FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]Op. Cit. P. 51.[2]See hisCantos Populares do Brasil,Contos Populares do Brasil,Estudos sobre a Poesia Popular Brasileira. These works he summarizes in Chapter VII, Volume I, of hisHistoria da Litteratura Brasileira, 2a Edição melhorada pelo auctor. Rio de Janeiro, 1902.[3]The frank, practical song, minus the African refrain, runs thus: “You like me and I like you. If pa consents, oh my darling, I’ll marry you.… If you’ll give me my clothes and furnish my food, if you pay all the household expenses, oh, my darling, I’ll come to live with you.”[4]Op. Cit. P. 58.[5]Résumé de l’histoire Littéraire du Portugal suivi du Résumé de l’histoire littéraire du Brésil.Ferdinand Denis. Paris, 1826. The Brazilian section occupies pages 513-601.[6]For an enlightening exposition of the Portuguese popular refrain known ascossantes, see A. F. G. Bell’sPortuguese Literature, London, 1922, pages 22-35. Their salient trait, like that of their Brazilian relative, is a certain wistful sadness.[7]Oliveira Lima.Formación Historica de la Nacionalidad Brasileña.Madrid, 1918. This Spanish version, by Carlos Pereyra, is much easier to procure than the original. Pp. 35-38.[8]See, however, on the matter of priority, José Verissimo’sEstudos de Literatura Brazileira, Quarta Serie. Pp. 25-64.[9]Ibid. P. 54. Also pp. 63-64. “To be the first, the most ancient, the oldest in any pursuit, is a merit.… This is the only merit that Bento Teixeira can boast.”[10]Verissimo, always a suggestive commentator, presents an interesting reason for these early national panegyrics. See the essay cited in the preceding notes, pages 50-51. He attributes the swelling chorus of eulogies to what might today be called a national “inferiority complex.” “Having no legitimate cause for glory,—great deeds accomplished or great men produced,—we pride ourselves ingenuously upon our primitive Nature, or upon the opulence,—which we exaggerate—of our soil.”[11]Oliveira Lima, op. cit. pages 45-46, comments interestingly upon Brazil’s lack of a national poet during the sixteenth century. “Brazil did not possess, during the XVIth century a national poet who could express, with all the sincerity of his soul, the passion of the struggle undertaken by culture against nature.… And this absence of a representative poet is evidenced throughout our literature, since, after all, the Indianism of the XIXth century was only a poetic convention grafted upon the trunk of the political break with the Portuguese fatherland.… The fact is that the exploits of yesterday still await the singer who shall chant them. The Indians were idealized by a Romanticism in quest of elevated souls; the Africans found defenders who rose in audacious flight, but the brave pioneers of the conquest, men of epic stature, have not received even the same measure of sympathy.”[12]Ronald de Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 87-88.[13]De Carvalho. Op. P. 96-97.[14]“I have explained the fruits and the vegetables that cause so much jealousy on Portugal’s part; I have listed those things for which Brazil may be envied. As title to preference over all the rest of the earth it enfolds four A’s. It has the first A in itsarvoredos(trees), ever green and fair to gaze upon; it has the second A in its pure atmosphere (ares), so pleasant and certain in temperature; it has the third A in its cool waters (aguas), that refresh the throat and bring health; the fourth A in its delightful sugar (assucar), which is the fairest gift of all the world. The four A’s then, arearvoredos,assucar,aguas,ares.”[15]Estudos, quarta serie.P. 47-48.[16]Le Brésil Litteraire. Histoire de la Littérature brésilienne suivie d’un choix de morceaux tirés des meilleurs auteurs b(r)ésiliens par Ferdinand Wolf. Berlin, 1863.See, for a discussion of this book, the Selective Critical Bibliography at the back of the present work.[17]Op. Cit. P. 109.[18]The Brazilians are beasts, hard at work their lives long, in order to support Portuguese knaves.[19]For a good résumé of Caviedes’ labours, with valuable biographical indications, see Luis Alberto Sánchez,Historia de la Literatura Peruana, I. Los Poetas de la Colonia, Pp. 186-200.[20]Ibid. P. 190.[21]The sun is born and lasts but a single day; dark night follows upon the light; beauty dies amidst the gloomy shadows and joy amid continued grief. Why, then, if the sun must die, was it born? Why, if light be beautiful, does it not endure? How is beauty thus transfigured? How does pleasure thus trust pain? But let firmness be lacking in sun and light, let permanence flee beauty, and in joy, let there be a note of sadness. Let the world begin, at length, in ignorance; for, whatever the boon, it is by nature constant only in its inconstancy.[22]“The story of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand is but a child’s tale compared with the fearless adventure of our colonial brothers.” Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 127.[23]Oliveira Lima.Aspectos da Litteratura Colonial Brazileira.Leipzig, 1896. This youthful work of the eminent cosmopolite furnishes valuable as well as entertaining collateral reading upon the entire colonial period in Brazil. The standpoint is often historical rather than literary, yet the proportions are fairly well observed.[24]See, for just such inclusion, B. Gorin’sDie Geshichte vun Yiddishen Theater, New York, 1918, 2 vols. (In Yiddish.) Page 33, Volume I. With reference to the Jew and comic opera, rumours of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s partial Jewish origin still persist.[25]Diminutive ofmoda, and signifying, literally, a new song. Themodinhais the most characteristic of Brazilian popular forms, a transformation of the troubadors’jácaraand the Portuguesefado. It is generally replete with love and the allied feelings.[26]The chief works of Antonio José da Silva areVida do Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança(1733);EzopaidaouVida de Ezopo(1734);Os Encantos de Medea(1735);AmphytriãoouJupiter e Alcmena(1736);Labyrintho de Creta(1736);Guerras do Alecrim e da Manjerona(1737); a highly amusing Molièresque farce, considered by many his best;As Variedades de Proteu(1737);Precipicio de Faetonte(posthumous).The latest view of Antonio José (See Bell’sPortuguese Literature, pages 282-284); whom Southey considered “the best of their drama writers,” is that his plays would in all likelihood have received little “attention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of the author’s life.” This probably overstates the case againstO Judeu, but it indicates an important non-literary reason for his popularity.

[1]Op. Cit. P. 51.

[2]See hisCantos Populares do Brasil,Contos Populares do Brasil,Estudos sobre a Poesia Popular Brasileira. These works he summarizes in Chapter VII, Volume I, of hisHistoria da Litteratura Brasileira, 2a Edição melhorada pelo auctor. Rio de Janeiro, 1902.

[3]The frank, practical song, minus the African refrain, runs thus: “You like me and I like you. If pa consents, oh my darling, I’ll marry you.… If you’ll give me my clothes and furnish my food, if you pay all the household expenses, oh, my darling, I’ll come to live with you.”

[4]Op. Cit. P. 58.

[5]Résumé de l’histoire Littéraire du Portugal suivi du Résumé de l’histoire littéraire du Brésil.Ferdinand Denis. Paris, 1826. The Brazilian section occupies pages 513-601.

[6]For an enlightening exposition of the Portuguese popular refrain known ascossantes, see A. F. G. Bell’sPortuguese Literature, London, 1922, pages 22-35. Their salient trait, like that of their Brazilian relative, is a certain wistful sadness.

[7]Oliveira Lima.Formación Historica de la Nacionalidad Brasileña.Madrid, 1918. This Spanish version, by Carlos Pereyra, is much easier to procure than the original. Pp. 35-38.

[8]See, however, on the matter of priority, José Verissimo’sEstudos de Literatura Brazileira, Quarta Serie. Pp. 25-64.

[9]Ibid. P. 54. Also pp. 63-64. “To be the first, the most ancient, the oldest in any pursuit, is a merit.… This is the only merit that Bento Teixeira can boast.”

[10]Verissimo, always a suggestive commentator, presents an interesting reason for these early national panegyrics. See the essay cited in the preceding notes, pages 50-51. He attributes the swelling chorus of eulogies to what might today be called a national “inferiority complex.” “Having no legitimate cause for glory,—great deeds accomplished or great men produced,—we pride ourselves ingenuously upon our primitive Nature, or upon the opulence,—which we exaggerate—of our soil.”

[11]Oliveira Lima, op. cit. pages 45-46, comments interestingly upon Brazil’s lack of a national poet during the sixteenth century. “Brazil did not possess, during the XVIth century a national poet who could express, with all the sincerity of his soul, the passion of the struggle undertaken by culture against nature.… And this absence of a representative poet is evidenced throughout our literature, since, after all, the Indianism of the XIXth century was only a poetic convention grafted upon the trunk of the political break with the Portuguese fatherland.… The fact is that the exploits of yesterday still await the singer who shall chant them. The Indians were idealized by a Romanticism in quest of elevated souls; the Africans found defenders who rose in audacious flight, but the brave pioneers of the conquest, men of epic stature, have not received even the same measure of sympathy.”

[12]Ronald de Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 87-88.

[13]De Carvalho. Op. P. 96-97.

[14]“I have explained the fruits and the vegetables that cause so much jealousy on Portugal’s part; I have listed those things for which Brazil may be envied. As title to preference over all the rest of the earth it enfolds four A’s. It has the first A in itsarvoredos(trees), ever green and fair to gaze upon; it has the second A in its pure atmosphere (ares), so pleasant and certain in temperature; it has the third A in its cool waters (aguas), that refresh the throat and bring health; the fourth A in its delightful sugar (assucar), which is the fairest gift of all the world. The four A’s then, arearvoredos,assucar,aguas,ares.”

[15]Estudos, quarta serie.P. 47-48.

[16]Le Brésil Litteraire. Histoire de la Littérature brésilienne suivie d’un choix de morceaux tirés des meilleurs auteurs b(r)ésiliens par Ferdinand Wolf. Berlin, 1863.See, for a discussion of this book, the Selective Critical Bibliography at the back of the present work.

[17]Op. Cit. P. 109.

[18]The Brazilians are beasts, hard at work their lives long, in order to support Portuguese knaves.

[19]For a good résumé of Caviedes’ labours, with valuable biographical indications, see Luis Alberto Sánchez,Historia de la Literatura Peruana, I. Los Poetas de la Colonia, Pp. 186-200.

[20]Ibid. P. 190.

[21]The sun is born and lasts but a single day; dark night follows upon the light; beauty dies amidst the gloomy shadows and joy amid continued grief. Why, then, if the sun must die, was it born? Why, if light be beautiful, does it not endure? How is beauty thus transfigured? How does pleasure thus trust pain? But let firmness be lacking in sun and light, let permanence flee beauty, and in joy, let there be a note of sadness. Let the world begin, at length, in ignorance; for, whatever the boon, it is by nature constant only in its inconstancy.

[22]“The story of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand is but a child’s tale compared with the fearless adventure of our colonial brothers.” Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 127.

[23]Oliveira Lima.Aspectos da Litteratura Colonial Brazileira.Leipzig, 1896. This youthful work of the eminent cosmopolite furnishes valuable as well as entertaining collateral reading upon the entire colonial period in Brazil. The standpoint is often historical rather than literary, yet the proportions are fairly well observed.

[24]See, for just such inclusion, B. Gorin’sDie Geshichte vun Yiddishen Theater, New York, 1918, 2 vols. (In Yiddish.) Page 33, Volume I. With reference to the Jew and comic opera, rumours of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s partial Jewish origin still persist.

[25]Diminutive ofmoda, and signifying, literally, a new song. Themodinhais the most characteristic of Brazilian popular forms, a transformation of the troubadors’jácaraand the Portuguesefado. It is generally replete with love and the allied feelings.

[26]The chief works of Antonio José da Silva areVida do Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança(1733);EzopaidaouVida de Ezopo(1734);Os Encantos de Medea(1735);AmphytriãoouJupiter e Alcmena(1736);Labyrintho de Creta(1736);Guerras do Alecrim e da Manjerona(1737); a highly amusing Molièresque farce, considered by many his best;As Variedades de Proteu(1737);Precipicio de Faetonte(posthumous).The latest view of Antonio José (See Bell’sPortuguese Literature, pages 282-284); whom Southey considered “the best of their drama writers,” is that his plays would in all likelihood have received little “attention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of the author’s life.” This probably overstates the case againstO Judeu, but it indicates an important non-literary reason for his popularity.

The latest view of Antonio José (See Bell’sPortuguese Literature, pages 282-284); whom Southey considered “the best of their drama writers,” is that his plays would in all likelihood have received little “attention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of the author’s life.” This probably overstates the case againstO Judeu, but it indicates an important non-literary reason for his popularity.

Stirrings of Revolt—The Inconfidencia—Two Epics:UraguayandCaramurú—The Lyrists of Minas Geraes: Claudio da Costa, Gonzaga, Alvarenga Peixoto, Silva Alvarenga—Minor figures—Political Satire—Early Nineteenth Century—José Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva.

Struggle for the territory of Brazil had bred a love for the soil that was bound sooner or later to become spiritualized into an aspiration toward autonomy. Thebrasileiroswere not forever to remain thebestasthat the hell-mouth of Bahia had called them, nor provide luxury for themaganos de Portugal. The history of colonial exploitation repeated itself: Spain with Spanish-America, Portugal with Brazil, England with the future United States. Taxes grew, and with them, resentment. Yet, as so often, the articulation of that rebellious spirit came not from the chief sufferers of oppression, but from an idealistic band of poets whose exact motives have not yet been thoroughly clarified by historical investigation. Few less fitted to head a separatist movement than these lyric, idealistic spirits who form part of theInconfidencia(Disloyalty) groupimmortalized in Brazilian history through the hanging ofTiradentesand the imprisonment and exile of a number of others. These men were premature in their attempt, and foredoomed to failure, but they lived, as well as wrote, an ideal and thus form at once an epoch in the national history and the nation’s letters. The freedom won by the United States, the foreshadowing of the French revolution, inspired in them ideas of a Brazilian republic; how surely idealistic was such an aim may be realized when we recall that Brazil’s emancipation was initiated with a monarchy (1822) and that, although it has been a republic since 1889, there are a number of serious thinkers who consider the more liberal form of government still less a boon than a disadvantage.

In 1783, Luis da Cunha de Menezes, a vain, pompous fellow, was named Captain-General of the Province of Minas. It was against him that were launched the nine satirical verse letters calledCartas Chilenasand signed by the pseudonymCritillo(1786). Menezes was succeeded by Barbacena (1788) who it was rumoured, meant to exact the payment of 700arrobasof gold, overdue from the province. It was this that proved the immediate stimulus to an only half-proved case of revolt, which, harshly suppressed, deprived Brazil of a number of its ripest talents.

From the name of the province—Minas Geraes—these poets have been grouped into a so-called Mineira school, which includes the two epicists, Frei José de Santa Rita Durão and José Basilio de Gama, and the four lyrists, Claudio Manoel da Costa, Thomas Antonio Gonzaga, Ignacio José de Alvarenga Peixoto and Manoel Ignacio da Silva Alvarenga.

Critics are not agreed upon the relative non-esthetic values of Basilio da Gama’sUraguay(1769)[1]and Santa Rita Durão’sCaramurú(1781). Wolf, with Almeida-Garrett, finds the first a truly national poem; Carvalho calls it “the best and most perfect poem that appeared in Brazil throughout the colonial period”; the early Denis found it not very original, for all its stylistic amenities; Romero, conceding its superiority toCaramurúin style and form, finds it inferior in historical understanding, terming the latter epic “the most Brazilian poem we possess.” Verissimo, who has written an extended comparison of the two poems,[2]is, to me, at least, most satisfying of all upon the problems involved and the esthetic considerations implied. In both the epics he discerns the all-pervading influence of Camões, the emulation of whom has seemed to cast upon every succeeding poet the obligation of writing his epic. Thus the chief initiators of Brazilian Romanticism, Porto Alegre and Magalhães, had to indite, respectively, aColomboand aConfederação dos Tamoyos, and Gonçalves Dias beganOs Tymbiras, while José de Alencar, romantic of the Romantics, started aFilhos de Tupan, “which happily for our good and his own, he never completed.” But what renders both theUruguayand theCaramurúimportant in the national literature is the fact that they stand out from the ruck of earlier and later Camonean imitations by virtue of a certain spontaneity of origin and an intuitive, historic relation with their day. It is not known whetherthe authors, though contemporaries, knew each other or read their respective works. Yet both instinctively employed indigenous material and revealed that same “national sentiment which was already stammering, though timorously, in certain poets contemporaneous with them or immediately preceding, such as Alvarenga Peixoto and Silva Alvarenga, with whom there enter into our poetry, mingled with classical images and comparison, names and things of our own. Though like Basilio and Durão, loyal Portuguese, these poets speak already of fatherland with exaltation and love. The idea of the fatherland, the national thought, which in Gregorio de Mattos is as yet a simple movement of bad humour, vagrant spite and the revolt of an undisciplined fellow, becomes in them the tender affection for their native land.…”

TheUruguayespecially reveals this nascent nationalism as it existed among the loyal Portuguese in the epoch just previous to theInconfidencia. “We must remember that the work of the Mineira poets” (and here Verissimo includes, of course, the lyrists to which we presently come) “abound in impressions of loyalty to Portugal.… Let us not forget José Bonifacio, the so-called patriarch of our Independence, served Portugal devotedly first as scientist in official intellectual commissions and professor at the University of Coimbra, and then as volunteer Major of the Academic Corps against the French of Napoleon, and finally as Intendente Geral, or as we should say today, Chief of Police, of the city of Porto. And José Bonifacio, like Washington, was at first hostile, or at least averse, to independence.”

TheUruguayis certainly less intense than the Caramurú in its patriotism. The author of the first wroteit, as he said, to satisfy a certain curiosity about Uruguay; also, he might have added, to flatter his patron, the then powerful Pombal, who, it will be recalled, at one time harboured the idea of transplanting the Portuguese throne to the colony across the sea. It would be an error, however, to see in the small epic (but five cantos long) a glorification of the native. The real hero, as Verissimo shows, is not Cacambo, but the Portuguese General Gomes Freire de Andrade. The villains, of course, are the Jesuits out of whose fold the author had come,—the helpers of the Indians of Uruguay who revolted against the treaty between Portugal and Spain according to which they were given into the power of the Portuguese. The action, for an epic, is thus restricted in both time and space, let alone significance, yet thus early the liberating genius of Basilio da Gama produced, for Portuguese literature, “its first romantic poem.” Here is the first—or surely one of the first—authentic evidences of what the Spanish-American critics call “literary Americanism,”—all the more interesting because so largely unpremeditated.

The “romanticism” of theUruguayis worth dwelling upon, if only to help reveal our long-tolerated terminological inadequacy.[3]It begins, not with the regularinvocation, but with a quasi-Horatian plungein medias res. It does not employ the outworn octave, but sonorous blank verse. The freedom of its style and the harmony of its verse “announce Garrett, Gonçalves Dias[4]and the future admirable modellers of blank verse, in the distribution of the episodes and the novelty of language and simile.” The language is not the Gongoristic extravagance of the Academicians; it is modern, even contemporary, grandiloquent in the Spanish style. The “Indianism” of the poem, in which Basilio da Gama forecasts the later Indianism of the Romantics, is not to be confused with that later type; for it must be recalled that Basilio da Gama did not look upon his Indians with that sentimental veneration characteristic of the nineteenth century Brazilians. As they were secondary to his purpose, so were they in his conception.“Two and distinct are the features of this aspect of our literature. The first Indianism, initiated by Basilio da Gama, continued by Durão and almost limited to the two epics, is hardly more than a poetic artifice; the Indian enters as a necessity of the subject, a simple esthetic or rhetorical means. He is not sung, but is rather an element of the song. In the second Indianism, that of the Romantics,—the loftiest representative of which is Gonçalves Dias,—the Indian advances from the position of an accessory to that of an essential element; he is the subject and the object of the poem. In this first phase of Indianism the sympathy of the poet is transferred only incidentally to the savage.… The contrary case obtains in the second phase; the sympathy of the poet is his entirely. So that, in the main, it is the attitude of the poet that distinguished the two Indianisms: indifferent in the first, sympathetic in the second.” And since choices must be made, Verissimo is right when he finds the earlier poets nearer to the sociological truth in preferring Portuguese civilization, with all its defects, to the imaginary charms of indigenous life. Yet sociological error of the Romantic Indianists proved more than poetic truth, for it was fecund “not only for literature, but even for the development of the national sentiment.” … “O Uruguaypossesses in Portuguese literature the value of being the first poem of a freer, newer, more spontaneous character after the series of epics derived fromOs Lusiadas, and in Brazilian literature that of being the initiator of the movement which, whatever its aberrations, contributed the most to the independence of our letters.…”

There is far less artistic pleasure in readingO Caramurú; it may well be, as most agree, that it, rather thanO Uruguay, is the national poem, but such a distinction pertains rather to patriotism than to poetry. The better verses of the earlier epic are a balm to the ear and a stimulus to the imagination; those of the later lack communicative essence. Santa Rita Durão, proclaiming in his preface the parity of Brazil with India as the subject of an epic, thus places himself as a rival of Camões; instead, he is an indifferent versifier and an unconscionable imitator; his patriotism, as his purpose, is avowed. Thesubject of his epic is the half-legendary figure of Diogo Alvares Correa,[5]a sort of Brazilian John Smith, who, wrecked upon the coast, so impressed the natives with the seeming magic of his firearms that he was received as their chief. His particular Pocahontas was the maiden Paraguassú, whom he is supposed to have taken with him to France; here she was baptized—as the disproved story goes—and at the marriage of the pair none less than Henry II and Catherine de Medicis stood sponsor to them.

Paragussú’s chief rival is Moema, and the one undisputed passage of the poem is the section in which, together with a group of other lovelorn maidens, she swims after the vessel that is bearing him and his chosen bride off to France. In her dying voice she upbraids him and then sinks beneath the waves.

Perde o lume dos olhos, pasma e treme,Pallida a côr, o aspecto moribundo,Com a mão ja sem vigor soltando o leme,Entre as salsas espumas desce ao fundo;Mas na onda do mar, que irado frema,Tornando a apparecer desde o profundo:“Ah! Diogo cruel!” disse com magua.E sem mais vista ser, sorveu-se n’agua.[6]

Perde o lume dos olhos, pasma e treme,

Pallida a côr, o aspecto moribundo,

Com a mão ja sem vigor soltando o leme,

Entre as salsas espumas desce ao fundo;

Mas na onda do mar, que irado frema,

Tornando a apparecer desde o profundo:

“Ah! Diogo cruel!” disse com magua.

E sem mais vista ser, sorveu-se n’agua.[6]

Yet there is a single line inO Uruguaywhich contains more poetry than this octave and many another of the stanzas in this ten-canto epic. It is that in which is described the end of Cacambo’s sweetheart Lindoya, after she has drunk the fatal potion that reveals to her the destruction of Lisbon and the expulsion of the Jesuits by Pombal, and then commits suicide by letting a serpent bite her.

Tanto ere bella no seu rostro a morte!So beautiful lay death upon her face!

Tanto ere bella no seu rostro a morte!

So beautiful lay death upon her face!

LikeO Uruguay, soO Caramurúends upon a note of spiritual allegiance to Portugal. It is worth while recalling, too, that the Indian of the first is from a Spanish-speaking tribe, and that the Indian of the second is a native Brazilian type.

And Verissimo points out that if the Indian occupies more space in the second, his rôle is really less significant than inO Uruguay.

The four lyrists of the Mineira group are Claudio Manoel da Costa (1729-1789); Thomas Antonio Gonzaga (1744-1807-9) the most famous of the quartet;José Ignacio de Alvarenga Peixoto (1744-1793), and Manoel Ignacio da Silva Alvarenga (1749-1814). Examination of their work shows the inaccuracy of terming them a “school,” as some Brazilian critics have loosely done. These men did not of set purpose advance an esthetic theory and seek to exemplify it in their writings; they are children of their day rather than brothers-in-arms. Like the epic poets, so they, in their verses, foreshadow the coming of the Romanticists some fifty years later; the spirits of the old world and the new contend in their lines as in their lives. They are, in a sense, transition figures, chief representatives of the “Arcadian” spirit of the day.

Claudio de Costa, translator of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” was chiefly influenced by the Italians and the French. Romero, in his positive way, has catalogued him with the race of Lamartine and even called him a predecessor of the Brazilian Byronians. A certain subjectivity does appear despite the man’s classical leanings, but there is nothing of him of the Childe Harold or the Don Juan. Indeed, as often as not he is a cold stylist and his influence, today, is looked upon as having been chiefly technical; he was a writer rather than a thinker or a feeler, and one of his sonnets alone has suggested the combined influence of Camões, Petrarch and Dante:

Que feliz fôra o mundo, se perdidaA lembrança de Amor, de Amor e gloria,Igualmente dos gostos a memoriaFicasse para sempre consumida!Mas a pena mais triste, e mais crescidaHe vêr, que em nenhum tempo é transitoriaEsta de Amor fantastica victoria,Que sempre na lembrança é repetida.Amantes, os que ardeis nesse cuidado,Fugi de Amor ao venenozo intento,Que lá para o depois vos tem guardado.Não vos engane a infiel contentamento;Que esse presente bem, quando passado,Sobrará para idéa de tormento.[7]

Que feliz fôra o mundo, se perdidaA lembrança de Amor, de Amor e gloria,Igualmente dos gostos a memoriaFicasse para sempre consumida!

Que feliz fôra o mundo, se perdida

A lembrança de Amor, de Amor e gloria,

Igualmente dos gostos a memoria

Ficasse para sempre consumida!

Mas a pena mais triste, e mais crescidaHe vêr, que em nenhum tempo é transitoriaEsta de Amor fantastica victoria,Que sempre na lembrança é repetida.

Mas a pena mais triste, e mais crescida

He vêr, que em nenhum tempo é transitoria

Esta de Amor fantastica victoria,

Que sempre na lembrança é repetida.

Amantes, os que ardeis nesse cuidado,Fugi de Amor ao venenozo intento,Que lá para o depois vos tem guardado.

Amantes, os que ardeis nesse cuidado,

Fugi de Amor ao venenozo intento,

Que lá para o depois vos tem guardado.

Não vos engane a infiel contentamento;Que esse presente bem, quando passado,Sobrará para idéa de tormento.[7]

Não vos engane a infiel contentamento;

Que esse presente bem, quando passado,

Sobrará para idéa de tormento.[7]

The native note appears in his work, as inA Fabula do Riberão do Carmoand inVilla-Rica, but it is neither strong nor constant. He is of the classic pastoralists, “the chief representative,” as Carvalho calls him, of Arcadism in Brazil.

Of more enduring, more appealing stuff is the famous lover Thomas Antonio Gonzaga, termed by Wolf a “modern Petrarch” (for all these Arcadians must have each his Laura) and enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen as the writer of their Song of Songs. For that, in a sense, is what Gonzaga’s poems toMariliasuggest. No other book of love poems has so appealed to the Portuguese reader; the number of editions through which theMarilia de Dirceuhas gone is second only to the printings ofOs Lusiadas, and has, since the original issue in 1792, reached to thirty-four. Gonzaga’s Marilia (in real life D. Maria Joaquina Dorothea de Seixas Brandão) rises from the verses of theselyrasinto flesh and blood reality; the poet’s love, however much redolent ofPetrarchian conventions, is no imagined passion. His heart, as he told her in one of his most popular stanzas, was vaster than the world and it was her abode. Gonzaga, like Claudio, was one of theInconfidencia; he fell in love with his lady at the age of forty, when she was eighteen, and sentimental Brazilians have never forgiven her for having lived on to a very ripe old age after her Dirceu, as he was known in Arcadian circles, died in exile. Yet she may have felt the loss deeply, for a story which Verissimo believes authentic tells of D. Maria, once asked how old she was, replying: “Whenhewas arrested, I was eighteen.…” It is sweet enough not to be true.

As Antonio José, despite his Brazilian birth, is virtually Portuguese in culture and style, so Gonzaga, despite his Portuguese birth, is Brazilian by virtue of his poetic sources and his peculiar lyrism,—a blend of the classic form with a passion which, though admirably restrained, tends to overleap its barriers. If, as time goes on, he surrenders his sway to the more sensuous lyrics of later poets, he is none the less a fixed star in the poetic constellation. He sings a type of constant love that pleases even amid today’s half maddened and half maddening erotic deliquescence. Some poets’ gods bring them belief in women; his lady brings him a belief in God:

Noto, gentil Marilia, os teus cabellos;E noto as faces de jasmins e rosas:Noto os teus olhos bellos;Os brancos dentes e as feições mimosas:Quem fez uma obra tão perfeita e linda,Minha bella Marilia, tambem pôdeFazer o céo e mais, si ha mais ainda.[8]

Noto, gentil Marilia, os teus cabellos;

E noto as faces de jasmins e rosas:

Noto os teus olhos bellos;

Os brancos dentes e as feições mimosas:

Quem fez uma obra tão perfeita e linda,

Minha bella Marilia, tambem pôde

Fazer o céo e mais, si ha mais ainda.[8]

The famous book is divided into two parts, the first written before, the second, after his exile. As might be expected; the first is primaveral, aglow with beauty, love, joy. Too, it lacks the depth of the more sincere second, which is more close to the personal life of the suffering artist. He began in glad hope; he ends in dark doubt. “The fate of all things changes,” runs one of his refrains. “Must only mine not alter?” One unconscious testimony of his sincerity is the frequent change of rhythm in his lines, which achieve now and then a sweet music of thought.

“Marilia de Dirceu,” Verissimo has written, “is of exceptional importance in Brazilian literature. It is the most noble and perfect idealization of love that we possess.” (I believe that the key-word to the critic’s sentence is “idealization.”)“Despite its classicism, it is above all a personal work; it is free of and superior to, the formulas and the rivalries of schools.… It is perhaps the book of human passion, such as the many we have now in our literatures that are troubled and tormented by grief, by doubt or despair. It is, none the less, in both our poetry and in that of the Portuguese tongue, the supreme book of love, the noblest, the purest, the most deeply felt, the most beautiful that has been written in that tongue since Bernardim Ribeiro and the sonnets of Camões.”[9]

Of the work of Alvarenga Peixoto, translator of Maffei’sMerope, author of a score of sonnets, some odes andlyrasand theCanto Genethliaco, little need here be said. TheCanto Genethliacois a baptismal offering in verse, written for the Captain-General D. Rodrigo José de Menezes in honour of his son Thomaz; it is recalled mainly for its “nativism,” which, as is the case with the epic-writers, is not inconsistent with loyalty to the crown. There is a certain Brazilianism, too, as Wolf noted, in hisIde to Maria.

As Gonzaga had his Marilia, so the youngest of the Mineira group, Silva Alvarenga, had his Glaura. In him, more than in any other of the lyrists, may be noted the stirrings of the later romanticism. He strove after, and at times achieved acôr americana(“American color”), and although he must introduce mythological figures upon the native scene, he had the seeing eye. Carvalho considers him the link between the Arcadians and the Romantics, “the transitional figure between the seventeenth-century of Claudio and the subjectivism of Gonçalves Dias.” To the reader in search of esthetic pleasure he is not such good company as Gonzaga and Marilia, though he possesses a certain communicative ardour.

The question of the authorship of theCartas Chilenas, salient among satirical writings of the eighteenth century, has long troubled historical critics. In 1863, whenthe second edition of the poem appeared, it was signed Gonzaga, and later opinion tends to reinforce that claim. If the query as to authorship is a matter more for history than for literature, so too, one may believe, is the poem itself, which, in the figure ofFanfarrão Mineziotravesties the Governor Luis da Cunha Menezes.[10]

Like Gregorio de Mattos, the author of theCartasis a spiteful scorpion. But he has a deeper knowledge of things and there is more humanity to his bitterness. “Here the Europeans diverted themselves by going on the hunt for savages, as if hot on the chase of wild beasts through the thickets,” he growls in one part. “There was one who gave his cubs, as their daily food, human flesh; wishing to excuse so grave a crime he alleged that these savages, though resembling us in outward appearance, were not like us in soul.” He flays the loose manners of his day—thankless task of the eternal satirist!—that surrounded the petty, sensuous tyrant. There is, in his lines, the suggestion of reality, but it is a reality that the foreigner, and perhaps the Brazilian himself, must reconstruct with the aid of history, and this diminishes the appeal of the verses. One need not have known Marilia to appreciate her lover’s rhymes; theCartas Chilenas, on the other hand, require a knowledge of Luiz de Menezes’ epoch.

The lesser poets of the era may be passed over with scant mention. Best of them all is Domingos Caldas Barbosa (1740-1800) known to his New Arcadia as Lereno and author of an uneven collection marred by frequent improvisation. The prose of the century, inferiorto the verse, produced no figures that can claim space in so succinct an outline as this.

On January 23, 1808, the regent Dom João fled from Napoleon to Brazil, thus making the colony the temporary seat of the Portuguese realm. The psychological effect of this upon the growing spirit of independence was tremendous; so great, indeed, was Dom João’s influence upon the colony that he has been called the founder of the Brazilian nationality. The ports of the land, hitherto restricted to vessels of the Portuguese monarchy, were thrown open to the world; the first newspapers appeared; Brazil, having tasted the power that was bestowed by the mere temporary presence of the monarch upon its soil, could not well relinquish this supremacy after he departed in 1821. The era, moreover, was one of colonial revolt; between 1810 and 1826 the Spanish dependencies of America rose against the motherland and achieved their own freedom; 1822 marks the establishment of the independent Brazilian monarchy.

Now begins a literature that may be properly called national, though even yet it wavered between the moribund classicism and the nascent romanticism, even as the form of government remained monarchial on its slow and dubious way to republicanism. Arcadian imagery still held sway in poetry and there was a decline from the originality of the Mineira group.

Souza Caldas (1762-1814) and São Carlos (1763-1829) represent, together with José Eloy Ottoni (1764-1851), the religious strains of the Brazilian lyre. Thefirst, influenced by Rousseau, is avowedly Christian in purpose but the inner struggle that produced his verses makes of him a significant figure in a generally sterile era, and hisOde ao homen selvagemcontains lines of appeal to our own contemporary dubiety. São Carlos’s mystic poemA Assumpção da Santissima Virgempossesses, today, merely the importance of its nativistic naïveté; for the third Canto, describing Paradise, he makes extensive use of the Brazilian flora. There is, too, a long description of Rio de Janeiro which describes very little. José Eloy Ottoni, more estimable for his piety and his patriotism than for his poetry, translated the Book of Job as Souza Caldas did the Psalms, and with great success.

Though these religious poets are of secondary importance to letters, they provided one of the necessary ingredients of the impending Romantic triumph; their Christian outlook, added to nationalism, tended to produce, as Wolf has indicated, a genuinely Brazilian romanticism.

Head and shoulders above these figures stands the patriarchal form of José Bonifacio de Andrade e Silva, (1763-1838) one of the most versatile and able men of his day. His scientific accomplishments have found ample chronicling in the proper places; quickly he won a reputation throughout Europe. “The name of José Bonifacio,” wrote Varnhagen, “ … is so interwoven with all that happened in the domains of politics, literature and the sciences that his life encompasses the history of a great period.…” His poems, in all truth but a small part of his labours, were published in 1825 under the Arcadianname of Americo Elysio. They are, like himself, a thing of violent passions. InAos Bahianoshe exclaims:

Amei a liberdade e a independenciaDa doce cara patria, a quem o LusoOpprimia sem dó, com risa e mofa:Eis o meu crime todo![11]

Amei a liberdade e a independencia

Da doce cara patria, a quem o Luso

Opprimia sem dó, com risa e mofa:

Eis o meu crime todo![11]

Yet this is but half the story, for the savant’s political life traced a by no means unwavering line. Two years before the publication of his poems he who so much loved to command fell from power with the dissolution of the Constituinte and he reacted in characteristic violence. Brazilians no longer loved liberty:

Mas de tudo acabou da patria gloria!Da liberdade o brado, que troavaPelo inteiro Brasil, hoje enmudece,Entre grilhoes e mortes.Sobre sus ruinas gemem, choram,Longe da patria os filhos foragidos:Accusa-os de traição, porque o amavam,Servil infame bando.[12]

Mas de tudo acabou da patria gloria!Da liberdade o brado, que troavaPelo inteiro Brasil, hoje enmudece,Entre grilhoes e mortes.

Mas de tudo acabou da patria gloria!

Da liberdade o brado, que troava

Pelo inteiro Brasil, hoje enmudece,

Entre grilhoes e mortes.

Sobre sus ruinas gemem, choram,Longe da patria os filhos foragidos:Accusa-os de traição, porque o amavam,Servil infame bando.[12]

Sobre sus ruinas gemem, choram,

Longe da patria os filhos foragidos:

Accusa-os de traição, porque o amavam,

Servil infame bando.[12]

A number of other versifiers and prose writers are included by Brazilians in their accounts of the national letters; Romero, indeed, with a conception of literature more approaching that of sociology than of belles lettres, expatiates with untiring gusto upon the work of a formidablesuccession of mediocrities. We have neither the space nor the patience for them here.

It is during the early part of the period epitomized in this chapter that Brazilian literature, born of the Portuguese, began to be drawn upon by the mother country. “In the last quarter of the eighteenth century,” quotes Verissimo from Theophilo Braga’sFilinto Elysio, “Portuguese poetry receives an impulse of renovation from several Brazilian talents.… They call to mind the situation of Rome, when the literary talents of the Gauls, of Spain and of Northern Africa, enrich Latin literature with new creations.”

The period as a whole represents a decided step forward from the inchoate ramblings of the previous epoch. Yet, with few exceptions, it is of interest rather in retrospection, viewed from our knowledge of the romantic movement up to which it was leading.

FOOTNOTES:[1]The original title was spelledUraguay. Later writers either retain the first or replace it with the more commonu.[2]Estudos.Segunda Serie, pp. 89-129.[3]In Portuguese literature, as Verissimo points out in his interesting parallel between the two epics, it is no easy matter to indicate the exact line between classic and romantic styles. A Frenchman has even spoken of the romanticism of the classics, which is by no means merely a sample of Gallic paradox. The Brazilian critic considers France the only one of the neo-Latin literatures that may be said to possess a genuinely classic period. As I have tried to suggest here and elsewhere, we have need of a change in literary terminology; classic and romantic are hazy terms that should, in time, be supplanted by something more in consonance with the observations of modern psychology. The emphasis, I would say, should be shifted from the subject-matter and external aspects to the psychology of the writer and his intuitive approach. The distinctions have long since lost their significance and should therefore be replaced by a more adequate nomenclature.[4]Long before Verissimo, Wolf (1863) had written in his pioneer work already referred to, “Thus José Basilio da Gama and Durão only prepared the way for Magalhães and Gonçalves Dias.”[5]The natives named himCaramurú, whence the name of the epic. The word has been variously interpreted as signifying “dragon risen out of the sea” (Rocha Pitta) and “son of the thunder” (Durão’s own version), referring in the first instance to the man’s rescue from the wreck and in the second to his arquebuse. Verissimo rejects any such poetic interpretation and makes the topic food for fruitful observation. He considers the Brazilian savage, as any other, of rudimentary and scant imagination, incapable of lofty metaphorical flights. “The Indians, infinitely less poetic than the poets who were to sing them, called Diogo Alvares as they were in the habit of calling themselves, by the name of an animal, tree or something of the sort. They named him Caramurú, the name of a fish on their coast, because they caught him in the sea or coming out of it. And to this name they added nothing marvellous, as our active imagination has pictured.” And “this very sobriquet as well as the epoch in which it was applied, are still swathed in legend.”[6]The light of her eyes is extinguished, she swoons and trembles; her face grows pale, her look is deathly; her hands, now strengthless, let go the rudder and she descends to the bottom of the briny waves. But returning from the depths to the waves of the sea, which quivers in fury, “Oh, cruel Diogo!” she said in grief. And unseen ever after, she was engulfed by the waters.[7]How happy were the world, if, with the remembrance of love and glory lost, the recollection of pleasures would likewise be consumed forever! But worst and saddest grief of all is to find that at no time is this fantastic victory of love transitory, for always it is repeated in remembrance. Lovers, you who burn in this fire, flee Love’s venomous assault that it holds for you there in later days. Let not treacherous contentment deceive you; for this present pleasure, when it has passed, will remain as a tormenting memory.[8]I gaze, comely Marilia, at your tresses; and I behold in your cheeks the jessamine and the rose; I see your beautiful eyes, your pearly teeth and your winsome features. He who created so perfect and entrancing a work, my fairest Marilia, likewise could make the sky and more, if more there be.[9]Estudos.Segunda Serie, pp. 217-218.[10]For Romero’s strenuous attempt to prove theCartasthe work of Alvarenga Peixoto, see hisHistoria, Volume I, pages 207-211.[11]I loved the liberty and independence of my dear sweet fatherland, which the Portuguese pitilessly oppressed with laughter and scorn. This is my sole crime![12]The glory of the fatherland is wholly gone. The cry of liberty that once thundered through Brazil now is mute amidst chains and corpses. Over its ruins, far from their fatherland, weep its wandering sons. Because they loved it, they are accused of treason, by an infamous, truckling band.

[1]The original title was spelledUraguay. Later writers either retain the first or replace it with the more commonu.

[2]Estudos.Segunda Serie, pp. 89-129.

[3]In Portuguese literature, as Verissimo points out in his interesting parallel between the two epics, it is no easy matter to indicate the exact line between classic and romantic styles. A Frenchman has even spoken of the romanticism of the classics, which is by no means merely a sample of Gallic paradox. The Brazilian critic considers France the only one of the neo-Latin literatures that may be said to possess a genuinely classic period. As I have tried to suggest here and elsewhere, we have need of a change in literary terminology; classic and romantic are hazy terms that should, in time, be supplanted by something more in consonance with the observations of modern psychology. The emphasis, I would say, should be shifted from the subject-matter and external aspects to the psychology of the writer and his intuitive approach. The distinctions have long since lost their significance and should therefore be replaced by a more adequate nomenclature.

[4]Long before Verissimo, Wolf (1863) had written in his pioneer work already referred to, “Thus José Basilio da Gama and Durão only prepared the way for Magalhães and Gonçalves Dias.”

[5]The natives named himCaramurú, whence the name of the epic. The word has been variously interpreted as signifying “dragon risen out of the sea” (Rocha Pitta) and “son of the thunder” (Durão’s own version), referring in the first instance to the man’s rescue from the wreck and in the second to his arquebuse. Verissimo rejects any such poetic interpretation and makes the topic food for fruitful observation. He considers the Brazilian savage, as any other, of rudimentary and scant imagination, incapable of lofty metaphorical flights. “The Indians, infinitely less poetic than the poets who were to sing them, called Diogo Alvares as they were in the habit of calling themselves, by the name of an animal, tree or something of the sort. They named him Caramurú, the name of a fish on their coast, because they caught him in the sea or coming out of it. And to this name they added nothing marvellous, as our active imagination has pictured.” And “this very sobriquet as well as the epoch in which it was applied, are still swathed in legend.”

[6]The light of her eyes is extinguished, she swoons and trembles; her face grows pale, her look is deathly; her hands, now strengthless, let go the rudder and she descends to the bottom of the briny waves. But returning from the depths to the waves of the sea, which quivers in fury, “Oh, cruel Diogo!” she said in grief. And unseen ever after, she was engulfed by the waters.

[7]How happy were the world, if, with the remembrance of love and glory lost, the recollection of pleasures would likewise be consumed forever! But worst and saddest grief of all is to find that at no time is this fantastic victory of love transitory, for always it is repeated in remembrance. Lovers, you who burn in this fire, flee Love’s venomous assault that it holds for you there in later days. Let not treacherous contentment deceive you; for this present pleasure, when it has passed, will remain as a tormenting memory.

[8]I gaze, comely Marilia, at your tresses; and I behold in your cheeks the jessamine and the rose; I see your beautiful eyes, your pearly teeth and your winsome features. He who created so perfect and entrancing a work, my fairest Marilia, likewise could make the sky and more, if more there be.

[9]Estudos.Segunda Serie, pp. 217-218.

[10]For Romero’s strenuous attempt to prove theCartasthe work of Alvarenga Peixoto, see hisHistoria, Volume I, pages 207-211.

[11]I loved the liberty and independence of my dear sweet fatherland, which the Portuguese pitilessly oppressed with laughter and scorn. This is my sole crime!

[12]The glory of the fatherland is wholly gone. The cry of liberty that once thundered through Brazil now is mute amidst chains and corpses. Over its ruins, far from their fatherland, weep its wandering sons. Because they loved it, they are accused of treason, by an infamous, truckling band.

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