Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

The “Integralistas,” Brazil’s one proto-fascist party, existed only briefly twenty years ago. There are communists and nationalists […].

There have been short-lived slogans like “The petroleum is ours” ( o Petroleo é nosso ) — even if there is not believed to be much petroleum in the country. The anti-American nationalist is almost always one of two types. Like the few “ racistas ” or anti-semites in Brazil, the first comes usually from the class of the “nouveau riche” and is very rarely a native Brazilian but a recent or first-generation immigrant. (Most of the new fortunes in the country have been made by immigrants.) His business has been granted privileges and strong government protection. Naturally he is afraid of foreign competion, particularly American large-scale competition and particularly if his own product is inferior or producing unfairly big profits. The other type of anti-American nationalist is, as is usual everywhere, the man who feels he must blame all his troubles on others: Jews, Negroes, or another nation. In political office such men can stir up anti-American feeling among the poor and ignorant. But since to most of the very poor and ignorant in Brazil, America means almost nothing, a land as remote as Atlantis, the blame is more apt to be put on a local politician. And it should be remembered that in both World Wars the Brazilian government was on the side of the Allies.

* * *

It is hard, almost impossible for the very rich to understand the poor, — something that Americans, with all their good intentions, often don’t seem to realize. National poverty can produce the same symptoms and reactions everywhere, China or Brazil. Anything a foreigner questions in Brazil, from inefficiency to dirt, from unpainted public buildings to city-manners, from bad transportation to infant mortality — before blaming it on climate, laziness, or national character in general, he should first ask himself “Can this be traced back to simple poverty?” Nine times out of ten it can.

And yet it is not just money that Brazil needs, — far from it. As Eugênio Gudin, Brazil’s most highly respected economist, and Finance Minister under President Dutra, said recently in a fine article in O Globo, Rio’s widely circulated afternoon paper:

“The principal cause of Brazil’s economic underdevelopment resides in the great scarcity, on all levels, of men prepared for the task of increasing national productivity, from engineers, entrepreneurs, and administrators of high calibre, to skilled workmen … Our chief goal, therefore, should be the formation of nuclei of educated men …

“For this we need … to import hundreds of technicians and teachers, and to send thousands of students to foreign countries, not only in the fields of the sciences but also in the various branches of engineering and industrial techniques…”

[Gudin] blames the present inflation and sad state of affairs in great part on the building of Brasília and the wild government waste & spending of the Kubitschek era. The United States helped build Brasília, just as we helped [ text breaks off ]

Large loans to an extravagant corrupt Federal government for vague areas of activity do no good. The only practical way to help Brazil is by helping the “educated nuclei,” and the industries and developments that will actually increase the country’s income.

There is no problem in Brazil that good government, good administration, could not resolve. This fact alone makes Brazil unique among the nations of the world. Under a good government, industrial and material progress would undoubtedly take place at a tremendous rate — all the essentials are there.

But before we condemn Brazil for not having achieved good government as yet — we should distinguish between “progress,” “culture,” and “civilization,” all very different things. The idea of “civilization” has never been especially connected with that of good government. If one had to choose: Is “bad” government so much worse than “good” government that leads to large-scale wars? Is an occasional assassination (although Brazil has actually had very few of them), or an almost-bloodless revolution, any worse than the death of thousands of innocent soldiers? Brazil has a considerable body of both sophisticated and still-living folk-culture. It has many qualities of character and society that go only with high civilization. While I am not making any exaggerated cultural or social claims for Brazil — still, the Greeks got along with bad governments, and so did the Italians of the Renaissance — and no one thinks much the worse of them for it today.

Obviously barring some world-wide disaster, Brazil is going to push and be pushed into industrialization. For the time being however, it is still one country where human-man, poor as he may be, is still more important than producing-man or consuming-man or political-man.

Everyone who visits Brazil agrees that ordinary, average Brazilians are a wonderful people: cheerful, sweet-tempered, witty, and patient — incredibly patient. To see them standing in line for hours, literally for hours, in lines folded back on themselves two or three times the length of a city block, — only to get aboard a broken-down, recklessly-driven bus and return to their tiny suburban houses, where, these days, as like as not, the street has not been repaired, nor the garbage collected, and there may even be no water — is to wonder at their patience. It seems that there should be a revolution every month or so. They have never had the government they deserve, and one wonders how long it will be before they get it.

Miss Moore and the Delight of Imitation

As far as I know, Miss Marianne Moore is The World’s Greatest Living Observer. The English language is fortunate in occasionally falling heir to such feats of description, say, as this, of lightning:

Flashes lacing two clouds above or the cloud and the earth started upon the eyes in live veins of rincing or riddling liquid white, inched and jagged as if it were the shivering of a bright riband string which had once been kept bound round a blade and danced back into its pleatings.

Or this:

Drops of rain hanging on nails etc. seen with only the lower rim lighted like nails (of fingers).

But they are prose and by Hopkins, and he is dead. Of course Hopkins occasionally did introduce instances of equally startling accuracy into his poetry with such lines as,

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple

Bloom lights the orchard apple …

Or, to quote something approaching nearer Miss Moore’s special provinces, the

Star-eyed strawberry breasted

Throstle …

and the famous

rose-moles all in stipple upon trout …

But Miss Moore has bettered these over and over again, and keeps right on doing it.

The firs stand in a procession, each with an

emerald turkey-foot at the top …

the blades of the oars

moving together like the feet of water-spiders …

The East with its

snails, its emotional

shorthand …

Peter, her immortal cat, with his

small tufts of fronds

or katydid legs above each eye.

and

the shadbones regularly set about his mouth, to droop or rise in unison like the porcupine’s quills …

The swan

with flamingo-colored, maple

leaflike feet.

and the lizard,

stiff,

and somewhat heavy, like fresh putty on the hand.