Brazilian Literature. Goldberg Isaac

41

Estudos, quarta serie. P. 47-48.

42

Le Brésil Litteraire. Histoire de la Littérature brésilienne suivie d’un choix de morceaux tirés des meilleurs auteurs b(r)ésiliens par Ferdinand Wolf. Berlin, 1863. See, for a discussion of this book, the Selective Critical Bibliography at the back of the present work.

43

Op. Cit. P. 109.

44

The Brazilians are beasts, hard at work their lives long, in order to support Portuguese knaves.

45

For a good résumé of Caviedes’ labours, with valuable biographical indications, see Luis Alberto Sánchez, Historia de la Literatura Peruana, I. Los Poetas de la Colonia, Pp. 186-200.

46

Ibid. P. 190.

47

The sun is born and lasts but a single day; dark night follows upon the light; beauty dies amidst the gloomy shadows and joy amid continued grief. Why, then, if the sun must die, was it born? Why, if light be beautiful, does it not endure? How is beauty thus transfigured? How does pleasure thus trust pain? But let firmness be lacking in sun and light, let permanence flee beauty, and in joy, let there be a note of sadness. Let the world begin, at length, in ignorance; for, whatever the boon, it is by nature constant only in its inconstancy.

48

“The story of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand is but a child’s tale compared with the fearless adventure of our colonial brothers.” Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 127.

49

Oliveira Lima. Aspectos da Litteratura Colonial Brazileira. Leipzig, 1896. This youthful work of the eminent cosmopolite furnishes valuable as well as entertaining collateral reading upon the entire colonial period in Brazil. The standpoint is often historical rather than literary, yet the proportions are fairly well observed.

50

See, for just such inclusion, B. Gorin’s Die Geshichte vun Yiddishen Theater, New York, 1918, 2 vols. (In Yiddish.) Page 33, Volume I. With reference to the Jew and comic opera, rumours of Sir Arthur Sullivan’s partial Jewish origin still persist.

51

Diminutive of moda, and signifying, literally, a new song. The modinha is the most characteristic of Brazilian popular forms, a transformation of the troubadors’ jácara and the Portuguese fado. It is generally replete with love and the allied feelings.

52

The chief works of Antonio José da Silva are Vida do Grande D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança (1733); Ezopaida ou Vida de Ezopo (1734); Os Encantos de Medea (1735); Amphytrião ou Jupiter e Alcmena (1736); Labyrintho de Creta (1736); Guerras do Alecrim e da Manjerona (1737); a highly amusing Molièresque farce, considered by many his best; As Variedades de Proteu (1737); Precipicio de Faetonte (posthumous).

The latest view of Antonio José (See Bell’s Portuguese Literature, pages 282-284); whom Southey considered “the best of their drama writers,” is that his plays would in all likelihood have received little “attention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had it not been for the tragedy of the author’s life.” This probably overstates the case against O Judeu, but it indicates an important non-literary reason for his popularity.

53

The original title was spelled Uraguay. Later writers either retain the first or replace it with the more common u.

54

Estudos. Segunda Serie, pp. 89-129.

55

In Portuguese literature, as Verissimo points out in his interesting parallel between the two epics, it is no easy matter to indicate the exact line between classic and romantic styles. A Frenchman has even spoken of the romanticism of the classics, which is by no means merely a sample of Gallic paradox. The Brazilian critic considers France the only one of the neo-Latin literatures that may be said to possess a genuinely classic period. As I have tried to suggest here and elsewhere, we have need of a change in literary terminology; classic and romantic are hazy terms that should, in time, be supplanted by something more in consonance with the observations of modern psychology. The emphasis, I would say, should be shifted from the subject-matter and external aspects to the psychology of the writer and his intuitive approach. The distinctions have long since lost their significance and should therefore be replaced by a more adequate nomenclature.

56

Long before Verissimo, Wolf (1863) had written in his pioneer work already referred to, “Thus José Basilio da Gama and Durão only prepared the way for Magalhães and Gonçalves Dias.”

57

The natives named him Caramurú, whence the name of the epic. The word has been variously interpreted as signifying “dragon risen out of the sea” (Rocha Pitta) and “son of the thunder” (Durão’s own version), referring in the first instance to the man’s rescue from the wreck and in the second to his arquebuse. Verissimo rejects any such poetic interpretation and makes the topic food for fruitful observation. He considers the Brazilian savage, as any other, of rudimentary and scant imagination, incapable of lofty metaphorical flights. “The Indians, infinitely less poetic than the poets who were to sing them, called Diogo Alvares as they were in the habit of calling themselves, by the name of an animal, tree or something of the sort. They named him Caramurú, the name of a fish on their coast, because they caught him in the sea or coming out of it. And to this name they added nothing marvellous, as our active imagination has pictured.” And “this very sobriquet as well as the epoch in which it was applied, are still swathed in legend.”

58

The light of her eyes is extinguished, she swoons and trembles; her face grows pale, her look is deathly; her hands, now strengthless, let go the rudder and she descends to the bottom of the briny waves. But returning from the depths to the waves of the sea, which quivers in fury, “Oh, cruel Diogo!” she said in grief. And unseen ever after, she was engulfed by the waters.

59

How happy were the world, if, with the remembrance of love and glory lost, the recollection of pleasures would likewise be consumed forever! But worst and saddest grief of all is to find that at no time is this fantastic victory of love transitory, for always it is repeated in remembrance. Lovers, you who burn in this fire, flee Love’s venomous assault that it holds for you there in later days. Let not treacherous contentment deceive you; for this present pleasure, when it has passed, will remain as a tormenting memory.

60

I gaze, comely Marilia, at your tresses; and I behold in your cheeks the jessamine and the rose; I see your beautiful eyes, your pearly teeth and your winsome features. He who created so perfect and entrancing a work, my fairest Marilia, likewise could make the sky and more, if more there be.

61

Estudos. Segunda Serie, pp. 217-218.

62

For Romero’s strenuous attempt to prove the Cartas the work of Alvarenga Peixoto, see his Historia, Volume I, pages 207-211.

63

I loved the liberty and independence of my dear sweet fatherland, which the Portuguese pitilessly oppressed with laughter and scorn. This is my sole crime!

64

The glory of the fatherland is wholly gone. The cry of liberty that once thundered through Brazil now is mute amidst chains and corpses. Over its ruins, far from their fatherland, weep its wandering sons. Because they loved it, they are accused of treason, by an infamous, truckling band.

65

“True Romanticism,” says Wolf, “is nothing other than the expression of a nation’s genius unrestrained by the trammels of convention.” He would derive the name through the same reasoning that called the lingua romana rustica (country