Vida e morte de M.J.Gonzaga de Sá:A Carlyleian View of Brazilian History

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: BARRETO, AFONSO HENRIQUES DE LIMA (1881–1922)BRAZIL/BRASIL — HISTORY, POLITICS & SOCIETYBRAZIL/BRASIL [AS LITERARY/CULTURAL THEME]CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795–1881)VIDA E MORTE DE M. J. GONZAGA DE SÁ [A. H. DE LIMA BARRETO] Notes 1. Lima Barreto, Correspondência II, in Obras, XVII, 178. All quotations in this article from the writings of Lima Barreto are taken from the edition of his complete works edited by Francisco de Assis Barbosa, 17 vols. (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1956) entitled Obras, of which the Correspondence occupies the final two volumes. Henceforth, all quotations from this edition will be indicated by volume and page number unless my italics are involved. 2. Afonso Celso Júnior, ‘Vida e Morte de Gonzaga de Sá’, Jornal do Brasil, 20 March 1919. 3. Tristão de Ataíde, ‘Um discípulo de Machado’, O Jornal, 18 June 1919. 4. Carlos Nelson Coutinho, ‘O significado de Lima Barreto na literatura brasileira’, in Realismo e anti-realismo na literatura brasileira, ed. Carlos Nelson Coutinho (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1974), 25–26. 5. Wilson Martins, História da inteligência brasileira, 6 vols. (São Paulo: Cultrix, 1978), V, 154. 6. Antônio Arnoni Prado, Lima Barreto: o crítico e a crise (Rio de Janeiro: Cátedra, 1976). 7. Coutinho, 25. 8. Lúcia Miguel-Pereira, História da literatura brasileira: prosa de ficção—de 1870 a 1920— (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1973), 300–01. 9. Osman Lins, Lima Barreto e o espaço romanesco (São Paulo: Ática, 1976), 34–48. 10. Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu’est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), 143. 11. Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History—Doctrine, 3rd edn. (New Haven and London: Yale U.P., 1981), 175–211. Erlich's book is by far the most exhaustive and authoritative historical account of all the main concepts of Russian Formalism. See also, Victor Sklovskij, ‘L'art comme procédé’ in Tzvetan Todorov, Théorie de la littérature (Paris: Seuil, 1965), 76–97. 12. Paulo Rónai, Encontros com o Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1958), 35. 13. Osman Lins, especially in his final chapter devoted entirely to Vida e morte. 14. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, Russian Formalist Criticism (Lincoln, Nebraska: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1965), 25. 15. Lemon and Reis, 66. 16. Lemon and Reis, 68. For other lucid redefinitions of Plot and Story, see Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, ed. Ann Jefferson and David Robey (London: Batsford, 1983), 31–33; and Theories of Literature in the Twentieth Century, ed. Fokkema and Kunne-Ibsch (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1979), 17–18. 17. Miguel de Unamuno, El porvenir de España, in Obras completas, 16 vols. (Barcelona: Vergara, 1959–64), IV, 990. 18. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1974), 74–75. 19. Eliade, 76. 20. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959), 30–32. 21. Heroes and Hero-Worship, in The Works of Thomas Carlyle, 30 vols. (London, 1896–99), V, 203. 22. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus in The Works, I, 12. 23. Heroes and Hero-Worship, 224. 24. Heroes and Hero-Worship, 155. 25. The Myth of the Eternal Return, 36ff. 26. Francisco de Assis Barbosa, preface to Recordações de escrivão Isaías Caminha, in Obras, I, 16. 27. The racial question inevitably arises at this point. There have been numerous attempts to deal with race in Lima Barreto. All have been superficial. To my knowledge, the three most recent critics to deal specifically with race in Lima are Gregory Rabassa, O negro na ficção brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro, 1965), 363–401; Maria Luisa Nunes, ‘Introduction’ in her Lima Barreto: Bibliography and Translations (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1979), 1–9; and Vera Regina Teixeira, ‘Clara dos Anjos de Lima Barreto: Biópsia de uma sociedade’, Luso-Brazilian Review, XVII (1980), 41–49. The last of these, despite its brevity, seems to me to be the best. The critic here has had the perspicacity to discern the manner in which the attitude to racial problems in Lima Barreto's fiction gradually modified with the passing years. Concentrating on his last novel, Clara dos Anjos, Vera Regina Teixeira notes in particular the way in which the attitude to oppression of people of mixed blood in Brazil broadens out in Lima's last years, becoming a condemnation of oppression by the rich and powerful of the poor and weak of all races. She contrasts the obsession with racial prejudice in the unfinished first version of Clara dos Anjos (1904) with the shift of focus onto social injustice, alienation of the individual, and fragmentation of society in the fiction of Lima's final phase. She emphasizes that not only the second and third versions of Clara but also Vida e morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá belong to this period. So for Teixeira, Vida e morte offers an attitude to race that corresponds to Lima's maturity.