[7] It were beautiful to feel in one’s brain the soul of Goethe, and to unite in his body Byron, Homer and Dante. To dream in the delirium of a moment that one is the soul of creation and the sound sent forth by the palpitant earth.
[8] Hell contains exquisite beauties, Cleopatras, Helenas, Eleonoras; there is where one falls in love in good company. There can’t be a hell with ladies around!
[9] But if Werther longed to see Carlotta giving bread and butter to the children and found her thus more beautiful than ever, I adore you all the more when I vision you doing the laundry.
[10] Why judge from the face—the face,—that mask of flesh which man received on entering the world,—that which goes on within? Almost always if it is summer on one’s face, it is winter in the soul. I confess before you; hear, contented ones! My laughter is feigned; yes, a thousand times I stifle with it the echoes of a groan that of a sudden rises to my lips; a thousand times upon the tempered strings I play, in accompaniment to my song fall tears. I pretend before you, for in the house of mirth pretence is the sad man’s prudence.
[11] The same poet, in Verissimo’s words, is the singer of “love and saudade. These two feelings are the soul of his poetry.” Estudos, II, 47.
[12] Oh, Lord, I feel and well you see that I am dying as I breathe this air; let me live, O Lord, let me feel, once again the joys of my native hearth. I would sleep in the shade of the cocoa-trees with their leaves as my canopy; and see whether I could catch the white butterfly that flies in the orchard. I want to sit beside the little stream at the fall of dusk, alone in the twilight filled with dreams of the future. Give me the sweet spots where I romped with the other children, let me see once again the sky of my fatherland, the skies of my Brazil. My grave will be among the mango-trees, bathed in the light of the moon. And there I shall sleep contentedly in the shadow of my hearth. The waterfalls will weep in deep-felt grief because I died so soon, while I in my sepulchre shall dream of my loves, in the land where I was born.
[13] With respect to a related subject Verissimo has uttered words quite as wise, in harmony with the esthetic view of nationalism.
“In no other Brazilian poets do I find, together with a banal facility in versification, the eminent qualities of poetry.… Another salient quality of these poets (that is, of those whom Verissimo groups into the second Romantic generation, including Gonçalves Dias, Alvares de Azevedo, Casimiro de Abreu, Junqueiro Freire, Laurindo Rabello) is their nationalism. Not that factitious nationalism of duty or erudition, in which intention and process are clearly discernible, but the expression—unconscious, so to say—of the national soul itself, in its feeling, its manner of speech, its still rudimentary thought. They are not national because they speak of bores, tacapes or inubias, or sing the savages that rove these lands. With the exception of Gonçalves Dias, none of them is even ‘Indianist.’ Casimiro de Abreu, upon whom Gonçalves Dias made so great an impression, whose nostalgia derives largely from the Cançõ do Exilio (Song of Exile) no longer sings the Indian. Neither do Alvares de Azevedo, Laurindo or the others.” Estudos, II, Pages 19-20.
[14] See Historia da Litteratura Brasileira Vol. II, pages 476-601.
[15] See, in Part Two of this book, the chapter devoted to Castro Alves.