Brazilian Literature

[Eric]

I've not read an enormous amount of Brazilian literature, but maybe because everyone else was looking at Latin American literature in Spanish, I looked at something else.

Clarice Lispector has been discussed quite a lot here already, but there are several other authors whose short-stories I've read: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Dalton Trevisan and Jo?o Guimar?es Rosa.

My forays into Brazilian literature were helped by the fact that Dutch translator August Willemsen translated all these authors and others over the years. So I've read them in Dutch, all except Clarice Lispector.

There are a lot of Machado de Assis books available in Dutch translation. I've read several stories and intend, one day to read his novel "Dom Casmurro". Carcanet published a collection of stories called "The Devil's Church and Other Stories". Machado Assis was an autodidact and read books by Swift, Sterne and Leopardi.

One of their main poets is called Carlos Drummond de Andrade. The "Drummond" is part of his Scottish ancestry.

As can be seen from Alfredo Bosi's "Hist?ria Concisa da Literatura Brasileira" (no, I haven't read it, but I bought it once hoping to one day know enough Portuguese to read it), Brazilian literature went through periods of Romanticism, Realism, Symbolism and Modernism, so is pretty European in its influences.

An excellent little guide to specific authors and books is "The Babel Guide to Brazilian Fiction in English Translation" compiled by David Treece and Ray Keenoy, Boulevard Books, 2001. Reviewed here are, by Machado de Assis alone:

Counselor Ayres' Memorial [novel]
Ther Devil's Church [stories]
Dom Casmurro [novel]
Epitaph of a Small Winner [novel]
Philosopher or Dog? [novel]
The Psychiatrist and Other Stories [stories]
Yay? Garcia [novel?]

And there are several further works by him in English translation, plus most of the other authors mentioned above, as well as the un-get-roundable contemporary author, Paolo Coelho, five of whose works are reviewed.

 

[Stewart]

Paolo Coelho

Of all the things to come out of Brazil, he surely is the worst. I've only read his The Alchemist but what an overhyped piece of drivel it was. Ayn Rand would be proud of him.

And as far as one Coelho and one Lispector goes, thats the sum of my Brazilian reading. I recently discovered, due to a spot of bad typing in a search on E?a de Queir?s (I entered 'de Queiroz') another name in Rachel de Queiroz, although I didn't look much into it. Wikipedia gives a sizeable list of Brazilian writers although who is available in translation will take some investigation.

 

[Eric]

If your name is pronounced "Quell You", maybe that's his destiny. Quell him, before he quells you. I've avoided him in the same way that I've avoided other cult gurus like ?i?ek. A Brazilian on a chatsite once said that Coelho's Portuguese was [stylistically?] poor. But I've never read any Coelho, so my opinion box, based on experience, is vacant. Although I do reserve the right to retain my prejudices.

E?a. He's Portuguese, not Brazilian. But yes, that's the problem with the manic nature of the Wikipedia. It wants to be so thorough that it starts listing everything. For people who would like to access things in English it would be handier to have a separate list, for each author, with a list of English translations, as in the Treece & Keenoy book.

Portuguese sites call him [Jos? Maria] E?a de Queir?s. Evidently, Queiroz was the original spelling before Portuguese spelling was standardised.

The Kirjasto site lists several translations of Queir?s into English. (This is a Finnish library site, in English. "Kirjasto" means "library" in Finnish.) See:

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ecade.htm

As Margaret Jull Costa is a contemporary translator, these books must have appeared recentlyish in English. One review of one of her translations is at:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/arts/idside1.php

One thing I find comical about Brazilian names is the way they show their mixed roots, e.g: Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Urda Alice Klueger, Clarice Lispector, S?rgio Buarque de Holanda, Vladimir Herzog, Jos? Lino Gr?newald, Pedro Neschling, Assis Chateaubriand, etc. You couldn't make such weird names up.

 

[cuchulain]

Re: Fernando Pessoa: The Book Of Disquiet

To move a bit off topic (but staying with the Portuguese language), have any of you read Rachel De Queiroz's The Three Marias? ****0 One of my favorite books. Brazilian author. Brilliant.

Also, Anguish ****0, by Graciliano Ramos. Another Brazilian. Classic novel.

 

[nnyhav]

Puzzling out why that's off-topic if the authors are Brazilian ... but there's a Portuguese Literature thread (and Stewart has helpfully compiled the list of assorted literatures by nationality in a sticky thread in General Discussion).

 

[Stewart]

Puzzling out why that's off-topic if the authors are Brazilian...

Because I cut off from The Book Of Disquiet thread.

 

[fausto]

Anyone here familiar with Ign?cio de Loyola Brand?o or Osman Lins?

 

[cuchulain]

Have read one novel by Osman Lins. The Queen of the Prisons of Greece. Strong novel. Liked it a great deal. Unique talent. I don't think I've read anyone quite like him before or since.

Have not heard of the other writer, though.

 

[nnyhav]

Realism from Brazil

The genius of Machado de Assis, Rio de Janeiro's laureate of irony

Stephen Henighan



The hills above Rio de Janeiro, now covered with shanty towns, were already poor, marginal districts in 1839, when Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, a mulatto orphaned at an early age and raised by his black (or possibly mulatta) stepmother, was born. One of the many enigmas which surround Machado de Assis is how a writer whose sensibility is as finely pitched of that of Chekhov, who extended the possibilities of realist fiction through experiments with point of view as subtle as those of Henry James, and whose savage disenchantment might have earned him the respect of Jonathan Swift, emerged from an impoverished background in a tropical empire run on a regime of slavery. It is almost as if Tolstoy, rather than having inherited Yasnaya Polyana, had been born a serf.

more from TLS ...

(I'm currently [tho off'n'on] reading Ign?cio de Loyola Brand?o's Zero)

 

[kpjayan]

Have read one novel by Osman Lins. The Queen of the Prisons of Greece. Strong novel. Liked it a great deal. Unique talent.

I have read The Queen of the Prisons of Greece few months back and I liked it immensly. A novel within a novel with a very complex narrative. He also discusses varyious aspects of fiction writing through this novel.

Quote:
The new relationship between novelist and reader emerges clearly in the elusive entity to which the narration is entrusted. The story obliterated the text..
-----
Narrative is a verbal event, and therefore it requires an agent to enunciate it; the role of the narrator, enigmatic being, is mysterious and diverse; contemporary fiction has been eliminating the interdictions that hindered its mediator and attempted, in their rigorousness, to impose the laws of the physical world, unchanged, upon the universe of the novel.
-----
This time has come many times for me, and the novels I have read open their sealed doors to some hidden corner of my soul. As for others, they remain inviolable and I contemplate them from the outside, half frightened, half ignorant.
Unquote:

I haven't read any other works of this writer. But would definitely like to read more.

 

[Eric]

I'm glad that the Brits have finally discovered and reviewed Machado de Assis. I discovered him about 15 years ago, thanks to translations into Dutch. The late August Willemsen must have translated a dozen books of stories. or novels, by him. I can't find, by Googling, exactly how many, but these nicely produced hardbacks still pop up in second-hand bookshops in Holland.

 

[Heteronym]

I've read two novels by Machado de Assis, Helena and Dom Casmurro: neither left me in awe. I still have, however, interest in trying Epitaph of a Small Winner, Philosopher or Dog? and The Psychiatrist.

I should also like to suggest M?rio de Andrade's Macuna?ma, for the magical realism lovers, Jo?o Ubaldo Ribeiro, considered the greatest living Brazilian author, and Jorge Amado, Brazil's greatest 20th century writer.

And for the brave ones, I introduce you to Father Ant?nio Vieira, author of beautiful 17th century religious writings.

 

[Eric]

I only read Machado de Assis' stories, not Dom Casmurro. I found them competent, and rather liked them. I do have Willemsen's translation of that novel, but have never read it.

In English, I have The Devil's Church & Other Stories, which contains nineteen of his stories (translated by Jack Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu). First published in 1985, by Carcanet, Manchester, UK.

The afterword there suggests that social criticism was one of Machado's fortes. For something to be satirised, you have to know the straight thing being satirised. So I suppose that a knowledge of Second Empire Brazil would help you "get" some of the stories better. There is evidently a c?sura at around 1880. It is said that the stories he wrote before that year were rather bland, at times. Whereas his best ones were written between then and his death in 1908.

 

[amanda]

Re: Fernando Pessoa: The Book Of Disquiet

To move a bit off topic (but staying with the Portuguese language), have any of you read Rachel De Queiroz's The Three Marias? ****0 One of my favorite books. Brazilian author. Brilliant.

Also, Anguish ****0, by Graciliano Ramos. Another Brazilian. Classic novel.

Yes, I randomly picked up her later book D?ra, Doralina about a year ago and have been looking for more of her work since. Other than a few odd short stories, The Three Marias was the only other work of hers translated, back in the 1960s - and both were last published in the 1980s I think.

I have no idea what her reputation is in Brazil, beyond knowing she was the first female author elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. (The page Stewart linked earlier has moved and its host, Rede de escriatoras brasileiras has a sizable list of other Brazilian women writers.)

Ramos is another other (out of millions) that I'm interested in pursuing, if only as he and de Queiroz are grouped in with/counted among other north-eastern Brazil/sert?o writers like Jorge Amado and Jos? Lins do Rego. (I think these four wrote a single novel together -- something I could never imagine doing. Writing is hard enough without having to confer with three other people!)

 

[DouglasM]

Brazil does not have a good number of its writers translated into other languages, unfortunately. And the editors don't do much about this as well.

But I recommend, above all things, the reading of Guimar?es Rosa's The Devil To Pay In The Backlands. For me, it's the greatest brazilian novel. If you like James Joyce's Ulysses you can't go wrong with this one, though much of its brilliance and neologisms get lost in the translation.

?rico Ver?ssimo has some excellent works: Incidente Em Antares (not sure if it was translated into english, but definitely should), The Time And The Wind and Olhai Os L?rios do Campo (Look At The Lilies of the Field).

Euclides da Cunha's Rebellion In The Backlands is also a nice catch. It tells the story of a real conflct in the northeast part of Brazil. Funny fact: Mario Vargas Llosa has a book about the same event (The War Of The End Of The World) and there's a character called "The Journalist". The journalist is in fact Euclides da Cunha.

I like the stream-of-counsciousness style used by Clarice Lispector. Her book The Passion According To G.H. is among my favorite books ever. Her short-story collections (The Foreign Legion, Clandestine Happiness, among others) are a deep dive into the human soul, or whatever one calls it, and so are his other novels like The Hour Of The Star.

One writer I didn't like at first, but now I admire is Graciliano Ramos. Look for Anguish, Barren Lives or St. Bernard.

In the poetry side: Olavo Bilac, Cruz e Souza, Castro Alves, ?lvares de Azevedo, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Vin?cius de Moraes, Cec?lia Meireles and the "emerging" author Mariana Ianelli are some good choices.

Contemporary writers include Ign?cio de Loyola Brand?o (Zero and And Still The Earth), Raduan Nassar (To The Left Of His Father and A Cup Of Cholera), Lya Luft, Lygia Fagundes Telles and the newer "incomers": Milton Hatoum, Cristov?o Tezza, Bernardo Carvalho, S?rgio Sant'Anna, Luiz Ruffato, Carlos Heitor Cony, Moacyr Scliar, Jo?o Gilberto Noll, Isa?as Pessotti, Luiz Ant?nio de Assis Brasil, Adriana Lisboa and the list goes on...

These are some that I could remember at the moment.

 

[titania7]

That's what I love about this forum. I learn about wonderful writers
from other countries that I wouldn't have ever discovered otherwise.

Thanks, Betelgeused, for sharing some of your favorite Brazilian authors
with us. Your recommendations are much appreciated.

~Titania

 

[DouglasM]

Glad to be of service.

That's what fascinated me about this forum. I discovered many authors that I probably woundn't in another way.

 

[Raphael Lambach]

Of all the things to come out of Brazil, he surely is the worst. I've only read his The Alchemist but what an overhyped piece of drivel it was. Ayn Rand would be proud of him.

And as far as one Coelho and one Lispector goes, thats the sum of my Brazilian reading. I recently discovered, due to a spot of bad typing in a search on E?a de Queir?s (I entered 'de Queiroz') another name in Rachel de Queiroz, although I didn't look much into it. Wikipedia gives a sizeable list of Brazilian writers although who is available in translation will take some investigation.

You're totally right. Paulo Coelho is our worse author. There're lots of better ones. In my city existis a man called "Crist?v?o Tezza" who is one of the most impostant and prize-winning.

It1s important to say we don't like Paulo Coelho - although there're many people who like him. Anyway, he's lost his force as best-seller.

 

[Stevie B]

I recently returned from a conference in Chicago where I spent much of my free time wandering around used bookstores. I ended up buying about a half-dozen novels including one by a Brazilian writer I know little about. The author is Autran Dourado and the book is titled The Hidden Life. I'm curious if anyone has read this book or author. If so, I'd appreciate it if you'd share your thoughts.

 

[Daniel del Real]

I haven't read Dourado's work but he is a very famous name in the Brazilian literary world. He won the Camoes Prize, the highest literary achievement for a Portuguese writing author, back in 2000. I'm sure you'll spend a good time reading that book.