Mario de Andrade
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Mario de Andrade (Brazil, 1893), a Sao Paulo mixed-race middle-class dandy working as a music professor and newspaper columnist, was trained as a pianist but already at the age of 20 published a book of poetry, "Ha uma Gota de Sangue em Cada Poema/ There is a drop of blood in each poem" under the pseudonym Mario Sobral. He taught piano at the Sao Paulo Conservatory and traveled around Brazil's Nordeste to research folk music. Meanwhile, he formed the Grupo dos Cinc/ Group of Five with fellow poet Oswald de Andrade, and painters Menotti Del Picchia, Tarsila do Amaral (Oswald's wife) and Anita Malfatti (a group that coalesced after Anita Malfatti's December 1917 solo show "Exposicao de Pintura Moderna/ Modern Painting Exhibition", the first show of modernist art in Brazil). In February 1922 Oswald, Mario, painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (born Emilio de Albuquerque Melo) and poet Menotti Del Picchia organized in Sao Paulo the "Semana de Arte/ Modern Art Week", featuring art, concerts and readings; the event which marked the beginning of the Brazilian modernist movement. At the event, Mario recited dissonant lyrics from his "Pauliceia Desvairada/ Hallucinated Sao Paulo" (1922), a collection full of linguistic experiments (free verse and colloquial slang).
Mario published the novel "Amar, Verbo Intransitivo/ To Love, Intransitive Verb" (1927), written in colloquial Brazilian dialect, a mixture of Portuguese and slang.
Meanwhile, Oswald de Andrade published two manifestos: "Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil/ Manifesto of Pau-Brasil Poetry" (1924) and "Manifesto Antropofago" (1928), the one with the celebrated motto "Tupi or not tupi - that is the question" (Tupi being a cannibal tribe and a metaphor for Brazil's cultural cannibalism).
Pauliceia Desvairada (1922) [p] Amar Verbo Intransitivo (1927) "Macunaima" (1928), Mario's comic, folk and picaresque multi-layered collage novel, blends the cultures, mythologies and languages of African slaves and Amerindian tribes, inspired by German ethnologist and explorer Theodor Koch-Gr nberg's five-volume "Vom Roraima Zum Orinoco/ From Roraima to the Orinoco" (1917) which collected Brazilian folk myths of both African and indigenous origins, and in particular the legend of Macunaima. Andrade's version of Macunaima becomes the "cannibal" hero, "the hero without a character", which is a metonym for Brazil the country. Like him, Brazil has no national character. The beginning of the tale is loosely a retelling of the Amerindian legend of Makunaima. The novel is a vast repertory of legends, fairy tales, mottos, nursery rhymes, proverbs, and at the same time the record of an existential mosaic. The story proceeds by magic spells in a world where magical powers are ubiquitous. Nature speaks all the time: toads, birds and deer all participate in the action. The stories within the story are littered with countless references to folk talkes from multiple mythologies. The magic leaks from a syncretic religion that blends indigenous legends, African cults and Catholic liturgy. Because it fuses multiple belief systems, the novel overflows with an accumulation of legends, magicians, saints, monsters, and so on. The novel's linguistic style evokes James Joyce's "Ulysses" (1922). It is a poetic style, with a musical rhythm (with frequent repetitions), and indulging in surrealistic free association, but also an ethnographic and botanical compendium (although his folklore is largely imagined, deformed, twisted). Andrade was writing a book on Brazilian music at the same time that he was writing this novel. The chaotic parade of indigenous terms, proverbs and idiomatic expressions is meant to highlight the anthropological complexity of Brazilian culture. The semi-hero of Andrade undertakes his own epic Odyssey and steps into several tragicomical picaresque adventures, halfway between Ulysses and Don Quixote. In the (unpublished) preface Andrade wrote that Macunaima is not a symbol but then went on to state that "the Brazilian has no character". Macunaima is also lazy and a lascivious sex-crazed womanizer. The three brothers (the lazy Macunaima, the gullible Jigue and the sorcerer Maanape) combine with the many characters they encounter to paint Brazil's collective unconscious. The novel is similar to a medieval chivalric romance, full of allegorical meanings. The journey of Macunaima from the jungle to the metropolis and back to the jungle is a metaphor about the transition from the world of myth to the world of the machine; about the transition from the ancestral magic of the jungle to the technological magic of the metropolis. The novel became well known only after a comic 1969 film adaptation. Macunaima (1928) + I Macunaima was born in the Amazon jungle to a Black indigenous woman of African ancestry. (The beginning parodies Jose de Alencar's 1865 novel "Iracema", in which an indigenous heroine gives birth to a mestizo who represents Brazil as the offspring of European and indigenous cultures but omits any reference to the African slaves). For six years he didn't speak, or, better, only said one sentence: "Ai, que pregui a!/ Ah, just so lazy!" He liked to touch the vagina of women and to spit in the face of men. He enjoyed the ritual dances of the tribe. The child was known mainly for his naughty pranks. He has two older brothers: Jigue and Maanape, the eldest. When he finally turned six and started speaking, he asked Jigue's wife Sofara to take him to the river. Sofara wastes the whole day with Macunaima and Jigue is angry when he gets home and realizes she's not done any chore. The scene repeats the following day. The third time Macunaima turns into a handsome prince. Sofara and the prince play around until evening, but this time Jigue has followed them and got jealous. Back home, he spanks the child Macunaima and sends Sofara back to her father. (This is the popular legend of Makunaima, a boy who transforms into a handsome man and has sex with his brother's wife). II Jigue finds a new girl, Iriqui, who carries a rat in her hair. The village is hungry. Maanape kills a river dolphin, but the father of the dolphin is a toad who gets angry. Macunaima finds timbo poison to catch fish. His mother takes Macunaima to a no man's land where he can't grow up. He wanders one week until he meets the old ogre Currupira, but the ogre wants to eat Macunaima. Macunaima flees and his body grows up and he returns to his village and to his mother. He tells his mother that he dreamed of losing one tooth, which his mother interprets as an omen that someone in their family will die. Macunaima seduces Iriqui and they make love. The following day he chases a pregnant doe, but the deer is a trick by the evil spirit Anhange. Macunaima, Jigue, Maanape and Iriqui leave town. III Macunaima scouts the route and finds Ci, the gorgeous mother of the forest. He tries to rape her but she is stronger. His brothers help him to capture her and then he rapes her. He becomes the new emperor of the jungle. Macunaima and Ci live together like husband and wife. She demands constant sex, never satisfied. She gives him a son but he dies because Ci breast fed him with poison injected by a snake. A grieving Ci ascends to the sky as the star Beta Centauri. (Ci seems inspired by both the queen of the Amazons in Gustao Crulo's 1925 novel "Mysterious Amazon" and Francisco de Orellana's report of a tribe of warrior women). Ci leaves Macunaima a talisman. IV Macunaima is constantly followed by a retinue of macaws and parakeets. One day he encounters the sobbing waterfall Naipi, who is being terrorized by Capei the Boiuna water snake. She is saved by Titcate but Capei turns him into a plant. Macunaima fights Capei but he and his brothers have to flee, leaving behind Ci's talisman. Macunaima meets Bachelor of Cananeia (a 16th-century slave trader). Capei shows up again and ascends to the sky as the Moon. A bird tells Macunaima that the magic green stone, Muiraquita, an alligator-shaped talisman, has made very rich the man who now has it: Venceslau, who left the jungle who now lives in the city of Sao Paulo thanks to his wealth. Macunaima is determined to get the talisman back. V Macunaima and his brothers sail towards Sao Paulo. Macunaima bathes in enchanted waters and turns into a blond, blue-eyed, white man. Jigue tries in vain the same trick but only turns red. Maanape doesn't change color at all and remains black. (The three brothers now symbolize the three races of Brazil). They reach Sao Paulo, a city of machines. Macunaima observes that machines kill men but men control the machines. Venceslau is also the giant Piaima, eater of men. Piaima kills Macunaima, dismembers him and cooks him. Maanape resurrects Macunaima with help from the ant Cambgique and the tick Zlezlegue. Macunaima buys a pistol from an English trader who takes it (ripe) from a pistol tree. He also gets bullets from a bullet tree and whiskey from a whiskey tree. VI The three brothers build a papiri. Macunaima turns Jigue into a telephone and calls Venceslau/ Piaima pretending to be o French lady who wants to meet him. Dressed like a woman, Macunaima meets Venceslau/ Piaima. Venceslau boasts of being a collector of precious stones. Venceslau is mesmerized by the French lady and tries to rape her. Macunaima flees but is stopped by the mulatta girl Caterina, who turns out to be a doll and a trap. Captured by Venceslau, Macunaima manages to escape. VII Macunaima is not strong enough to kill Piaima, so he travels to Rio to get help from the devil Exu. He attends the Macumba ceremony chaired by the black priestess Tia Ciata and is consecrated as Exu's son. Exu then grants him the wish to torture Venceslau: Venceslau's "I" is transported into Exu's "I" and Macunaima is free to beat him up. Back in Sao Paulo, Venceslau bleeds. In a surreal jump out of fiction into meta-reality, Macunaima leaves Rio with Andrade's Rio friends: the art critic Antonio Bento, the composer Jayme Ovalle, the dandy Dodo (real name Geraldo Barroso), and the poets Manuel Bandeira, Blaise Cendrars, Ascenso Ferreira, and Raul Bopp. VIII One day Macunaima is hungry. He shakes the tall tree Voloma to get the fruit, but Voloma gets furious and throws Macunaima onto a desert island. Macunaima is rescued by Vei, the Sun, an old African woman, and by her three daughters. They take him back to Rio, where they live. Vei wants Macunaima to marry one of her daughters, but Macunaima instead has sex with a Portuguese girl. Vei reveals that Macunaima would have become immortal if he had married one of the girls. IX Macunaima, signing himself " emperor", writes a grotesquely erudite letter to the Icamiabas (as the Amazons are called in Sao Paulo), dated 1926, in which he relates how he lost the talisman, how an archangel has revealed that a Peruvian named Venceslau stole it, and how he, the emperor, is negotiating with Venceslau to regain it. He then describes the cosmopolitan manners of the elegant ladies of Sao Paulo as well as the Polish prostitutes who inhabit the red-light district (and are known as "French ladies"), hinting that their profession is lucrative and would greatly enrich him if the Amazons adopted it. He goes on to describe the marvels of the modern city of Sao Paulo and pledges to bring similar progress to his jungle empire. He describes the wealthy and the politicians, but also the disease and the conditions of the workers. He then asks the Amazons to send him more cacao beans to sell because he is broke. The letter as a whole is a parody of modern city life. Written in ancient Portuguese, it is also a parody of Pero Vaz de Caminha's letter of 1500 to the king of Portugal relating Pedro Cabral's discovery of Brazil and the marvels of the country. X A saint, Antonio the Indian (a real-life Tupi prophet but he lived in the 16th century), converts Macunaima to the Caraimonhaga faith. Macunaima meets the German woman Fraulein (a character from his previous novel). He then runs into a mulatto who is telling a crowd the story of the Father of Mutum. But Macunaima disagrees and starts telling his own version of the story, the story of the god Paui-Podole, and the crowd likes it and is moved by it. The Father of the Mutum, in Macunaima's version, is the four stars of Southern Cross, the national symbol of Brazil. (The mutum is a Brazilian bird). XI (the wildest chapter). Macunaima lives in a Sao Paulo boarding house with his brothers. Macunaima causes mischief and a mob almost lynches his brothers. A cop arrests Macunaima but another mob helps him escape. Venceslau/ Piaima lives in a palace. Macunaima visits Venceslau who is still recovering from the beating. Macunaima turns into an ant to explore Venceslau's body. Macunaima then turns into a fish to obtain a fishing hook from a fisherman. Macunaima then goes fishing but is attacked by Venceslau/ Piaima's wife Ceiuci, who captures with a fishing net. Macunaima turns into a duck that Ceiuci is about to cook when her younger daughter releases him. Macunaima has sex with the girl but then Ceiuci finds him. She tests him with three riddles. He solves the third one and is allowed to jump from the window onto a magical horse. Nonetheless she chases after him. Macunaima is taken by the horse all over Brazil and even to Argentina, always galloping and being followed by Ceiuci. Priests and a viper help him to hide from her. Finally, a tuiuiu turns into an airplane and flies him right back to the boarding house in Sao Paulo. On the way he waves at the priest Bartolomeu de Gusmao (a real-life character who had designed a flying ship in the 18th century). Ceiuci kicks out the rebel daughter who becomes a comet. XII Macunaima wakes up feverish. He wants to check out Venceslau/ Piaima but he is told that he and his family left for Europe. The brothers think of following him to Europe, but Macunaima wastes his last money on a useless possum. They have to sell the last cacao beans they have. Macunaima runs into a spider monkey who tricks him and kills him. A lawyer carries his corpse back to the boarding house. Manaape is a sorcerer and resurrects Macunaima. Manaape even divines a good number that Macunaima plays at lotto and yields some money. XIII Macunaima wakes up with a terrible rash. He sees a colossal ship and would like to board for Europe but is rejected by the sailors. Jigue comes home with a new girl, Suzi, and immediately Macunaima becomes her lover. Jigue beats them up both, and locks Suzi in a room where the saint Jose de Anchieta (a real-life Jesuit missionary, but he lived in the 16th century) teaches her to pick fleas. Jigue eventually kicks out Suzi, who becomes a meteor in the sky. XIV Macunaima reads in the newspapers that Venceslau is coming back from Europe and goes to wait for him. While he waits, a chaffeur tells him the story of how Palaua the puma turned into the automobile. When Venceslau arrives, Macunaima eats snakes and gets furious. He outsmarts the giant Piaim and makes him fall from his vine swing into boiling pasta (the pot in which the giant and his wife were planning to cook Macunaima). Piaima finally dies and Macunaima can take the talisman. XV Macunaima and his brothers set out on the river to return to the jungle. The jungle animals welcome back the emperor. Macunaima finds Iriqui, who has been waiting in the jungle all the time for him. However, he runs into the monster Oibe, the giant worm, who first befriends him and then gets upset when Macunaima eats the innards that he was cooking. Macunaima has to flee, chased by Oibe. During the escape, Macunaima meets people who retired to caves: Francisco de Mendonca Mar (a real-life painter of the 18th century), who claims to have lived in a cave for three centuries, and the friar Hercules Florence, who speaks French and claims to have just invented photography in 1927 (a real-life Frenchman who in 1833 coined the word "photography" six years before Daguerre). Still chased by Oibe, Macunaima also meets a princess and takes her with him. Macunaima vomits the innards which turn into a lush floating island. They escape Oibe downriver on the floating island until they rejoin Jigue, Iriqui and Maanape. Macunaima dumps Iriqui for the princess. Iriqui ascends to the sky with six monkeys and they become the Seven Sisters (the Pleiades). XVI Macunaima meets Joao Ramalho (a founder of Sao Paulo) and his 15 children. Macunaima looks for the conscience that he left behind in the jungle but can't find it and so he takes the conscience of a Spanish-American. The brothers are starving. Jigue meets the one-legged shaman Tzalo and steals his magic gourd that attracts fish. He then meets the giant armadillo shaman Caicae and steals his magic guitar that attracts game. And so the brothers have plenty to eat. The princess becomes Jigue's lover. Macunaima takes revenge by casting a magic spell on Jigue which turns Jigue into a shadow. Macunaima eats a bunch of bananas which are actually Jigue's shadow, which is infected with leprosy. Macunaima deliberately spreads leprosy around him while Jigue's shadow swallows Maanape and the princess, becoming a shadow demon. The shadow demon haunts Macunaima until it bonds with a god, the Father of Vultures, and becomes one of his two heads. XVII Now Macunaima is bored alone, and spends his time teaching a parrot his own adventures in his tribe's language. However, the Sun/ Vei is plotting her revenge against the man who rejected her daughters. Vei makes Macunaima lust for Uiara, who looks like a gorgeous woman but in reality is a monster. Macunaima swims towards her but it is a trap: he is attacked by piranhas that sever his leg, his nose, his ears and other body parts. Meanwhile, Uiara steals his talisman. Desperate, Macunaima searches for his missing body parts and his talisman. He finds all the body parts except the leg, but does not find the talisman. He decides that it is time to die and to become a star himself. Paui-Podole grants him the wish and turns Macunaima and his belongings into the constellation Ursa Major (the Big Dipper). Epilogue The author relates that Macunaima, after returning to the jungle and realizing that his tribe had gone extinct and that his civilization had disappeared, ascended to the sky, rejoining his brothers and Ci, and became a constellation, Ursa Major. Only a parrot remained in the jungle to keep alive the stories and the language that had been obliterated, including the story and the words of Macunaima. The parrot told a man everything and that man is the author. The novel ends with the sentence "And now i am done". After the collapse of the republic and the coup of Getulio Vargas (1930), Mario devoted himself to his musical ethnomusicological research, collecting countless traditional songs. He never finished his long experimental poem "Meditacao Sobre o Tiete/ Meditation on the Tiete River". He died in 1945, relatively young at the age of 51. "Meditacao Sobre o Tiete/ Meditation on the Tiete River" (1945) [p] |
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