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Is Jorge Amado the Gateway to Brazil, or Not?

2012; Penn State University Press; Volume: 49; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/complitstudies.49.3.0361

1528-4212

Alamir Aquino Corrêa,

Urban Development and Societal Issues

In the national and international search for a Brazilian identity, we often say and hear that we are the country of soccer, samba, and Carnaval. This has given us a reputation as a party country, lacking commitment, a reputation reinforced by the economic interests of the entertainment industry. For a long time, particularly within the collective consciousness of the Brazilian people, the predominant perception has been that Brazil is not a “serious country” (many have said Charles De Gaulle was the first to use this phrase in reference to Brazil; however, Carlos Alves de Souza, Brazilian ambassador to France during the “Lobster War,” cemented its use, and Annick T. Melsan demystified the idea), even though the Brazilian economy and the country's politics have begun to undermine this pejorative reputation.For most Brazilian intellectuals, especially those socially engaged in finding a solution to the country's disparities, this view of Brazil is tinged with a profound sadness that arises from the absence of an auspicious present and the distance from a redemptive future. This idea can be found in Paulo Prado's book Retrato do Brasil: Um ensaio sobre a tristeza brasileira (1928) (Portrait of Brazil: An Essay on Brazilian Sadness) and in Gilberto Freyre's classic essays marked by autobiographical witness in Casa-grande e senzala (1933) (The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization [1946]) and Sobrados e mucambos (1936) (The Mansions and the Shanties: The Making of Modern Brazil [1987]). Additionally, Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda in Raízes do Brasil (1936) (Brazilian Roots) and Visão do paraíso (1959) (Vision of Paradise) and Caio Prado Júnior in Formação do Brasil contemporâneo (1942) (The Formation of Contemporary Brazil [1967]) highlight “the cordial man,” referring to a person who engages in moral negotiation in return for personal favors and who displays the servitude that comprises the colonial mindset.Perhaps because of this and because of the medieval notion that there is no sin below the Equator (ultra equinoxialem non peccatur)—a notion that determines the geographic location of paradise and that persists in tropicália and MPB (Brazilian popular music)—Brazil has been sought after for another reason both by its inhabitants and by foreigners. Within Brazil lies the locus amoenus, where peace, a joy for life, and an abundance of water predominate (ideas registered by Pero Vaz de Caminha in his Carta a El-Rey sobre o descobrimento do Brasil [Letter to the King Regarding the Discovery of Brazil]). This Brazilian “identity” has become a part of our cultural manifestations. Much of which is presented to foreigners as Brazilian, even to those from what were also once Portuguese colonies, has a hint of the exoticism and freedom typical of the tropics and is imagined as being Dionysian in nature.Brazilian literature is part of a peripheral culture—a former Portuguese colony with a very different Portuguese language from that spoken in Portugal that only began to interact with other Western languages in the 1930s. The first translations of Jorge Amado's work were done into Spanish: Cacau (1933) was translated in 1935, and Jubiabá (1935) was translated in 1937. The first translation of Érico Veríssimo's work was also done into Spanish; Olhai os lírios do campo (1938) was published in Argentina in 1940. That same year, the first translation of Casa-grande e senzala was also published in Buenos Aires.Within the context of Franklin D. Roosevelt's “good neighbor” policy, there was also considerable improvement in Brazil's relationship with the United States, particularly regarding Brazilian artistic production. In 1941, Érico Veríssimo gave a series of lectures in the United States as a guest of the Department of State. These lectures were a result of his work translating several North American writers for Editora Globo in Porto Alegre. He returned to the United States in 1943 to become a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. That same year, Veríssimo published Crossroads with Macmillan Publishers, a translation of his Caminhos cruzados (1937), and in 1945, he published a compendium of Brazilian literature: Brazilian Literature: An Outline. Several of Veríssimo's other texts have been published in English, a number of them shortly after their Portuguese editions: Olhai os Lírios do campo (1938) (Consider the Lilies of the Field [1947]), O resto é silêncio (1943) (Rest is Silence [1946]), and O tempo e o vento (1949) (Time and the Wind [1951]). Academic interest in Veríssimo also emerged at the time. In 1946, Hispania published Linton Lomas Barret's article “Érico Veríssimo and the Creation of Novelistic Character.” The value of Veríssimo's work can be measured by its editorial success as well as its critical reception. Brazilian critics have consistently revisited Veríssimo's work, which is an icon of southern Brazilian culture, along with that of Mário Quintana, particularly Maria da Glória Bordini in Rio Grande do Sul. In the United States, Veríssimo has been the subject of four doctoral theses, one of which was a project comparing him to Graham Greene. In Brazil, there have been twenty-seven doctoral theses about Veríssimo's work since 1987.Still within the context of neighborly politics, some North American editors, such as the Samuel Putnam and Alfred Knopf, went in search of other Brazilian authors, opening the doors for them to the North American market. In 1944, Putnam translated Euclides da Cunha's Os sertões as Revolt in the Backlands and published it through the University of Chicago Press. Gollancz (London) reedited the essay in 1947. It was at this time that Jorge Amado's and Graciliano Ramos's novels became prominent within Brazilian literature. In 1945, Knopf published Amado's Terras do sem fim (1943) (The Violent Land). The following year, Lewis C. Kaplan, Veríssimo's translator, translated Ramos's Angústia (Anguish). The great interest in the regionalist fiction of the Brazilian northeast, which reflected Brazil's own editorial market, is exemplified in Fred P. Ellison's 1945 study of the Brazilian novel and by a recent statement indicating that Graciliano Ramos's Vidas secas (Barren Lives) is the most widely read Brazilian novel in English.1Although Brazilian literature did not garner much readership in the United States, there has been considerable interest in translating and publicizing Brazilian authors within U.S. universities. Among these, the long series of translations of Jorge Amado's work stands out both for its translations into the English language and for those into almost fifty other foreign languages. Nevertheless, several critics view this export of his oeuvre with great reservation, since Amado presents an empathetic view of Brazil. It is precisely Amado's impact and the circumstances surrounding this impact that I briefly address, presenting the Bahian fictionalist as the gateway to Brazil for an international readership and paradoxically noting the small space his works occupied within Brazilian universities until a short time ago.Without a doubt, Jorge Amado is one of the most studied Brazilian authors outside of Brazil. There are 249 items listed in the MLA International Bibliography, including 8 doctoral dissertations on his oeuvre in the United States. By comparison, there are 10 dissertations on Machado de Assis and 8 on Guimarães Rosa. The first critical analysis on Amado by a non-Brazilian is “Os Romances de Jorge Amado” (“Jorge Amado's Novels”), an article by Ernest E. Stowell. It was published in Spanish in 1945 in the Revista Iberoamericana (published by the University of Pittsburgh), and it points to the superior quality of Jubiabá and Mar morto. More recently, in 2001, Keith H. Brower, Earl E. Fitz, and Enrique E. Martínez-Vidal edited a collection of essays in English on Jorge Amado (Jorge Amado: New Critical Essays). In 2005, Rita Olivieri-Godet and Jacqueline Pejon edited a collection in French (Jorge Amado: Lectures et dialogues autour d'une oeuvre). On the other hand, inside Brazil, there have been 154 doctoral dissertations on Machado de Assis, 141 on Guimarães Rosa, 33 on Jorge Amado, and 27 on Érico Veríssimo, according to CAPES, a dissertation bank maintained by the Brazilian Ministry of Education. This indicates that although Amado is an important literary figure, he remains secondary in the Brazilian canonical context.This difference in treatment, that is, the resistance Brazilian universities have shown toward Amado, has manifested itself at various moments. I would like to highlight two such manifestations in particular: Walnice Nogueira Galvão's “Amado: Respeitoso, respeitável” (“Amado: Respectful, Respectable”) and Robert Reis's “Who's Afraid of (Luso-) Brazilian Literature?” Galvão was Antonio Candido's assistant. She received her doctorate in 1970 and is currently professor emeritus at the Universidade de São Paulo. Reis (1949–1995) received his doctorate from the Pontífica Universidade Católica-Rio de Janeiro in 1983 and taught at the University of Minnesota. Although these two scholars do not belong to the same generation, the sour critical tone of their work is very much alike. Galvão points to several failings in Amado's work, including the “pornographic” language found in Tereza Batista cansada da guerra (1972) (Tereza Batista, Home from the Wars [1972]).2 Reis demonstrates his indignation toward Brazilianists (here understood as foreigners who study Brazil) who perceive Brazil through Jorge Amado's “exotic” view.3 Both also react negatively to the rituals Amado portrays, particularly culinary and Afro-Brazilian ones, and Reis, who takes a synthetic view, sees Amado's way of defining the poor black man as good and the rich white man as bad as Manichean.4When evaluating Amado's impact within Brazilian universities, it is important to consider three other works of criticism. Alfredo Bosi's História concisa da literatura brasileira (Concise History of Brazilian Literature), originally published in 1970, holds hegemonic sway in literature courses. Bosi, when classifying the novel from 1930s, defines the works of Jorge Amado, Marques Rebelo, and Érico Veríssimo as novels with minimal tension: “Há conflito, mas este configura-se em termos de oposição verbal, sentimental quando muito: as personagens não se destacam visceralmente da estrutura e da paisagem que as condicionam” (“There is conflict, but it is mainly in terms of verbal opposition, sentimental [opposition] at most: the characters do not distinguish themselves viscerally from the structure and background that condition them”).5 On the other side of this argument, and rarely listed in ancillary bibliographies of literature courses, we have Roberto DaMatta, an anthropologist who praises Jorge Amado's carnavalization in several works, including Carnavais, malandros e heróis (1979) (Carnivals, Scoundrels, and Heroes) and in A casa e a rua (1984) (The House and the Street). Additionally, Ívia Alves has revisited Jorge Amado's work through several cultural studies, which are perhaps better than the others at providing an understanding of Amado's narrative discourse; however, Alves justifies the aesthetic resistance to Amado in Brazilian universities in the 1970s (exemplified here through Bosi, Galvão, and Reis), claiming that linguistic refinement (or a reflection on language) is what made critics gravitate away from Amado's fiction and toward the experimental fiction of Guimarães Rosa and Clarice Lispector.6 In sum, perhaps Bosi's judgmental attitude, although based on a minor criticism (that the novel has minimal tension), may keep Amado away from literature courses, while at the same time DaMatta merely validates his own interpretation of the Brazilian man in his praise of Amado and Alves that indirectly maintains and justifies an aesthetic devaluation of Amado's works.Amado's various biographical narratives and interviews highlight two aspects of his life: his political engagement with the Communist Party until 1954 (and the subsequent marginalization of his texts in Brazil and in other countries) and the intense network of writers and other celebrities, particularly those outside of Brazil, that he created. His investments in both the Communist Party and his international circle of friends may suggest an economic concern on his part in guaranteeing his place within world literature, which perhaps reflects his hope of proving the quality of his work. Albert Camus' article on Jubiabá, Amado's relationships with Pierre Verger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, and Ferreira de Castro, his political activity in conjunction with Pablo Neruda, Carlo Ponti's purchase of the film rights to Mar morto and Warner Brothers' purchase of the film rights for “A completa verdade sobre as discutidas aventuras do comandante Vasco Moscoso de Aragão, capitão de longo curso” (part of Home is the Sailor), Roman Polanski's visit to Salvador, Amado's involvement in the movement against censorship in conjunction with Érico Veríssimo, and his Nobel Prize nominations in 1967 and 1968 by the Brazilian Writers Union all demonstrate the extent of Amado's international network by 1970.By indicating the year 1970, I wanted to emphasize Amado's long journey as a professional writer and the fact that he achieved success much earlier than Galvão claims in her article. In a 1995 publication about his life and work, Amado reacts to the academic criticism against him: Romancista de putas e de vagabundos, classifica-me com menosprezo um graúdo da crítica literária. A classificação me agrada, passo a repeti-la para definir minha criação romanesca…. Em três palácios de governo relembrei que sou apenas um romancista de putas e vagabundos, colocando o acento na palavra puta, com júbilo.7(Literary critics categorize me with disdain as a novelist of whores and bums. This categorization rather pleases me, and from now on, I shall repeat it as a way of defining my novelistic creations…. I have reminded people that I am merely a novelist of whores and bums at three capitol buildings, jubilantly emphasizing the word “whores.”) This testimonial provides readers with a glimpse of Amado's cordiality, as Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda puts it, his carnavalization, his anthropophagous digestion of the Brazilian higher education system. Amado's mere presence at three capitol buildings, “humbly” describing his condition as a writer, amounted to a harsh, scathing criticism.Many critics who consider the market success of Brazilian authors versus their academic influence on culture are surprised by Amado's editorial and personal successes as well as by the indifference an international readership has shown toward the rest of Brazilian literature. The same has occurred with Paulo Coelho, also a writer of best sellers. This being said, I would like to highlight a few arguments Carmen Chaves Tesser makes in her 2001 article “A Postcolonial Reading of a Colonised Malandro.”In contrast to Roberto Reis, who attacks Brazilianists, Tesser recognizes that Brazilianists have disregarded Amado's oeuvre in an effort to “sell” a particular image of Brazil, as a country and as an intellectual group, as equal to other modern nations. Drawing on postcolonial theory, Tesser postulates that Brazilian intellectuals should not censor those wanting to know Brazil nor should they censor the means by which this knowledge is achieved. By so censoring, they indirectly eliminate the basis for attacks on those who consume Amado's work nationally and internationally, be it his work in its original, adapted, or translated forms.8 Tesser then notes the problem with the academic definition of “Brazilianness.” She views it as an attempt to perceive the hybridity of the Brazilian experience in relation to European values and as a product of the inexcusable neglect of the African presence, although I would like to point out that this African presence is precisely what guides Gilberto Freyre's essays. Tesser sees in Amado's work an element that greatly complicates this issue—the contrasting and conflicting juxtapositions between Europe and Africa in Brazil in his work are such that Amado ends up disregarding the norms of high culture without completely assuming the norms of low culture.9 Tesser sees Amado as a Brazilian malandro, a scoundrel, and although she never states this, the behavior she describes throughout her own work reiterates the processes of accommodation and survival found in the picaresque. Tesser also subsequently recognizes the need for another reading of Amado, one that would provoke a crisis of conscience among critics, allowing them to better understand the Bahian novelist.At the end of her essay, Tesser comments on some of the ideas found in Ruben Oliven's work, which she translated into English. Like other intellectuals, Oliven is concerned with being Brazilian (with the image foreigners have of Brazil) but with a different idea of being Brazilian than the one Amado documents. After all, the majority of the Brazilian population is located in the southeast and south of the country, and the Brazilian customs North Americans are acquainted with—Brazilian food such as rice and black beans, Brazilian music such as bossa nova, and Brazilian literature by writers other than Amado, such as Machado de Assis and Clarice Lispector—are very different from those in the northeast. Additionally, the southeast and south have experienced centuries of European immigration and possess a culture of their own. (Historically, these regions were first populated by the Spanish and Portuguese, and then, from 1860 on, a considerable number of Italians and Germans emigrated there as well.) In summation, Oliven emphasizes the need for recognizing a local culture before a national culture can be defined. Without aiming to dispute Oliven's ideas, I would like to add that a large part of the population in the south and southeast came from the Brazilian northeast (approximately 20 percent of the population of the city of São Paulo is composed of northeastern immigrants; in Paraná, a southern state, one of every four inhabitants is a northeastern immigrant). These people preserve their heritage, as can be seen, for example, in the fairs dedicated to the northeast and in literature (for example, Ricardo Ramos's short stories). As such, our contemporary urban profile, created mostly since 1960, is still not quite understood in terms of local, regional, and national identities. We must agree, however, that Brazil is not only bossa nova, feijoada seasoning, or the literary crônicas that take place in the Ipanema and Leblon neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, just to mention a few of the tourist stereotypes sold to other countries. Tesser's call for a reevaluation of Amado's work as necessary is truly courageous, not only because she is demanding that his work be confronted but also because she understands that there is something in it that has been ignored by a significant number of Brazilian intellectuals—the inheritance and presence of the Afro-Brazilian.I believe the time has come to evaluate the motives that brought Amado to this impasse between commercial success and academic reception. In order to accomplish this, I would like to emphasize Amado's role as a promoter of Bahia. While Bahia is also a part of Brazilian space, where there are all sorts of people—poor people, oppressed people, disgraced people, bandits, colonels, prostitutes, fishermen, college graduates—many of the people there are moved by a certain sensory hability where taste predominates (aesthetic, musical, culinary, sexual). Amado's characters are mostly driven by the desire to survive, in the face of the indifference of the state, quasi-slave labor conditions, life with an inherited Iberian patriarchy centered on the male figure, and subalternity based on race, gender, age, and social class or by a desire to find some type of amusement (capoeira, bohemian life, music) or to find tolerance (in spite of obvious racism). During his first phase, Amado was acclaimed because of his sociopolitical engagement, as were Graciliano Ramos, José Lins do Rego, and Rachel de Queirós. Later, he achieved success by providing his readers with a novel such as Gabriela, cravo e canela, which stands as the true dividing line between Amado as a novelist of social engagement and Amado as a novelist intent on public success. The various prizes he won domestically and internationally after Gabriela attest to his impact and his maturation.Within Amado's body of work there are many instances of the Afro-Brazilian, from cordel literature to the carnivalized sensuality of its cuisine. The affability and cordiality that define Bahia (reflected, for example, in the affection the Bahian people show to those who visit Bahia), a place where there is no hurry and none of the stress of modern life, may be precisely what attract the foreigner to this world, a world that may perhaps be better than the one in which the reader lives. Obviously, some of Amado's characters are caricatures, but this humor is what amuses readers, the foreign ones in particular, that do not want to encounter their own problems in what they read. It is perhaps in this space that the “something special” about Amado's work lies, something that is quickly noticed by foreign translators and editors, (who, however, have nevertheless removed entire sections from novels or have made his language even more explicit, as recent theses on the translations of Amado's work have shown).10Several soap operas, television series, and films produced since 1961 of Amado's novels have given them greater exposure, which has been important to their success. Without a doubt, many foreign readers have gotten to know Brazil through Amado's novels, as Ilana Seltzer Goldstein has shown.11 His work was for a long time (and still is) a portrayal of Brazil, even if it is confined to the Bahian space. In fact, the exoticism his novels generate for foreigners is also generated in other Brazilian cultural centers.For many years, it was taboo to study Amado in Brazilian universities. Until 2000, only five doctoral dissertations had been defended in which Amado was the main subject (four in São Paulo and one in Rio de Janeiro). The first doctoral thesis on Dona Flor e seus dois maridos (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) was only completed at the Federal University of Bahia in 2001 even though the university bestowed its first doctoral degree in 1995. Since then, academic interest in his work has greatly increased—perhaps because the number of doctorates offered outside of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo has increased or perhaps because of the considerable impact of cultural studies. In foreign universities, Amado's novels have been used in introductory courses on Brazil for a very simple reason: the availability of copies generated by the undeniable editorial success of his work in English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian.There are two constants that seem to reappear in Amado's trajectory: exoticism and the Afro-Brazilian element (even though these are two facets, they are positive ones). Here we can see how Amado's trajectory coincides with that of the construction of a Brazilian image since 1960—one that is particular to the international community. With the advent of the military dictatorship and its project of national integration, it was impossible for the media to ignore Amado's words, even if the Globo television network sought to impose a different national accent on its television newscasts. The soap opera was the medium that made cultural differences visible. It is possible to observe within these soap operas a change from representing the perspective of Rio de Janeiro to representing that of São Paulo, Bahia, and Rio Grande do Sul. Although the Afro-Brazilian element has been progressively confirmed through more important roles in made-for-television dramas, the exoticism associated with Bahia has not diminished at the same rate.Amado's work can be situated between the transition from a provincial Brazil, a cultural archipelago, to one that has been modernized and integrated through means of communication. Juridical and social advances provided an alternative space for Afro-Brazilians. Living in a country with clean water, laid-back people, and immense natural beauty, we are now psychologically and physically less exotic and more conscious of our cultural differences. In the 1930s, Brazilian intellectuals were very much concerned with the place of those marginalized by ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference, and this concern has resurfaced to become the political motto of the past twenty-five years. This new temperament must also permeate academia, opening space for more detached readings of Amado, readings less concerned with his ideological commitment and more concerned with his desire that the country be transformed through literature. Amado belongs to a long tradition of writers who have registered different ways of life, from Gregório de Matos to Caldas Barbosa. His work is very Bahian, and as such, very Brazilian. There are already several new portals to Brazil, but Amado will continue being the one that is always open to a time that has passed, a time to which we return through one of Amado's epigraphs: “O cheiro de cravo/A cor de canela/Eu vim de longe/Vim ver Gabriela” (The smell of cloves/ The color of cinnamon/ I've come from afar/ I've come to see Gabriela).