Brazilian Tales | Page 4

clergyman, "the
vicar of sorrows," who, in the luxuriant environment of his charge
suffers the tortures of carnal temptations, with the spirit at last
triumphant over the flesh. Whatever of artifice there is in these tales is

overcome, one of his most sympathetic critics tells us, by the poetic
sincerity of the whole. Taunay, too, has been likened to Pierre Loti for
his exotic flavor. In Yerecé a Guaná we have a miniature Innocencia.
Yerecé and Alberto Monteiro fall in love and marry. The latter has been
cured, at the home of Yerecé, 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, Eça de Queiroz, and Emile Zola, was
definitely steered toward naturalism. "In Aluizio Azevedo," says
Benedicto Costa, "one finds neither the poetry of José 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 Cortiço.
I have singled out, rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of the
characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Graça 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