Modernism, Brazil

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Modernism, Brazil

Brazilian modernism began in São Paulo in 1922 and lasted through several phases until 1945. In its beginnings it was principally an aesthetic and cultural revolution. Its objective was to break down a colonial mentality in art and letters that largely ignored national realities in order to imitate foreign currents in these areas. It did not intend to limit itself to São Paulo, or to art and letters, but to embrace the whole nation and to integrate activities in every sphere. It was successful in bringing about a vast transformation in Brazilian life through studies in the arts and sciences, particularly the social sciences. In theory and practice the great leader of modernism from its inception to its close was Mário de Andrade, whose death in 1945 coincided with the end of the movement.

The movement not only modernized Brazilian thought and action but revealed a more integrated Brazil to the world. The nation became liberated, independent at the same time that it continued to adapt foreign materials, and able to contribute to world culture. Regional culture, traditions, folklore, and language, including the contributions of the principal races of Brazil, took on new national meaning for Brazilian intellectuals who revitalized them in their works, whether creative, scholarly, or critical. They no longer felt cultural or intellectual life away from the metropolis was impossible, and many preferred to remain in their native states rather than move to the capital.

From the beginning there was constant emphasis not only on the independence of Brazilian letters but also on the aesthetic value and autonomy of a work of literature. Most of the numerous polemics of modernism dealt with questions of form and technique rather than content, with the result that later Brazilian authors, perhaps more intent than their predecessors, have generally been marked by greater professionalism. Another important question was that of developing linguistic studies and a Brazilian Portuguese suitable for literary purposes. The time of amateurism or dilettantism of authors for whom literature was a youthful or leisure occupation had passed. Modernism was a breath of fresh air to academicism. Despite the problem of making a living, still a great one for writers in Brazil, more of them devoted their talents and energies exclusively to their work than had been the case in the past, when other occupations or peripheral literary activity had taken most of their time.

A certain reaction against positivism, the materialistic philosophy that prevailed in Brazil in the late nineteenth century, in favor of more spiritual values placed emphasis on the reform of poetry during the first phase of modernism. After 1930, however, the reform spread to prose fiction. Modernism was to serve as the necessary catalyst for the production of something new from the several "isms" with which Brazilian novelists had already experimented. The result was a more nationalistic regionalism, sometimes propagandistic as in the early Jorge Amado, sometimes documentary as in José Lins Do Rego's Sugarcane Cycle or Amado's later works of the Cacao Cycle. The psychological novel continued to develop as with Érico Veríssimo or, especially, Graciliano Ramos. As for the short story, modernism abandoned the well-made type á la Maupassant for evocative, impressionistic, slice-of-life pieces such as those Ramos composed. Again, it took some time for formal and linguistic problems to be resolved satisfactorily. The Brazilian crônica, a subjective reaction to some current event or situation, much like the American newspaper column or informal English essay, was one highly satisfactory solution, despite its somewhat circumstantial, transitory nature. While modernism tended to avoid the historical and the concrete for the spontaneous and spiritual, it sought to develop works of lasting, universal value.

Modernism was by no means a completely unified movement, but for the first few years all reactions and counterreactions were centered in São Paulo. Then two related but different modernisms developed in other parts of the country. The first, beginning in 1926 in Recife, was regionalism, and the second, the "Testa" or spiritualist group, began in 1927 in Rio de Janeiro. Both were traditionalistic and conservative, especially the latter, which was Catholic in inspiration and hostile to the writers of São Paulo. The chief goal of the one was to base modernism more soundly on cultural traditions, principally those of the Northeast; that of the other was to structure its aesthetics along more classical lines. Neither goal corresponded very well with those of modernism, which gave rise to numerous polemics. While regionalism remained largely unknown outside of Recife, the second group, having originated in the capital, gained national fame immediately. Both had elder statesmen, Gilberto Freyre and Tasso da Silveira, respectively, each of whom longed to be the new Mário de Andrade and to establish the dominance of his group.

By the time modernism reached the Northeast, it had abandoned its purely aesthetic approach and already had acquired some political direction, leftist or rightist. Between 1925 and 1927 modernism appeared to be leftist, and the writers of Recife saw a real need to reaffirm the cultural values of the Northeast. Nevertheless, the modernists were still fundamentally concerned with literature and the fine arts, while the future regionalists emphasized culture in a broader and more popular sense—for example, cookery, crafts, and the like—for some time to come. The birth of a modern northeastern literature therefore owes at least as much to São Paulo in its initial stages as to Recife. Regionalism and modernism were complementary, after all, differing only in degrees of traditionalism and cosmopolitanism. Yet regionalism was elaborated by Freyre chiefly as antimodernist, in large part to prove its independence. Regionalism was in fact to enjoy its most brilliant period in the 1930s and 1940s with the flowering of the Northeast novel, which by and large followed a program already proposed in 1922 by the modernists, who had accomplished a literary revolution. Among its Brazilian proponents, the northeasterners were the most significant members to participate in the revolution through letters. The nationalization of literature during the ferment of the 1920s resulted in the political polarization of northeasterners as well as paulistas, who adhered to nationalistic political parties of either extreme. Modernism depended heavily on regionalism to achieve its program of nationalization.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aguilar, Gonzalo Moisés. Poesia concreta brasileira: As vanguardas na encruzilhada modernista. São Paulo: Edusp, 2005.

Johnson, Randal. "Rereading Brazilian Modernism." Texas Papers on Latin America No. 89-04. Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1989. Available from http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/etext/llilas/tpla/8904.pdf.

Johnson, Randal. "Brazilian Modernism: An Idea out of Place?" In Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America, edited by Anthony L. Geist and José B. Monleón, 186-214. New York: Garland, 1999.

Martins, Wilson. The Modernist Idea: A Critical Survey of Brazilian Writing in the Twentieth Century. Translated by Jack E. Tomlins. New York: New York University Press, 1970.

Nist, John. The Modernist Movement in Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967.

Schwartz, Jorge, ed. Caixa modernista. São Paulo: Edusp, Imprensa Oficial, Governo do Estado de São Paulo; and Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2003.

Sullivan, Edward J., ed. Brazil: Body & Soul. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2001.

Richard A. Mazzara

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture