Brazilian Tales | Page 3

the book was made a libretto that was set to music by the Brazilian
composer, Carlos Gomez. The story is replete with an intensity of life
and charming descriptions that recall the pages of Chateaubriand, and
its prose often verges upon poetry in its idealization of the Indian race.

Of the author's other numerous works Iracema alone approaches
Guarany in popularity. The dominant note of the author, afterward
much repeated in the literary history of his nation, is the essential
goodness and self-abnegation of the national character.
Alfred d'Escragnolle Taunay (1843-1899) is among the most important
of Brazil's novelists. Born at Rio de Janeiro of noble family he went
through a course in letters and science, later engaging in the campaign
of Paraguay. He took part in the retreat of La Laguna, an event which
he has enshrined in one of his best works, first published in French
under the title La Retraite de la Laguna. He served also as secretary to
Count d'Eu, who commanded the Brazilian army, and later occupied
various political offices, rising to the office of senator in 1886. His list
of works is too numerous to mention in a fragmentary introduction of
this nature; chief among them stands Innocencia; a sister tale, so to
speak, to Isaacs's María. According to Verissimo, Innocencia is one of
the country's few genuinely original novels. It has been called, by
Mérou (1900), "the best novel written in South America by a South
American," a compliment later paid by Guglielmo Ferrero to Graça
Aranha's Canaan. Viscount Taunay's famous work has been translated
into French twice, once into English, Italian, German, Danish, and even
Japanese.
The scene is laid in the deserted Matto Grosso, a favorite background
of the author's. Innocencia is all that her name implies, and dwells
secluded with her father, who is a miner, her negress slave Conga, and
her Caliban-like dwarf Tico, who loves Innocencia, the Miranda of this
district. Into Innocencia's life comes the itinerant physician, Cirino de
Campos, who is called by her father to cure her of the fever. Cirino is
her Ferdinand; they make love in secret, for she is meant by paternal
arrangement for a mere brute of a mule driver, Manaçao by name.
Innocencia vows herself to Cirino, when the mule-driver comes to
enforce his prior claim; the father, bound by his word of honor, sides
with the primitive lover. The tragedy seems foreordained, for
Innocencia makes spirited resistance, while Manaçao avenges himself
by killing the doctor. A comic figure of a German scientist adds humor
and a certain poignant irony to the tale. Such a bare outline conveys

nothing of the mysterious charm of the original, nor of its poetic
atmosphere. Comparing Innocencia with what has been termed its
sister work, María, I believe that María is the better tale of the two,
although there is much to be said for both. The point need not be
pressed. The heroine of María is more a woman, less a child than
Innocencia, hence the fate of the Spanish girl is tragic where that of the
other maiden is merely pitiful. Innocencia, on the other hand, is stouter
in texture. In María there is no love struggle; the struggle is with life
and circumstance; in Innocencia there is not only the element of rivalry
in love, but in addition there is the rigid parent who sternly, and at last
murderously, opposes the natural desires of a child whom he has
promised to another. Where María is idyllic, poetic, flowing smoothing
along the current of a realism tempered by sentimentalism, Innocencia
(by no means devoid of poetry) is romantic, melodramatic, rushing
along turbulently to the outcome in a death as violent as María's is
peaceful. There is in each book a similar importance of the background.
In Innocencia the "point of honor" is quite as strong and vindictive as
in any play of the Spanish Golden Age. María shares with Innocencia
relieving touches of humor and excellent pages of character
description.
Taunay's O Encilhamento is a violent antithesis to the work just
considered. Here the politician speaks. In passages of satire that
becomes so acrimonious at times as to indicate real personages, the
wave of speculation that swept Argentina and Brazil is analyzed and
held up to scorn. The novel is really a piece of historical muck-raking
and was long an object of resentment in the republic.
Everything from Taunay's pen reveals a close communion with nature,
an intimate understanding of the psychology of the vast region's
inhabitants. His shorter tales, which I hope later to present to the
English-reading public, reveal these powers at their best. Now it is a
soldier who goes to war, only, like a military Enoch Arden, to return
and find his sweetheart in another's arms; now it is a