Brazil Literature

Brazil Literature: The Contemporary Age

The twentieth century, especially at the beginning, brought with it the need for a linguistic and metric renewal which provided the representatives of modernism (founded in 1922 in São Paulo), first of all Mário de Andrade, author of the novel Macunaíma and splendid poems partially influenced by Italian Futurism, as well as decisive critical essays. The affirmation of the national spirit and the language really spoken by the people was enriched with an explosive humor in the work of Oswald de Andrade who, very close to surrealism, was the author of the anthropophagic manifesto, launched from the pages of the Revista de Antropofagia. The novel returned to the themes of regionalism with the last great master of Neolusitan literature, Henrique Coelho Neto. The most typically Brazilian and world famous poetry was born from modernism, with Manuel Bandeira, Raul Bopp, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Murilo Mendes, Augusto Frederico Schmidt, Jorge de Lima and Vinícius de Moraes, author among other things of the Orfeu da Conceição is also a composer. Alongside it, the neorealist novel of the Northeast developed, with Jorge Amado, one of the most read and translated in the world, José Lins do Rêgo and above all with the dry, Verga, inimitable Graciliano Ramos. These writers dominate the period between the two world wars, the most fruitful of Brazilian letters. The legacy of modernism and the previous experiences of regionalism are collected in the post-war period by a narrative that – especially with João Guimarães Rosa, Adonias Filho, Osman Lins, Clarice Lispector, Nélida Piñón – seeks new forms of expression and achieves notable results. At the same time, the panorama of poetry is animated by two important movements: the “generation of ’45” (Cabral de Melo Neto, Moreira de Fonseca, etc.) and the neo-avant-garde “Concretist” (Décio Pignatari, Haroldo de Campos, Augusto de Campos), whose poetic practice, radically anti-discursive, has revolutionized Brazilian poetry. The individual affirmation of individual personalities, such as the committed Alfonso Romano de Sant’Anna and Ferreira Gullar, and the preference for subjective forms of poetry are the characteristics of the poetic panorama in the seventies and eighties, a counterpoint to the birth of a new poem by young people, spread mainly through alternative channels of small publishing houses, whose theme ranges from feminism to marginalization, from the urban environment to ecology. The path of prose also appears, in the sixties and seventies, fragmented into various trends, more or less aimed at experimental research and a new literary commitment. Quarup, Hermilo Borba Filho, Ariano Suassuna who revisits the Northeast storytelling tradition in the theater as well as in fiction moves towards formulas that prelude to the affirmation, in the Eighties and Nineties, and especially in the short story with a North American slant, of the hallucinated scenario of metropolis (JJ Veiga, Roberto Drummond, Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, Danton Trevisan, Ivan Angelo, Vanda Fabien). The period of great fruitfulness of the Brazilian novel, which began after the return to democracy and the end of censorship, seems to be prolonging despite the moment of economic and social difficulties the country is experiencing; the living conditions and sufferings of the population during the period of the dictatorship continue to be at the center of a “testimony” literature, which in the early nineties came to assume almost a meaning of catharsis, with the detailed narration of oppression suffered by individuals, families and the whole country (as in the novels by Cardoso Meu pai, acabaram con ele and Giário de Berê). Alongside it, however, a production has also flourished that covers the most disparate themes, translating into historical novels (Boca do inferno, by A. Miranda) or social (O escândalo, by A. Harringer Lisboa), in sagas dedicated to immigrants of different nationalities (to the Italians for example, as in Lacava’s Vinho amargo, or to the Germans as in Boos’s Quadrilátero) or to the Indians, but also in science fiction works, thrillers and satires. The trend inspired by the new age is particularly flourishing, the greatest exponent of which can be considered Paulo Coelho (b.1947), author who became world famous with the Alchemist (1988), followed by, among others, Handbook of the Warrior of Light (1997), and The Witch of Portobello (2007). Alongside the novel, the genre of chronicle that, practiced in the past by some of the most popular Brazilian authors, has known a second youth, not only because the works of masters such as João do Rio, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Rubem Braga and Raquel Queirós they have been made accessible again to the general public after a long period of unavailability, but also because it has attracted a lively group of younger writers (including Paolo Mendes Campos, Alfonso Romano de Sant’Anna, João Ubaldo Ribeiro). Equally worth mentioning is the intense and fruitful literary activity of Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987), a sociologist who, with works such as Casa Grande & Senzala, was able to model precise and stylistically valuable portraits of Brazilian society, and Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997), anthropologist expert of the indigenous world and author of Maíra (1978), precisely focused on the conflict between the indians of the Amazon and the whites of today’s Brazil. According to mathgeneral, wide-ranging narrators, such as Jorge Amado, continue their trajectory, Zélia Gattai, Josué Montello, Autran Dourado and Rubem Fonseca (b.1925), author of stories deeply imbued with violence and urban reality: among his books O chance Morel (1973), O selvagem da ópera (1994) and the collection of short stories Diário de um Fescenino (2003). To these are now added new voices such as those of Antônio Olinto, of João Ubaldo Ribeiro, epic author of great linguistic incisiveness, of Sérgio Sant’Anna, of the beloved comic creator Mauricio de Souza and of his pupil Marcelo Cassaro (b.1970), by Bernardo Carvalho (b.1960), one of the most interesting authors to emerge in the 1990s (Onze, 1995; Mongólia, 2003; O sol se põe em São Paulo, 2007), by João Gilberto Noll (b.1946; O cego and Dançarina, 1980; Bandoleiros, 1985; A máquina do ser, 2006). The poet, playwright and songwriter Francisco Buarque de Hollanda, and the poets Fabrício Carpi Nejar (b. 1972) and Marcia Theophilo (b. 1941) also enjoy a good reputation.

Brazil Literature