FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]The so-called Modernist movement (another meaningless name!) was really not a movement, but a scattered reaction against Spanish academic domination. It was French in inspiration and chiefly behind the lead of the Decadents resulted in a species of continental affirmation. I have tried, in myStudies in Spanish-American Literature, New York, 1920, to show the emergence of this affirmation, from the romantic predecessors in the New World and the French background, to such salient personalities as Darío, Rodó, Eguren, Blanco-Fombona and Chocano.[2]Oh, immortal century (i. e., the nineteenth), oh, century in which conquest, war, religions and the ancient monarchies have crumbled to earth, loathsome as harpies, gloomy as the desert! I bow before thee, touch my knee to the earth, that I may pray to thine ideal titanic, starry bust![3]You’re not the same, oh flower ofmorbidezza, queen of the Adriatic! Glittering Jordan of love, where the wandering Musset drank lustral beauty in waves. Your smile, oh triumphal Venice, is gone—olympic diamond that was set in the heroic forehead of the lord, bard and lover, immortally great. Your dark lagoon no longer hears the plangent strains of the olden serenade,—the sighs of love heaved by the voluptuous patrician in your gondolas.… There remains but the yearnful song of San Marco’s moaning pigeons.[4]Op. Cit P. 301.[5]Ibid. P. 303.[6]Estudos2a serie, P. 283. The book was published in Portugal, in 1872, and was “read and admired here in 1872. TheMiniaturas, the poems of which bear dates from 1867, to 1870, mention the poet as a Brazilian, native of Rio de Janeiro. He was, in fact, such by birth, by intention, and, what is of more importance, by intuition and sentiment, genuinely Brazilian. We ought, then, to count this, his first book, despite the fact that it was conceived and generated abroad, in the roster of our Parnassianism, and perhaps as one of its principal factors.” See, however, Afranio Peixoto’s splendid two-volume edition of theObras Completas de Castro Alves, Rio de Janeiro, 1921, for a refutation of this opinion. (Page 15.) According to Alberto de Oliveira there are decided Parnassian leanings in Castro Alves’sEspumas Fluctuantes, 1870, in the sonnets calledOs anjos da meia noite(Midnight Angels.)[7]It exercises over me a gentle tyranny that fills me with pride and casts me down; there is in this magnetism such power, an electricity that fascinates me and draws me to the edge of an abyss. And I, inert, without will power, make no attempt to flee.[8]Op. Cit. Page 307. The italics are mine.[9]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.[10]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![11]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.…[12]See the chapter devoted to him in Part Two of this book.[13]See Part Two for a special chapter on Machado de Assis.[14]See, for a good study of Emilio de Menezes, Elysio de Carvalho’sAs Modernas Correntes Esthéticas na Literatura Braziléira. Rio, 1907. Pp. 62-74.[15]See Part Two for chapters on Graça Aranha, Monteiro Lobato, Euclydes da Cunha and Coelho Netto.

[1]The so-called Modernist movement (another meaningless name!) was really not a movement, but a scattered reaction against Spanish academic domination. It was French in inspiration and chiefly behind the lead of the Decadents resulted in a species of continental affirmation. I have tried, in myStudies in Spanish-American Literature, New York, 1920, to show the emergence of this affirmation, from the romantic predecessors in the New World and the French background, to such salient personalities as Darío, Rodó, Eguren, Blanco-Fombona and Chocano.

[2]Oh, immortal century (i. e., the nineteenth), oh, century in which conquest, war, religions and the ancient monarchies have crumbled to earth, loathsome as harpies, gloomy as the desert! I bow before thee, touch my knee to the earth, that I may pray to thine ideal titanic, starry bust!

[3]You’re not the same, oh flower ofmorbidezza, queen of the Adriatic! Glittering Jordan of love, where the wandering Musset drank lustral beauty in waves. Your smile, oh triumphal Venice, is gone—olympic diamond that was set in the heroic forehead of the lord, bard and lover, immortally great. Your dark lagoon no longer hears the plangent strains of the olden serenade,—the sighs of love heaved by the voluptuous patrician in your gondolas.… There remains but the yearnful song of San Marco’s moaning pigeons.

[4]Op. Cit P. 301.

[5]Ibid. P. 303.

[6]Estudos2a serie, P. 283. The book was published in Portugal, in 1872, and was “read and admired here in 1872. TheMiniaturas, the poems of which bear dates from 1867, to 1870, mention the poet as a Brazilian, native of Rio de Janeiro. He was, in fact, such by birth, by intention, and, what is of more importance, by intuition and sentiment, genuinely Brazilian. We ought, then, to count this, his first book, despite the fact that it was conceived and generated abroad, in the roster of our Parnassianism, and perhaps as one of its principal factors.” See, however, Afranio Peixoto’s splendid two-volume edition of theObras Completas de Castro Alves, Rio de Janeiro, 1921, for a refutation of this opinion. (Page 15.) According to Alberto de Oliveira there are decided Parnassian leanings in Castro Alves’sEspumas Fluctuantes, 1870, in the sonnets calledOs anjos da meia noite(Midnight Angels.)

[7]It exercises over me a gentle tyranny that fills me with pride and casts me down; there is in this magnetism such power, an electricity that fascinates me and draws me to the edge of an abyss. And I, inert, without will power, make no attempt to flee.

[8]Op. Cit. Page 307. The italics are mine.

[9]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.

[10]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!

[11]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.…

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

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

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

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

During the last half of the month of February, 1868, two admirable letters were exchanged by a pair of notable men, in which both discerned the budding fame of a twenty-year-old poet. The two notables were José de Alencar, chief novelist of the “Indianist” school, and Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, not yet at the height of his career. The poet was Castro Alves. His real “discoverer” was the first of these two authors, who sent him from Tijuca to Machado de Assis at Rio de Janeiro. In his letter of the 18th of February, José de Alencar wrote (I quote only salient passages):

“Yesterday I received a visit from a poet.

“Rio de Janeiro does not yet know him; in a very short while all Brazil will know him. It is understood, of course, that I speak of that Brazil which feels; with the heart and not with the rest.

“Sr. Castro Alves is a guest of this great city, for but a few days. He is going to São Paulo to finish the course that he began at Olinda.

“He was born in Bahia, the region of so many excellent talents; the Brazilian Athens that does not weary of producing statesmen, orators, poets and warriors.

“I might add that he is the son of a noted physician.But why? The genealogy of poets begins with their first poem. And what is the value of parchments compared with these divine seals?…

“Sr. Castro Alves recalled that I had formerly written for the theatre. Appraising altogether too highly my experience in this difficult branch of literature, he wished to read me a drama, the first fruits of his talent.

“This production has already weathered the test of competent audiences upon the stage.…

“Gonzagais the title of the drama, which we read in a short time. The plot, centered about the revolutionary attempt at Minas,—a great source of historical poetry as yet little exploited,—has been enriched by the author with episodes of keen interest.

“Sr. Castro Alves is a disciple of Victor Hugo, in the architecture of the drama, as in the coloring of the idea. The poem belongs to the same ideal school; the style has the same brilliant touches.

“To imitate Victor Hugo is given only to capable intelligences. The Titan of literature possesses a palette that in the hands of a mediocre colorist barely produces splotches.…

“Nevertheless, beneath this imitation of a sublime model is evidenced an original inspiration that will later form the literary individuality of the author. His work throbs with the powerful sentiment of nationality, that soul of the fatherland which makes great poets as it makes great citizens.…

“After the reading of his drama, Sr. Castro Alves recited for me some of his verses.A Cascata de Paulo Affonso,As duas ilhasandA visão dos mortosdo notyield to the excellent examples of this genre in the Portuguese tongue.…

“Be the Virgil to this young Dante; lead him through the untrodden ways over which one travels to disillusionment, indifference and at length to glory,—the three vast circles of thedivine comedyof talent.”

The reply from Machado de Assis came eleven days later. He found the newcomer quite as original as José de Alencar had made him out to be. Castro Alves possessed a genuine “literary vocation, full of life and vigour and revealing in the magnificence of the present the promise of the future. I found an original poet. The evil of our contemporary poetry is that it is imitative—in speech, ideas, imagery.… Castro Alves’s muse has her own manner. If it may be discerned that his school is that of Victor Hugo, it is not because he copies him servilely, but because a related temperament leads him to prefer the poet of theOrientalesto the poet ofLes Méditations. He is certainly not attracted to the soft, languishing tints of the elegy; he prefers the live hues and the vigorous lines of the ode.”

Machado de Assis found in the poet the explanation of the dramatist.Gonzaga, to be sure, is no masterpiece of the theatre, and Castro Alves quickly returned from that interlude in his labours to the more potent appeal of resounding verse. If he was fortunate, at the outset, to find so influential a pair to introduce him into the literary world, it was his merit alone that won him early prominence. Only a year ago, signalizing the commemoration of the fifteenth anniversary of his death, Afranio Peixoto prefaced the two splendid volumes of his completeworks—including much hitherto unpublished material—with a short essay in which he calls Castro AlvesO Maior Poeta Brasileiro(The Greatest of Brazilian Poets). Let the superlative pass. If it is not important to criticism—and how many superlatives are?—it shows the lasting esteem in which his countrymen hold him. He is not only the poet of the slaves; to many, he is the poet of the nation and a poet of humanity as well.

His talents appeared early; at the Gymnasio Bahiano, by the time he was twelve—and this was already the mid-point of his short life—he not only wrote his first verses, but showed marked aptitude for painting. Long before his twentieth year he had become the rival of Tobias Barreto, the philosopher of Sergipe, not only in poetry, it seems, but in theatrical intrigue that centred about the persons of Adelaide do Amaral and Eugenia Camara. While Barreto, the half-forgotten initiator of thecondoreirostyle, led the admirers of the first, Eugenia Camara exercised a powerful attraction over Castro Alves, in whom she inspired his earliest lyrics. Perhaps it was because of her that he aspired to the dramatic eminence which he sought withGonzaga, produced on September 7, 1867, at the Theatro São João amidst scenes of tumultuous success. It was directly after this triumph that he came to José de Alencar. As we see from that writer’s letter, the youth was intent upon continuing his studies; in São Paulo he rose so quickly to fame among the students, not alone for his verses but for his gifted delivery of them and his natural eloquence, that he was shortly hailed as the foremost Brazilian poet of the day.

But unhappiness lay straight before him. His mistress left him; on a hunt he accidentally shot his heel and later had to go to Rio to have the foot amputated; the first symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis appeared and, in 1869, he returned to Bahia to prepare hisEspumas Fluctuantesfor the press. Change of climate was of temporary benefit; he went back to the capital to be received in triumph; new loves replaced the old. He was foredoomed, however, and during the next two years he worked with the feverish haste of one who knows that his end is near. He died on July 6, 1871.

In the history of Brazilian poetry Castro Alves may be regarded as a figure characterized by the more easily recognized traits of romanticism plus the infiltration of social ideas into the sentimental content. Some would even discover in a few of his products the first signs of the nascent Parnassianism in Brazil. Long before Carvalho selected him as the chief exponent of social themes in the romantic period, Verissimo had indicated that Castro Alves was “our first social poet, the epic writers excepted. He is the first to have devoted a considerable part of his labours not to sentimental subjectivism, which constitutes the greatest and the best part of our poetry, but to singing or idealizing social feeling, fact and aspiration.”

Hugo is his great god; … “nosso velho Hugo.—mestre do mundo! Sol da eternidade!” he exclaims inSub tegmine fagi. “Our old Hugo. Master of the world! Sun of eternity!” Alves, often even in his love poetry, seems to orate from the mountain tops. “Let us draw these curtains over us,” he sings inBoa Noite(GoodNight); “they are the wings of the archangel of love.” Or, in theAdeus de Thereza, if time passes by, it must be “centuries of delirium, Divine pleasures … delights of Elysium.…” His language, as often as not, is the language of poetic fever; image clashes upon image; antithesis runs rife; verses flow from him like lava down the sides of a volcano. Nothing human seems alien to his libertian fervour. He captures the Brazilian imagination by giving its fondness for eloquence ideas to feed upon.[1]Now he is singing the glories of the book and education, now upbraiding the assassin of Lincoln, now glorifying the rebel, now picturing the plight of the wretched slaves in words that are for all the world like a shower of sparks. In his quieter moments he can sing love songs as tender as the cooing of any dove, asinO Laco de fito; he can indite the most graceful and inviting of bucolics as inSub tegmine fagi; and this softer note is an integral part of his labours.

But what brought fame to Castro Alves was his civic, social note. From Heine, to whom he is indebted for something of his social aspiration, he took as epigraph for his collectionOs Escravos, a sentiment that reveals his own high purpose. “Flowers, flowers! I would crown my head with them for the fray. The lyre! Give me, too, the lyre, that I may chant a song of war.… Words like flaming stars that, falling, set fire to palaces and bring light to hovels.… Words like glittering arrows that shoot into the seventh heaven and strike the imposture that has wormed into the holy of holies.… I am all joy, all enthusiasm; I am the sword, I am the flame!…” The quotation is almost a description of Alves’s method. Once again, for the part ofOs Escravosthat was published separately five years after his death, we find an epigraph from Heine prefacingA Cachoeira de Paulo Affonso(The Paulo Affonso Falls): “I do not really know whether I shall have deserved that some day a laurel should be placed upon my bier. Poetry, however great be my love for it, has ever been for me only a means consecrated to a holy end.… I have never attached too great a value to the fame of my poems, and it concerns me little whether they be praised or blamed. It should be a sword that you place upon my tomb, for I have been a brave soldier in the war of humanity’s deliverance.” This, too, is a description of Castro Alves. He was a sword rather than a lyre; certainly his verse shows a far greater preoccupation with purpose than with esthetic illumination, and just as certainly doeshe fall far short of both Hugo and Heine in their frequent triumph over whatever purpose they professed.

I am not sure that the Brazilians do not confuse their admiration for Alves’s short life and its noble dedication with the very variable quality of his poetry. Read by one with no Latin blood in his veins it seems too often a dazzling display of verbal pyrotechnics, freighted with a few central slogans rather than any depth of idea. I speak now of the work as a whole and not of the outstanding poems, such asAs vozes da Africa(Voices from Africa),O Navio Negreiro(The Slave Ship),Pedro Ivo. It is in these few exceptions that the poet will live, but just as surely, it seems to me, will his esthetic importance shrink to smaller proportions than the national criticism today accords it. The ever-scrupulous, ever-truthful Verissimo, who does not join the general chorus of uncritical admiration of Castro Alves, indicates that even his strongest claim upon us—that of a singer of the slaves—is injured by an evident exaggeration. What might be called Alves’s “Africanism” is thus condemned of untruth to artistic as well as to quotidian reality, in much the same manner as was the “Indianism” in the poetry of Gonçalves Dias.…“The lack of objective reality offends us and our taste, habituated as we are to the reality of life transported to artistic representations. As I have already had occasion to observe, Castro Alves’s defect as a poet of the slaves is that he idealized the slave, removing him from reality, perhaps in greater degree than art permits, making him escape—which is evidently false—the inevitable degradation of slavery. His slaves are Spartacuses or belong to the gallery of Hugo’sBurgaves. Now, socially, slavery is hateful chiefly because of its degrading influence upon the human being reduced to it and by reaction upon the society that supports it.”

When Castro Alves prepared theEspumas Fluctuantesfor publication he already felt the hand of death upon him. In the short foreword that he wrote for the book—in a style that is poetry, though written as prose—he compared his verses to the floating spume of the ocean, whence the title of the book. “Oh spirits wandering over the earth! O sails bellying over the main!… You well know how ephemeral you are … passengers swallowed in dark space, or into dark oblivion.… And when—actors of the infinite—you disappear into the wings of the abyss, what is left of you?… A wake of spume … flowers lost amid the vast indifference of the ocean.—A handful of verses … spume floating upon the savage back of life!…”

This mood, this language, this outlook, are more than half of the youngster that was Castro Alves. For the most part he is not original, either in form or idea; the majority of his verses seem to call for the rostrum and the madly moved audience. Yet more than fifty years after his death the numerous editions of his poems provide that rostrum, and the majority of his literate countrymen form that audience.

When his powers are at their highest, however, he achieves the true Hugoesque touch, as, for example, in the closing stanzas of the famousVoices from Africa, written in São Paulo on June 11, 1868:

Christo! embalde morreste sobre um monte.…Teu sangue não lavou da minha fronteA mancha original.Ainda hoje são, por fado adverso,Meus filhos—alimaria do universo,Eu—pasto universal.Hoje em meu sangue a America se nutre:—Condor, que transformara-se em abutre,Ave de escravidão.Ella juntou-se ás mais … irmã traidora!Qual de José os vis irmãos, outr’ora,Venderam seu irmão!…Basta, Senhor! De teu potente braçoRole atravez dos astros e do espaçoPerdão p’ra os crimes meus!Ha dous mil annos eu soluço um grito.…Escuta o brado meu lá no infinito,Meu Deus! Senhor, meu Deus!…[2]

Christo! embalde morreste sobre um monte.…Teu sangue não lavou da minha fronteA mancha original.Ainda hoje são, por fado adverso,Meus filhos—alimaria do universo,Eu—pasto universal.

Christo! embalde morreste sobre um monte.…

Teu sangue não lavou da minha fronte

A mancha original.

Ainda hoje são, por fado adverso,

Meus filhos—alimaria do universo,

Eu—pasto universal.

Hoje em meu sangue a America se nutre:—Condor, que transformara-se em abutre,Ave de escravidão.Ella juntou-se ás mais … irmã traidora!Qual de José os vis irmãos, outr’ora,Venderam seu irmão!

Hoje em meu sangue a America se nutre:

—Condor, que transformara-se em abutre,

Ave de escravidão.

Ella juntou-se ás mais … irmã traidora!

Qual de José os vis irmãos, outr’ora,

Venderam seu irmão!

…

Basta, Senhor! De teu potente braçoRole atravez dos astros e do espaçoPerdão p’ra os crimes meus!Ha dous mil annos eu soluço um grito.…Escuta o brado meu lá no infinito,Meu Deus! Senhor, meu Deus!…[2]

Basta, Senhor! De teu potente braço

Role atravez dos astros e do espaço

Perdão p’ra os crimes meus!

Ha dous mil annos eu soluço um grito.…

Escuta o brado meu lá no infinito,

Meu Deus! Senhor, meu Deus!…[2]

This poem is theEli Eli lama sabachthaniof the black race.

It is matched for passionate eloquence by the lashing lines that form the finale ofO Navio Negreiro;

Existe um povo que a bandeira emprestaP’ra cobrir tanta infamia e cobardia!…E deixa a transformar-se nessa festaEm manto impuro de bacchante fria!…Meu Deus! meu Deus! mas que bandeira é esta,Que impudente na gavéa tripudia?Silencio, Musa … chora, e chora tantoQue o pavilhão se lave no teu pranto!…Auri-verde pendão de minha terra,Que a briza do Brasil beija e balança,Estandarte que á luz do sol encerraAs promessas divinas da esperança.…Tu que, da liberdade apos da guerra,Foste hastiado dos heroes na lança,Antes te houvessem roto na batalha,Que servires a um povo de mortalha!…Fatalidade atroz que a mente esmaga!Extingue nesta hora o brigue immundoO trilho que Colombo abriu nas vagas,Como um iris no pelago profundo!Mas é infamia de mais!… Da etherea plagaLevantai-vos, heroes do Novo Mundo!Andrade! arranca esse pendão dos ares!Colombo! fecha a porta dos teus mares![3]

Existe um povo que a bandeira empresta

P’ra cobrir tanta infamia e cobardia!…

E deixa a transformar-se nessa festa

Em manto impuro de bacchante fria!…

Meu Deus! meu Deus! mas que bandeira é esta,

Que impudente na gavéa tripudia?

Silencio, Musa … chora, e chora tanto

Que o pavilhão se lave no teu pranto!…

Auri-verde pendão de minha terra,Que a briza do Brasil beija e balança,Estandarte que á luz do sol encerraAs promessas divinas da esperança.…Tu que, da liberdade apos da guerra,Foste hastiado dos heroes na lança,Antes te houvessem roto na batalha,Que servires a um povo de mortalha!…

Auri-verde pendão de minha terra,

Que a briza do Brasil beija e balança,

Estandarte que á luz do sol encerra

As promessas divinas da esperança.…

Tu que, da liberdade apos da guerra,

Foste hastiado dos heroes na lança,

Antes te houvessem roto na batalha,

Que servires a um povo de mortalha!…

Fatalidade atroz que a mente esmaga!Extingue nesta hora o brigue immundoO trilho que Colombo abriu nas vagas,Como um iris no pelago profundo!Mas é infamia de mais!… Da etherea plagaLevantai-vos, heroes do Novo Mundo!Andrade! arranca esse pendão dos ares!Colombo! fecha a porta dos teus mares![3]

Fatalidade atroz que a mente esmaga!

Extingue nesta hora o brigue immundo

O trilho que Colombo abriu nas vagas,

Como um iris no pelago profundo!

Mas é infamia de mais!… Da etherea plaga

Levantai-vos, heroes do Novo Mundo!

Andrade! arranca esse pendão dos ares!

Colombo! fecha a porta dos teus mares![3]

As Napoleon, before the pyramids, told his soldiers that forty centuries gazed down upon them, so Alves, in the opening poem ofOs EscravoscalledO Seculo(The Century), invoking the names of liberty’s heroes—Christ, Carnaris, Byron, Kossuth, Juarez, the Gracchi, Franklin—told the youth of his nation that from the heights of the Andes, vaster than plains or pyramids, there gazed down upon them “a thousand centuries.” Even in numbers he is true to the high-flown conceits of thecondoreiroschool; the raising of Napoleon’s forty to the young Brazilian’s thousand is indicative of the febrile passion that flamed in all his work. Castro Alves was a torch, not a poem. When he beholds visions of a republic (as inPedro Ivo), man himself becomes a condor, and liberty, like the poet’s truth, though crushed to earth will rise again.

Não importa! A liberdadeE como a hydra, o Antheu.Se no chão rola sem forças,Mais forte do chão se ergueu.…São os seus ossos sangrentosGladios terriveis, sedentos.…E da cinza solta aos ventosMais um Graccho appareceu!…[4]

Não importa! A liberdade

E como a hydra, o Antheu.

Se no chão rola sem forças,

Mais forte do chão se ergueu.…

São os seus ossos sangrentos

Gladios terriveis, sedentos.…

E da cinza solta aos ventos

Mais um Graccho appareceu!…[4]

This is not poetry that can be read for very long at a time. It is not poetry to which one returns in quest of mood, evocative beauty, or surrender to passion. It is the poetry of eloquence, with all the grandeur of true eloquenceand with many of the lesser qualities of oratory at its less inspiring level. Castro Alves, then, was hardly a poet of the first order. He sang, in pleasant strains, of love and longing; he whipped the nation’s conscience with poems every line of which was a lash; some of his verses rise like a pungent incense from the altars where liberty’s fire is kept burning; he was a youthful soul responsive to every noble impulse. But his passion is too often spoiled by exaggeration,—the exaggeration of a temperament as well as a school that borrowed chiefly the externals of Hugo’s genius. Nor is it the exaggeration of feeling; rather is it a forcing of idea and image, accent and antithesis,—the failings of the orator who sees his hearers before him and must have visible, audible token of their assent.

So that, when all is said and done, the permanent contribution of Alves to Brazilian poetry is small, consisting of a few love poems, several passionate outcries on behalf of a downtrodden race, and a group of stanzas variously celebrating libertarian ideas. All the rest we can forget in the intense appeal of the surviving lines. I know that this does not agree with the current acceptation of the poet in Brazil, where many look upon him as the national poet, but one can only speak one’s honest convictions. With reference to Castro Alves, I admire the man in the poet more than the poet in the man.

FOOTNOTES:[1]“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.…”[2]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![3]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![4]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!

[1]“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.…”

[2]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!

[3]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!

[4]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!

Had he been born in Europe and written, say, in French, Machado de Assis would perhaps be more than a name today—if he is that—to persons outside of his native country. As it is, he has become, but fourteen years after his death, so much a classic that many of his countrymen who will soon gaze upon his statue will surely have read scarcely a line of his work. He was too human a spirit to be prisoned into a narrow circle of exclusively national interests, whence the cry from some critics that he was not a national creator; on the other hand, his peculiar blend of melancholy charm and bitter-sweet irony have been traced to the mingling of different bloods that makes Brazil so fertile a field for the study of miscegenation. His work, as we all may read it, is, from the testimony of the few who knew him intimately, a perfect mirror of the retiring personality. His life and labours raised the letters of his nation to a new dignity. Monuments to such as he are monuments to the loftier aspirations of those who raise them, for the great need no statues.

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1839 and died there in 1908; he came of poor parents and was early beset with difficulties, yet the very nature of the work he was forced to take up broughthim into contact with the persons and the surroundings that were to suggest his real career. As a typesetter he met literature in the raw; at the meetings of literary men and in the book shop of Paulo Brito he began to feel the nature of his true calling. At twenty he commenced to write with the indifference and the prolixity of the ’prentice hand; comedies, tales, translations, poems—all was grist that came to his literary mill. His talent, though evident, was slow to develop; it could be seen that the youth had a gift for understanding the inner workings of the human soul and that by nature he was an ironist, yet his poetry, especially, lacked fire—it came from the head, not the heart. Take the man’s work as a whole, for that matter, and the same observation holds generally true. He is not of the sort that dissolves into ecstasies before a wonderful sunset or rises to the empyrean on the wings of song; for such self-abandonment he is too critical, too self-conscious. In him, then, as a poet we are not to seek for passion; in his tales we must not hunt too eagerly for action; in his novels (let us call them such) we are not to hope for adventure, intrigue, climax. Machado de Assis is, as far as a man may be, sui generis, a literary law unto himself. His best productions, which range over thirty years of mature activity, reveal an eclectic spirit in whom something of classic repose balances his innate pessimism. It has been written of him that he was “a man of half tints, of half words, of half ideas, of half systems.…” Such an estimate, if it be purged of any derogatory insinuations, is, on the whole, just; if Machado de Assis seems to miss real greatness, it is because of something inherently balanced in his make-up; he is never himself carried away, and thereforeneither are we. Yet he belongs to a company none too numerous, and when Anatole France, some years ago, presided at a meeting held in France to honour the noted Brazilian, he must have appeared to more than one in the audience as a peculiarly fitting symbol of the spirit that informed the departed man’s work.[1]

Not that Machado de Assis was an Anatole France, as some would insinuate. But he was not unworthy of that master’s companionship; his outlook was more circumscribed than the Frenchman’s, as was his environment; his garden, then, was smaller, but he cultivated it; his glass was little, like that of another famous Frenchman, but he drank out of his own glass.

The poetry of Machado de Assis appears in four collections, all of which go to make up a book of moderate size. And, if the truth is to be told, their worth is about as moderate as their size. If critics have found him, in his verse, very correct and somewhat cold; if they have pointed out that he lacked a vivid imagination, suffered from a limited vocabulary, was indifferent to nature, and thus deficient in description, they have but spoken whatis evident from a reading of the lines. This is not to say that a poem here and there has not become part of the national memory—as, for example, the well-knownCirculo Vicioso(Vicious Circle) andMosca Azul(The Blue Fly)—verses of a broadly moralistic significance and of little originality. HisChrysalides, the first collection, dates back to 1864; already his muse appears as a lady desirous of tranquillity (and this at the age of twenty-five!) while in the poemErrohe makes the telltale declaration:

Amei-te um diaCom esse amor passageiroQue nasce na phantasiaE não chega ao coração.

Amei-te um dia

Com esse amor passageiro

Que nasce na phantasia

E não chega ao coração.

“I loved you one day with that transient love which is born in the imagination and does not reach the heart.” There you have the type of love that appears in his poetry; and there you have one of the reasons why the man is so much more successful as a psychological ironist in his novels than as a poet. Yet close study would show that at times this tranquillity, far from being always the absence of torment, is the result of neutralizing forces; it is like the revolving disk of primary hues that seems white in the rapidity of its whirling.

These early poems dwell upon such love; upon a desire for justice, as revealed in hisEpitaphio do Mexico(Mexico’s Epitaph) andPolonia(Poland); upon an elegiac note that seems statement rather than feeling. “Like a pelican of love,” he writes in one of his poems that recalls the famous image of de Musset,“I will rend my breast and nurture my offspring with my own blood; my offspring: desire, chimera, hope.…” But read through the verses ofChrysalidesand it is hard to find where any red blood flows. The vocabulary is small, the phrases are trite; his very muse is namedMusa Consolatrix, bringing solace rather than agitated emotion.

Phalenas(Moths, 1870) is more varied; the collection shows a sense of humour, a feeling for the exotic, as in the quasi-Chinese poems, which are of a delicate pallor. But there is little new in his admonitions to cull the flower ere it fade, and his love poetry would insult a sensitive maiden with its self-understanding substratum of commentary. His reserve is simply too great to permit outbursts and like the worshipper of whom he speaks in hisLagrimas de Cera, he “did not shed a single tear. She had faith, the flame to burn—but what she could not do was weep.”[2]He is altogether too frequently the self-observer rather than the self-giver; nor would this be objectionable, if out of that autoscopy emerged something vital and communicable to the introspective spirit in us all. He can sing of seizing the flower ere it fades away, yet how frequently does he himself seize it? There is humour in the ninety-seven octaves ofPallida Elvira,—a queer performance, indeed, in which a thin comic vein blends imperfectly with a trite philosophic plot. Romantic love, the satiety of Hector, the abandonment of Elvira, the world-wanderings of the runaway, his vain pursuit of glory and his return too late, to finda child left by the dead Elvira, the obduracy of grandfather Antero; such is the scheme. Hector, thus cheated, jumps into the sea, which he might well have done before the poem began.

More successful isUma Oda de Anacreonte, a one-act play in verse, in which is portrayed the power of money over the sway of love. Cleon, confiding, amorous youth that he is, is disillusioned by both love (Myrto) and friendship (Lysias). There is a didactic tint to the piece, which is informed with the author’s characteristic irony, cynicism, brooding reflection and resigned acceptation. Of truly dramatic value—and by that phrase I mean not so much the conventional stageworthiness of the drama’s technicians as a captivating reality born of the people themselves—there is very little.

InAmericanas(1875) the poet goes to the native scenes and legends for inspiration;Potyra—recounting the plight of a Christian captive who, rather than betray her husband by wedding a Tamoyo chief, accepts death at the heathen’s hands—is a cold, objective presentation, unwarmed by figures of speech, not illuminated by any inner light;Niani, a Guaycuru legend, is far better stuff, more human, more vivid, in ballad style as opposed to the halting blank verse of the former; for the most part, the collection consists of external narrative—feeling, insight, passion are sacrificed to arid reticence.

ThusA Christã Nova(The Converted Jewess) contains few ideas; neither colour nor passion, vision nor fire, inhere in it. There is a sentimental fondness for the vanquished races—a note so common in the “Indian” age of Brazilian letters, and in analogous writings of the Spanish-Americans, as to have become a convention. Thepoem tells the story of a converted Jewess who is betrothed to a soldier. She is met by her betrothed after the war, with her father in the toils of the Inquisition. Rather than remain with her lover, she chooses to die with her parent; father and daughter go to their end together. Chiefly dry narrative, and perhaps better thanPotyra, though that is negative praise. The poem is commendable for but two poetic cases: one, a very successfulterza rimaversion of the song of exile in the Bible, “By the waters of Babylon sat we down and wept …” and the other, a simple simile:

… o pensamentoE como as aves passageiras: voaA buscar melhor clima.…… ThoughtIs like a bird of passage, ever wingingIn quest of fairer climes.…

… o pensamentoE como as aves passageiras: voaA buscar melhor clima.…

… o pensamento

E como as aves passageiras: voa

A buscar melhor clima.…

… ThoughtIs like a bird of passage, ever wingingIn quest of fairer climes.…

… Thought

Is like a bird of passage, ever winging

In quest of fairer climes.…

It is in theOccidentaesof 1900 that we find more of the real Machado de Assis than in the series that preceded it. The ripened man now speaks from a pulsing heart. Not that any of these verses leap into flame, as in the sonorous, incendiary strophes of Bilac, but at least the thoughts live in the words that body them forth and technical skill revels in its power. Here the essence of his attitude toward life appears—that life which, rather than death, is the corroding force, the universal and ubiquitous element. TheMosca Azulis almost an epitome of his outlook, revealing as it does his tender irony, his human pity, his repressed sensuality, his feeling for form, his disillusioned comprehension of illusions. His resigned acceptance of life’s decline is characteristic of the man—part,perhaps, of his balanced outlook. One misses in him the rebel—the note that lends greatness to the hero in his foreordained defeat, raising the drama of surrender to the tragedy of the unconquered victim. But this would be asking him to be some one else—an inartistic request which we must withhold.

I give theMosca Azulentire, because of its central importance to the poetry of the man, as well as to that more discerning outlook upon life which is to be found in his prose works.

Era uma mosca azul, azas de ouro e granada,Filha da China ou da Indostão,Que entre as folhas brotou de uma rosa encarnadaEm certa noite de verão.E zumbia e voava, e voava, e zumbia,Refulgindo ao clarão do solE da lua,—melhor do que refulgiaUm brilhante do Grão-Mogol.Um poléa que a viu, espantado e tristonho,Um poléa lhe perguntou:“Mosca, esse refulgir, que mais parece um sonho,Dize, quem foi que t’o ensinou?”Então ella, voando, e revoando, disse:“Eu sou a vida, eu sou a florDas graças, o padrão da eterna meninice,E mais a gloria, e mais o amor.”E elle deixou-se estar a contemplal-a, mudo,E tranquillo, como un fakir,Como alguem que ficou deslumbrado de tudo,Sem comparar, nem reflectir.Entre as azas do insecto, a voltear no espaço,Uma cousa lhe pareceuQue surdia com todo o resplendor de um paçoE viu um rosto, que era o seu.Era elle, era um rei, o rei de Cachemira,Que tinha sobre o collo nú,Um immenso collar de opala, e uma saphyraTirado ao corpo de Vischnu.Cem mulheres em flor, cem nayras superfinas,Aos pés delle, no liso chão,Espreguiçam sorrindo as suas graças finas,E todo o amor que tem lhe dão.Mudos, graves, de pé, cem ethiopes feios,Com grandes leques de avestruz,Refrescam-lhes de manso os aromados seios,Voluptuosamente nus.Vinha a gloria depois—quatorze reis vencidos,E emfim as pareas triumphaesDe tresentas nacões, e os parabens unidosDas coroas occidentaes.Mas o melhor de tudo é que no rosto abertoDas mulheres e dos varões,Como em agua que deixa o fundo descuberto,Via limpos os corações.Então elle, estendo a mão calloso y tosca,Affeita a só carpintejar,Com um gesto pegou na fulgurante mosca,Curioso de examinar.Quiz vel-a, quiz saber a causa do mysterio.E fechando-a na mão, sorriuDe contente, ao pensar que alli tinha um imperio,E para casa se partiu.Alvoroçado chega, examina, e pareceQue se houve nessa occupaçãoMudamente, como um homem que quizesseDissecar a sua illusão.Dissecou-a, a tal ponte, e com tal arte, que ella,Rota, baca, nojenta, vil,Succumbiu; e com isto esvaiu-se-lhe aquellaVisão fantastica e subtil.Hoje, quando elle ahi vae, de áloe e cardamono,Na cabeça, com ar taful,Dizem que ensandeceu, e que não sabe comoPerdeu a sua mosca azul.[3]

Era uma mosca azul, azas de ouro e granada,Filha da China ou da Indostão,Que entre as folhas brotou de uma rosa encarnadaEm certa noite de verão.

Era uma mosca azul, azas de ouro e granada,

Filha da China ou da Indostão,

Que entre as folhas brotou de uma rosa encarnada

Em certa noite de verão.

E zumbia e voava, e voava, e zumbia,Refulgindo ao clarão do solE da lua,—melhor do que refulgiaUm brilhante do Grão-Mogol.

E zumbia e voava, e voava, e zumbia,

Refulgindo ao clarão do sol

E da lua,—melhor do que refulgia

Um brilhante do Grão-Mogol.

Um poléa que a viu, espantado e tristonho,Um poléa lhe perguntou:“Mosca, esse refulgir, que mais parece um sonho,Dize, quem foi que t’o ensinou?”

Um poléa que a viu, espantado e tristonho,

Um poléa lhe perguntou:

“Mosca, esse refulgir, que mais parece um sonho,

Dize, quem foi que t’o ensinou?”

Então ella, voando, e revoando, disse:“Eu sou a vida, eu sou a florDas graças, o padrão da eterna meninice,E mais a gloria, e mais o amor.”

Então ella, voando, e revoando, disse:

“Eu sou a vida, eu sou a flor

Das graças, o padrão da eterna meninice,

E mais a gloria, e mais o amor.”

E elle deixou-se estar a contemplal-a, mudo,E tranquillo, como un fakir,Como alguem que ficou deslumbrado de tudo,Sem comparar, nem reflectir.

E elle deixou-se estar a contemplal-a, mudo,

E tranquillo, como un fakir,

Como alguem que ficou deslumbrado de tudo,

Sem comparar, nem reflectir.

Entre as azas do insecto, a voltear no espaço,Uma cousa lhe pareceuQue surdia com todo o resplendor de um paçoE viu um rosto, que era o seu.

Entre as azas do insecto, a voltear no espaço,

Uma cousa lhe pareceu

Que surdia com todo o resplendor de um paço

E viu um rosto, que era o seu.

Era elle, era um rei, o rei de Cachemira,Que tinha sobre o collo nú,Um immenso collar de opala, e uma saphyraTirado ao corpo de Vischnu.

Era elle, era um rei, o rei de Cachemira,

Que tinha sobre o collo nú,

Um immenso collar de opala, e uma saphyra

Tirado ao corpo de Vischnu.

Cem mulheres em flor, cem nayras superfinas,Aos pés delle, no liso chão,Espreguiçam sorrindo as suas graças finas,E todo o amor que tem lhe dão.

Cem mulheres em flor, cem nayras superfinas,

Aos pés delle, no liso chão,

Espreguiçam sorrindo as suas graças finas,

E todo o amor que tem lhe dão.

Mudos, graves, de pé, cem ethiopes feios,Com grandes leques de avestruz,Refrescam-lhes de manso os aromados seios,Voluptuosamente nus.

Mudos, graves, de pé, cem ethiopes feios,

Com grandes leques de avestruz,

Refrescam-lhes de manso os aromados seios,

Voluptuosamente nus.

Vinha a gloria depois—quatorze reis vencidos,E emfim as pareas triumphaesDe tresentas nacões, e os parabens unidosDas coroas occidentaes.

Vinha a gloria depois—quatorze reis vencidos,

E emfim as pareas triumphaes

De tresentas nacões, e os parabens unidos

Das coroas occidentaes.

Mas o melhor de tudo é que no rosto abertoDas mulheres e dos varões,Como em agua que deixa o fundo descuberto,Via limpos os corações.

Mas o melhor de tudo é que no rosto aberto

Das mulheres e dos varões,

Como em agua que deixa o fundo descuberto,

Via limpos os corações.

Então elle, estendo a mão calloso y tosca,Affeita a só carpintejar,Com um gesto pegou na fulgurante mosca,Curioso de examinar.

Então elle, estendo a mão calloso y tosca,

Affeita a só carpintejar,

Com um gesto pegou na fulgurante mosca,

Curioso de examinar.

Quiz vel-a, quiz saber a causa do mysterio.E fechando-a na mão, sorriuDe contente, ao pensar que alli tinha um imperio,E para casa se partiu.

Quiz vel-a, quiz saber a causa do mysterio.

E fechando-a na mão, sorriu

De contente, ao pensar que alli tinha um imperio,

E para casa se partiu.

Alvoroçado chega, examina, e pareceQue se houve nessa occupaçãoMudamente, como um homem que quizesseDissecar a sua illusão.

Alvoroçado chega, examina, e parece

Que se houve nessa occupação

Mudamente, como um homem que quizesse

Dissecar a sua illusão.

Dissecou-a, a tal ponte, e com tal arte, que ella,Rota, baca, nojenta, vil,Succumbiu; e com isto esvaiu-se-lhe aquellaVisão fantastica e subtil.

Dissecou-a, a tal ponte, e com tal arte, que ella,

Rota, baca, nojenta, vil,

Succumbiu; e com isto esvaiu-se-lhe aquella

Visão fantastica e subtil.

Hoje, quando elle ahi vae, de áloe e cardamono,Na cabeça, com ar taful,Dizem que ensandeceu, e que não sabe comoPerdeu a sua mosca azul.[3]

Hoje, quando elle ahi vae, de áloe e cardamono,

Na cabeça, com ar taful,

Dizem que ensandeceu, e que não sabe como

Perdeu a sua mosca azul.[3]

As one reads this, a fable comes to mind out of childhood days. What is this poem of the fly, but the tale of the man who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, retold in verses admirable for colour, freshness,—for everything, indeed, except originality and feeling? Those critics are right who find in Machado de Assis a certain homiletic preoccupation; but he is never the preacher, and his light is cast not upon narrow dogmas, with which he had nothing to do, but upon the broad ethical implications of every life that seeks to bring something like order into the chaos we call existence,—a thing without rhyme or reason, as he would have agreed, but what would you? Every game has its rules, even the game of hide and seek. And if rules are made to be broken, part of the game is in the making of them.

Companioning the search for roots of illusion is the theme of eternal dissatisfaction. This Machado de Assis has put into one of the most quoted of Brazilian sonnets, which he callsCirculo Vicioso(Vicious Circle):

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