Brazilian Tales | Page 4

tells us, by the poetic sincerity of the whole. Taunay, too, has been likened to Pierre Loti for his exotic flavor. In Yerec�� a Guan�� we have a miniature Innocencia. Yerec�� and Alberto Monteiro fall in love and marry. The latter has been cured, at the home of Yerec��, of swamp fever. The inevitable, however, occurs, and Montero hears the call of civilization. The marriage, according to the custom of the tribe into which Montero has wed, is dissolved by the man alone. He returns to his old life and she dies of grief.
A work that may stand beside Innocencia and Verissimo's Scenes from Amazon Life as a successful national product is Inglez de Sousa's O Missionario. Antonio de Moraes, in this story, is not so strong in will as Taunay's vicar of sorrows. Antonio is a missionary "with the vocation of a martyr and the soul of an apostle," on duty in the tropics. The voluptuous magnetism of the Amazon seizes his body. Slowly, agonizingly, but surely he succumbs to the enchantment, overpowered by the life around him.
Since Machado de Assis (who should precede Azevedo) and Coelho Netto (who should follow him, if strict chronological order were being observed) are both referred to in section three, which deals particularly with the authors represented in this sample assortment of short tales, they are here omitted.
With the appearance of O Mulato by Aluizio Azevedo (1857-1912), the literature of Brazil, prepared for such a reorientation by the direct influence of the great Portuguese, E?a de Queiroz, and Emile Zola, was definitely steered toward naturalism. "In Aluizio Azevedo," says Benedicto Costa, "one finds neither the poetry of Jos�� de Alencar, nor the delicacy,--I should even say, archness--of Macedo, nor the sentimental preciosity of Taunay, nor the subtle irony of Machado de Assis. His phrase is brittle, lacking lyricism, tenderness, dreaminess, but it is dynamic, energetic, expressive, and, at times, sensual to the point of sweet delirium."
O Mulato, though it was the work of a youth in his early twenties, has been acknowledged as a solid, well-constructed example of Brazilian realism. There is a note of humor, as well as a lesson in criticism, in the author's anecdote (told in his foreword to the fourth edition) about the provincial editor who advised the youthful author to give up writing and hire himself out on a farm. This was all the notice he received from his native province, Maranhao. Yet Azevedo grew to be one of the few Brazilian authors who supported himself by his pen.
When Brazilian letters are better known in this nation, among Azevedo's work we should be quick to appreciate such a pithy book as the Livro de uma Sogra,--the Book of a Mother-in-Law. And when the literature of these United States is at last (if ever, indeed!) released from the childish, hypocritical, Puritanic inhibitions forced upon it by quasi official societies, we may even relish, from among Azevedo's long shelf of novels, such a sensuous product as Corti?o.
I have singled out, rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of the characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Gra?a Aranha's Canaan, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Guglielmo Ferrero's fulsome praise of it as the "great American novel."[2] For South America, no less than North, is hunting that literary will o' the wisp. Both Maria and Innocencia have been mentioned for that honor.
[2] Issued, in English (1920) by the publishers of this book.
There is a distinct basis for comparison between Innocencia and the more famous Spanish American tale from Colombia; between these and Canaan, however, there is little similarity, if one overlook the poetic atmosphere that glamours all three. Aranha's masterpiece is of far broader conception than the other two; it adds to their lyricism an epic sweep inherent in the subject and very soon felt in the treatment. It is, in fact, a difficult novel to classify, impregnated as it is with a noble idealism, yet just as undoubtedly streaked with a powerful realism. This should, however, connote no inept mingling of genres; the style seems to be called for by the very nature of the vast theme--that moment at which the native and the immigrant strain begin to merge in the land of the future--the promised land that the protagonists are destined never to enter, even as Moses himself, upon Mount Nebo in the land of Moab, beheld Canaan and died in the throes of the great vision.
Canaan is of those novels that centre about an enthralling idea. The type which devotes much attention to depictions of life and customs, to discussions upon present realities and ultimate purposes, is perhaps more frequent among Spanish and Portuguese Americans than among our own readers who are apt to be overinsistent in their demands for swift, visible action. Yet, in