European influences
We could make the beginnings of the literature of the regions we are interested in coincide with the arrival of the Portuguese, citing, for example, the Letters that the leader of the first Jesuit mission, Manuel da Nóbrega (Sanfins do Douro, 1517 - Rio de Janeiro, 1570), sent to his superiors to keep them informed of his travels in the interior and his contacts with the native Indians. These documents, which are similar to the so-called catechetical literature, are more generally part of the "quinhentismo", that is, the corpus of informative texts that mixed chronicles and descriptions. The writers of the second generation, although born in the country, did not escape the European influence either, and so the Baroque was imported and then developed, although Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais rather succumbed to Arcadianism - which could be described as neoclassicism - with the creation, about ten years after that of Lisbon in 1757, of the Ultramarina Arcadia (academy) in Vila Rica (now Ouro Preto). Several authors were affiliated with it, such as Domingues Caldas Barbosa (Rio de Janeiro, 1740-1800), Basilio da Gama (São José do Rio das Mortes, 1741-1795) and Inácio José de Alvarenga Peixoto (Rio de Janeiro, 1742-1792), but it was Cláudio Manuel da Costa (Mariana, 1729-1789) who served as the leader of the school, as his Obras poéticas are representative of this school
Then, in 1811, the man who is considered one of the pioneers of Brazilian Romanticism, thanks to his collection Suspiros poéticos e saudades, was born in Rio de Janeiro: Domingos José Gonçalves de Magalhães, who lost his life at the age of 70 in Rome. A doctor by profession - an activity he shared with Joaquim Manuel de Macedo (1820-1882), author of the sentimental novel La Brunette (1844) - he also devoted himself to the art of the stage with the drama António José, or O Poeta e a Inquisição, which was performed on March 13, 1838 in Rio and is considered the precursor of Brazilian theater. Finally, Magalhães is associated with Indianism because of his epic poem A confederação dos Tamois (1857), a theme he shared with José Martiniano de Alencar, who died in Rio in 1877, although their opinions differed. Alencar, in particular, would achieve great fame with his trilogy O Guarani, Iracema and Ubirajara , which celebrated the myth of the courageous Indian living in full harmony with nature, an image that he maintained by imagining, among other things, a love story between a young Portuguese woman, Cecilia, and Peri, who would end up proving to him that he was not a "savage" at all
The end of the 19th century finally saw the creation of a Brazilian Academy of Letters modelled on the French one. Among the founding members, who met for the first time in 1897 in Rio de Janeiro, were João Franklin da Silveira Távora (1942-1888), author of the regionalist novel O Cabaleira, and the diplomat Joaquim Nabuco (1849-1910), who campaigned for the abolition of slavery, as did Ruy Barbosa de Oliveira (1849-1923) and José do Patrocínio (1853-1905), Sílvio Romera (1851-1914), who wrote an ambitious História da Literatura brasileira, the playwright Artur Azevedo (1855-1908), the critic José Veríssimo (1857-1916), and also Aluísio Azevedo (1857-1913), who gave Brazil with O Mulato (1881) one of its first great naturalist novels. We could also mention Alberto de Oliveira, born in Saquarema in 1857 and who died in Niterói in 1937, who together with Raimundo Correia and Olavo Bilac formed the "Parnassian Triad" that followed the famous precept "Art for art's sake" of Theophile Gautier, or Luís Murat (1861-1929), a poet associated with symbolism. However, the one who would truly mark his time and a shift in Brazilian literature was the elder of them all, and in fact their first president: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1839.
Towards a modern literature
Machado de Assis is definitely an author of great importance in Brazil, and more globally in the lusophone literary world. Grandson of freed slaves, son of servants, his education was reduced to a strict minimum as he began working at a very young age. Self-educated and curious, he nevertheless acquired a great culture that allowed him to reach a position in the civil service, while at the same time beginning a literary career that would take him to the top. His work - prolix and eclectic - was initially marked by romanticism and conventionalism, before a sudden break led him to spearhead the realist movement, perhaps encouraged by the hundreds of columns on societal issues that he wrote for newspapers. This second phase began with the publication in 1881 of the posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, which had first appeared in serial form the previous year in the Revista Brasileira. This fictional autobiography of a man who struggles all his life to achieve hypothetical glory, is by turns caustic, daring in its form, and sometimes political. Together with Dom Casmurro and the Eyes of the Surf and Quincas Borba: The Philosopher or the Dog, it forms a trilogy that can be discovered at Métailié, which has also translated Machado's The Alienist, What Men Call Love, The Golden Watch and other tales... Euclides da Cunha was born in 1866 in Cantagalo, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where he died in 1909. His experience as a war correspondent in Canudos, during the conflict that opposed the government to a group of 30,000 independent settlers from 1869 to 1897, provided the material for his masterpiece Os Sertões (now Highlands, published by Métailié). In French, it is also possible to read another essay, this time on the slavery of rubber workers, L'Invention de l'Amazonie : trois récits (Chandeigne), still surprisingly - and unfortunately - relevant
The last generation of the 19th century is no less fertile. Thus, João do Rio (1881-1921) and his perfect contemporary Lima Barreto both made a name for themselves as journalists, the latter evoking the hardships suffered because of the color of his skin in several texts still offered by L'Harmattan: Sous la bannière étoilée de la Croix du Sud, Souvenirs d'un gratte-papier (Memories of a paper-pusher ) and Vie et mort de Gonzaga de Sa. Ronald de Carvalho, 12 years their junior, participated in the modernist review Orpheu, which appeared only twice, but was proud to count Pessoa and Almada Negreiros among its contributors. In the same vein, Cecília Meireles (1901, Rio de Janeiro-1964) opened the 20th century with a flourish, and is still considered a great poetess. Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Itabira, 1902-Rio de Janeiro, 1987) gave poetry a wide scope by introducing the free verse mode, while Adalgisa Nery (1905-1980) turned away from it to explore autobiography with her novel A imaginária, which reveals the marital violence she suffered during her first marriage. Finally, João Guimarães Rosa (Cordisburgo, 1908-Rio de Janeiro, 1967) excelled in the difficult genre of the short story, as confirmed by the Chandeigne publishing house, which offers Mon Oncle le jaguar & autres histoires (My Uncle the Jaguar & Other Stories), before deploying all his talent in a book that has become a classic, Diadorim (Le Livre de Poche). This internationally acclaimed title tells the adventures of a "jagunço" in the Sertão (the arid and hostile hinterland) in the first person, in a unique style close to the oral tradition
In the course of the 20th century, Brazilian literature proved on several occasions that it had asserted itself and become emancipated from European models, and that it would henceforth have to be reckoned with, as was hammered home by the prestigious Camões Prize awarded to Rachel de Queiroz, who was also the first woman to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters. She died in 2003 in Rio de Janeiro, recounting her native Nordeste inThe Land of Great Thirst, available from Anacaona, and delivering a breathtaking psychological portrait of a murderer in João Miguel, published by the same company. Lucio Cardoso also weaves dramatic(Chronicle of the Murdered House) or expressionist(Inacio) plots, but Murilo Rubiao dedicates himself to magical realism(The Ex-Magician of the Minho Tavern and Other Short Stories, published by L'Arbre Vengeur). These authors explore various genres, but one author stands out with a unique voice: Clarice Lispector, born in Ukraine of Jewish parents, who arrived in Brazil when she was only a few months old. If the recent reissues of her works in French are to be believed, her fame is not about to dry up, so the Women's Editions have dedicated a boxed set to her to celebrate the centenary of her birth in 2020, that some of his short stories can now be read in paperback(Bonheur clandestin) as well as his novels(L'Heure de l'étoile), that his abundant correspondence has been reunited and that his unclassifiable classics do not cease to guarantee his rare talent(Agua viva, La Ville assiégée, Le Bâtisseur des ruines..)
Contemporary literature
As Clarisse Lispector's posterity suggested, the second half of the 20th century showed that women now had the freedom to express themselves in literature, as in the case of Nélida Piñon , whose name was an anagram of her grandfather's , who endeavored to recount her family's exile in A República dos Sonhos (The Republic of Dreams), published by Editions des Femmes), or Ana Maria Machado, who addressed the young public in texts that won the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 2000 (Rêve noir d'un lapin blanc, Quelle fête!(Vents d'ailleurs), a niche that Ângela Maria Cardoso Lago (1945-2017) will also make her own with her illustrated albums for the youngest. However, the one who won all the votes was already impressive by her atypical background, she was indeed born in a favela of Belo Horizonte in 1946. Of Afro-Brazilian origin, Conceição Evaristo had to face many material obstacles in order to survive, but the tales and legends told to her by her relatives as a child served as comfort and fueled her passion for words. She was acclaimed when her first text was published in 2003: Ponciá Vicêncio (The Story of Poncia, Anacaona Editions) sold several thousand copies. But, beyond the form, this flow of memories, lived and collected, is the guarantor of the memory of a mixed race people who had to face decolonization and then the torments of racial discrimination, which explains why her other texts - from Banzo, memoirs of the favela, to her poetry (Poems of memory and other movements) and her short stories (Her eyes of water) -
were eagerly anticipated.If Conceição Evaristo had a great international audience, what can be said of the impact of The Alchemist, which has sold tens of millions of copies since its publication in 1988! In this undeniable bestseller, Paulo Coelho - born in Rio de Janeiro in 1947 - describes the initiatory quest of a young Andalusian shepherd, Santiago, who, in his search for treasure, discovers the treasure he possessed within himself. This book was written by a man whose father saw fit to commit him to a psychiatric hospital when he became aware of his creative impulses, an episode that appears in Veronika decides to die. His "personal legend", which would never cease to take him down the wrong path - from the hippie movement to the jails of the dictatorship - would lead him to Santiago de Compostela, an experience that would inspire his first completed text, The Pilgrim of Compostela, establishing the attraction for a spirituality to which his other books would continue to respond: The Fifth Mountain, The Solitude of the Winner, Aleph... The journalist Fernando Morais will be interested in this incredible destiny, dedicating a biography to him, The Magician of Light
, available from J'ai Lu. Although few authors can match Paolo Coelho's immeasurable success, there are many who continue to contribute to Brazilian literature, and it will not be difficult to find them among the natives of Minas Gerais or Rio de Janeiro, especially since these states seem to give a special place to the book, as the creation in 2007 of the Minas Gerais Literature Prize seems to indicate. In the same way, the numerous translations from which they benefit is a guarantee of their talent, and allows, for example, the French reader to discover from the inside the favela where Paulo Lins grew up in the 70s. His native "Cidade de Deus" also gave him the title of his best-known work, which became The City of God in 2003, published by Gallimard. Asphalte Editions later published Since the Samba is Samba, a new urban and popular fresco, this time set in the 1920s. Those who want to capture the atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro should also look at L'Homme du côté gauche by Alberto Mussa, published by Phébus (for adults), or Quand le cœur s'arrête by Adriana Lisboa, published by La Joie de lire (for teenagers). These two authors are also interested in the rest of the world, the first writing about pre-Islamic poets(L'Énigme de Qaf , published by Anacharsis), the second giving shape to characters who will go into exile in the United States in Bleu Corbeau, and in Vietnam in Hanoi. Finally, with his graphic novels, Marcello Quintanilha (Écoute, jolie Marcia, Âmes publiques, Les Lumières de Niteroi... published by Çà et Là) offers yet another way to understand Brazil.
