Brazilian Tales | Page 8

dignity, by
the unity of a life that was entirely devoted to the cult of intellectual
beauty, and by the prestige exerted about him by his work and by his
personality, Machado de Assis succeeded, despite a nature that was
averse to acclaim and little inclined to public appearance, in being
considered and respected as the first among his country's men-of-letters:
the head, if that word can denote the idea, of a youthful literature which
already possesses its traditions and cherishes above all its glories ... His
life was one of the most regulated and peaceful after he had given up
active journalism, for like so many others, he began his career as a
political reporter, paragrapher and dramatic critic."
Coelho Netto (Anselmo Ribas, 1864- ) is known to his countrymen as a
professor of literature at Rio de Janeiro. His career has covered the
fields of journalism, politics, education and fiction. Although his work
is of uneven worth, no doubt because of his unceasing productivity, he
is reckoned by so exacting a critic as Verissimo as one of Brazil's most
important writers,--one of the few, in fact, that will be remembered by
posterity. Among his best liked stories are "Death," "The Federal
Capital," "Paradise," "The Conquest," and "Mirage." Netto's short
stories are very popular; at one time every other youth in Brazil was
imitating his every mannerism. He is particularly felicitous in his
descriptions of tropical nature, which teem with glowing life and vivid
picturesqueness.
Coelho Netto is considered one of the chief writers of the modern
epoch. "He is really an idealist," writes Verissimo, "but an idealist who
has drunk deeply of the strong, dangerous milk of French naturalism."
He sees nature through his soul rather than his eyes, and has been much
influenced by the mystics of Russia, Germany and Scandinavia. His
style is derived chiefly from the Portuguese group of which Eça de
Queiroz is the outstanding figure, and his language has been much
affected by this attachment to the mother country. His chief stylistic
quality is an epic note, tempered by a sentimental lyricism.

In his book Le Roman au Brésil (The Novel in Brazil, which I believe
the author himself translated from the original Portuguese into French)
Benedicto Costa, after considering Aluizio Azevedo as the exponent of
Brazilian naturalism and the epicist of the race's sexual instincts, turns
to Coelho Netto's neo-romanticism, as the "eternal praise of nature, the
incessant, exaggerated exaltation of the landscape..." In Netto he
perceives the most Brazilian, the least European of the republic's
authors. "One may say of him what Taine said of Balzac: 'A sort of
literary elephant, capable of bearing prodigious burdens, but
heavy-footed.' And in fact ... he reveals a great resemblance to
Balzac,--a relative Balzac, for the exclusive use of a people,--but a
Balzac none the less."
Despite his lack of ideas, his mixture of archaisms, neologisms, his
exuberance, his slow development of plots, his lack of proportion
(noticeable, naturally, in his longer works rather than in his short
fiction) he stands pre-eminent as a patron of the nation's intellectual
youth and as the romancer of its opulent imagination.
Medeiros e Albuquerque (1867- ) is considered by some critics to be
the leading exponent in the country of "the manner of de Maupassant,
enveloped by an indefinable atmosphere that seems to bring back Edgar
Allan Poe." He has been director-general of public instruction in Rio de
Janeiro, professor at the Normal School and the National School of
Fine Arts, and also a deputy from Pernambuco. With the surprising
versatility of so many South Americans he has achieved a reputation as
poet, novelist, dramatist, publicist, journalist and philosopher.
IV.
The part that women have played in the progress of the South
American republics is as interesting as it is little known. The name of
the world's largest river--the Amazon, or more exactly speaking, the
Amazons--stands as a lasting tribute to the bravery of the early women
whom the explorer Orellana encountered during his conquest of the
mighty flood.[3] For he named the river in honor of the tribes' fighting
heroines. Centuries later, when one by one the provinces of South
America rose to liberate themselves from the Spanish yoke, the women

again played a noble part in the various revolutions. The statue in
Colombia to Policarpa Salavarieta is but a symbol of South American
gratitude to a host of women who fought side by side with their
husbands during the trying days of the early nineteenth century. One of
them, Manuela la Tucumana, was even made an officer in the
Argentine army.
[3] This derivation of the river's name is by many considered fanciful.
A more likely source of the designation is the Indian word
"Amassona," i.e., boat-destroyer, referring to the tidal phenomenon
known as "bore" or "proroca,"