brasileira. His Scenes of Life on the Amazon have been compared to the pages of Pierre Loti for their exotic charm. He died in 1918.

118

I have no wish to chisel the Capitoline Zeus, Herculean and beautiful, in divine marble. Let another – not I! – cut the stone to rear, in brutal proportions, the proud figure of Athene. More than by this extraordinary size that astounds the sight I am fascinated by the fragile reliquary of a delicate artist. Such is my procedure. My pen, follow that standard. To serve thee, serene Goddess, serene Form! Live! For I shall live in the service of thy cult, obscurely sculpturing thy vessels in the purest of gold. I will celebrate thine office upon the altar; more, if the sacrifice be too small, I myself will die. Let me, too, fall, hopeless, yet tranquil. And even as I fall, I’ll raise my lance in the cause of Style!

119

Published originally in 1888, and ending, in its first form, with Sarças de Fogo.

120

More than arms, however, more than battle, more than conflagrations, it is love that shines here, kindling hatred between peoples and scattering discord. That love which now incites, now abates war, and chains the heroic Paris to the curved breasts of Helen the beautiful.

121

He who loves invents the pangs in which he lives; and instead of soothing these griefs, he seeks a new care with which he but rekindles them. Know, then, that this is the reason why I go about so. Only madmen and lovers weep in their greatest joy.

122

For the heart that suffers, severed from you, in this exile that I weep, the simple and sacred affection with which I shield myself against all misfortunes is not enough. It is not enough to know that I am loved; I would have your delicate body in my arms, taste in my mouth the sweetness of your kiss. Nor am I shamed by the just ambitions that consume me. For there is no greater baseness than to change the earth for the sky. It more exalts the heart of a man to be a man ever, and, in the greatest purity, remain on earth and love like a human being.

123

Far from you, if peradventure I hear your name, murmured by an indifferent mouth amidst other women’s names, the tears come suddenly to my eyes… Such is he who suffers in bitter exile and sadly, hears his native tongue, so pure and beautiful, spoken by foreign lips… For your name is to me the name of a distant, worshipped fatherland, the longing for which consumes me. And to hear it is to behold eternal springtime, and the everlasting light of the blessed land, where, amidst flowers, your love awaits me.

An excellent example of a similar identification of sweetheart and fatherland occurs in the sonnet Desterro (Exile), in the section Alma Inquieta, in which his beloved is called “patria do meu desejo” (land of my desire).

124

There they go! The sky arches over like an endless burning roof of bronze, and the sun shoots, and shooting, riddles with arrows of steel the sea of sand. There they go, with eyes in which thirst has kindled a strange fire, gazing ahead to that oasis of love which yonder, clearly rises in its deluding beauty. But now blows the simoon of death: the shattering whirlwind envelops them, prostrates them; sated, it rolls upon itself and falls in exhaustion… And once again the sun shoots in the fiery sky… And over the exterminated generation the sand sleeps its peaceful, tranquil sleep.

125

I want an endless kiss, that shall last an entire life and sate my desire! My blood seethes. Slake it with your kiss, kiss me so! Close your ears to the sound of the world, and kiss me, beloved! Live for me alone, for my life only, only for my love!

126

The stars have all come out, and have broidered the pure veil of heaven with the whitest of lilies. But the most beautiful of all I do not yet see. One star is missing. It is you!.. Open your window and come!

127

Ah, who can express, enslaved and impotent soul, what the lips do not speak, what the hand cannot write. Clasping your cross, you burn, you bleed, only soon to behold in the mire that which had dazzled you… Thought seethes; it is a whirlwind of lava: Form, cold and compact, is a sepulchre of snow… And the heavy word stifles the fragile Idea which, like perfume and light, flew glittering about. Who can find the mould in which to cast expression? Ah! who can speak the infinite anxieties of our dreams? The heavens that flee from the hand that is raised? And mute ire? And this wretched world? And voiceless despair? And the words of faith that were never spoken? And the confessions of love that die in one’s throat?

128

A vast, mute horror, a deep silence shrouded the world upon the day of Sin. And Adam, beholding the gates of Eden close, seeing Eve gaze in hesitant trembling at the desert, said: “Come to me! Enter into my love, and surrender to my flesh your own fair flesh! Press your agitated breast against my bosom and learn to love Love, renewing sin. I bless your crime, I welcome your misfortune, I drink, one by one, the tears from your cheeks! Behold! Everything rejects us! All creation is shaken by the same horror and the same indignation… The rage of the Lord twists the trees, ravages the heart of the forest like a hurricane of flame, splits the earth into volcanoes, curls the water of the rivers; the stars are aquiver with shudders; the sea mutters with fury; the sky is dark with anger… Let us go! What matters God? Loosen like a veil your tresses over your nakedness! Let us be gone! Let the earth burn in flames; let the branches rend your skin; let the sun bite your body; let the nests harm you; let wild beasts rise on all the roads to howl at you; and seeing you bleed through the brambles, let the serpents entangle themselves upon the ground at your feet… What matters it? Let love, but a half-open bud, illumine our banishment and perfume the desert! I love you! I am happy! For from the lost Eden I bear everything, having your beloved body! Let everything crumble to ruin about you; it will all rise new born before your eyes, – all, seas and skies, trees and mountains, for perpetual life burns in your bowels! Roses will burgeon from your mouth if you sing! Rivers will flow from your eyes, if you weep! And if, about your enchanting, nude body, all should die, what matters it then? You are Nature, now that you are woman, now that you have sinned! Ah, blessed the moment in which you revealed to me love with your sin and life with your crime! For, free from God, redeemed and sublime, I remain a man upon earth, in the light of your eyes, – Earth, better than Heaven! Man, greater than God!”

129

Hold! A new land shines before your eyes! Stop! Here, before the green shores, the waves’ inclemency turns to caresses… This is the kingdom of Light, of Love and Satiety! Oh, mariner! Let your voice, accustomed to blasphemies and curses, tremble! Gaze at her standing there, a dark, pure virgin who surrenders to your kisses, in the fulness of her beauty, her two breasts which, burning with desire, you soothe… Kiss her! The tropical sun gave her that gilded skin, the nest’s content, the rose’s perfume, the coolness of the river, the splendour of dawn… Kiss her! She is the fairest of all Nature’s flowers! Sate yourself with love in this fragrant flesh, oh first lover of the Brazilian Land!

130

Resumo da Historia do Brazil. Maria G. L. de Andrade. Edição Ampliada, 1920, Pages 277-278.

131

“This struggle for existence,” writes Cunninghame-Graham in A Brazilian Mystic (pages 17-18) “amongst plants and animals presents its counterpart amongst mankind. The climate sees to it that only those most fitted to resist it arrive at manhood, and the rude life they subsequently lead has forged a race as hard as the Castilians, the Turks, the Scythians of old, or as the Mexicans.

“No race in all America is better fitted to cope with the wilderness. The sertanejo is emphatically what the French call ‘a male.’ His Indian blood has given him endurance and a superhuman patience in adversity. From his white forefathers he has derived intelligence, the love of individual as opposed to general freedom inherent in the Latin races, good manners, and a sound dose of self-respect. His tinge of negro blood, although in the sertão it tends to disappear out of the race, at least in outward characteristics, may perchance have given him whatever qualities the African can claim. Far from demonstrative, he yet feels deeply; never forgets a benefit, and cherishes an insult as if it were a pearl of price, safe to revenge it when the season offers or when the enemy is off his guard.

“Centaurs before the Lord, the sertanejos do not appear (almost alone of horsemen) to have that pride in their appearance so noticeable in the gaucho, the Mexican and in the Arabs of North Africa. Seated in his short, curved saddle, a modification of the ‘recao’ used on the Pampas of the Argentine, the sertanejo lounges, sticks his feet forward, and rides, as goes the saying, all about his horse, using, of course, a single rein, and the high hand all natural horsemen affect. Yet, when a bunch of cattle break into a wild stampede, the man is suddenly transformed. Then he sits upright as a lance, or, bending low over his horse’s neck, flies at a break-neck pace, dashing through the thick scrub of the caatingas in a way that must be seen to be believed. Menacing boughs hang low and threaten him. He throws himself flat on the horse’s back and passes under them. A tree stands in his way right in the middle of his headlong career. If his horse, highly trained and bitted, fails to stop in time, he slips off like a drop of water from a pane of glass at the last moment, or if there is the smallest chance of passing on one side, lies low along his horse’s flank after the fashion of an old-time Apache or Comanche on the war-path.”

132

I quote the translation of this quatrain from Cunninghame-Graham. The third quatrain, here given as I find it in Os Sertões, 1914, fifth edition, differs in a single unimportant spelling from that used by the author of A Brazilian Mystic, who translates it: “Our King, Dom Sebastian, will come to visit us and free us from the reign of the dog.” I do not think this is correct, as the two final lines are a threat to the other side.

133

See Introduction to The Evolution of Brazil compared with that of Spanish and Anglo-Saxon America. Stanford University, California, 1914. The introduction, by Professor Percy Alvin Martin, should be read with care, as it assigns Lima’s year of birth erroneously to the year 1865, and gives wrong dates for the Aspectos (1896, not 1906) and Pernambuco (1894, not 1895); moreover, it ascribes to Björnstjerne Björnsen, instead of to Goran Björkman, the bestowal upon Lima of the epithet “intellectual ambassador of Brazil.”

134

Lima here refers to Dr. Roque Saenz-Peña, inaugurated 1910. The citation is from Lecture VI (and last); the series was delivered in English.