Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

Brazilian poetry cannot be considered truly Brazilian — that is, independent of that of Portugal — until after the Proclamation of Independence in 1822. Its development is more or less predictable, in that its movements parallel those of western Europe, especially France, with a time-lag of ten, twenty, or more years. As in American writing, this time-lag has decreased over the years, growing always shorter, until at present sometimes Brazilian poetry actually seems more advanced than that of the countries it formerly derived from. As in American poetry, there are exceptions to this, apparent regressions in the modernist movement, but none happens to come within the period covered by this volume. There is no space in this brief introduction to give a history of Brazilian poetry over the last hundred fifty years. We shall merely give the highlights, naming a few outstanding poets and their books and briefly outlining the movements that make up the Brazilian heritage of the fourteen poets represented.

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The nineteenth century was, as elsewhere, the romantic century, and Brazilian Romanticism is considered to have started with the publication of a book of poems by Gonçalves Magalhães (1811–1882), called, romantically indeed, Poetic Sighs and Longings. The four outstanding romantic poets, however, were: Gonçalves Dias (1823–1864); Álvares de Azevedo (1831–1852); Casimiro de Abreu (1837–1860); and Castro Alves (1847–1871). All four used genuinely Brazilian themes, Gonçalves Dias* romanticising the Brazilian Indian for the first time, and Castro Alves, in his melodramatic poem “The Slave Ship,” being the first poet to protest against the horrors of the slave trade. They and the other poets of the movement were much influenced, by way of France and Portugal, by the English romantics. Saudade, the characteristic Brazilian longing or nostalgia, and plain homesickness appear obsessively in their poems — perhaps because most of these young poets, “of good family,” made the long ocean voyage to study at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, for Brazil had no universities until the late nineteenth century. Several of them died very young, as did Keats and Shelley, usually of tuberculosis. Gonçalves Dias drowned, shipwrecked on his native shore, while returning from Portugal.

The romantic period gave way to a period of realism, called the Parnassian movement (from around 1870 to 1890) and a brief period of Symbolism (1890–1900). The so-called “realists” were strongly influenced by the French Parnassian school of Gauthier, Banville, Lesconte de L’Isle, and Heredia. The most famous poet of this school was Olavo Bilac (1865–1918), three of whose books are Poesias (1888), Poesias Infantis (1904), and Tarde (1919). The Symbolist movement produced one important figure, the black poet Cruz e Souza (1861–1918). German and English romantic poetry were known to the Brazilians, but French literature and philosophy were, and have remained, until very recently, the strongest influences in Brazilian literature and thought. They are still perhaps of primary importance, but English and, even more, American prose and poetry are now rapidly becoming better known. English is now becoming the most important and fashionable foreign language.

From the turn of the century until 1922, Brazilian poetry went through a period of eclecticism, with no one style predominating, reflecting in general the intense nationalism prevalent at the time. In 1912 Oswald de Andrade, later considered the most radical poet of the 1922 movement, returned from Europe with a copy of Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto. About that time he created a sensation by publishing a poem without rhyme or meter, entitled “Last Ride of a Tubercular through the City by Streetcar.” The subject-matter and tone of poetry were changing, and in 1917, when Manuel Bandeira published his first book Ash of the Hours, the critic João Ribeiro announced that Olavo Bilac, admired for so long, was “now out of date.”

The year 1922 marked the centennial of Brazilian independence. A group of writers and artists, most of whom had lived in Europe, decided to celebrate by holding a festival at which they would present the avant-garde theories they had enthusiastically adopted in Paris and Italy to their artistically backward compatriots. “Modern Art Week” took place in the Municipal Theatre of São Paulo on the 13th, the 15th, and the 17th of February. It has become as much a landmark in Brazilian culture as the New York Armory Show of 1913 is in the culture of the United States.

The night of the 15th was the most dramatic of the three. The poet Menotti del Pichia made a speech presenting the aims of the new artistic movements, summarizing them with these words: “We want light, air, ventilators, airplanes, workers’ demands, idealism, motors, factory smokestacks, blood, speed, dream, in our Art. And may the chugging of an automobile, on the track of two lines of verse, frighten away from poetry the last Homeric god who went on sleeping and dreaming of the flutes of Arcadian shepherds and the divine breasts of Helen, an anachronism in the era of the jazz band and the movie.” Poets and prose writers then read excerpts from their works. The audience took offense, and there followed an uproar of booing, whistling, and shouted insults. Mário de Andrade read from his book Hallucinated City, and later he confessed in a long essay regarding Modern Art Week that he did not know how he had had the courage to face such an audience.

Mário de Andrade (1893–1945), a mulatto from São Paulo, was one of the most important figures in contemporary Brazilian art and literature. A critic, poet, and novelist, he was also one of the very first intellectuals to discover and to become seriously interested in the great untapped resources of Brazilian folklore and popular music. It is hard to think of any form of contemporary artistic activity in Brazil that does not owe a debt to him. In the year of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, 1970, every newspaper and review printed critical studies, biographical essays, and tributes to him, and loving memoirs were written about him as teacher and friend. The vitality of his personality and the wide range of his interests have been of the utmost importance in helping create a richer artistic self-consciousness in Brazil.

The Modernist poetic movement repudiated French and Portuguese influences, and, as in other countries, it rejected the ideas of the Romantics, Parnassians, and Symbolists. It believed in using the material of everyday life, and attempted a complete honesty, bringing the anguish and conflicts of the period into poetry for the first time. The Modernist group originally included, among other poets, Manuel Bandeira, Mário de Andrade, and Oswald de Andrade. There were also the painters Anita Malfatti and Di Cavalcanti; the sculptor Victor Brecheret, and the composer Villa-Lobos. Only Villa-Lobos is well-known outside Brazil, but the others all took part in the artistic transition from the outworn forms of the nineteenth century to the forms of the present.

In 1924, in Paris, Oswald de Andrade published an important book of poems called Brazilwood. With extreme economy of means, in simple language, he treated Brazilian themes, customs, superstitions, and family life directly, and for the first time in Brazilian poetry humorously. These qualities have marked Brazilian poetry ever since; they represent the real achievement of Modern Art Week and modernismo. A word of tribute should also be given to the French poet Blaise Cendrars, who lived in Brazil for several years. His free style, brilliant imagery, and fresh, ironic treatment of the modern world were all important influences on the poets of the Modernist movement.