FOOTNOTES:

Um horror grande e mudo, um silencio profundoNo dia do Peccado amortalhava o mundo.E Adão, vendo fechar-se a porta do Eden, vendoQue Eva olhava o deserto e hesitava tremendo,Disse:Chega-te a mim! entra no meu amor,E á minha carne entrega a tua carne em flor!Preme contra o meu peito o teu seio agitado,E aprende a amar o Amor, renovando o peccado!Abençóo o teu crime, acolho o teu desgosto,Bebo-te, de uma em uma, as lagrimas do rosto!Ve! tudo nos repelle! a toda a creaçãoSacóde o mesmo horror e a mesma indignação.…A colera de Deus torce as arvores, crestaComo um tufão de fogo o seio de floresta,Abre a terra em vulcões, encrespa a agua do rios;As estrellas estão cheias de calefrios;Ruge soturno a mar; turva-se hediondo o céo.…Vamos! que importa Deus? Desate, como um véo,Sobre a tua nudez a cabelleira! Vamos!Arda em chammas o chão; rasguem-te a pelle os ramos;Morda-te o corpo o sol; inuriem-te os ninhos;Surjam féras a uivar de todos os caminhos;E vendo-te a sangrar das urzes atravez,Se enmaranhem no chão as serpes aos teus pés.…Que importa? o Amor, botáo apenas entreabertoIlumina o degredo e perfume o deserto!Amo-te! sou feliz! porque do Eden perdido,Levo tudo, levando o teu corpo querido!Póde, em redor de ti, tudo se anniquilar:Tudo renascerá cantando ao teu olhar,Tudo, mares e céos, arvores e montanhas,Porque a Vida perpetuo arde em tuas entranhas!Rosas te brotarão da bocca se cantares!Rios te correrão dos olhos, se chorares!E se, em torno ao teu corpo encantador e nú,Tudo morrer, que importa? A Natureza és tu,Agora que és mulher, agora que peccaste!Ah! bemdito o momento em que me revelasteO amor com o teu peccado, e a vida com a teu crime!Porque, livre de Deus, redimido e sublime,Homem fico na terra, á luz dos olhos teus,—Terra, melhor que o Céo! homem, maior que Deus![11]

Um horror grande e mudo, um silencio profundo

No dia do Peccado amortalhava o mundo.

E Adão, vendo fechar-se a porta do Eden, vendo

Que Eva olhava o deserto e hesitava tremendo,

Disse:

Chega-te a mim! entra no meu amor,

E á minha carne entrega a tua carne em flor!

Preme contra o meu peito o teu seio agitado,

E aprende a amar o Amor, renovando o peccado!

Abençóo o teu crime, acolho o teu desgosto,

Bebo-te, de uma em uma, as lagrimas do rosto!

Ve! tudo nos repelle! a toda a creaçãoSacóde o mesmo horror e a mesma indignação.…A colera de Deus torce as arvores, crestaComo um tufão de fogo o seio de floresta,Abre a terra em vulcões, encrespa a agua do rios;As estrellas estão cheias de calefrios;Ruge soturno a mar; turva-se hediondo o céo.…

Ve! tudo nos repelle! a toda a creação

Sacóde o mesmo horror e a mesma indignação.…

A colera de Deus torce as arvores, cresta

Como um tufão de fogo o seio de floresta,

Abre a terra em vulcões, encrespa a agua do rios;

As estrellas estão cheias de calefrios;

Ruge soturno a mar; turva-se hediondo o céo.…

Vamos! que importa Deus? Desate, como um véo,Sobre a tua nudez a cabelleira! Vamos!Arda em chammas o chão; rasguem-te a pelle os ramos;Morda-te o corpo o sol; inuriem-te os ninhos;Surjam féras a uivar de todos os caminhos;E vendo-te a sangrar das urzes atravez,Se enmaranhem no chão as serpes aos teus pés.…Que importa? o Amor, botáo apenas entreabertoIlumina o degredo e perfume o deserto!Amo-te! sou feliz! porque do Eden perdido,Levo tudo, levando o teu corpo querido!

Vamos! que importa Deus? Desate, como um véo,

Sobre a tua nudez a cabelleira! Vamos!

Arda em chammas o chão; rasguem-te a pelle os ramos;

Morda-te o corpo o sol; inuriem-te os ninhos;

Surjam féras a uivar de todos os caminhos;

E vendo-te a sangrar das urzes atravez,

Se enmaranhem no chão as serpes aos teus pés.…

Que importa? o Amor, botáo apenas entreaberto

Ilumina o degredo e perfume o deserto!

Amo-te! sou feliz! porque do Eden perdido,

Levo tudo, levando o teu corpo querido!

Póde, em redor de ti, tudo se anniquilar:Tudo renascerá cantando ao teu olhar,Tudo, mares e céos, arvores e montanhas,Porque a Vida perpetuo arde em tuas entranhas!Rosas te brotarão da bocca se cantares!Rios te correrão dos olhos, se chorares!E se, em torno ao teu corpo encantador e nú,Tudo morrer, que importa? A Natureza és tu,Agora que és mulher, agora que peccaste!Ah! bemdito o momento em que me revelasteO amor com o teu peccado, e a vida com a teu crime!Porque, livre de Deus, redimido e sublime,Homem fico na terra, á luz dos olhos teus,—Terra, melhor que o Céo! homem, maior que Deus![11]

Póde, em redor de ti, tudo se anniquilar:

Tudo renascerá cantando ao teu olhar,

Tudo, mares e céos, arvores e montanhas,

Porque a Vida perpetuo arde em tuas entranhas!

Rosas te brotarão da bocca se cantares!

Rios te correrão dos olhos, se chorares!

E se, em torno ao teu corpo encantador e nú,

Tudo morrer, que importa? A Natureza és tu,

Agora que és mulher, agora que peccaste!

Ah! bemdito o momento em que me revelaste

O amor com o teu peccado, e a vida com a teu crime!

Porque, livre de Deus, redimido e sublime,

Homem fico na terra, á luz dos olhos teus,

—Terra, melhor que o Céo! homem, maior que Deus![11]

So, inPeccador(Sinner) he presents the figure of a proud, unrepentant sinner—it might be the amorous Don Juan himself,—who “accepts the enormousness of the punishment with the same countenance that he wore when formerly he accepted the delight of transgression!” He isno less sincere, doubtless, when inUltima Pagina(Final Page) he exclaims

Carne, que queres mais? Coração, que mais queres?Passam as estações, e passam as mulheres.…E eu tenho amado tanto! e não conheço o Amor!Flesh, what would you more? What would you more, my heart?The seasons pass and women, too, pass with them.…And I have loved so much, yet know not what is Love!

Carne, que queres mais? Coração, que mais queres?Passam as estações, e passam as mulheres.…E eu tenho amado tanto! e não conheço o Amor!

Carne, que queres mais? Coração, que mais queres?

Passam as estações, e passam as mulheres.…

E eu tenho amado tanto! e não conheço o Amor!

Flesh, what would you more? What would you more, my heart?The seasons pass and women, too, pass with them.…And I have loved so much, yet know not what is Love!

Flesh, what would you more? What would you more, my heart?

The seasons pass and women, too, pass with them.…

And I have loved so much, yet know not what is Love!

Tedio(Ennui) is the voluptuousness of Nirvana after the voluptuousness of Dionysus; like all sinners, he comes for rest to a church. “Oh, to cease dreaming of what I cannot behold! To have my blood freeze and my flesh turn cold! And, veiled in a crepuscular glow, let my soul sleep without a desire,—ample, funereal, lugubrious, empty as an abandoned cathedral!…”

The sectionAs Viagens(Voyages) consists chiefly of twelve admirable sonnets—a form in which Bilac’s blending of intense feeling with artistic restraint seems as much at home as any modern poet—ranging from the first migration, through the Phoenicians, the Jews, Alexander, Cæsar, the Barbarians, the Crusades, the Indies, Brazil, the precursor of the airplane in Toledo, the Pole, to Death, which is the end of all voyages. At the risk of overemphasizing a point that has already been made, I would quote the sonnet on Brazil:

Pára! Uma terra nova ao teu olhar fulgura!Detem-te! Aqui, de encontro a verdejantes plagas,Em caricias se muda a inclemencia das vagas.…Este é o reino da Luz, do Amor e da Fartura!Treme-te a voz affeita ás blasphemias e as pragas,Ó nauta! Olha-a, de pé, virgem morena e pura,Que aos teus beijos entrega, em plena formosura,—Os dous seios que, ardendo em desejos, afagas.…Beija-a! O sol tropical deu-lhe a pelle doradaO barulho do ninho, o perfume da rosa,A frescura do rio, o esplendor da alvorada.…Beija-a! é a mais bella flor da Natureza inteira!E farta-te de amor nesse carne cheirosa,Ó desvirginador da Terra Brasileira![12]

Pára! Uma terra nova ao teu olhar fulgura!

Detem-te! Aqui, de encontro a verdejantes plagas,

Em caricias se muda a inclemencia das vagas.…

Este é o reino da Luz, do Amor e da Fartura!

Treme-te a voz affeita ás blasphemias e as pragas,

Ó nauta! Olha-a, de pé, virgem morena e pura,

Que aos teus beijos entrega, em plena formosura,

—Os dous seios que, ardendo em desejos, afagas.…

Beija-a! O sol tropical deu-lhe a pelle doradaO barulho do ninho, o perfume da rosa,A frescura do rio, o esplendor da alvorada.…

Beija-a! O sol tropical deu-lhe a pelle dorada

O barulho do ninho, o perfume da rosa,

A frescura do rio, o esplendor da alvorada.…

Beija-a! é a mais bella flor da Natureza inteira!E farta-te de amor nesse carne cheirosa,Ó desvirginador da Terra Brasileira![12]

Beija-a! é a mais bella flor da Natureza inteira!

E farta-te de amor nesse carne cheirosa,

Ó desvirginador da Terra Brasileira![12]

What is this, indeed? Part of some ardent Song of Songs? Note how the imagery is exclusively that of burning passion. Brazil becomes a fascinating virgin who falls to the fortunate discoverer. In that sonnet, I should say, is concealed about one half the psychology of the narrower patriotism.

O Caçador de Esmeraldasis a splendid episode in four parts, containing some forty-six sextets in all, filled with movement, colour, pervading symbolism and a certain patriotic pantheism. More than a mere search for emeralds the poem recounts the good that man may work even in the vile pursuit of precious stones,—thevanity of all material quest. For sheer artistry it ranks with Bilac’s most successful accomplishments.

“His inspiration,” wrote Verissimo, considering the verse of Bilac, “is limited to a few poetic themes, all treated with a virtuosity perhaps unparalleled amongst us … but without an intensity of feeling corresponding to the brilliancy of the form, which always is more important in him. This is the characteristic defect of the Parnassian esthetics, of which Sr. Bilac is our most illustrious follower, and to which his poetic genius adjusted itself perfectly and intimately.” I believe that Verissimo was slightly misled by Bilac’s versified professions. There is no doubt that Bilac’s temperament, as I have tried to show, was eminently suited to some such orientation as was sought by those Parnassians who understood what they were about; there is as little doubt, in my mind, that his feeling was intense, though not deep. He may have spoken of the crystalline strophe and the etcher’s needle—which, indeed, he often employed with the utmost skill,—but there were moments when nothing but huge marbles and the sculptor’s chisel would do. It was with such material that he carvedA Alvorada de Amor. “If Sr. Machado de Assis was,” continues Verissimo, “more than twenty years previous to Bilac, our first artist-poet,—if other contemporaries or immediate predecessors of Bilac also practised the Parnassian esthetics, none did it with such manifest purpose, and, above all with such triumphant skill.…”

I am not sure whether Verissimo is right in having asked of Bilac a more contemporary concern with the currents of poetry. The critic grants that Bilac is perhapsthe most brilliant poet ever produced by his nation, “but other virtues are lacking in him without which there can be no truly great poet. I do not know but that I am right in supposing that, conscious of his excellence, he remained a stranger to the social, philosophical and esthetic movement that is today everywhere renewing the sources of poetry. And it is a great pity; for he was amongst us perhaps one of the most capable of bringing to our anaemic poetry the new blood which, with more presumption than talent, some poets—or persons who think themselves such—are trying to inject, without any of the gifts that abound in him.”

Bilac, as we have seen, did, toward the end of his life, become a more social spirit. But this was not necessary to his pre-eminence as a poet. He was, superbly, himself. Rather that he should have given us so freely of the voluptuary that was in him—voluptuary of feeling, of charm, of form, of language, of taste—than that, in a mistaken attempt to be a “complete” man, he should sprawl over the varied currents of the day and hour. For it is far more certain that each current will find its masterly spokesman in art, than that each artist will become a masterly spokesman for all of the currents.

FOOTNOTES:[1]I have no wish to chisel the Capitoline Zeus, Herculean and beautiful, in divine marble. Let another—not I!—cut the stone to rear, in brutal proportions, the proud figure of Athene. More than by this extraordinary size that astounds the sight I am fascinated by the fragile reliquary of a delicate artist. Such is my procedure. My pen, follow that standard. To serve thee, serene Goddess, serene Form! Live! For I shall live in the service of thy cult, obscurely sculpturing thy vessels in the purest of gold. I will celebrate thine office upon the altar; more, if the sacrifice be too small, I myself will die. Let me, too, fall, hopeless, yet tranquil. And even as I fall, I’ll raise my lance in the cause of Style![2]Published originally in 1888, and ending, in its first form, withSarças de Fogo.[3]More than arms, however, more than battle, more than conflagrations, it is love that shines here, kindling hatred between peoples and scattering discord. That love which now incites, now abates war, and chains the heroic Paris to the curved breasts of Helen the beautiful.[4]He who loves invents the pangs in which he lives; and instead of soothing these griefs, he seeks a new care with which he but rekindles them. Know, then, that this is the reason why I go about so. Only madmen and lovers weep in their greatest joy.[5]For the heart that suffers, severed from you, in this exile that I weep, the simple and sacred affection with which I shield myself against all misfortunes is not enough. It is not enough to know that I am loved; I would have your delicate body in my arms, taste in my mouth the sweetness of your kiss. Nor am I shamed by the just ambitions that consume me. For there is no greater baseness than to change the earth for the sky. It more exalts the heart of a man to be a man ever, and, in the greatest purity, remain on earth and love like a human being.[6]Far from you, if peradventure I hear your name, murmured by an indifferent mouth amidst other women’s names, the tears come suddenly to my eyes.… Such is he who suffers in bitter exile and sadly, hears his native tongue, so pure and beautiful, spoken by foreign lips.… For your name is to me the name of a distant, worshipped fatherland, the longing for which consumes me. And to hear it is to behold eternal springtime, and the everlasting light of the blessed land, where, amidst flowers, your love awaits me.An excellent example of a similar identification of sweetheart and fatherland occurs in the sonnetDesterro(Exile), in the sectionAlma Inquieta, in which his beloved is called “patria do meu desejo” (land of my desire).[7]There they go! The sky arches over like an endless burning roof of bronze, and the sun shoots, and shooting, riddles with arrows of steel the sea of sand. There they go, with eyes in which thirst has kindled a strange fire, gazing ahead to that oasis of love which yonder, clearly rises in its deluding beauty. But now blows the simoon of death: the shattering whirlwind envelops them, prostrates them; sated, it rolls upon itself and falls in exhaustion.… And once again the sun shoots in the fiery sky.… And over the exterminated generation the sand sleeps its peaceful, tranquil sleep.[8]I want an endless kiss, that shall last an entire life and sate my desire! My blood seethes. Slake it with your kiss, kiss me so! Close your ears to the sound of the world, and kiss me, beloved! Live for me alone, for my life only, only for my love![9]The stars have all come out, and have broidered the pure veil of heaven with the whitest of lilies. But the most beautiful of all I do not yet see. One star is missing. It is you!… Open your window and come![10]Ah, who can express, enslaved and impotent soul, what the lips do not speak, what the hand cannot write. Clasping your cross, you burn, you bleed, only soon to behold in the mire that which had dazzled you.… Thought seethes; it is a whirlwind of lava: Form, cold and compact, is a sepulchre of snow.… And the heavy word stifles the fragile Idea which, like perfume and light, flew glittering about. Who can find the mould in which to cast expression? Ah! who can speak the infinite anxieties of our dreams? The heavens that flee from the hand that is raised? And mute ire? And this wretched world? And voiceless despair? And the words of faith that were never spoken? And the confessions of love that die in one’s throat?[11]A vast, mute horror, a deep silence shrouded the world upon the day of Sin. And Adam, beholding the gates of Eden close, seeing Eve gaze in hesitant trembling at the desert, said: “Come to me! Enter into my love, and surrender to my flesh your own fair flesh! Press your agitated breast against my bosom and learn to love Love, renewing sin. I bless your crime, I welcome your misfortune, I drink, one by one, the tears from your cheeks! Behold! Everything rejects us! All creation is shaken by the same horror and the same indignation.… The rage of the Lord twists the trees, ravages the heart of the forest like a hurricane of flame, splits the earth into volcanoes, curls the water of the rivers; the stars are aquiver with shudders; the sea mutters with fury; the sky is dark with anger.… Let us go! What matters God? Loosen like a veil your tresses over your nakedness! Let us be gone! Let the earth burn in flames; let the branches rend your skin; let the sun bite your body; let the nests harm you; let wild beasts rise on all the roads to howl at you; and seeing you bleed through the brambles, let the serpents entangle themselves upon the ground at your feet.… What matters it? Let love, but a half-open bud, illumine our banishment and perfume the desert! I love you! I am happy! For from the lost Eden I bear everything, having your beloved body! Let everything crumble to ruin about you; it will all rise new born before your eyes,—all, seas and skies, trees and mountains, for perpetual life burns in your bowels! Roses will burgeon from your mouth if you sing! Rivers will flow from your eyes, if you weep! And if, about your enchanting, nude body, all should die, what matters it then? You are Nature, now that you are woman, now that you have sinned! Ah, blessed the moment in which you revealed to me love with your sin and life with your crime! For, free from God, redeemed and sublime, I remain a man upon earth, in the light of your eyes,—Earth, better than Heaven! Man, greater than God!”[12]Hold! A new land shines before your eyes! Stop! Here, before the green shores, the waves’ inclemency turns to caresses.… This is the kingdom of Light, of Love and Satiety! Oh, mariner! Let your voice, accustomed to blasphemies and curses, tremble! Gaze at her standing there, a dark, pure virgin who surrenders to your kisses, in the fulness of her beauty, her two breasts which, burning with desire, you soothe.… Kiss her! The tropical sun gave her that gilded skin, the nest’s content, the rose’s perfume, the coolness of the river, the splendour of dawn.… Kiss her! She is the fairest of all Nature’s flowers! Sate yourself with love in this fragrant flesh, oh first lover of the Brazilian Land!

[1]I have no wish to chisel the Capitoline Zeus, Herculean and beautiful, in divine marble. Let another—not I!—cut the stone to rear, in brutal proportions, the proud figure of Athene. More than by this extraordinary size that astounds the sight I am fascinated by the fragile reliquary of a delicate artist. Such is my procedure. My pen, follow that standard. To serve thee, serene Goddess, serene Form! Live! For I shall live in the service of thy cult, obscurely sculpturing thy vessels in the purest of gold. I will celebrate thine office upon the altar; more, if the sacrifice be too small, I myself will die. Let me, too, fall, hopeless, yet tranquil. And even as I fall, I’ll raise my lance in the cause of Style!

[2]Published originally in 1888, and ending, in its first form, withSarças de Fogo.

[3]More than arms, however, more than battle, more than conflagrations, it is love that shines here, kindling hatred between peoples and scattering discord. That love which now incites, now abates war, and chains the heroic Paris to the curved breasts of Helen the beautiful.

[4]He who loves invents the pangs in which he lives; and instead of soothing these griefs, he seeks a new care with which he but rekindles them. Know, then, that this is the reason why I go about so. Only madmen and lovers weep in their greatest joy.

[5]For the heart that suffers, severed from you, in this exile that I weep, the simple and sacred affection with which I shield myself against all misfortunes is not enough. It is not enough to know that I am loved; I would have your delicate body in my arms, taste in my mouth the sweetness of your kiss. Nor am I shamed by the just ambitions that consume me. For there is no greater baseness than to change the earth for the sky. It more exalts the heart of a man to be a man ever, and, in the greatest purity, remain on earth and love like a human being.

[6]Far from you, if peradventure I hear your name, murmured by an indifferent mouth amidst other women’s names, the tears come suddenly to my eyes.… Such is he who suffers in bitter exile and sadly, hears his native tongue, so pure and beautiful, spoken by foreign lips.… For your name is to me the name of a distant, worshipped fatherland, the longing for which consumes me. And to hear it is to behold eternal springtime, and the everlasting light of the blessed land, where, amidst flowers, your love awaits me.An excellent example of a similar identification of sweetheart and fatherland occurs in the sonnetDesterro(Exile), in the sectionAlma Inquieta, in which his beloved is called “patria do meu desejo” (land of my desire).

An excellent example of a similar identification of sweetheart and fatherland occurs in the sonnetDesterro(Exile), in the sectionAlma Inquieta, in which his beloved is called “patria do meu desejo” (land of my desire).

[7]There they go! The sky arches over like an endless burning roof of bronze, and the sun shoots, and shooting, riddles with arrows of steel the sea of sand. There they go, with eyes in which thirst has kindled a strange fire, gazing ahead to that oasis of love which yonder, clearly rises in its deluding beauty. But now blows the simoon of death: the shattering whirlwind envelops them, prostrates them; sated, it rolls upon itself and falls in exhaustion.… And once again the sun shoots in the fiery sky.… And over the exterminated generation the sand sleeps its peaceful, tranquil sleep.

[8]I want an endless kiss, that shall last an entire life and sate my desire! My blood seethes. Slake it with your kiss, kiss me so! Close your ears to the sound of the world, and kiss me, beloved! Live for me alone, for my life only, only for my love!

[9]The stars have all come out, and have broidered the pure veil of heaven with the whitest of lilies. But the most beautiful of all I do not yet see. One star is missing. It is you!… Open your window and come!

[10]Ah, who can express, enslaved and impotent soul, what the lips do not speak, what the hand cannot write. Clasping your cross, you burn, you bleed, only soon to behold in the mire that which had dazzled you.… Thought seethes; it is a whirlwind of lava: Form, cold and compact, is a sepulchre of snow.… And the heavy word stifles the fragile Idea which, like perfume and light, flew glittering about. Who can find the mould in which to cast expression? Ah! who can speak the infinite anxieties of our dreams? The heavens that flee from the hand that is raised? And mute ire? And this wretched world? And voiceless despair? And the words of faith that were never spoken? And the confessions of love that die in one’s throat?

[11]A vast, mute horror, a deep silence shrouded the world upon the day of Sin. And Adam, beholding the gates of Eden close, seeing Eve gaze in hesitant trembling at the desert, said: “Come to me! Enter into my love, and surrender to my flesh your own fair flesh! Press your agitated breast against my bosom and learn to love Love, renewing sin. I bless your crime, I welcome your misfortune, I drink, one by one, the tears from your cheeks! Behold! Everything rejects us! All creation is shaken by the same horror and the same indignation.… The rage of the Lord twists the trees, ravages the heart of the forest like a hurricane of flame, splits the earth into volcanoes, curls the water of the rivers; the stars are aquiver with shudders; the sea mutters with fury; the sky is dark with anger.… Let us go! What matters God? Loosen like a veil your tresses over your nakedness! Let us be gone! Let the earth burn in flames; let the branches rend your skin; let the sun bite your body; let the nests harm you; let wild beasts rise on all the roads to howl at you; and seeing you bleed through the brambles, let the serpents entangle themselves upon the ground at your feet.… What matters it? Let love, but a half-open bud, illumine our banishment and perfume the desert! I love you! I am happy! For from the lost Eden I bear everything, having your beloved body! Let everything crumble to ruin about you; it will all rise new born before your eyes,—all, seas and skies, trees and mountains, for perpetual life burns in your bowels! Roses will burgeon from your mouth if you sing! Rivers will flow from your eyes, if you weep! And if, about your enchanting, nude body, all should die, what matters it then? You are Nature, now that you are woman, now that you have sinned! Ah, blessed the moment in which you revealed to me love with your sin and life with your crime! For, free from God, redeemed and sublime, I remain a man upon earth, in the light of your eyes,—Earth, better than Heaven! Man, greater than God!”

[12]Hold! A new land shines before your eyes! Stop! Here, before the green shores, the waves’ inclemency turns to caresses.… This is the kingdom of Light, of Love and Satiety! Oh, mariner! Let your voice, accustomed to blasphemies and curses, tremble! Gaze at her standing there, a dark, pure virgin who surrenders to your kisses, in the fulness of her beauty, her two breasts which, burning with desire, you soothe.… Kiss her! The tropical sun gave her that gilded skin, the nest’s content, the rose’s perfume, the coolness of the river, the splendour of dawn.… Kiss her! She is the fairest of all Nature’s flowers! Sate yourself with love in this fragrant flesh, oh first lover of the Brazilian Land!

Os Sertões, which first appeared in 1902—a happy year for Brazilian letters, since it witnessed the publication of Graça Aranha’sChanaanas well—is one of the outstanding works of modern Portuguese literature. At once it gave to its ill-fated author a fame to which he never aspired. His name passed from tongue to tongue, like that of some new Columbus who with his investigation of the sertão had discovered Brazil to the Brazilians. His labour quickened interest in the interior, revealed a new source of legitimate national inspiration and presented to countrymen a strange work,—disturbing, illuminating, disordered, almost a fictional forest, written in nervous, heavily-freighted prose. Yet this is harsh truth itself, stranger than the fiction of Coelho Netto, wilder than the poetry of Graça Aranha, though instinct with the imagination of the one and the beauty of the other. The highly original work struck a deep echo in English letters and if Englishmen have neglected to read Richard Cunninghame-Graham’s remarkable book calledA Brazilian Mystic: The Life and Miracles of Antonio Conselheiro—a book that would never have been written had not Euclydes da Cunha toiled away in obscurity to produceOs Sertões—it is their loss rather than their fault.It is a hurried and a harried world. Who, today, has time for such beauty of thought and phrase as Richard the wandering Scots sets down almost carelessly in his books and then sends forth from the press with mildly mocking humour for his prospective, but none too surely anticipated readers? Yet it is not the least of Euclydes da Cunha’s glories that he was the prime cause of Mr. Cunninghame-Graham’sA Brazilian Mystic. Not a fault of English readers, surely; but none the less their loss.

The author ofOs Sertõeswas born on January 20, 1866, in Santa Rita do Rio Negro, municipality of Cantagallo. Losing his mother when he was three years old, he went first to Theresopolis to an aunt, and thence, after two years, to São Fidelis to another aunt, with whom he remained until his first studies were completed. His father retiring to Rio de Janeiro in 1876, Euclydes was transported to the capital, where he attended in due course thecollegioscalled Victorio da Costa, Anglo-Brasileiro and Aquino. Naturally, he went through his baptism of verse, preparing a collection calledOndas(Waves); since every Brazilian early suffers an attack of this literary measles—it would be almost impolite not to indite one’s obligatory number of sonnets—the notice is without any importance to a man’s later career. It was at the Escola Militar da Praia Vermelha, which he entered at the age of twenty, that he laid the foundations of his scientific studies, and it is the scientist in Euclydes da Cunha that solidifiesOs Sertões.

The man—as his mature prose testifies—was of nervous temperament, and was led into one political scrape after another. At the very beginning of his career, carriedaway by the propaganda of Benjamin Constant, he committed an act of indiscipline against the Minister of War which has become famous in the annals of Brazilian politics, having required the benevolent intervention of the Emperor.

His journalistic labours began in 1888; the following year found him at the Escola Polytechnica of Rio de Janeiro, finishing his course as an engineer, but the proclamation of the Republic interrupted his studies and he returned to the army.

The material for his famous book was gathered while in the service of the important newspaperEstado de São Paulo, for which he went into the wilds to report the government campaign against the fractious inhabitants of the sertão.

The campaign, as taught in the Brazilian schools, marked another stage in the establishment, the consolidation, of the Brazilian republic. It took place during the presidency of Prudente de Moraes (1894-1898) and brought within the folds of the new régime the rebellious sertanejos, who had rallied round the leadership of Antonio Vicente Mendes Maciel. Maciel was born circa 1835 in Ceará and had, since 1864, attracted attention because of his strange religious notions, his queer garb, his legendary personality. Accused of crime, he was vindicated and went off toward the interior of Bahia, wandering in every direction over the sertões and reaching, at last, a tiny hamlet of Itapicuru, which he christened with the name Bom Jesus (Good Jesus) on November 10, 1886. The Archbishop of Bahia objecting, Maciel was ousted in 1887 as a preacher of subversive doctrines. His followers accompanied him, however, to Canudos,an old cattle ranch which, in 1890 was an abandoned site with some fifty ramshackle ruins of cottages. Thither came flocking an army of devotees and riff-raff, so that, when Maciel resisted the government that was intent upon collecting its taxes, he had a respectable number to heed his cry of insurrection.

At first the new republic tried religious methods, sending a Capuchin friar to win over the rebels to the Church and the Law. The monk despaired. Then followed four expeditions against the mystical Antonio; the first in November of 1896, the second during December-January of 1896-1897, the third during February and March of 1897, the last from April to October of the same year. “The sad chronicle of the tragedy of Canudos, the most important civil war in the history of the country,” concludes one popular text-book account,[1]“indicated the immediate necessity of the unification of the country.… It revealed, furthermore, the great resources of strength and virility among the sertanejos, who, though conservative and little disposed to lend themselves easily to novelty, possess none the less qualities important to the development of the country, once they are in fact bound to the national life.”

Euclydes da Cunha’s revelatory book opened the doors of the Brazilian Academy of Letters to him in 1903. He produced other books, one on the eternal question of Peru versus Bolivia, in which he sides with Bolivia; he became known for his speeches. The end of his life, which occurred through assassination on the 15th of August, 1909, was caused by a sexual snarl inwhich the corruptors of his domestic happiness added crime to betrayal.

The plan ofOs Sertõesis that of a scientific spirit at the same time endowed with the many-faceted receptivity of the poet. Before approaching the campaign of Canudos itself, the author studies the land and the man produced by it; he is here, indeed, as Verissimo early indicated, the man of science, the geographer, the geologist, the ethnographer; the man of thought, the philosopher, the sociologist, the historian; the man of feeling, the poet, the novelist, the artist who can see and describe. But nowhere the sentimentalist. From one standpoint, indeed, the book is a cold confirmation of the very law against whose operative details the author protests:—“the inevitable crushing of the weak races by the strong.”

Though a sertanejo school of fiction had existed beforeOs Sertões, the book brought to Brazilians a nearer, more intimate conception of the inhabitants of those hinterlands.

“The sertanejo,” writes the author in Chapter III of the section devoted to the man of the sertão, “is first of all a strong man. He does not possess the exhaustive rachetism of the neurasthenic hybrids of the coast.

“His appearance, however, at first blush, reveals the contrary. He lacks the impeccable plasticity, the straightness, the highly correct structure of athletic organisms.

“He is graceless, seemingly out of joint, crooked. Hercules-Quasimodo, he reflects in his appearance the typical ugliness of the weak. His loose gait, curved,almost waddling and tortuous, suggests the manipulation of unarticulated members. This impression is aggravated by his normally abject posture, in a manifestation of displeasure that gives him an appearance of depressing humility. On foot, when standing still, he invariably leans against the first door-post or wall that he finds; on horseback, if he reins in the animal to exchange a few words with a friend, he at once falls upon one of the stirrups, resting upon the side of the saddle. Jogging along, even at a rapid trot he never traces a straight, firm line. He advances hastily in a characteristic zig-zag, of which the meandering tracks of the sertão seem to be the geometric pattern.…

“He is the everlastingly tired man.…

“Yet all this seeming weariness is an illusion.

“There is nothing more amazing than to see him disappear all of a sudden.… It takes only the arising of some incident that requires the unleashing of his dormant energy. The man is transfigured.…”[2]

And it is this same powerful denizen of the Brazilian hinterlands that is a prey to the most primitive of superstitions, so that it was an easy matter for his resistance to a distant seat of government to become coupled in his mind with a resurgence of Sebastianism as newly incarnated in the person of Antonio Maciel.

“This feeling of uneasiness in regard to the new government,” writes Cunninghame-Graham, “the mysticism of the people as shown in the belief in the return to earth of Dom Sebastian, and the fear that the government meant the destruction of all religion, tended to make the dwellers in the sertão especially susceptible to any movement, religious or political alike, during the time between the abdication of the Emperor and the firm establishment of the new government. Out of the depths of superstition and violence, Antonio Conselheiro arose to plunge the whole sertão into an erethism of religious mania and blood.”

As relatively late as 1837 the region had witnessed averitable orgy of sacrifice. A fanatic had mounted the so-calledpedra bonita(pretty stone) and preached the coming of King Dom Sebastian, “he who fell at the field of Alcazar-el-Kebir. He foretold that the stone would be cut into steps; not cut with any earthly tools, but smoothed away by the shedding of the blood of children. Up these steps, so miraculously to be prepared, surrounded by his guard of honour, dressed in armour, the King, who had been dead three hundred years, should ascend and come into his own again, reigning in Portugal and in Brazil, and bountifully rewarding those who had been faithful to him and by their faith contributed to his disenchantment.… A multitude of women, all a prey to the mysterious agitation … came through the mountain passes, followed the trails through the virgin forests and assembled to hear the word preached at the wondrous pulpit made by no earthly hands. Unluckily they brought their children with them. Then, roused to a religious frenzy beyond belief, as they stood listening to the words of the illuminatedcafuzormamaluco—for history has not preserved his name—women strove with one another who should be the first to offer up her child, so that its blood should split the rock and form the sacred stair, by which the King, the long lamented Dom Sebastian, should ascend in glory, bringing back peace and plenty upon earth.… A common-sense historian (Cunninghame-Graham refers to Araripe Junior’sReino Encantado) says that for days the rocks ran blood.…”

Further incident is unnecessary to a notion of the sertanejos’ mystic habit of mind and action. The Brazilian government became in their eyes a rule of dogs, and theirfavourite phrase for the republic wasa lei do cão(the law of the dog). In the popular quatrains that Euclydes da Cunha collected are found merged the hatred of the sertanejos for the governing class of Brazil, their millenial hope in Dom Sebastian and their faith in Antonio surnamed Conselheiro (i. e., the Councillor) as the deliverer from all evil.

O Anti-Christo nasceuPara o Brazil governarMas ahi esta O ConselheiroPara delle nos livrar.Antichrist was bornTo govern poor Brazil,But God raised up our CouncillorTo save us from that ill.[3]Garantidos pela leiAquelles malvados estão.Nos temos a lei de DeusElles tem a lei do cão.Protected by the lawAre those wretches in their lairs.Ours is the law of God,The law of the dog is theirs.Visita nos vem fazerNosso rei D. Sebastião.Coitado daquelle pobreQue estiver na lei do cão!Our good King D. SebastianComes to visit us.Pity the poor wretchWho supports the law of the dog!

O Anti-Christo nasceuPara o Brazil governarMas ahi esta O ConselheiroPara delle nos livrar.

O Anti-Christo nasceu

Para o Brazil governar

Mas ahi esta O Conselheiro

Para delle nos livrar.

Antichrist was bornTo govern poor Brazil,But God raised up our CouncillorTo save us from that ill.[3]

Antichrist was born

To govern poor Brazil,

But God raised up our Councillor

To save us from that ill.[3]

Garantidos pela leiAquelles malvados estão.Nos temos a lei de DeusElles tem a lei do cão.

Garantidos pela lei

Aquelles malvados estão.

Nos temos a lei de Deus

Elles tem a lei do cão.

Protected by the lawAre those wretches in their lairs.Ours is the law of God,The law of the dog is theirs.

Protected by the law

Are those wretches in their lairs.

Ours is the law of God,

The law of the dog is theirs.

Visita nos vem fazerNosso rei D. Sebastião.Coitado daquelle pobreQue estiver na lei do cão!

Visita nos vem fazer

Nosso rei D. Sebastião.

Coitado daquelle pobre

Que estiver na lei do cão!

Our good King D. SebastianComes to visit us.Pity the poor wretchWho supports the law of the dog!

Our good King D. Sebastian

Comes to visit us.

Pity the poor wretch

Who supports the law of the dog!

Cunninghame-Graham, like Euclydes da Cunha, and like the better of the Brazilian’s critics, feels a strong sympathy for the man in whom the new hopes of the sertanejos were centred. It is a sympathy, moreover, born of the understanding without which all knowledge is as fruit turned to ashes in the mouth. The Scot, like the Brazilian, is a psychologist. “Antonio Conselheiro himself did not so much rebel against authority as against life, perhaps expecting from it more than it had to give upon the spiritual side, not understanding that a fine day, with health to enjoy it, is the most spiritual of pleasures open to mankind,” he writes, in his amiable, worldly-wise (and heavenly-wise) way. And later: “When all is said, it is impossible not to sympathize to some extent with the misguided sectaries, for all they wanted was to live the life they had been accustomed to and sing their litanies. Clearly Antonio Conselheiro had no views on any subject under heaven outside his own district. His dreams were fixed upon a better world, and his chief care was to fit his followers for the change that he believed was to take place soon.”

It is Verissimo, who, with his almost unerring insight, extracts from his countryman’s book its central significance. Here is a volume that is a remarkable commentary upon the formation of all religions,“without excepting our own Christianity. In another milieu, under other conditions, Antonio Conselheiro is a Christ, a Mohammed, a Messiah, one of the many Mahdis, creators of religions in that fecund soil of human belief which is Asia. In the sertão, friends and enemies and even the constituted authorities, hold him (i. e., Antonio Maciel, the people’s councillor) as a good, honest, upright man, despite the legend—and is it only a legend?—which attributes to a tragic matricide his transformation from a business man into a religious preacher, his life as a saint and a missionary of the sertão.”

I find that I have spoken as much of Cunninghame-Graham as of the Brazilian in whom he found his most important source; that is because the Scotsman’s book is the best possible revelation in English of the remarkable account given by Euclydes da Cunha.

Os Sertõesstands alone in the nation’s literature; we, in ours, have no book to parallel it in spirit, purport or accomplishment. Yet even today there are regions to which a similar method might be applied, for Verissimo’s words about Asia seem to cover the United States as well,—in less degree, of course, but for our purpose with equal patness. More, a close reading of the government’s application of force to a situation that might have yielded to less warlike methods,—or, at least, that might have been managed without the necessity of the final massacre—could teach something to all governmental departments that are brought into contact with alien or extra-social groups which must be incorporated into the national entity.Os Sertõesis the best answer to the young Brazilian regionalists who have made the book a rallying-point.Here is a volume—and a thick, compact volume it is—dealing in quasi-reportorial spirit with a brief incident in the most hidden recesses of the national interior; it was not written with belles-lettres in mind; it is strewn with terms and processes of thought that baffle the ordinary reader. Yet the man who composed it was a vibrant personality, and whether knowingly or unwittingly, he made the book a symbol,—a symbol of uncomprehending persecution, of human fanaticism, of religious origins, of man’s instinctive seeking after something higher. It is true that the persecution was in part necessary, that the aspect of fanaticism here revealed is most repugnant, that the spectacle of religious origins does not flatter our unctuous, supposedly civilized, superior souls. But it is true, likewise, that we must gaze into such depths as these to remind ourselves occasionally that we dwell in these inferiors. Such is the wisdom of Euclydes da Cunha, of Richard Cunninghame-Graham, of José Verissimo.

FOOTNOTES:[1]Resumo da Historia do Brazil.Maria G. L. de Andrade. Edição Ampliada, 1920, Pages 277-278.[2]“This struggle for existence,” writes Cunninghame-Graham inA Brazilian Mystic(pages 17-18) “amongst plants and animals presents its counterpart amongst mankind. The climate sees to it that only those most fitted to resist it arrive at manhood, and the rude life they subsequently lead has forged a race as hard as the Castilians, the Turks, the Scythians of old, or as the Mexicans.“No race in all America is better fitted to cope with the wilderness. The sertanejo is emphatically what the French call ‘a male.’ His Indian blood has given him endurance and a superhuman patience in adversity. From his white forefathers he has derived intelligence, the love of individual as opposed to general freedom inherent in the Latin races, good manners, and a sound dose of self-respect. His tinge of negro blood, although in the sertão it tends to disappear out of the race, at least in outward characteristics, may perchance have given him whatever qualities the African can claim. Far from demonstrative, he yet feels deeply; never forgets a benefit, and cherishes an insult as if it were a pearl of price, safe to revenge it when the season offers or when the enemy is off his guard.“Centaurs before the Lord, the sertanejos do not appear (almost alone of horsemen) to have that pride in their appearance so noticeable in the gaucho, the Mexican and in the Arabs of North Africa. Seated in his short, curved saddle, a modification of the ‘recao’ used on the Pampas of the Argentine, the sertanejo lounges, sticks his feet forward, and rides, as goes the saying, all about his horse, using, of course, a single rein, and the high hand all natural horsemen affect. Yet, when a bunch of cattle break into a wild stampede, the man is suddenly transformed. Then he sits upright as a lance, or, bending low over his horse’s neck, flies at a break-neck pace, dashing through the thick scrub of thecaatingasin a way that must be seen to be believed. Menacing boughs hang low and threaten him. He throws himself flat on the horse’s back and passes under them. A tree stands in his way right in the middle of his headlong career. If his horse, highly trained and bitted, fails to stop in time, he slips off like a drop of water from a pane of glass at the last moment, or if there is the smallest chance of passing on one side, lies low along his horse’s flank after the fashion of an old-time Apache or Comanche on the war-path.”[3]I quote the translation of this quatrain from Cunninghame-Graham. The third quatrain, here given as I find it inOs Sertões, 1914, fifth edition, differs in a single unimportant spelling from that used by the author ofA Brazilian Mystic, who translates it: “Our King, Dom Sebastian, will come to visit us and free us from the reign of the dog.” I do not think this is correct, as the two final lines are a threat to the other side.

[1]Resumo da Historia do Brazil.Maria G. L. de Andrade. Edição Ampliada, 1920, Pages 277-278.

[2]“This struggle for existence,” writes Cunninghame-Graham inA Brazilian Mystic(pages 17-18) “amongst plants and animals presents its counterpart amongst mankind. The climate sees to it that only those most fitted to resist it arrive at manhood, and the rude life they subsequently lead has forged a race as hard as the Castilians, the Turks, the Scythians of old, or as the Mexicans.“No race in all America is better fitted to cope with the wilderness. The sertanejo is emphatically what the French call ‘a male.’ His Indian blood has given him endurance and a superhuman patience in adversity. From his white forefathers he has derived intelligence, the love of individual as opposed to general freedom inherent in the Latin races, good manners, and a sound dose of self-respect. His tinge of negro blood, although in the sertão it tends to disappear out of the race, at least in outward characteristics, may perchance have given him whatever qualities the African can claim. Far from demonstrative, he yet feels deeply; never forgets a benefit, and cherishes an insult as if it were a pearl of price, safe to revenge it when the season offers or when the enemy is off his guard.“Centaurs before the Lord, the sertanejos do not appear (almost alone of horsemen) to have that pride in their appearance so noticeable in the gaucho, the Mexican and in the Arabs of North Africa. Seated in his short, curved saddle, a modification of the ‘recao’ used on the Pampas of the Argentine, the sertanejo lounges, sticks his feet forward, and rides, as goes the saying, all about his horse, using, of course, a single rein, and the high hand all natural horsemen affect. Yet, when a bunch of cattle break into a wild stampede, the man is suddenly transformed. Then he sits upright as a lance, or, bending low over his horse’s neck, flies at a break-neck pace, dashing through the thick scrub of thecaatingasin a way that must be seen to be believed. Menacing boughs hang low and threaten him. He throws himself flat on the horse’s back and passes under them. A tree stands in his way right in the middle of his headlong career. If his horse, highly trained and bitted, fails to stop in time, he slips off like a drop of water from a pane of glass at the last moment, or if there is the smallest chance of passing on one side, lies low along his horse’s flank after the fashion of an old-time Apache or Comanche on the war-path.”

“No race in all America is better fitted to cope with the wilderness. The sertanejo is emphatically what the French call ‘a male.’ His Indian blood has given him endurance and a superhuman patience in adversity. From his white forefathers he has derived intelligence, the love of individual as opposed to general freedom inherent in the Latin races, good manners, and a sound dose of self-respect. His tinge of negro blood, although in the sertão it tends to disappear out of the race, at least in outward characteristics, may perchance have given him whatever qualities the African can claim. Far from demonstrative, he yet feels deeply; never forgets a benefit, and cherishes an insult as if it were a pearl of price, safe to revenge it when the season offers or when the enemy is off his guard.

“Centaurs before the Lord, the sertanejos do not appear (almost alone of horsemen) to have that pride in their appearance so noticeable in the gaucho, the Mexican and in the Arabs of North Africa. Seated in his short, curved saddle, a modification of the ‘recao’ used on the Pampas of the Argentine, the sertanejo lounges, sticks his feet forward, and rides, as goes the saying, all about his horse, using, of course, a single rein, and the high hand all natural horsemen affect. Yet, when a bunch of cattle break into a wild stampede, the man is suddenly transformed. Then he sits upright as a lance, or, bending low over his horse’s neck, flies at a break-neck pace, dashing through the thick scrub of thecaatingasin a way that must be seen to be believed. Menacing boughs hang low and threaten him. He throws himself flat on the horse’s back and passes under them. A tree stands in his way right in the middle of his headlong career. If his horse, highly trained and bitted, fails to stop in time, he slips off like a drop of water from a pane of glass at the last moment, or if there is the smallest chance of passing on one side, lies low along his horse’s flank after the fashion of an old-time Apache or Comanche on the war-path.”

[3]I quote the translation of this quatrain from Cunninghame-Graham. The third quatrain, here given as I find it inOs Sertões, 1914, fifth edition, differs in a single unimportant spelling from that used by the author ofA Brazilian Mystic, who translates it: “Our King, Dom Sebastian, will come to visit us and free us from the reign of the dog.” I do not think this is correct, as the two final lines are a threat to the other side.

Oliveira Lima belongs, more than to the history of Brazilian letters, to the history of Brazilian culture. He is an integral part of that culture and his life, coincidentally, runs parallel with the emergence of Brazil into an honoured position among the nations of the world. Once, in a happy phrase, the Swedish writer Goran Björkman, a corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, characterized him aptly as “Brazil’s intellectual ambassador to the world,” and the phrase has stuck because it so eminently fitted the modest, indefatigable personality to whom it was applied. In a sense Oliveira Lima has been, too, the world’s intellectual ambassador to Brazil; he has seen service literally in every corner of the globe,—in Argentina as in the United States, in Japan as in France, Belgium, Sweden and Germany. Wherever he has come he has torn aside the dense veil of ignorance that has hidden Brazil from the eyes of none too curious foreigners; from wherever he has gone he has sent back to his native land solidly written, well considered volumes upon the civilization of the old world and the new. In both the physical and the intellectual sense he has been, largely, Brazil’s point of contact with the rest of the world. And the nation has been most fortunatein that choice, for Manoel de Oliveira Lima, most “undiplomatic” of diplomats, is the most human of men. He is, in the least spectacular sense of the word, an inspirer, not of words but of deeds. Trace his itinerary during the past twenty-five years and it is a miniature map of a double enlightenment. If diplomacy is ever to achieve anything like genuine internationality, it must travel some such path as this. And I dare say that Senhor Oliveira Lima is one of the rare precursors of just such a diplomacy. The example of his career has helped to raise that office from one of sublimated social hypocrisy to the dignity of lofty human intercourse.

Manoel de Oliveira Lima was born on December 25th, 1867, in the city of Recife, Pernambuco,—that state of which Silveira Martins has strikingly declared that the Brazilian gaucho—indomitable defender of the nation’s frontiers—was simply a Pernambucan on horseback. He was sent early to Portugal to complete his education, becoming one of the favourite students of the noted historian Oliveira Martins; at the age of twenty-one he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and Letters from the University of Lisbon and set out, after a couple of years, upon his career of diplomacy, into which he was initiated by Carvalho Borges and the Baron de Itajubá.

“Oliveira Lima never wrote verses,” declared Salvador de Mendonça once in a speech of welcome.“I believe that, with the exception of theLusiads, all poems are to him like theColomboof Porto Alegre to the readers of our literature, an unknown land awaiting some Columbus to discover it. Like an old philosopher friend of mine, who doesn’t admit monologues or asides in the theatre because only fools or persons threatened with madness converse with themselves, so Oliveira Lima finds it hardly natural for people to write in verse, for the language of seers was never the spoken tongue. His spirit is positive and direct; only curved lines are lacking for him to be a geometer. His characteristic trait is sincerity; he says only what he thinks is true, and says it without beating about the bush, in the explicit form of his conviction. I believe that he is but a lukewarm admirer of music, and prefers, to the contemplation of nature, the study of social phenomena and the examination of the human beehive.”

For a Brazilian never to have written verses is indeed almost a violation of the social code, and it may be that Senhor Lima’s lukewarmness toward music helps to explain a certain lack of musicality in his clear but compact prose. But lack of poetic appreciation should not be inferred from his friend’s lines; one has but to go through one of Lima’s earliest and most solid works,Aspectos da Litteratura Colonial Brazileira, to discover, in this original contribution, a deep, unostentatious feeling for those beautiful emotions we call poetry.

His literary career, as we have seen, is closely identified with his numerous peregrinations. It opened with a historical study of his birthplace:Pernambuco, seu Desenvolimento historica(1894), followed two years later by theAspectos. Thereafter is pursued, rather closely, the travels of Lima, resulting inNos Estados Unidos(1899), a work of uneven value upon the United States,No Japão, (1903), a more mature volume upon the land of the rising sun, countless speeches and seriesof lectures delivered in the universities of both hemispheres—now at the Sorbonne, now at the University of Louvaine, at Harvard, Yale, Stanford University and lesser institutions—and always upon his favourite theme: the history of Brazilian and Latin-American culture. Out of these lectures have arisen more than one of his books, some of them originally delivered in English and French; for Lima is an accomplished linguist, employing English and French with ease and speaking German, Italian and Spanish as well.

It is history that forms his main interest; even when he makes a single attempt—and not a highly successful one—at the drama, hisSecretario d’El Rey(The King’s Secretary, 1904) turns upon the historic figure of Alexandre de Gusmão in the days of 1738. It is worth while noting, as a commentary upon Lima’s unfanatic patriotism, that he justly considers this work a Brazilian drama, though the action takes place in Portugal. For,“in the first place, our historic period anterior to the Independence necessarily involves so intimate a connection of the colony with the court that it is almost impossible, treating of the one, to lose the other from sight. Material communication and above all moral relations established a sort of territorial continuity between both sides of the Atlantic, which formed a single fatherland. Besides, the action of the piece could hardly have been made to take place in Brazil, since the protagonist of the play, perhaps the most illustrious Brazilian of the XVIIIth century, and one whose personality merited, as few others, consecration upon the stage, lived in Europe from his earliest youth. For identical reasons the action ofO Poeta e a Inquisção(The Poet and the Inquisition) by Domingos de Magalhães, our first national tragedy, takes place in Lisbon. And finally the author would remind his reader that the spirit of his piece is entirely Brazilian, trying to symbolize—and more direct pretension would be anachronistic—the differentiation which had already begun between the mother country and its American colony, which was destined to continue and propagate its historic mission in the new world, and the economic importance of which was daily becoming more manifest.”

It is in history that, with a few exceptions, Lima’s most enduring work has been performed. He has recreated the figure of Dom João VI (Dom João no Brasil, 2 vols.); he has thrown light into dark places of the national narrative, particularly in the period beginning with the French invasion of Portugal that sent John VI to Brazil in 1808 and thus made the colony a virtual kingdom, and ending with 1821. “Dr. Lima’s investigations in hitherto unused sources also led to a revision of judgment,” wrote Professor P. A. Martin,“of many personages and events of the period; an instance of which is his successful rehabilitation of the character of Dom John VI. This sovereign, treated with contempt and contumely by the bulk of the Portuguese historians who have never forgiven him for deserting his native land, now appears in a new and deservedly more favorable light. The author makes it clear that John’s rule in Brazil was as liberal and progressive as was desirable in a country in which all thorough-going reforms must of necessity be introduced gradually. And these same reforms, especially the opening of the chief Brazilian ports to the commerce of all friendly nations, not only redounded to the immediate benefit of the country, but what was infinitely more important, paved the way for ultimate independence.”[1]So well, indeed, that the year following John’s departure is the year of Brazil’s complete emancipation.

Oliveira Lima’s internationalism—employing that word in a broader sense than it is usually given in political discussion—is thus at once territorial and spiritual. He knows his own country too well to glorify it in the unthinking patriotism of a Rocha Pitta; he knows the rest of the world too well to harbour faith in the exclusivistic loyalties that patriotism everywhere connotes. His very books, as if to symbolize his universal attitude, trace the amplification of his interests and of his cosmopolitan spirit. He began with a study of his birthplace; he continued with a study of his nation’s colonial letters; he then initiated a series dealing with national, historical figures and events, in conjunction with books upon the four corners of the world. Latterly, as if to round out the whole, he has completed aHistory of Civilization, intended chiefly for use in Brazil’s higher centres of education; but it is far more than a mere text-book. It is the natural outgrowth of a dignified lifetime,—the work of a man who, early placed in the diplomatic service,outgrew the confines of that profession because, in simple words, he was too human for it.

“In fact,” he himself once declared in a speech, “to be a good diplomat is to be able to deceive wisely.” And Lima has been wiser in goodness than in deceit.

It is easy enough now, with the distance of a few years between us and the end of a war that need never have been fought, to proclaim a humanistic spiritual world-unity. It was not easy for Lima while the war was going on; perhaps he, as well as any other, recognized the futility of his efforts to keep at least the western hemisphere of the world sane during the carnage; perhaps this was but an example of what one of his youthful disciples has called his “quixotism.” It was, together with these things, a simple, if striking, example, of the man’s devotion to the truth he sees.

“Through love of the truth,” he said, at a banquet given to him in Rio Janeiro in 1917, “I became a diplomat, who did not correspond to the ideal of the type, despite the remark of a departed friend of mine who used to say that I had spent my life lying, in Europe, Asia and America, saying, in foreign countries and to foreign audiences, that Brazil possesses a dramatic history, a brilliant literature, a promising economy,—in short—all the characteristics of a civilization …, of which my friend, apparently, was sceptical.

“Through love of the truth, I am now a journalist who ought to correspond to the ideal of the type, and if I do not, it is for the simple reason that in a certain sense, truth is the most burdensome luggage a person can carry through life, for it is always getting into our way. I don’t see why it should be inculcated with such arduous effort—and, paradoxically, a sincere effort—into the souls of children, since, in their future life it can cause so much trouble to those of us who continue to invoke and apply what was taught us as a virtue.”

If Lima has been an undiplomatic diplomat, he is an unjournalistic journalist. As another paradox in his life, this man of Brazilian birth, Portuguese education and tri-continental wanderings has settled down in Washington, D. C., having presented his remarkable library to the Catholic University. Back from his present home he sends, to be sure, political chronicle and such chat, but also literary letters that are read with avidity by a youth whom he is strongly influencing. This is the stuff out of which a number of his books have grown; it is the sort of journalism that Bernard Shaw has boasted about, because of its intimate relation to significant, immediate life.

That he has chosen the United States for his permanent home sufficiently indicates a predilection early evidenced in his book upon this country; but that preference is neither blind nor unreasoned, any more than his Pan-Americanism is the hollow proclamation that deceives nobody less than alert South Americans. In his attitude to our nation he is candid, direct, with the reserve of a Martí, a Rodó, a Verissimo, only that he knows us more intimately than did those sterling spirits. At the end of a series of lectures dedicated to the then President of Leland Stanford Junior University, John Casper Branner, “distinguished scientist, eminent scholar and true friend of Brazil,” and delivered at that university, as well as others of this country, Lima declared that“The filiation and evolution of Portuguese America are separate from those of Spanish America; not infrequently, nay frequently rather, was this evolution hostile to that of Spanish America; but today they have common, identical interests, and a desire for a closer approximation appears so reciprocal that this movement becomes every day more pronounced and more firmly rooted. For Pan-Americanism to be complete, it would be necessary for the United States to ally itself with Latin America, with the importance, the influence, the prestige, the superiority to which its civilization entitles it—it would not be human to do otherwise—but without any thought, expressed or reserved, of direct predominance, which offends the weaker element and renders it suspicious.

“It is this which those who, like myself, know and esteem the United States,—and the best way of showing one’s esteem is not by praising unreservedly,—are hoping will come as the result of the great university movement which is gradually crystallizing in this country. Here idealism is a feature of the race (nor would you without it belong to a superior race), an ideal so noble and elevated as that of respect for the right of others, as that of human solidarity through the unification of culture. The great statesman who now presides over the destinies of the Argentine Republic, proclaimed at the First Pan-American Conference, at Washington, that America belonged to all humanity, not to a fraction of it; and indeed America is and will continue to be more and more the field for the employment of European capital, of study for European scholars, of commerce for European merchants, of activity for European immigration. Only thus will the New World fulfil its historical and social mission and redeem the debt contracted with Europe, which has given it its civilization.”[2]

This is an example of that “Spirit of peace and concord to which I have ever subordinated my spiritual activity.”[3]

As an investigator, Lima has always gone to the sources; he has the born historian’s patience with detail, and if he lacks the music of a seductive prose, he compensates for this more purely literary grace with a gift for vivifying the men and events of the past. Thus, if his sole venture into the historical drama has been unproductive of dramatic beauty, his historical writings abound in passages of colourful, dramatic power. Carlos Pereyra, himself a prolific writer upon American history, has, in his Spanish translation of Lima’sHistoric Formation of the Brazilian Nationality, compared him to such painters of the soul as Frans Hals. “Oliveira Lima paints portraits in the fashion of Hals. Thus we behold his personages not only in the ensemble of the canvas and in the external perfection of each figure, but in that mysterious prolongation that carries us into the intimate shadows of the personality.…”

Lima’s eclecticism is but the natural result of his residence in many parts of the world; it is also an aspect of a spiritual tolerance which is a trait of his personality, and which despite his “historic Catholicism” evokes, even from an unbeliever, the simple tribute which in this modestessay I seek to render as much to that personality as to any of its products.

As for his growing influence upon the youth of Brazil, I will let one of the most promising of those young men speak for his colleagues. Writes Senhor Gilberto de Mello Freyre,[4]“This independence of view and attitude explains the fascination that he exercises over the intellectual youth of Brazil.… He is generous toward the newcomers, without for that reason being easy with his praise. On the contrary, he is discreet. His generosity never reaches the extremes of indulgence. His intellectual hospitality has been great; he has been a sort of bachelor uncle to the nation’s ‘enfants terribles.’ He was one of the first to proclaim the powerful, strange talents of Euclydes da Cunha. He has sponsored other youthful intellects whose brilliant future he can foresee, such as Sr. Assis Chateaubriand, Sr. Antonio Carneiro Leão, Sr. Mario Mello, Sr. Annibal Fernandes.”

There are men whose lives are the best books they have written; to this company Manoel de Oliveira Lima belongs. He has identified himself so completely with the cultural history of his nation that, as I said at the beginning, he is an integral part of it, and if his works were removed from the national bookshelf, a yawning gap would be left. That is the better nationalism, to which he has devoted an unchauvinistic career of the higher patriotism. He has, on the other hand, become so essentially cosmopolitan as to have earned the rare title of world-citizen. If more diplomats have not been able to reconcile these two supposed “opposites,” it is notbecause such a patriotism is incompatible with the international mind, but because under their ceremonial clothes they hide the age-old predatory heart and serve the age-old predatory interests. Lima has not labelled others, and I am not going to label him; men, like countries, must remain ever different. But countries, like men, may bridge the gulf of difference by patient understanding, and the rivers of blood that flow under those bridges must be the blood of human tolerance and aid, not the blood of barter and battle. It would be easy to point out a certain “conservatism” in Lima, as in more than one other, and yet, if it be possible for us to live in anything but the present, he is a man of the future, for he has always dwelt above boundaries, above battles, above most of the sublimated childishness which we grown-ups pompously call“the serious business of the world.”

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