Besides
a major novel on Canudos penned not by a Brazilian but a Peruvian(
Mario Vargas Llosa),a
South African writer has now written a major novel on our national
epic, an extraordinary history that begins with our indigenous tribes
in the tropical forest, unfolds across the centuries with generations
of Cavalcantis and Silvas symbolizing the building of Brazil, and
leads up to a metaphorical finale with Brasília, a transfiguration
of the mythical El Dorado sought for five centuries and transformed
into an urban reality - a psychological, social and political reality.
From
José de Alencar to João Ubaldo Ribeiro, as well as Bernardo
Guimarães, Jorge Amado, Haroldo Maranhão and Herberto
Sales, all attempted this ambitious project, only fragmentarily accomplished
among them. The reasons why aren't important here: despite several
attempts the project was never realized in its entirety, its total
congeniality with the "Brazilian thing." The questions this raises
can be answered, in each case, with a sheaf of responses, both individual
and applicable to all.
The
mysterious and complex circumstances that allowed a foreigner to overcome
obstacles which, given the vastness of the subject, we've barely managed
to confront (and frequently we did it badly), are only explained by
the tautology that is, after all, at the center of these questions:
Uys is the first to have, in the necessary proportions, the talent
required for the task; the first one who could see us from the "outside"
with the sympathetic integration (in the etymological sense of the
word) that was required for the work; he was the first one to understand
Brazil as an imaginary creation, coherent in its apparent incoherencies,
organic in its historic development, complimentary in its contradictions
and antagonisms, unitary in its differences and obscurely answering
to the famous "will of being a nation" that Julien Benda identified
as the motivating force in the history of his own country.
The
inevitable orthographic errors aside (Floriano Peixote, Tobojara)
and linguistic slip (limpa sangue; the answers in sim;)
one or another historical inaccuracy like saying Castro Alves was
present in the abolitionist ceremony of Pernambuco in 1885 or designating
Pedro II by the title of 'Perpetual Defender of Brasil,' a title that
belonged to his father; taking Caipora as a feminine entity; or including
José do Patricinio among personalities who on November 15,
1889 came in haste to the house of Deodoro da Fonseca - these are
insignificant inaccuracies in this novel of one thousand pages and,
of course, irrelevant to the American readers for whom the novel was
written. And for the Brazilians, too, for after all, the novelist
has a right to the poetical liberties of his profession.
What
we have in front of us is the Brazilian national epic in all its decisive
episodes - the indigenous civilization and the El Dorado myth that
they themselves created and supported, passing it on to the hallucinated
imaginations of the conqueror; the discovery and domination of the
North-East; the Bandeiras and geographical expansion; the gold rush
and nationalist feeling present, not only in the struggle against
the Dutch but also the Inconfidência Mineira; the Royal Family's
arrival and the Independence; the Second Reign and the war with Paraguay;
the Abolition and the Republic - everything converging like the segments
of a rose window in that reborn and metamorphosized myth that
is Brasília, symbol of the proclaimed territorial integrity
and, not without reason, with the expeditions that expanded to the
south and to the west on the pretext of capturing Indians and searching
for the "Golden Fleece."
In
the introduction, the editors state this book is destined for a place
at the side of the gigantic bestsellers of James Michener and James
Clavell - of this we've no doubt, nor is it difficult to imagine it
will inspire a film or TV series, that's a certainty. The only reservation
from a strictly literary point of view is the technique or fiction
the author uses here or there, with conventional mass-market processes,
such with melodramatic episodes solved in the last minute or some
simplification in characterization.
All
of this is dispelled in the vigorous narrative art and the descriptive
force of an author completely at home with the immense historical
mural he has before him. Descriptions like those of the war with Paraguay,
particularly the battle of Tuiuti (a scene also depicted by João
Ubaldo Ribeiro in one of the most important sections of his novel)
do not find in our literature any rival capable of surpassing them,
and they evoke the great passages of War and Peace
rather than best-sellers of current extraction.
With
these episodes and others from 1491 onward, the author shows a total
empathy with the decisive moments in our history and their spiritual
meaning: Indians, Portuguese, Mamelucos, Pernambucanos, Paulistas
identify themselves through the centuries, not merely as historical
figures but with the psychology and sentiment of the Brazilian. As
one of the characters states, already in the eighteenth century, the
bandeirantes were inspired to search for mines for the greater glory
and richness of the king, and the Pernambucanos were at the same time
consolidating the economic and political structure, "but when we think
in the present, we just see Brazil."
This
represents a dialectical process even more complex than the ingenious
rebuilding of our history - and, after all, inevitable: "Where were
they -" meditates one of the characters on the inaugural night of
Brasília,"-the Amador Flôres da Silvas and the Benedito
Buenos, where were all those who in the south and in the north, in
the extreme west or in the impenetrable forests, on Monte Tabocos
or in the colonial mills - where were all who had opened the way for
this conquest? Brasilia seemed to be, finally, the El Dorado they
had searched for in vain, thus coming full circle from the inflamed
imaginations of the first conquerors when they beheld the "sun's drops"
worn by the natives in their primitive collars.
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