All about Walt Whitman

3.5 Oswald de Andrade, Fernando Pessoa, Aléxis de Tocqueville, Gilberto Freyre

Part 2

Synchronically, another poet, this time in Brazil, was using the same word used by Álvaro de Campos, concrete, to refer to his artistic work. We refer to Oswald de Andrade, a journalist, writer, playwright, and poet. Oswald[1], one of the leading figures in the 1922 Week of Modern Art, became a poet at the age of thirty-five. Like Pessoa and Whitman, he was not only an author, but also a thinker: he wrote literary criticisms, two theses (a literary and a philosophical one) and edited newspapers and magazines. Like Whitman, who, up to 1849 when he gave up practical politics, had been a member of the Democratic Party and then of the new Republican Party, Oswald was a political activist and became a member of the Brazilian Communist Party in 1931. According to Décio Pignatari, “after Machado de Assis, Oswald is our only thinker-writer”. Pignatari means writer of fiction, naturally[2]. However, it is in the field of literature that our interest rests: in his “Manifesto Antropófago”, published in “Revista de Antropofagia”[3], Oswald asserted, among other ideas, that they were “concretists”:

Tupi, or not tupi that is the question. […]

Against all the importers of canned conscience. […]

The natural man. […]

The spirit refuses to conceive of the spirit without the body.

Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had discovered happiness. […]

The fixation of progress by means of catalogues and television sets. Only machinery. And blood transfusions. […]

Against Memory source of customs. Personal experience renewed. […]

We are concretists. Ideas take over, react, burn people in public squares. Let us suppress ideas and other paralysis. In favor of plots. To believe in signs, to believe in tools and the stars. […]

Anthropophagy. Absorption of the sacred enemy.

Against the social reality, dressed and oppressive, recorded by Freud – reality without complexes, without madness, without prostitutions and penitentiaries of Pindorama’s matriarchate.

Some ideas in the manifesto deserve explanation. First, the ideas were juxtaposed on the page, without linking words, breaking the grammatical organization of the text, which is characteristic of the cubist artists. In this way, the sentences are connected to each other by “unexpected links”, as it happens in a “cubist painting, [where] a design reduced to an amplified detail of an eye is sided by a playing card or the body of a guitar” (ANDRADE, 1990, p.38). Haroldo de Campos, who wrote the introduction to this 1990 edition of Pau Brasil, compared Oswald’s poetry to painting, in this case, cubist painting, but not for the technique itself. It was more for the search for a “primitive sensitivity” and a “poetics of concreteness” (1990, p.45). Thus, the poet already uses in his manifesto the techniques he is proposing for his poetry, like the montage technique and the repetition of certain words (anaphoras: words like “contra” / “against”, “nunca” / “never”, and “tínhamos” / “we had” are spread throughout the text). Then, the allusion to Hamlet’s “To be or not to be, that’s the question” (SHAKESPEARE, 1992, p.669: this line opens Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act III, scene I) that is devoured and re-coded into “Tupi, or not tupi, that’s the question”, which is a reference to a Native American Indian tribe that lived on the coast of Brazil and their language. Therefore, being authentically Brazilian is the real question, and that must be faced by us all.

Since poetry is not separated from culture, at this point we must make a connection between the linguistic aspect of the modernist poetics with its cultural and social aspect. This is so because the idea behind the poetic manifestation carries a socio-cultural one, which is the attitude against foreign cultural imposition and the acknowledgment of our own nature. This explanation is necessary because we also need to understand the socio-cultural difference between Brazil and the United States in the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century. The fact is that, in Brazil, unlike the United States, miscegenation was and is a reality. In this sense, there is much more ethnic integration in Brazil than there is in the United States, even considering all the social problems stemmed from racial discrimination. We could possibly assert that Whitman’s dream of national integration, in ethnical and cultural terms, came true, at least partially, in Brazil, despite all the still existing problems. In order to show this contrast between the two countries, we will resort to quotations from Democracy in America (two volumes: 1835 and 1840) by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859, the French political thinker and historian who also wrote The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856), and Casa Grande e Senzala (The Masters and The Slaves), by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. First, we will present a quotation from Democracy in America, by Tocqueville, whose works depict the social conditions of the individual and the state in western societies. In this book, he addresses this problem in the USA in the nineteenth century:

The human beings who are scattered over this space do not form, as in Europe, so many branches of the same stock. Three races, naturally distinct, and, I might almost say, hostile to each other, are discoverable among them at the first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers had been raised between them by education and law, as well as by their origin and outward characteristics, but fortune has brought them together on the same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do not amalgamate, and each race fulfills its destiny apart. [...] The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they have lived, but the destiny of the Negroes is in some measure interwoven with that of the Europeans. These two races are fastened to each other without intermingling; and they are alike unable to separate entirely or to combine. The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.[4] (Chapter XVIII, on the three races that inhabit the United States)

On the other hand, this impossible racial mixture between the three races, which had “insurmountable barriers […] raised between them” in the United States, was carried on at every level of contact between the peoples living in Brazil: the Indians, the Portuguese and the Africans brought here[5]. Another excerpt from the same chapter from Democracy in America indicates that Tocqueville considered that the mixing of races would create a more appropriate environment for the mutual understanding of races forced to live together, as is the case in Brazil, although he recognizes that of “[…] all Europeans, the English are those who have mixed least with the Negroes”, which testifies to the enormous difficulties of Americans in mingling with Native or Afro-Americans:

I have previously observed that the mixed race is the true bond of union between the Europeans and the Indians; just so, the mulattoes are the true means of transition between the white and the Negro; so that wherever mulattoes abound, the intermixture of the two races is not impossible. In some parts of America the European and the Negro races are so crossed with one another that it is rare to meet with a man who is entirely black or entirely white; when they have arrived at this point, the two races may really be said to be combined, or, rather, to have been absorbed in a third race, which is connected with both without being identical with either.

Freyre, in his book Casa Grande e Senzala (The Masters and The Slaves, 1984), originally published in 1933, centers his research on this theme, racial relations in Brazil in the nineteenth century, which was fundamental to him, as he stated in his preface to the book. Based on the fact that the pre-Colombian peoples living in these lands were very receptive (1984, p.89-161; chapter II, on “The Amerindian in the Formation of the Brazilian Family”), the Portuguese people were given to miscegenation, had no rigidity and were heir to a great social flexibility (1984, pp.189-262; chapter III, on “The Portuguese Settler”), and the Africans brought to Brazil were very adaptive, but also persistent in leaving their mark on the culture, body or soul of “every Brazilian” (1984, pp.283-379; on “The Black Slave in Brazilian’s Sexual and Family Life”). If we look more closely at the metaphorical references of “blood transfusions”[6] and the “Absorption of the sacred enemy”, the expressions that appear in Oswald’s manifesto and link them with the socio-cultural aspect of our nationality, we can see them as indicators of our multiraciality, represented, for example, by people defined in Brazil with mixed race terms such as: “Caboclo”, a term for white and Amerindian; “Cafuzo”, a word for black and Amerindian; and “Mulato” (mulatto) an admixture of white European and black African ancestry.

In relation to this, Oswald, like Whitman, believed in a harmonic natural life of soul and body, and this harmony in man and with nature is highlighted by the next statement in his manifesto about the discovery of happiness. The meaning of this is that the Indians, before the arrival of the Portuguese conquerors, already lived happily, without the help of the Catholic Church, or the tiring tyranny of foreign religion. Therefore, instead of promoting a conflict within an already multiethnic group, Oswald calls for national unity, and through an element of one of the three cultures involved, the Indian anthropophagic rituals, he struggles for the renewal of our personal, and then collective, experience. This would finally come to the sociological field, fostering a new social reality, a healthy one, stripped of old customs.

For example, the custom of being too much dressed, which was counteracted by the nakedness and daily bathing of the Indians, so that everything would be clearly seen in the light of the tropical sun (nakedness is a topic addressed by Whitman, as we have seen in the last section of chapter 2; “no clothing”, except for ornaments and personal belongings, is listed as one of the characteristics of most of the Indians living in Brazil; 1984, p.97). Besides that there is the old custom that was most embedded in our antiquated mentality: “the patriarchal system of the Portuguese colonization” (FREYRE, 1984, Preface, p. lxii) of our society, the same “pater familias” (p. lxiii), which is the paternal power of life and death over family and slaves, handed down to us from Roman Law that was inherited by the Portuguese. This is the law, mentioned in the manifesto, whose rigidity should be melted by the joy of “Pindorama’s matriarchate”. Curiously, Oswald’s autobiography, Um Homem Sem Profissão (A Man Without Profession), has an appropriate subtitle: “Sob as Ordens de Mamãe” (“Under Mama’s Orders”).

Our always useful Aurélio[7] provides the definition for “pindorama”, which is a word from the Tupi language meaning the “Region or country of palm trees” (FERREIRA, 1999, p.1567). This again sounds like an anthropophagic act, since the expression “palm trees” refers to a common feature of our land and also to one of our most famous poems, “Canção do Exílio” (“Exile Song”), by our first and most renowned “indianist poet” (BILAC; PASSOS, 1930, p.24), Gonçalves Dias, whose lines “My land has got palm trees, / where the sabiá[8] sings” are repeated throughout the poem, as anaphoras and epiphoras (repetition of words or phrases at the beginning and end of stanzas). Indeed, this culturally cannibalistic attitude had been expressed by Oswald de Andrade in his “Manisfesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil”[9] (“Brazil wood Poetry Manifesto”), in which he states that what we need is “A reaction against all indigestions of wisdom”, and strives for “The best of our lyric tradition” and “The best of our modern display”. He said that we must be “Only Brazilians of our own time”, with a sufficient amount of chemistry, mechanics, economy, ballistics, and “all digested”. We should be “practical”, “experimental”, in sum, “poets”. As this type of poetry is for exportation, like the Brazil wood at colonial times, based on “synthesis”, “balance”, “invention”, “surprise”, the “digestion” of past culture and foreign culture was a necessary step, and digestion can only happen after ingestion, that is, eating, devoration. Another aspect of this “digestion”, a word that denotes transformation of matter into bodily absorbable substances that will later be converted into energy, is that it also means, figuratively, “mental absorption”, assimilation.

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[1] As there are two remarkable “de Andrades” in our Modernist movement (Oswald de Andrade and Mário de Andrade), we will refer to them by their first names. Despite the same last name, they are not related.

[2] This comment is in Um Homem Sem Profissão (A Man Without Profession); (ANDRADE, 1990, p.8).

[3] This “Anthropophagic Manifesto”, published in the “Anthropophagy Magazine” (the other founding members of the magazine were Raul Bopp and Antônio de Alcântara Machado), was, in Pignatari’s opinion (1990, pp.8-9), the “cultural proposition for the old peoples of new nations […], turning the nationalistic-romantic indianism inside out”, making eating a sign and making the sign a form of eating. The result was “devoration”, which is, culturally speaking, a ritualistic act of absorbing/devouring the foreign culture to acquire its best features, and then combining these new features with our own best qualities, which would produce poetry for exportation, like Brazil wood, our first export product.

[4] Tocqueville’s works are available on the internet nowadays on several sites, such as <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/toc_indx.html>, owned by the University of Virginia. Accessed on May 16, 2007.

[5] Although we are discussing miscegenation, we are not blind to the fact that there was, around 1500, in Brazil, an Indian population ranging from 1 to 10 million individuals, and that these people were gathered in different “societies” and spoke around 1300 different languages, being Tupi one of the main societal and linguistic branches. Nowadays, there are around 460 thousand individuals who speak around 180 languages. However, we prefer to think like the great Chief Seattle, even if official authorities do not validate the document. Thus, we quote here the last section of Chief Seattle’s speech in, presumably, 1854 or 1855: “[…] And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone. / Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.” Data on Brazilian Indians available at: <http://www.funai.gov.br/>.

Accessed on: May 3, 2007. Data on Chief Seattle available at: <http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1985/spring/chief-seattle.html>. Accessed on May 3, 2007.

[6] Though the original phrase reads “blood transfusing machines”, it refers to technology and to donating and receiving blood, which is a process that does not make it possible to identify the blood donor’s skin color.

[7] Aurélio, in Brazil, has become synonymous with dictionary, for Aurélio Buarque de Holanda Ferreira is the author of the most famous dictionary in our country.

[8] Sabiá is the Tupi word for a typical Brazilian bird (“tordo”, of the genus Turdus) of the thrush family Turdidae. In 2002, the “sabiá laranjeira” (Turdus rufiventris), was chosen as the symbol-bird of Brazil.

[9] This manifesto (1924), altered and reduced, was used as a “program-poem” in the 1925 edition of Pau-Brasil, the book of poems that portray our country, with sections such as “History of Brazil” (with passages from historical documents rearranged into poems in a parodic way, such as Pero Vaz de Caminha’s letter to the king of Portugal, and Pero de Magalhães Gandavo’s “História da Província Santa Cruz” / “History of the Province of Santa Cruz”), “Colonization Poems”, “Carnival”, “Mine Paths”, and “Lóide Brasileiro”, which recollects his trip from Europe to Brazil, and whose first poem is a parody of the “Exile Song”, “Canto de Regresso à Pátria” (“Song of Return to the Nation”), with verses like “Minha terra tem palmares / onde gorgeia o mar” (“My land has got “palmares” / where the sea trills” and “Não permita Deus que eu morra / Sem que volte pra São Paulo / Sem que veja a rua 15 / E o progresso de São Paulo” (“I beg God not to let me die / Without returning to São Paulo / Without seeing 15 Street / And São Paulo’s progress”). Indeed,  “Palmares” has got three meanings: 1. regions whose vegetation is mostly palm trees, such as the one where the Quilombo dos Palmares was located (Alagoas, Brazil); 2. Quilombo dos Palmares (around 1580-1695), historically the most important “quilombo” in Brazil (a “quilombo” is a refuge of runaway and free-born African slaves fighting for freedom), whose most important and last leader was Zumbi dos Palmares (1655-November 20, 1695); nowadays, november 20^th is the Afro-Brazilians’ Black Consciousness Day; 3. individuals living within a “quilombo” (ANDRADE, 1990, p.139).

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