Lenguajes y Voces en La Literatura Brasilera

"Languages" and "Voices" in Brazilian Literature Author(s): Eva Bueno Source: Revista de Letras, Vol. 36 (1996), pp.
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"LANGUAGES" AND "VOICES" IN BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
Eva BUENO1
ABSTRACT: literature: The Hour dor, by A
This came,
essay by
is a comparative Julio Ribeiro,
study
of three works in 1888; A horn in 1977, In this
of Brazilian da estrela, O cobra I initially
published
of the Star, by Clarice Rubem Fonseca,
Lispector, in
published 1979.
and
published
study, and
with
matters to the Portuguese related investigate language a possible or denies it gives "space" which it negotiates and step, its own to African I raise some space languages questions in relation present about both
its relationship characters, European As a the
to some to other
while
languages second placement invented interest some to speak. KEYWORDS: an literature.
in national post
territory. and
modernity
of Brazilian in the throughout kinds of the
literature first world and
in relation hastily the validity be
to postmodernist adopted everywhere. that
postulates My main
is to question can literature
of affirmations space
literature oppressed
a privileged
for the
Language;
voice;
Brazil;
lawlessness;
postmodernity;
Brazili
Introduction 1992 marked America. especially the 500th anniversary of Columbus' "discovery" of the 500th anniversary of another event which, for us, students, critics and teachers of literature, is of equal
It also marked
1 Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese - College Place - Penn State University - DuBois - 15801-3199 - USA. Pennsylvania
Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,
36: 189-210,
1996
189
Gram?tica
importance: the publication of Antonio de Nebrija's . In his Gram?tica, Nebrija states to de la lengua castellana the queen that "siempre la lengua fue compa?era del imperio"(1926, p.3). Indeed, as we all know, the conquest of America and the sub
if not more
mission
of Africans, have, of its native inhabitants, the enslavement for these more than 500 years, gone hand in hand with the systematic effort to erase languages, and cultures, so that European languages, culture and population could take the space previously occupied by the many peoples that lived inAmerica before Columbus' arrival. 1992 also marked the 500th anniversary of the resistance to this massive attempt in at neutralization or outright destruction of anything non-European the American soil. Obviously, itwould be naive to see this resistance as a linear, well since it has happened in different ways, some demarcated movement, times as silent resistance, and sometimes as a loud scream from the in Brazil, peoples. The slave insurrections quilombos, marginalized or the revolution of 1791 to 1804 in Haiti Indian resistance through since the sixteenth century, are some of the most out the Americas of and obvious examples these different kinds of resistance. However so texts resistance has this is what makes the study of fascinating sometimes distribution infiltrated into the dominant discourse which organizes the of power. In the case of works of literature, they often open to be turned "inside out" to reveal how resistance was
themselves In built up precisely as a reflection about the power of representation. other words: the same representational process employed in "othering" those with little or no access to power in the whole continent of America
Indians, Blacks, women, homosexuals seems to have sometimes
turned could
Iwant to interrogate in this process in three Brazilian fictional texts: A carne, published 1888 by Julio Ribeiro; A hora da estrela [The Hour of the Star], by Clarice Lispector, of 1977; and O cobrador, by Rubem Fonseca, pub lished in 1979. Many aspects of these three works solicit my attention. Even though the first one, A time very different from hora da estrela [TheHour example of what Mikhail acteristic Bakhtin, of languages: "one language carne, was obviously written at a historical the late twentieth century Brazil of both A of the Star] and O cobrador, it constitutes an (1981, p.12) wrote as a peculiar char they throw light on each other. Indeed, for can ... see itself only in the light of another Bakhtin
itself around and broken open a space In this paper, represent himself/herself.
in which
the "other"
190
36: 189-210,
1996
language". What interests me most directly is how in Brazil, in differ ent historical moments these languages evolved an almost open con flict to determine which would be the "light" and which the "lighted". To focus even more, Iwant to inquire whether the presence of polys?mie echoes necessarily means that a space has been carved up by/for the different voices within the language. Or, to put it a little differently, can we not say that the presence of numerous voices represents their "waste" in the historical context? Ultimately, Iwant to ask whether the - as a linguistic device or as a "voice" en registering of the marginal in the battle of "voices" meshed represents an opening necessarily can be heard and his/her through which the subaltern/marginal/other wishes, rights, desires acted upon. These are matters of no little consequence, and the discussion of such topics is complex. However, the attempt at understanding the issues is of utmost importance, because what is at stake in the heart of this discussion is, as Foucault (1984) says in "The Order of Dis
course", desire and power. As Foucault writes, -
discourse object merely
is not of desire; that which
simply and
that which
manifests constantly
(or hides) teaches
desire
it is also
the
since,
as history struggles there
us, discourse but
is not is the which
translates
or systems
of domination,
thing for which is to be seized,
and by which (p. 110)
is struggle,
discourse
is the power
In these three texts I propose to analyse, there is a close ship between language and the material and social conditions in them. Moreover, precisely because in Brazil the Portuguese has had to establish its privileged position as the language
relation displayed language of power
through its fight against both the Indian and the African languages, this language, in itself, has become a site where the very ideology of the Brazilian nation rests some of its force. That is to say, although there is the lure of taking language for its face value, as if it "means what it says", there is the possibility of taking language as a farmore - a powerful force which can actually define or radically vexed device
even create social, political, racial and gender constituencies, or, more
negation
to my point, language can be seen as the privileged space where the of these social, political, racial and gender constituencies gets To illustrate this point, let me refer to Bakhtin's course in the novel. He states that discussion of dis
accomplished.
36: 189-210,
1996
191
any concrete which with value, it was
discourse directed
(utterance) already
finds
the object overlain
at
as it were
qualifications, already
open
enveloped by the spoken been
on the contrary, have already
to dispute, charged with in an obscuring mist or, words of alien that "light" about it. (1981, p.276)
to do here is to open up the dispute, and to show that had already been spoken when these texts I analyze were in written, and that the display of several languages and sub-languages them constitute a medley of competing strategies for the discussion of What alien words the arguments embodying the polisemic which they try to represent. instance of the reality/realities
Iwant
The language
of the flesh
We will begin with A came, for chronological reasons, and also because the discussion of the literary period this novels springs from is fundamental to the understanding of the two other texts, The Hour of the Star and O cobrador. My choice of a naturalist novel to open this discussion is due to the fact that the very nature of the move in Brazil, is an example of what ment, at least as it was constituted Carolyn Porter (1990, p.272) has stated as the moment when "the voices of those 'othered' by the dominant discourse acquire a new authority, no matter how marginalized or effaced they might be." However, even as I acknowledge the crucial importance of the presence of the others' voices in the text, I am also aware that, as a cultural artifact which is not available to all in society, the text alone, the novel alone does not necessarily guarantee that the "other," the subaltern, will be heard in society. Since A carne has traditionally been considered a naturalist text, on the nature of the let me offer some brief historical perspective movement in Brazil. By the time the first Brazilian naturalist novels appeared in the 1880's, the country was going through an extremely charged political moment, when the need for a unitary idea of the nation - seen as necessary of by the forces at work in the moment transformation of the country from a monarchic to a republican re either relativizes the naturalist expressions of a mechanicist gime view of life, or sees it as the representations of regional problems. the wider
192
36: 189-210,
1996
Another
problem which has called my attention to the naturalist texts in all Bra is the fact that is has been these texts, almost exclusively zilian literary history, which have been critically seen as form or as examples of the application of a foreign model in Brazilian literature.
As I see them, the Brazilian novels traditionally considered natural ist portray tensions caused by the realignment, or, better still, the sudden visibility, of elements such as women, blacks, mulattoes, and homosexuals. The standard reading has seen this appearance as a
mere function of a "mechanicist" view of existence, or a naturalism's
preference of the ugly, lowly, and revolting aspects of life. However, in my own view, for late nineteenth-century Brazilians the idea of Brazil was going out of control precisely because the political mo ment the beginning of the republican regime facilitated the call for a centralized idea of Brazil .which could be summarized under the positivistic motto "Order and Progress".2 Critic Flora Sussekind (1984, p. 32) has stated that the naturalist science and literature novels represent a space where nationality, a as truthful to the in which vision itself unitary presents conjugate reader. Very much to the contrary, I argue that they question these very issues in a way that makes them very crucial registers of the struggle against the formation of any unitary imaginary of Brazil as a republican, progressive, totalized entity. They register this strug gle by the appropriation of the dominant discourse itself. That is, the voices of those who have historically been "othered" acquire visibil ity, authority, even when this authority and visibility come disguised as yet another effort to efface them. Carolyn Porter, writing about the presence of these marginal voices in literature (1990, p.268), says or effaced they may have been," that "no matter how marginalized they "may be understood not as always already neutralized by the ideologies they must speak through in order to be heard, but rather as inflecting, distorting, even appropriating such ideologies, genres,
values so as to alter their configuration".
In the beginning of A carne there is/are one/two dedications to Zola, in French, followed by a Latin citation. I pass over the question of the fact that the text, as printed, is full of mistakes. The dedica tion/^ read/s:
I argue this point in a more detailed fashion in "BrazilianNaturalism
and the Politics of Origin".
36: 189-210,
1996
193
Quoi
qui'il
en soit,
voici mon que
oeuvre. je vous gorg?s en fais? de richesses,
Agr?erez-vous Pourquoi Permettez pas? ne d?daignent que
la d?dicace Les pas
rois, quoique
des pauvres paysans. toujous les ch?fits cadeaux vous fasse mon hommage je complet, lige, de serviteur les paroles tu maestro. 1888. Ribeiro du po?te florentin: [sic]
f?al en empruntant Tu duca, St. Paul, tu signore, le 25 janvier
Jules
On the next page, facing the above quoted text, there is still an other dedication, followed by a Latin quotation given as number one:
A. M. Je ne suis suivre vos EMILE ZOLA
t?m?raire, traces; d'?crire
de je n'ai pa [sic] la pr?vention ce n 'est pas pr?tendre suivre vos une pauvre ?tude tant soit peu admire. le dieu dieu que on vous quand
traces que naturaliste. "Nous nous vit en nous vit en mois Ce n'est n'est n'est pas pas
On ne vous ?chauffons, s'agitei": s'est
imite pas, dit Ovide,
eh bien!
le tout petit
que
agit?,
et j'ai ?crit La Chair. ce n'est diantre! pas une la Cur?e, chandelle ce
pas
l'Assomoir,
la Terre; mais, le soleil
et pourtant
une chandelle
?claire.
(1) Est Deus
in nobis,
agitante
celescimus
illo.3
One can immediately ask what these two pages in French, before a work obviously written in Portuguese by a Brazilian, are doing in the can be suggested, and among beginning of a novel. Several possibilities the most obvious is the fact that Julio Ribeiro wants to pay homage to his master, as he himself says in the dedication. But why can't he write this homage in Portuguese? Or, if Ribeiro ever sent the novel to Zola, is the homage an end in itself, destined only to flatter the French writer?
3 Obviously, I take no responsibility forRibeiro's, nor for the typist's French. My transcription is an exact copy of the dedications as printed inA came (Ribeiro, 1975).
194
36: 189-210,
1996
Or maybe
comparison
the main
between
point Ribeiro wants

Zola "le soleil" and
to make
himself
evolves
"une
around the
chandelle" -
which
can be transposed also to the parallel comparison between the French language {"lesoleil") and the Portuguese ("une chandelle"). Ribeiro leaves no doubt about which language represents the source of light.
Obviously, it is also possible that, by initially framing his novel with three French, Italian and Latin Ribeiro is at once estab foreign languages lishing the polys?mie character of the work while disclosing more lin guistic barriers. Although it is commonly understood that the Brazilian elite of the time 1888 had at least rudimentary knowledge of French, it is a little unlikely that all prospective readers could understand French, Italian and the Latin quotation at the bottom of the page. The fact is that, up to the time of the 1975 edition of the novel both the typesetter and the proof-reader did not know the French language well enough to catch some obvious mistakes such as page-setting of the dedication inwrong order, with the end of the letter being printed before the beginning. (For that matter, they did not even know Portuguese well enough, as the in the book show.) many misspellings How could Ribeiro expect his audience to understand him at the end of 1888? The answer is: he could not, and therefore he did not. The novel constitutes a series of linguistic and cultural codes which are not easily accessible. It is, however, at least intriguing that in a time of much needed consensus and centralization about what Brazil
meant, there appears a novel written by a grammarian, no less! in
which the Portuguese language is almost lost in the middle of so many other languages. To make this text even more difficult to understand, the novel's leading female character, Lenita, becomes a kind of vortex in which all linguistic, social, moral, and sexual energies in the text become at once centralized and neutralized. We need to remember that the novel was not written at a time when the linguistic vernacu lar had some kind of autonomy. Itwas decades later before it attained to Neil Larsen (1990, p.83), as late as 1930 the it, if ever. According Brazilian "[l]anguage would appear to be, formally speaking, a model practice of consumptive production by virtue of its capacity to 'pro duce' the world by engulfing itwhole" .4 At the time A came was pub as was it lished, the Portuguese language, practiced in Brazil, could
between
In his brilliant discussion Larsen clarifies that "consumption" is "the ideally mediating principle" the colonized and the colonizer's civilization. For Larsen, "[l]anguage's 'consumption'
36: 189-210,
1996
195
practice of any kind of consumption, much less pro duction. By writing his flattering dedication to Zola in French, Ribeiro marks the extremely important role languages play in his novel, and of the incorporation of these other languages discloses the necessity as a function of the Portuguese language itself, while at the same time he stresses Paradoxically, that these languages were not available to be consumed. it seems that the ability to speak French, or any other language, constitutes the hegemonic mark of those who can
not be a model
European speak proper Portuguese. In fact, nobody understands attack Ribeiro
these levels of the novel, and the critics for the dedication5 and for the presence of languages. Critic Jos? Ver?ssimo is clearly very irritated with the presence of scien tific terminology, and calls this Ribeiro's "fixed idea" of showing off his and his ability to deal with other languages. scientific knowledge as obtrusive However, they might be, it is important to stress that these languages appear in the text not always as linguistic acts to which the status of a language is given. Some of them appear as registers of
certain ways of speaking and as written codes. In a sense, however,
of the linguistic all of them contribute to the extreme destabilization matter in the novel. It is no wonder, therefore, that Ver?ssimo, always a keen year for impurities in the language, also ridicules Ribeiro be cause of certain idiosyncratic orthographic uses:
another puerility in which the grammarian of words with in which appears the group is
the special ch appears kharacter,
orthography [he writes] etc. Kil?metro of Baviera,
kh. Thus melankholia, and the always been in the [name
is khiliometro, which has
of the] capital translated German
in Portuguese form M?nchen.
as Munich, (1978, p. 191)
is written
of the world is, by virtue of forging autonomy out of culture's own consumptive moment can then perhaps be more concretely engaged as the process of learning to 'speak' as a single 'language' the multiplicity of cultural practices that, in their mutual separation as instances of 'production,' fail to resist the mediating power of the colonizing circuit of (unequal) exchange" (p.84). As I hope my own discussion will show, these texts dramatize precisely the resistance to speaking a single language, the Portuguese language of the colonizer. 5 See, for instance, Jos? Ver?ssimo's reaction to Julio Ribeiro's dedication of the book to Zola, whom he calls "duca, signore e maestro": the critic's anger is not caused by the presence of a foreign language, but by the terms of the homage Ribeiro pays to the French writer (1978,p. 182).
196
36: 189-210,
1996
Even though these forms do not appear in the 1975 version of the novel, any literate Brazilian can imagine Verissimo's surprise at their occurrence in a time the Portuguese language was going through ac at least commodations which deemed such orthographic mannerisms obsolete, and possibly offensive, because they challenged the author ity of those whose job itwas to determine orthographic changes.6 How ever, the presence of these forms in the book's original edition serves to show one more degree of linguistic destabilization. Since the main lin guistic code, Portuguese, was not stable enough to decide for one uni fied orthography, the text becomes a linguistic festival at once showing the language's porosity and its inadequacy to convey precise meaning. Both Lenita and Barbosa have long "scientific" conversations about the nature and origin of trees, and proceed to give their Latin names,and these polyglot exchanges are one more register of this unsteady charac teristic. InA came language has no center, and the addition of scientific language only heightens its de-centered existence in another language. In a sense, the Portuguese language, although it is the main language in the novel, becomes a "supplement" to the other languages displayed in the text. Or, on the other hand, because the main language is Portu
guese, the others are the necessary supplement, or the anchor which stabilizes Portuguese in this tempestuous linguistic ocean of Brazil. There are other registers which signal even more instability. When, of the novel, the old black witch-doctor Joaquim gathers some slaves in his shack and starts to perform a ceremony, he is greeted as "mganga." The editor explains in a foot note that "mganga" is an African word" which means "lord of the time, Cambinda distributor of rain" and, by extension, "theologian, priest, teacher" black "teacher", however, speaks an almost (Ribeiro, 1975, p.63).The Portuguese:
disse Joaquim Cambinda, uss? pens? b? nu qu? vai faz?,
about
the middle
unrecognizable
Zel?mo, lap?ssi?
I believe that any adult Brazilian can remember some of the ortographic changes that were mandated (from top to bottom) in their lifetime. For younger ones, maybe the only traumatic experience in this area was the revision of the accents. Suddenly, "ele"was not "ele", for instance. These might seem small changes, but when you have been taught the reasons why some words had some kinds of accent, it is difficult to accept that those changes are no more. InVer?ssimo's case, since he was part of the intellectual elite and therefore in the (ideological) space to reinforce these changes, Ribeiro's adherence to both old or foreign forms must have been very irritating (and subversive) indeed.
36: 189-210,
1996
197
Pens?, Intossi,
mganga. uss? qu? memo riz?ma? (p.63) (italics in the original) si riss? ni riman?ri ri
San Migu? Qu?, mganga.
A footnote dialogue:
Jer?nimo, Pensei, Ent?o -
immediately
follows, giving a Portuguese
version of the
voce mestre.
pensou
bem
no que
voce
vai fazer,
rapaz?
voce
quer mesmo das Almas? (p.63)
alistarse
na
irmandade
de
S?o Miguel Quero, mestre.
Jer?nimo, are going
have
you
thought boy?
carefully
about what
you
to do, my teacher. really want teacher.
Yes Then Yes
I did, you I do,
to join the
fraternity
of Saint Michael
of Souls?
Joaquim Cambinda's language is a departure from the Portuguese norm, and, because Cambinda is a leader in his (slave) community, his language has its own authority. In other words, Cambinda has power: he knows his environment, controls it through this knowledge and uses it to dominate and impose rules on his fellow black people. underestimates his owner's power, and his machina tions, intrigues and poisonings are discovered. Cambinda confesses to the killing of slaves and the poisoning of the whites. It seems that what the novel has been preparing the reader to understand is that a from Cambinda's the is of a norm, speech, departure Portuguese his with with natural of his environment: he piece handling products derives his power from both. However, since he is a slave, and not a white man, he can be accorded neither the scientific honors both and Lenita share, nor the recognition for speaking a foreign language, much less for his obvious invention of a new one from the mixture of Portuguese and an African language. His death comes as a both for his crimes and for his handling of a scientific punishment Barbosa knowledge which belonged to the whites. His speech, therefore, is the first sign of his danger and, in fact, constitutes the symbol of the po tential danger of allowing the handling and the mixture of things (and languages) that should be kept apart. Both his language and his But Cambinda
198
36: 189-210,
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scientific knowledge are "brasileirismos," a form of degeneration which cannot be permitted to flourish, since it represents danger. On the one hand, we have languages French, English, Italian, Latin which are all status, and on the other hand, we have a new language - mixture of Portuguese and an African language which has none. A came is, an to dramatize this linguistic instability. In this therefore, attempt novel, language proliferates, as if to make up for the absent center, be cause no one single language can encompass all the others. Bakhtin's discussion is again pertinent.
utterance centrifugal
According
to him,
subject serves forces and
[e]very concrete as a point where are brought intersect answers
of a speaking as well
as centripetal
to bear. The process of unification
of centralization and disunification, not language
decentralization,
in the utterance; the requirements
the utterance of its own
only as it
an individualized answers well; such
embodiment
of a speech in
act, but as
the requirements it is in fact an active diversity.
of heteroglossia participant
speech
(1981, p.272)
In A carne, the text's own departure from the norm, that is, its choice of a different orthography, is a rupture of or a "break with" the accepted orthographic norm; the penchant for giving the Latin names of plants is a rupture with the accepted norm for the novel in the Bra zilian literature of the end of the nineteenth century. In sum, these deviations were just as unacceptable for a "work of art" as Joaquim Cambinda's private branch of knowledge was considered evil, worth less, dangerous, since it could neither be incorporated as capital for his masters, nor be legitimized by the/a scientific community. What seems clear is that in the structural abstraction of language from con crete experience, a certain kind of concession of concrete experience to linguistic form ismade, but not the concession that form, itself, has the status of a language.7
7 Other languages appear in the text. Starting with the dedication in French, Latin and Italian, the text continues its journey through more French, English and Latin. Barbosa writes to Lenita that he is looking forward to giving her a "hands-shake" (sic) (Ribeiro, 1975, p.83); later Lenita is reminded of Rabelais when she realizes she is pregnant: "Les b?tes sur leurs ventr?es n'endurant " jamais lem?le masculant (p.141) (italics in the original), and finally, she chooses a Latin expression to explain to Barbosa why " demonstrant she is marrying another man: "pater est is quern iustae nuptiae
36: 189-210,
1996
199
The
hour
of the
"cobrador"
Roughly one hundred years later, we can see how these anxieties first expressed in naturalist texts such as A came still continue to be an important part of the agenda of Brazilian writers. The two texts which Iwill analyse now obviously belong to a different aesthetic tra dition. In the contemporary Brazil that these texts portray there is no more room for the witcheries
has become, now,
knowledge
guage
of a Cambinda, or for the absurd display of of French, Latin and Italian. As I see it, the matter of lan
the matter of voice, and, in an unavoidable
development, of how this voice is represented. Two texts, A hora da estrela, (1977) by Clarice Lispector, and Rubem Fonseca's O cobrador (1979) are exemplary for a considera tion of narrative positioning and how it has been affected by I am aware that this practice is a highly postmodernist practice. if we take in consideration that the issue, especially problematized term postmodernism is, itself, the subject of contentions and discus sions both in the countries which export and in the countries which its significance, and its pertinence. The use import the terminology, - in a of such word Brazilian postmodernism literary context, has to be Roberto Schwarz has already thor very charged. necessarily in two essays, the such of discussed practices implication oughly the memorable and much quoted "As id?ias fora do lugar" (1977) and at this "Nacional por subtra?ao" (1987).8 What Iwant to emphasize, is how the which point, peaked at the fiercely centralizing process dawn of the Republic in 1889 continues to be part of the subject of literature at this time of the twentieth century. The issue, once again, is Brazil. But this Brazil is different from that Julio Ribeiro's Brazil. Now the nation has at last acknowledged in its midst. Brazil there are Blacks, Mulattoes, Asians, and Mesti?os
(p.154) (italics in the original). These languages, English, French and Latin, however, constitute a common heritage which can - at least theoretically - be shared by all educated people. Lenita chooses to use French and Latin to give respectability to her plight. When she wants to refer to her love affair with Barbosa, she uses a secret code in her letter, "cryptographic lines drawn in some code" (p.154) in both are initiates. Similarly, Joquim Cambinda's followers are initiates in his secret linguistic and ritual code. 8 For Schwarz, "We Brazilians and Latin-Americans constantly experience with the character of the "postigo, inaut?ntico, imitado" of the life we lead. This experience has been a formative aspect of our critical thinking ever since the times of our independence" (1987, p.29). As a result, Schwarz concludes, our "sense of uneasiness is a fact" (p.29).
200
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to recognize the fact that it is not a single, Unitarian is not the South, the West is not the East. And the Northeast entity: a a is there nation composed by Brazilians, and it needs to Brazil, yet, be represented. How can a writer account for its diversity? How to represent this diversity and, at the same time, keep at least the aware also has come ness it from the outside? For of the impossibility of representing at in The Hour is a representation of least of the Brazil Star, Lispector, in Rio de Janeiro. For Fonseca Brazil is the highly con the Northeast temporary, violent and wholly urbanized Rio de Janeiro. Or to be more specific, Lispector attempts to incorporate her region into a newer, more of the entire country. Fonseca, aggressive and powerful hypostization in contrast, appears to take this hypostization for granted and then proceed to dismantle it. Iwant to investigate what each text enables us to infer about what it presumes to know, and whether such pre sumption, in turn, enables us to generalize about what kind of knowl edge, if any, a narration needs to dispense to its narrator as a function of dispensing knowledge to us. In other words, how has the role of the narrator changed in these postmodern times, and how can we under stand these changes? How can we understand a narrative project today in which the some to truth about real life life because convey imperative represented it is real - is apparently at the center of the ideological construction for a country's whole region? How to comprehend an actuality which ap pears always already to be the perpetually exacerbated subject of the it?More to my very art which would represent it only by exacerbating focus, fromwhat point of view? As we shall see, in The Hour of The Star and O cobrador the handling of the role of the narrator will be of crucial importance for the discussion of these issues. in "O narrador p?s Brazilian critic Silviano Santiago writes, moderno" (1989), that "the post-modern narrator knows that the "real and the 'authentic' are linguistic constructions" (p.40). Indeed, in The Hour of The Star the narrator is conscious of his role, and starts by saying that "the story ...will have some seven characters and I am one of the most important among them, of course. I, Rodrigo S. M." he (p.13).9 Next, begins to explain his technique: "[this] story [is] pat and explicit yet holds certain secrets ently open starting with one of the book's titles 'As For the Future,' preceded and followed by a full
I am quoting from the English translation of 1987.
36: 189-210,
1996
201
stop. Hopefully this need for confinement will ultimately become clear" (p. 13). The narrator knows that whatever knowledge he has of his sub ject is fragmented, because inevitably filtered through his own intri consciousness. He protests not to know Macab?ia, cately mediated the heroine, and goes on to speak about himself, thus his narration into a narrative not only of the story of the northeast, but of the exorcism of his own devils as well. and reality combine in a conspiratory level of metadiscourse
the narrator to say,
transforming girl from the Both fiction which leads
[f]orgive me since my write destiny,
if I add
something
more clear,
about myself and when a I
identity
is not very
I am surprised (p. 15)
to find that I possess
The same anxiety is expressed by the heroine Macab?ia, who "does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly" (p. 15). From the outset, Rodrigo knows that the reality he is creating is a reality of words; therefore, he is tempted to embellish his writing with juicy terms: "magnificent adjectives, robust nouns, and verbs so agile that they glide through the atmosphere as they move into ac tion. For surely words are actions?" (p. 15). But what kind of actions can words be? He, Rodrigo, the narrator, senses that between his con sciousness and the world there are only words. These words can come from the utterances
discourses" which
of semi-literate
organize society:
Macab?ia,
as the narrator
not from the "master

says, this is a "sim
or social jus ple story," and terms such as capitalism, exploitation, The narrator abides with the character, the tice, never get mentioned. most common of beings, "one girl among thousands of others like her" soci (p. 13), who is not "even aware that she live[s] in a technological
ety where she was a mere cog in the machine" (p.29). The narrator
that he is biased, incapable of dealing with the subject, en in the subject's life, and yet, unable to feel the reality of a meshed subject which is made only of words. Because it ismade of words which he did not invent, this subject is made of words which are already there, already used by somebody confesses in the past. Answering his own question on why he writes, Rodrigo all that, yes, history is history. However, let's not says: "Everything, is word the fruit of the word. The word has to look like that the forget the word" (p.20). Since a word always resembles another word, it has
202
36: 189-210,
1996
always existed, and therefore has always been there forwhoever wanted to use it. Because Macab?ia is a word, and Rodrigo's work is made of words, it is inevitable that his characters will look like other words, one the "crossbreed between other works. For instance, Macab?ia, 'quiddity' and another," who seemed "to have been conceived from some vague notion in the minds of starving parents" (p.57) resembles the character Leonardo, in Memorias de um sargento de milicias (1852) a of Militia the between difference However, [Memories Lieutenant}. the two characters ismore important than merely the fact that Leonardo is "the fruit of a treading and a pinch" :he is a picaro whose destiny is organized by a narrative instance which still believes that there is hope for the Leonardos of Brazil. Macab?ia's reality is very much one in which hope does not exist. Her boyfriend Olimpio is also a word derived from a previous one. Rodrigo says that Olimpio is a sertanejo who has already washed his honor in blood. A "sertanejo", Rodrigo says, is "above all, patient"(p.65). Here we have a clear reference to the 1902 Euclides da Cunha's Os sert?es, where he says that "[a] sertanejo is, above all, strong" (p.81). The difference between the characterization of the sertanejo made by da Cunha and the one made by Lispector signals, perhaps, a less na ive knowledge of the matter: the use of the word "patient," adjective re-visits the characteriza for calm and noun for sick and bed-ridden, tion of the sertanejos in a Brazilian milieu in order to bring them up to their present reality: they are no longer strong; they are just patient, long-suffering, and finally unhealthy. At this point it is convenient to inquire whether the characteri zation of Macab?ia and Olimpio are what has been called "pastiche." Indeed, they seem to embody what Fredric Jameson (1983) has dis "in a world in which cussed as pastiche: stylistic innovation is no all is is left to imitate that dead styles, to speak longer possible, with voice the masks and the of the through styles in the imaginary museum" in the process of (p. 115). And yet, we must ask whether, imitating the "dead styles," the writer Lispector is not bringing these styles back to life. Or, to place the question closer to the meta-real ity within The Hour of the Star, is the narrator not speaking through the mask of Macab?ia? Or is Rodrigo M. to be seen as a surrogate
for Lispector, and both as only parasites of the poor and miserable Macab?ia? Or, maybe, we can see this situation as a kind of high level cannibalism: Rodrigo feeds on words, expressions, impressions which have already appeared in Brazilian literature; he feeds as well
36: 189-210,
1996
203
and Olimpio in order to be able to represent them. But at the same time he "feeds" on the life of his characters, Rodrigo complains that Macab?ia has taken control of him, is "eating" him. What we have here, then, is more than cannibalism; it is "word balism" of the third degree: Lispector invented the narrator Rodrigo - and M. - himself a word made of bits and parts of other words he feeds on the words he invents, that is, on Macab?ia, Olimpio, and
the other characters.
on Macab?ia
Ultimately, this structure exposes the author's attempt to make of The Hour of the Star a dramatization of an (im)possible dialogue. Nev ertheless, even as the reader can see the effort of this dramatization, it becomes clear that what is really at stake here is the continuation of the (re)production of Macab?ia's speech, now coded as "language," and - or the expression of it is the passport which will allow her language into the society or damn her to eternal marginality. Macab?ia's language, like the language of Joaquim Cambinda of A carne, is a corrupted, misspelled Portuguese. Her voice, however, is not violent; hers is the humble, silent voice of a sacrificial victim upon whose blood the big city
thrives.
There is no way to deny that The Hour of the Star tries to tell a story which makes a truth claim about an actual Brazilian society. There has got to be some level inwhich the elusive reality of Macab?ias and and Olimpios rep Olimpios gets represented. But how can Macab?ias resent themselves? Is that representantion possible in terms of a Bra zilian society raided by multinationals, crushed under the eternally re and Olimpios speak? curring economic disasters? Do the Macab?ias Can they speak at all without the mediation of a narrator who belongs in a different social class? In a society ruled by oligarchies dating back to the discovery and colonization, the only possibility for the Macab?ias and Olimpios to acquire strength and some sort of representational of the establishment power is through either the witty challenging um in Memorias de de milicias, or through the re sargento portrayed volts of the kind portrayed both by Cunha's Os sert?es, or more espe cially by the violent resolution of Rubem Fonseca's O cobrador. In this short story, part of a book with the same name, it seems that Fonseca takes up the representational anxieties present in Lispector's text and works them towards a violent solution. The story of O cobrador is narrated in the first person by the main character himself. He starts with his visit to the dentist. What seems to be at first a humorous account of one more dental experience be
204
36: 189-210,
1996
comes the wick of a bomb of violence. The cobrador explodes after he has to keep silent during the dentist's work in his mouth, a time dur ing which he is told that "the root is rotten". After shooting the den tist in the leg, the narrator/character goes to the city, where be begins his task of charging the world what it owes him: "school, girl-friend, sound system, respect, ham sandwich from the bar at Vieira Fazenda Street, ice-cream, football" (1989, p.16).10 This is just the beginning of what he wants back from society. In his furor to collect what he thinks he has the right to, he rapes and kills and, at the end, his actions The "politicization" of his violence is a acquire a political meaning. of the world; he realizes that he turning point in his understanding " now a if I that has mission: know every person who's been screwed as I do the world would be better, more just. ... to kill one by up did " mere one is and I am free from that crap mysticism, (p.28). In this short story, it seems that the narrative comes unmediated, other than that of the cobrador uncontaminated by a consciousness himself. It is as if the "hero" is the sole organizing principle of the narrative, and the reader has to accede to his reading of his reality. In the case of Lispector's The Hour of the Star and Rubem Fonseca's O cobrador, the narrator's role is dramatized in two different ways which turn out to deliver the same sense of proximity and distance from the subject. The seemingly different technique comes, perhaps, from the to imprint to her narrative. In Lispector wants degree of mediation The Hour of the Star, the heroine, precisely because she is a woman is communicated whose existence of the through the consciousness male narrator, embodies what Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard (1984, p.81) says itself: about postmodernity
The postmodern unpresentable forms, the consensus the nostalgia not in order would be that which, that which which would in the modern, denies make that which in order puts forward the
in presentation
itself;
itself the solace it possible searches to impart
of good to share for new
of a taste
collectively presentations, sense
for the unattainable; to enjoy them but
a stronger
of the unpresentable.
In his attempt to speak about Macab?ia, Rodrigo S. M. has to rely on the enmeshing of her conscience with his own; that is, he can only
10 Iuse my own translation of O cobrador in this discussion.
36: 189-210,
1996
205
imagine representing her because, as he says, he has fallen in love with her. His incapability to represent her to the reader is further complicated of the power because of his self-consciousness about the pervasiveness of words. Not coincidentally, this woman Macab?ia, whom he, Rodrigo who occasionally
She
S. M. has invented with words, also loves words. She herself falls in love with words and fears silence:
rarely spoke (having little or nothing silence made to say) but she
is a typist
loved
sounds.
Sounds were about
life. The night's some
her nervous. 1987, p.33)
Itwas
as if night were
to pronounce
fatal word.
(Lispector,
Macab?ia fears silence because it provides an empty space full of bad forebodings. Rodrigo, on his turn, leaves no doubt about the elabo I only achieve simplicity rateness of his craft: "Let no one be mistaken. with enormous effort" (p. 11). The desire to just say what he wants to that there are no sufficient, or ad say is countered by his knowledge equate words to convey the complex silence which surrounds the char acter. It is as if, because the subject of his tale - the life of a suffering individual from the Northeast has been told in Brazilian literature so is to diffuse Macab?ia's many times, the way to achieve effectiveness tale into his own tale, into everybody's tale. silence and incapacity to represent herself However, Macab?ia's is not a mere trait in a literary character: there is a political and per haps even an apocalyptic warning in Lispector's depiction of this girl. Macab?ia's fear of silence is an indication that, even for the silent ones, of silent ones silence is oppressive, frightening. From the multitude like her might come "some fatal word" which will crack the night and itwill not be spoken language at all. In this sense, it seems that Rubem Fonseca's cobrador is this very fatality which, although shar and silence Macab?ia lives, ing the same situation of powerlessness in action word form of and violence. It seems the the finally pronounces If that the cobrador is an answer to Lispector's (orRodrigo's) musings. can are actions be The actions" also words. words (1987, p. 15), "surely of the cobrador will is afraid of. Macab?ia actions flood with words/actions the silent night
Rubem Fonseca's short story thus takes up the word where Clarice Lispector abandons it. Both writers, then, are trying to give voice to people who cannot speak. But we need to ask if these people are what Lyotard (1984) had called "the conceivable which cannot be presented"? (p.81). To what limit are these two characters conceivable and to what
206
36: 189-210,
1996
limit are they merely conceived within (1984, p.84), again, says that
a postmodern writes, rules, artist or writer
a discursive
instance?
Lyotard
is in the position are not judged in principle
of a philosopher: governed to a determining
the text he
the work and they familiar
he produces cannot be
by preestablished judgment, Those rules by and
according text
applying categories have
categories the work
to the
or to the work.
are what
of art itself
to be understood
according
is looking for ... Post modern would to the paradox of the future (post) anterior
{modo).
Conclusion In these contemporary Brazilian working within what can be called a an are, at the same time, discussing obtain a space for the languages texts, the two writers, although postmodern literary convention, old Brazilian problem of how to and voices of the conquered, I see it, their discussion of a Brazilian
submitted, silenced people. As society has much to do with the paradox of a future anterior, that is, of a future which has always been grounded in the past: the fear of the oppressed. Joaquim Cambinda, of A came, is just one representative of a member of the oppressed people who start, like Fonseca's cobra dor, to charge from society that which they think they have a right to. Lispector and Fonseca
represent
in the twentieth
those who are -
century, as well
one way
as Ribeiro
battling
in
the nineteenth,
or another
for a space for these words. These three writers, just like other countless artists throughout the Americas, have sensed this need and have an in to it. effort address engaged
However, unlike the representational saturation of first-world coun
I believe, to constitute a perpetual tries, in Brazil reality continues, even to narratives which try to incorporate into themselves this rebuke rebuke and therefore they open themselves up to the charge that they are finally only imbricating their own textuality. That is to say, these narratives might be seen as, once again, just word play which is not backed by any real intention to do anything practical in the real world in order to address the real problems of the real people. They serve the purpose every lip-service has always served: to appease the consciousness of those who produce them, and not to fundamentally change
expresses
anything.
the
In this regard, the violence

of his refusal, as putative
in Fonseca's
narrator,
narrative
violence
to construct
36: 189-210,
1996
207
hyperrealized Cobrador is to destroy
- or texztualized world; it is as if the point in the world, not recreate it. In Lispector, on the other hand, there is only reflection, as if the world must be posited, over and over again, before any consideration can be allowed about its a merely cultural or political history. For Julio Ribeiro, it sufficed to register the linguistic idiosyncrasies and dialectal differences. The difference is that the world in Lispector is a world that gives forth knowledge which can be narrated. The world in Fonseca is a world
that gives forth knowledge which must be destroyed. Contemporary Bra zilian literature situates itself uneasily as a discursive practice somewhere
in between present these as Lispector's two extremes, with narrators either absent as self-consciously Indeed, or as self-consciously as Fonseca's.
with a narrator, we might say, who has not so much lost the confidence of what could be transmitted about the world as gained the lack of confidence that whatever can be transmitted about the world is finally only one more thing in the world. And this world itself continues to be a source of representation because it is not beyond representation but beneath it.A whole new way of seeing this world would be necessary for these representations of it to be accepted and integrated into the whole of Brazilian consciousness. The mediation between these two instances must be negotiated by the narrator, in the work of fiction.
As Silviano Santiago (1989, p.43) puts it, "(n)owriting is innocent ... by giving voice to the other, (the narrator) ends up giving voice to himself, in an indirect way". And, Iwould add that, by giving voice to carve their narrators, the writers ultimately give voice to themselves, a space for themselves. Like the "cobrador," perhaps there was a time when writers were between a poem and a gun. The poem literature
wins, giving voice to characters, narrators, and, of course, writers.
Yet, again, literature as it is constituted in a country like Brazil, is part of a "cultural" bourgeois structure of which the oppressed takes no part. There is a real which does not ever get represented in litera ture. This real, the real of the oppressed, the subaltern, might repre sent itself some day?not through words, but through actions. Fredric Jameson (1983, p. 115-6) has already warned us that "contemporary or art is going to be about art itself in a new kind of way; postmodernist even more, itmeans that one of its essential messages will involve the failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the necessary imprisonment of the past." Rodrigo's affirmation in the beginning of
The Hour of the Star, that "we are all one and the same person..."
(Lispector,
1987, p. 12), seems
to function as an ironical afterthought
208
36: 189-210,
1996
through which Lispector stresses literature's attempt to proclaim its identification with the oppressed. What remains to be seen, however, is if there is time for this identification or if the oppressed of this world - as a will forever shun literature the word way to win the struggle for justice and equality, and turn definitely to actions.
Acknowledgements to express my gratitude to two dear departed friends, Fran Lopes Junior and C?sar Brites. C?sar gave me the Fonseca's book, and Francisco gave me the opportunity to write the first version of this essay for presentation at the conference of the Mo Iwant cisco Caetano dern Languages Association.
BUENO,
E.
"Linguagens" p. 189-210,
e "vozes" 1996.
na
literatura
brasile?a.
Rev.
Let.
(S?o Pau
lo), v.36,
RESUMO: ra brasileira:
Este A
traba?ho carne, Lispector, em
? um estudo
comparativo publicada 1977,
de em
tr?s obras
da literatu da estre Fon a ques
de Julio Ribeiro, publicada em estudo,
1888, A hora
la, de Clarice seca, publicado lingua
e O cobrador,
de Rubem
1979. Neste
investigamos
inicialmente
e seu relacionamento com o poss?vel portuguesa "espa?o" ou nega a alguns personagens, ao mesmo em tempo seu pr?prio a outras tanto em rela?ao que ela negocia espa?o l?nguas eu a l?nguas em territorio africanas nacional. Num rop?ias quanto segundo e levantamos relativas ? p?s-modernidade momento, algumas indaga?oes t?o da que ela propicia ? colocac?o brasileira da literatura no pr?meiro mundo tas inventados os demais. ma?oes da que O int?resse diante dos postulados p?s-modernis e apressadamente todos adotados por de afir
literatura
a validade do ensaio ? interrogar principal ou pelo menos sustentam que a literatura algumas ser o espa?o em que o oprimido pode privilegiado
formas pode se
expressar.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: literatura brasileira.
Lingua;
voz; Brasil;
marginalidade;
p?s-modernidade;
36: 189-210,
1996
209
References
ALMEIDA, Martins, BAKHTIN, Emerson BUENO, Notes, CUNHA. cisco FONSECA, FOUCAULT, M. M. A. Memorias 1941. The dialogic imagination. Holquist. Austin: and Ed. Michael University Holquist. of Texas Trans. Press, Caryl 1981. de um sargento de milicias. 10.ed. S?o Paulo:
and Michael
E. P. Brazilian
naturalism 1992. campanha
the politics
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1996

Lenguajes y Voces en La Literatura Brasilera

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"Languages" and "Voices" in Brazilian Literature Author(s): Eva Bueno Source: Revista de Letras, Vol. 36 (1996), pp.

"LANGUAGES" AND "VOICES" IN BRAZILIAN LITERATURE

ABSTRACT: literature: The Hour dor, by A

is a comparative Julio Ribeiro,

of three works in 1888; A horn in 1977, In this

of Brazilian da estrela, O cobra I initially

of the Star, by Clarice Rubem Fonseca,

its relationship characters, European As a the

languages second placement invented interest some to speak. KEYWORDS: an literature.

of Brazilian in the throughout kinds of the

literature first world and

in relation hastily the validity be

to postmodernist adopted everywhere. that

is to question can literature

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

discourse object merely

is not of desire; that which

(or hides) teaches

as history struggles there

us, discourse but

is not is the which

thing for which is to be seized,

and by which (p. 110)

relation displayed language of power

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

any concrete which with value, it was

the object overlain

enveloped by the spoken been

on the contrary, have already

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

I argue this point in a more detailed fashion in "BrazilianNaturalism

and the Politics of Origin".

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

voici mon que

oeuvre. je vous gorg?s en fais? de richesses,

Agr?erez-vous Pourquoi Permettez pas? ne d?daignent que

la d?dicace Les pas

f?al en empruntant Tu duca, St. Paul, tu signore, le 25 janvier

t?m?raire, traces; d'?crire

On ne vous ?chauffons, s'agitei": s'est

imite pas, dit Ovide,

et j'ai ?crit La Chair. ce n'est diantre! pas une la Cur?e, chandelle ce

la Terre; mais, le soleil

(1) Est Deus

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

point Ribeiro wants

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

European speak proper Portuguese. In fact, nobody understands attack Ribeiro

the special ch appears kharacter,

orthography [he writes] etc. Kil?metro of Baviera,

kh. Thus melankholia, and the always been in the [name

is khiliometro, which has

of the] capital translated German

in Portuguese form M?nchen.

as Munich, (1978, p. 191)

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo,

San Migu? Qu?, mganga.

follows, giving a Portuguese

quer mesmo das Almas? (p.63)

S?o Miguel Quero, mestre.

Jer?nimo, are going