Brazilian Tales | Page 2

reaction,--mystical, sensualist,
individualist, socialistic or anarchistic,--as in Europe.
Two chief impulses were early present in Brazilian letters: that of
Portuguese literature and that of the Jesuit colleges. At the time of the
discovery of Brazil only Italy, Spain, France and Portugal possessed a
literary life. Portugal, indeed, as the Brazilian critic points out, was
then in its golden period. It boasted chroniclers like Fernao Lopes,
novelists like Bernardim Ribeiro, historians like Joao de Barros, and

dramatists of the stamp of Gil Vicente. The Jesuit colleges, too, were
followed by other orders, spreading Latin culture and maintaining
communication between the interior and the important centers. It is
natural, then, that early letters in Brazil should have been Portuguese
not only in language, but in inspiration, feeling and spirit. Similarly, we
find the early intellectual dependence of the Spanish American
countries upon Spain, even as later both the Spanish and the Portuguese
writers of America were to be influenced greatly by French literature.
"Brazilian poetry," says Verissimo in the little essay already referred to,
"was already in the seventeenth century superior to Portuguese verse."
He foresaw a time when it would outdistance the mother country. But
Brazilian literature as a whole, he found, lacked the perfect continuity,
the cohesion, the unity of great literatures, chiefly because it began as
Portuguese, later turned to east (particularly France) and only then to
Brazil itself. In the early days it naturally lacked the solidarity that
comes from easy communication between literary centers. This same
lack of communication was in a sense still true at the time he wrote his
essay. The element of communicability did exist during the Romantic
period (1835-1860), whereupon came influences from France, England,
Italy, and even Germany, and letters were rapidly denationalized. What
was thus needed and beneficial from the standpoint of national culture
prejudiced the interests of national literature, says Verissimo. He finds,
too, that there is too little originality and culture among Brazilian
writers, and that their work lacks sincerity and form (1899). Poetry was
too often reduced to the love of form while fiction was too closely
copied from the French, thus operating to stifle the development of a
national dramatic literature. Excessive preoccupation with politics and
finance (where have we heard that complaint elsewhere?) still further
impeded the rise of a truly native literature.
Perhaps Verissimo's outlook was too pessimistic; he was an earnest
spirit, unafraid to speak his mind and too much a lover of truth to be
misled by a love of his country into making exaggerated claims for
works by his countrymen. We must not forget that he was here looking
upon Brazilian letters as a whole; in other essays by him we discover
that same sober spirit, but he is alive to the virtues of his fellow writers
as well as to their failings.

It is with the prose of the latest period in Brazilian literature that we are
here concerned. From the point of view of the novel and tale Brazil
shares with Argentina, Columbia, Chile and Mexico the leadership of
the Latin-American[1] republics. If Columbia, in Jorge Isaacs' Maria,
can show the novel best known to the rest of the world, and Chile, in
such a figure as Alberto Blest-Gana (author of Martin Rivas and other
novels) boasts a "South American Balzac," Brazil may point to more
than one work of fiction that Is worthy of standing beside María,
Martin Rivas or José Marmol's exciting tale of love and adventure,
Amalia. The growing Importance of Brazil as a commercial nation,
together with a corresponding increase of interest in the study of
Portuguese (a language easily acquired by all who know Spanish) will
have the desirable effect of making known to the English reading
public a selection of works deserving of greater recognition.
[1] I am aware of the recent objection to this term (See my Studies in
Spanish American Literature, pp. 233-237), but no entirely satisfactory
substitute has been advanced.
Just to mention at random a few of the books that should in the near
future be known to American readers, either in the original or through
the medium of translations, I shall recall some of the names best known
to Brazilians in connection with the modern tale and novel. If there be
anything lacking in the array of modern writers it is a certain broad
variety of subject and treatment to which other literatures have
accustomed us.
It is not to be wondered at that in surroundings such as the Amazon
affords an "Indian" school of literature should have arisen. We have an
analogous type of fiction in United States literature, old and new,
produced by similar causes. Brazilian "Indianism" reached its highest
point perhaps in José Alencar's famous Guarany, which won for its
author national reputation and achieved unprecedented success. From