FOOTNOTES:
[1] London, 1905. Page 113.
[2] Cf. Spanish and Portuguese brasa, a live coal. Also, English brazier.
[3] Le Roman au Brésil. Paris, 1918.
[4] Sylvio Romero (See Litteratura Contemporanea, Rio de Janeiro, no date, pages 45-46, chapter upon the poet Luiz Murat) refers in characteristic fashion to the Brazilian habit of overstating the case of the native imagination. There is no audacious flight, he declares; no soaring of eagles and condors. “Whether we examine the popular literature or the cultured, we find overwhelming proof of this assertion. Our popular novels and anonymous songs are scant in plot, ingenious imaginings, marvelous imagery, which are so common in their Slavic, Celtic, Greek and Germanic congeners. And the contribution brought by the negroes and indigenous tribes are even poorer than the part that came to us from the Portuguese. Cultivated literature … is even inferior to the popular productions from the standpoint of the imagination.… Our imagination, which is of simply decorative type, is the imagination of lyric spirits, of the sweet, monodic poetry of new souls and young peoples.”
[5] Sertão. Literally, interior, midland part. It refers here to the plateau of the Brazilian interior. In the opening pages of his excellent A Brazilian Mystic, R. B. Cunninghame-Graham suggests as a periphrasis, “wooded, back-lying highlands.” The German hinterland conveys something of the idea.
[6] Ronaldo de Carvalho. Pequena Historia da Literatura Brasileira. Rio de Janeiro, 1919. Pp. 13-14. For Euclydes da Cunha, see the special chapter devoted to him in part two. Joaquim Nabuco (1849-1910) was a distinguished publicist and writer, born in Pernambuco. In 1905 he was ambassador to the United States.
[7] Rio. 1902. (2a Edição, melhorada pelo auctor.)
[8] Op. Cit. 16-17.
[9] De Carvalho. Op. Cit. P. 27.
[10] Saudade. Compare English longing, yearning, or German Sehnsucht.
[11] Rufino José Cuervo (1842-1911) was called by Menéndez y Pelayo the greatest Spanish philologist of the Nineteenth Century.
A species of national pride finds vent in philological channels through the discovery of “localisms” in each of the Spanish-American republics. At the most this is of dialectic or sub-dialectic importance, but it illustrates an undoubted trend and supports Cuervo’s contentions.
[12] New York, 1921. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
[13] Estudos de Literatura Brazileira. Sexta serie. Rio de Janeiro, 1907. Pp. 47-133.
[14] An important monthly published at São Paulo, then under the editorship of Srs. Afranio Peixoto and Monteiro Lobato.
[15] Note, for example, the various spellings of the word literature here used as in the originals.
[16] The famous Portuguese seat of learning at Coimbra.
[17] João Ribeiro. A Lingua Nacional. São Paulo. 1921.
[18] Varnhagen, in his Introduction to the Florilegio da Poesia Brazileira (Vol. I of the two volumes that appeared in Lisbon in 1850, pages 19-20), has some interesting remarks upon the early hispanization of Portuguese in Brazil. Among such effects of Spanish upon Brazilian Portuguese he notes the transposition of the possessive pronouns; the opening of all vowels, thus avoiding the elision of final e or converting final o into u; the pronunciation of s at the end of a syllable as s instead of as sh, which is the Portuguese rule.
[19] The wise Goethe once said to Eckermann: “The poet, as a man and citizen, will love his native land; but the native land of his poetic powers and poetic action is the good, noble and beautiful, which is confined to no particular province or country, and which he seizes upon and forms wherever he finds it. Therein is he like the eagle, who hovers with free gaze over whole countries, and to whom it is of no consequence whether the hare on which he pounces is running in Prussia or in Saxony.… And then, what is meant by love of one’s country? What is meant by patriotic deeds? If the poet has employed a life in battling with pernicious prejudice, in setting aside narrow views, in enlightening the minds, purifying the tastes, ennobling the feelings and thoughts of his countrymen, what better could he have done? how could he have acted more patriotically?”
[20] New York, 1917. P. X.
[21] Op. cit. P. 48.
[22] Julio Cejador y Frauca. Historia de la Lengua y Literatura Castellana, Madrid, 1915 to the present.
[23] In their Compendio de Historia da Literatura Brasileira (1909, Rio, 2a edição refundida) Sylvio Romero and João Ribeiro point out the existence of a certain Germanism from 1870 to 1889, due chiefly to the constant labours of Tobias Barreto. Italian influence is very strong in law, and that of the United States in political organization. As will be seen in a later chapter, the United States had, through Cooper, a share in the “Indianism” of the Brazilian Romanticists. Our Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whitman and Poe are well known, the latter pair through French rather than the original channels.
[24] Rio. Second edition, Revised
[25] This by no means implies acceptance of Romero’s critical standards. See, for details, the Selective Bibliography at the back of the book.
CHAPTER II
PERIOD OF FORMATION (1500-1750)
The Popular Muse—Sixteenth Century Beginnings—Jesuit Influence—Seventeenth Century Nativism—The “Bahian” school—Gregorio de Mattos Guerra—First Half of Eighteenth Century—The Academies—Rocha Pitta—Antonio José da Silva.