Brazilian Literature

141

At least one Academician in Brazil has argued sensibly in favor of woman’s admission to that body.

142

Muse! Let not ever even a gesture of grief or of sincere feeling spoil your serene countenance! Before a Job, preserve the same pride, before a corpse, the same gaze, the same austere brow. I would have no tears in your eyes; no soft, idyllic song upon your lips. Celebrate now the serpent-like phantasm of a Dante, now the martial figure of a Homeric warrior. Give me the hemistych of gold, the attractive image, rhyme whose sound, like a compact harmony, sings to the ears of the soul; the limpid, living strophe; verses that recall with their barbarous accents now the rasping noise of breaking flint, now the muffled sound of cracking marble… Oh, Muse, whose stony eye that never weeps freezes the smile upon the lip and stanches the flow of tears! Let me go with you, in utter liberty, through those vast spaces where the Impassive dwells. Take me far, oh white impassive Muse! Far above the world into the immensity where, launching flames at the dawn’s procession, the golden wain of the sun swings through the clouds. Transport me in a flaming ascension, to the delicious peace of the Olympic-Hearth where the pagan gods dwell eternally; and where, in a long look, I may in your company watch pass by across the secular haze the poets and the heroes of the great ancient days.

143

Dona Alda rose early today. Her rich tresses flowed loosely golden over her sides; on her lips a joyful smile; she goes for a walk in the garden. The flowers, ranged in a long row, gleefully in chorus salute her: “Good day!” Dona Alda continues… A swallow follows her: the sun bathes her in his light; and Dona Alda walks on… A whirl of leaves accompanies her… She walks on… Her glance glitters like a brilliant flash. But – how cruel! – as she steps forward, holding up the hem of her dress, she treads upon a tender carnation of lily whiteness… Yet the flower, beneath her feet, still murmurs, “Oh, thank you so much, Dona Alda!”

144

With their forefeet raised in the air, their mouths free of reins, naked, interlacing their lances as they shout in their play, here they come in all their beauty, tripping the mazes of their dance, rudely displaying to the light the whiteness of their breasts. The night hearkens, the moonlight shines, the tree-tops moan; a thousand she-centaurs, laughing, playing, struggling, gallop freely on, go and come, their bosoms filled with air, their tresses free to the blowing of the zephyrs. The moonlight pales, night falls, and now dawn comes… The hyppic dance is stopped, and soon all space thunders with the mad dash of the centaurs in flight; for, from afar, in the light of the moon grown pale, – huge, with his eyes aflame, brave, with Argive club hanging from his heroic arm, Hercules has appeared.

145

Another “Washington of the South,” according to some Spanish Americans, is Marshal Sucre Bolívar’s powerful associate. Bolívar himself has been compared to Washington, perhaps most illuminatingly by the notable Equatorian, Juan Montalvo, in his Siete Tratados.

146

Some time after writing the article of which the above is an amplification, I received from Senhor Lobato a letter which is of sufficient importance to contemporary strivings in Brazil, and to the life and purpose of Lobato himself, to merit partial translation. I give the salient passages herewith:

“I was born on the 18th April, 1883, in Taubate, State of São Paulo, the son of parents who owned a coffee estate. I initiated my studies in that city and proceeded later to São Paulo, where I entered the department of Law, being graduated, like everybody else, as a Bachelor of Laws. Fond of literature, I read a great deal in my youth; my favourite authors were Kipling, Maupassant, Tolstoi, Dostoievsky, Balzac, Wells, Dickens, Camillo Castello Branco, Eça de Queiroz and Machado de Assis … but I never let myself be dominated by any one. I like to see with my own eyes, smell with my own nose. All my work reveals this personal impression, almost always cruel, for, in my opinion, we are the remnant of a race approaching elimination. Brazil will be something in the future, but the man of today, the Luso-Africano-Indio will pass out of existence, absorbed and eliminated by other, stronger races … just as the primitive aborigine passed. Even as the Portuguese caused the disappearance of the Indian, so will the new races cause the disappearance of the hybrid Portuguese, whose rôle in Brazilian civilization is already fulfilled, having consisted of the vast labour of clearing the land by the destruction of the forests. The language will remain, gradually more and more modified by the influence of the new milieu, so different from the Lusitanian milieu.

“Brazil is an ailing country.” (In his pamphlet Problema Vital, Lobato studies this problem, indicating that man will be victorious over the tropical zone through the new arms of hygiene. The pamphlet caused a turmoil throughout Brazil, and sides were at once formed, the one considering Lobato a defamer of the nation, the other seeing in it an act of sanative patriotism. As a result, a national program of sanitation was inaugurated. This realism of approach, so characteristic of Lobato, made of his figure Jéca Tatú a national symbol that has in many minds replaced the idealized image of Pery, from Alencar’s Guarany. Jéca thus stands for the most recent critical reaction against national romanticism.)“I recognize now that I was cruel, but it was the only way of stirring opinion in that huge whale of most rudimentary nervous system which is my poor Brazil. I am not properly a literary man. I take no pleasure in writing, nor do I attach the slightest importance to what is called literary glory and similar follies. I am a particle of extremely sensitive conscience that adopted the literary form, – fiction, the conte, satire, – as the only means of being heard and heeded. I achieved my aim and today I devote myself to the publishing business, where I find a solid means of sustaining the great idea that in order to cure an ailing person he must first be convinced that he is, in fact, a sick man.”Here, as elsewhere, Lobato’s theory is harsher than his practice. He is, of course, a literary man and has achieved a distinctive style; but he knows, as his letter hints, that his social strength is his literary weakness.