CONTENTS

IntroductionAbout Lima BarretoTranslator’s NoteThe Short StoryThe Novel

Barreto had a visceral relationship to his home city: he used to say it lived in him just as much as he lived in it. And, in that sense, the city was a sort of laboratory in which he could study Brazil and think deeply about society – and all its manifest contradictions – in the newly republican Brazil.

Indeed, one of the most striking characteristics of Barreto’s oeuvre is how it chronicles the life of Rio in a way that is unmatched by any other writer of the time. And his love for the city made him a traditionalist. Even though he feigned contempt for the past as ‘a sump of prejudice’, he was equally up in arms against each and every inroad of modernisation, be it the cinema, skyscrapers (and the consequent destruction of old buildings that were ‘intimately linked to the history and the soul of Rio’) or – last but not least – football.   

In that way his work was an extraordinarily accurate reflection of the time, which witnessed the advent of the Republic and contained all sorts of contradictory movements within the overall process of modernisation – backwardness and stagnation on the one hand, civility and evolution on the other. And, having become the political, economic, administrative and cultural centre of the country, Rio de Janeiro displayed those characteristics in ample measure. These were the paradoxes Barreto would have had in mind when he referred to ‘the physical city and the symbolic city, the urbs and the sub-urbs’, the former being the republican metropolis, modernised according to an essentially foreign template and which Barreto denounced for ‘excluding the people’, the latter being the shabby city of the slums, of boisterous street markets and amusement parks, of yellow fever and of the ‘animal game’ – a lottery that originated in 1892 as a way of raising money for the zoo in Rio and subsequently became hugely popular (even though, since 1946, it’s been illegal).

Despite being a chronicler of his ‘beloved suburbs’, however, Barreto also harboured an intense dislike of the rich districts and everything they stood for: the dandies, the bourgeoisie, the ‘academic’ intellectuals, the pseudo literati and their dinner parties.  He loved ‘those gloomy streets, those humble cottages, bursting with children and domestic animals, those country habits, the hearty Sunday lunch, the chit-chat at the shop door and all those people who were prisoners of their environment’.

The accusation of misogyny sometimes levelled against Barreto is totally false. The women he criticised were, above all, the bourgeois women, the snobs, whereas he was sympathetic to proletarian, suburban women. One of the biggest interpretative mistakes is to suggest that he was against the movements and actions in favour of women’s emancipation. For him, the feminist movement of the time was not working or fighting in defence of women; it was ‘fragile, inconsistent, innocuous, and concerned itself only with perfumes, accessories and trivia’; it looked down on working-class women and ignored their demands for better conditions; in short, it simply divorced itself from the question.

Both in his fiction and his non-fiction, Barreto always devoted a significant amount of space to women, portraying and commenting on: women’s situation with respect to marriage; the moral code imposed on women by men and by society; the unfair way in which women’s adultery was viewed by the law; women’s lack of educational and professional opportunities; prostitution; and all of this cut across by the always present and relevant racial (and social) question, as is made clear in Clara’s concluding words in the completed novel: ‘In this life, we’re nothing.’

It is true that his articles and essays – whether about feminism, the women’s movement, the vote for women, women’s rights, women’s literature, or whether about everyday life, fashion, behaviour or female customs – always display a critical, ironic stance, and that the way women are portrayed in his short stories and novels shows them dependent on men and submissive to the social ‘norms’ of the age. But it is also true that, on innumerable occasions, he shows them acting and behaving progressively, and as superior to men.  Examples are: Olga in Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma; Edgarda in Numa e a ninfa; Efigênia in O cemitério dos vivos; Cecília in Diário íntimo; Cló, Adélia, Lívia and other women in his short stories.

Barreto’s writing about women should be viewed in the light of his position in respect of marriage. He thought the way society elevated men, as if they were automatically gifted with exceptional attributes, made it impossible for wives to enjoy a fulfilling emotional life and left them repressed and frustrated. It should be emphasised that Barreto respected the institution of marriage and saw it as almost the only way for women to achieve fulfilment; it was just that he was unable to overlook the reality of marriage in that bourgeois, republican society: for men, a sort of ‘commercial transaction’, ultimately reducing the wife to ‘a stepping-stone for the husband’; for women, on the other hand, a way of realising themselves through dedication to ‘the superior man’, especially when he was deified by addition of the title ‘Doctor’. And, as a general rule, women went along with this flawed attitude, which led so often to deception and bitterness.

Barreto paid particular attention to women’s education, both as it was and as it should be. He was a trenchant critic of the lack of educational opportunities for women and he spoke with passion about the absolute need to provide them with those opportunities. Indeed, most women at the start of the century saw education simply as a way of making themselves more appealing to their male companions; they were not looking for intellectual emancipation. And it was the latter that Lima was advocating by campaigning for better educational opportunities for women. In general, women were largely restricted to their homes, which reflected the cultural mores of the time, and they were thought of as sentimental/emotional rather than intellectual/philosophical. Lima considered that to be the cause of so much unhappiness for women, both inside and outside marriage. He saw women’s education as essential for improving men’s education and for good citizenship, because the fate of the generations to come – and of society as a whole – depended on the education given to children.

All Barreto’s work evolved on the basis of, and around, a central theme: power and its exercise – power seen and described by him as ‘the various combinations of elements, vectors and procedures interwoven in society and comprising prisons, both large and small, both visible and invisible, that tend to restrict and constrain men’s thought, to limit their possibilities for personal, cultural, professional and social fulfilment and for them to have their just place in society.’ He analysed power at every level: the government, ideologies, cultural institutions such as the press, science, and the general models that determined everyday behaviour and relationships. And, in all this, he showed himself to be, above all, an anti-capitalist.

He was an implacable critic of the supposed modernity the Republic claimed to be implementing, an opponent of all forms of assimilation of foreign values (especially football, cinema and other cultural imports), and an often intransigent defender of ‘Brazilianism’, which – he maintained – should permeate ‘the authentic national language’. But he was also an active opponent of the ultra nationalism that emerged at the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th, questioning the erroneous self-image Brazil was creating, and revealing, one by one, the ultimate ridiculousness of the nationalistic clichés and myths. (In Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma, he implicitly parodies the jingoistic booklet by Afonso Celso, the son of Barreto’s protector, entitled Why I’m proud to be Brazilian (1901), which was very popular at the beginning of the 20^th century and which gave rise to the expression ufanismo (ultra nationalism). He himself tried to map out a patriotism with a historical and social conscience that would emphasise citizenship, be both anchored in real Brazilian culture and resistant to cosmopolitanism and would embrace the ethnic, social and cultural cross-fertilisation in the country.

All of this can be clearly seen in the tripartite development of Clara dos Anjos.

A similar change of direction can be seen in the novels Recordações do escrivão Isaias Caminha, which was also begun in 1904 (and completed in 1905), and  Vida e morte de M.J. Gonzaga de Sá, which was written during the same period as Isaias Caminha.

Those two books share many philosophical and ideological themes, but Barreto was more interested in publishing Isaias Caminha, Gonzaga de Sá not being published until 1919 (at the insistence of Monteiro Lobato, its eventual editor).

As mentioned previously, Barreto gave up his idea of writing a historical novel about slavery in Brazil in favour of critical, incisive observation of the political and institutional life of the Republic, becoming the Republic’s arch-critic in the process.

The unfinished 1904 version of Clara dos Anjos could be said to have prepared the ground for those two 1905 novels (Isaias Caminha and Gonzaga de Sá), Isaias Caminha  morphing from a work about racial prejudice to one with a wider psychological and existential theme, and from a denunciation of social and racial discrimination to a critique and satire of the journalistic and literary worlds. (This is a good example of ‘intentional fallacy’, an expression coined by the French critic Pierre Macherey in his work Pour une théorie de la production littéraire, which has to do with how an author’s preliminary, a priori ideas, when conceiving a work, can be overturned and altered during the actual construction of the narrative – as if the author were ‘discovering’ the story.) Thus the change of course that took place after Barreto’s initial conception of Clara dos Anjos, towards the narrative threads that were going to predominate in Isaias Caminha and  Gonzaga de Sá, proved to be the direction he would take until the end of his (short) literary career.

The notes and sketches for Clara dos Anjos constitute,  in themselves, a foundation for Isaias Caminha which, in certain subtle ways, incorporates the projected work about slavery, but with a different focus and literary structure, especially in view of the political context, identified by Barreto as oligarchic, sectarian and elitist.

Together with those two novels that followed in its wake, Clara dos Anjos synthesises Barreto’s philosophical and ideological evolution even more than his literary evolution. And it does so especially in the shift from an ethnic focus to a more all-embracing fictional world.

It would not be out of place to see this process in the light of the ‘religious perception of art’ proposed by Tolstoy in his famous essay ‘What is Art?’, because it was the main – and crucial – influence on Barreto’s literary career, particularly with respect to the transformation of his literary ideas, the adoption of a new thematic direction in his fiction, and his concept and advocacy of ‘literature as mission’.

On the other hand, in resolute opposition to almost all the contemporary styles of writing, and particularly the predominant aristocratic style, there was Lima Barreto. Despite being a respected writer of articles and essays for the newspapers, and recognised as an exceptional novelist for the highly praised Recordações do escrivão Isaias Caminha (1909) and Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915), he absolutely refused to turn either his journalistic work or his literary work – whether fictional or non-fictional – into ‘an instrument of propaganda for the republican dream of false progress and false civilisation’. He maintained that his was ‘a militant literature, works that debate the questions of the age (…) as opposed to the sort of literature that limits itself to questions of form, to sentimental love stories and to the idealisation of nature’.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, whose writing was as ornate as it was vacuous, snobbish and futile – totally in accordance with literature as ‘society’s smile’, as advocated by Afrânio Peixoto – Barreto brought to his fiction the militant sense of ‘a social mission, with a view to contributing to the happiness of a people, of a nation and of humanity’. In his opinion, literature had to be ‘militant’, with a clear, defined objective, as he stated in an interview published in A Época on 18 February 1916:

The first version, of 1904, comprises just four chapters of an incomplete novel, which were inserted in Diário íntimo (after being seduced and disgraced, Clara is taken advantage of by various men). The second version is a short story that was published in the collection Histórias e sonhos (after being seduced, Clara faces up to her disgrace and lives a sad life of poverty). The third version, the completed novel (where the narrative focusses on the minute details of the seduction), was written between December 1921 and January 1922, but only saw the light of day after Barreto’s death. First of all, the chapter ‘The Postman’ was published in the journal Mundo Literário in May 1922, with the introduction: ‘a previously unpublished excerpt from the novel Clara dos Anjos, which is due to be published shortly’. Then, between January 1923 and May 1924, it was published in 16 instalments in the Revista Souza Cruz. It was not published as a book until 1947, being the last of Barreto’s fictional works to be published.

The significant differences between the three versions have to do with the changes in Barreto’s focus, reflecting developments in his thinking and ‘literary aesthetics’ over the course of time. From his initial focus on the situation of the blacks in the city of Rio, in 1904, to a focus, in 1921–2, less on the racial question and more on poverty and social injustice in general, regardless of race. This was characterised as a ‘social novel’, with the author emphasising the tragic fate of men and women – indiscriminately – who were forced by poverty to live lives of shame. It is worth noting , in this sense, the difference in the way in which Barreto treats tragedy, a literary category he never really engaged with until this, his final work. Nevertheless, despite the move from the pre-eminence of the racial/social theme of the first text to the multiple – social, economic, psychological – themes of the last, racial discrimination and prejudice were a constant, integral theme throughout his fiction.

So, in its three versions, Clara dos Anjos represents a crucial, and intentional, change of focus from the question of negritude and the situation of the blacks in Brazil – the initial idea for the novel and for an (unrealised) History of Slavery in Brazil – to a full-scale novel, but with a more political focus on Brazilian institutions and society – and this also applies to his later novels and short stories.

There is no indication whatsoever, however, that Barreto ‘abandoned’ or distanced himself from his political ideals, i.e. from the ideological fulcrum at the very heart of his life and work. Never…

The question of ethnicity and ‘its influence on our nationality’ was always present – in his own DNA, at the core of his social conscience, in his non-fiction (especially his essays) and in his fiction. And it is particularly present in the three versions of ‘Clara dos Anjos’ – in a more focussed and central form in the incomplete novel, still with a significant presence in the short story, and integrated into a wider, political view in the completed novel.*

Because his salary was only small, the family moved to a modest house in the suburb of Todos os Santos in which, in 1904, he began the first version of his novel Clara dos Anjos (Clara of the Angels). In the following year he began his novel Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha (Memoirs of the Clerk Isaías Caminha), which was published in Lisbon in 1909. He also published a series of reports in the Correio da Manhã newspaper and commenced the novel Vida e morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá (Life and Death of M. J. Gonzaga de Sá), which was not published until 1919. He participated in the Fon-Fon magazine and in 1907, together with some friends, launched the Floreal magazine, which survived for only four numbers but attracted the attention of the literary critic José Veríssimo. During this period he devoted himself to reading, in the National Library, the great names of world literature, including the European realist writers of the period; he was one of the few Brazilian writers who became familiar with the works of the Russian novelists.

In 1910 he was a juryman in a trial that condemned some soldiers involved in a student’s murder, an incident that came to be called ‘The Spring of Blood’; as a result he was passed over when it came to any possibilities of promotion in the secretariat of war. In the space of three months, in 1911, he wrote the novel Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma (The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma), which was published in instalments in the Jornal do Comércio, for which he wrote, and also in the Gazeta da Tarde. In 1912 he published two instalments of the Aventuras do Dr. Bogoloff (The Adventures of Dr. Bogoloff), in addition to little humorous books, one of them printed in the O Riso magazine.

Although alcoholism was beginning take hold of him, it did not prevent him from continuing to work for the press and, in 1914, he commenced a series of daily feuilletons in the Correio da Noite. In 1915 the A Noite newspaper published his novel Numa e a ninfa (Numa and the Nymph) in instalments, and he began a long phase of work with the Careta magazine, writing political articles on various topics.  In the first months of 1916, the novel Triste fim de Policarpo Quaresma appeared as a book, together with some notable short stories such as ‘A Nova Califórnia’ (New California) and ‘O homem que sabia javanês’ (The Man who Spoke Javanese); these were warmly received by the critics, who saw Lima as a true successor to Machado de Assis. He began writing for the political weekly A.B.C. After being hospitalised in July 1917, he delivered to his editor, J. Ribeiro dos Santos, the manuscript of Os Bruzundangas (The Bruzundangans – Bruzundanga being Lima’s satirical name for Brazil), which was not published until a month after his death, in 1922.

He applied for a vacancy in the Brazilian Academy of Letters, but his application was not even considered. He published the second edition of Isaías Caminha and, subsequently, the novel Numa e a ninfa in book form. He started publishing articles and feuilletons in the alternative press of the period: A Lanterna, A.B.C. and Brás Cubas, which published an article of his showing sympathy for the revolutionary cause in Russia. After being diagnosed with toxic epilepsy, he was pensioned off in December 1918 and he moved to another house in the Rua Major Mascarenhas in Todos os Santos, where he lived until his death.

At the beginning of 1919 he ceased his collaboration with the A.B.C. weekly, because he took issue with an article it published criticising the blacks. He published the novel Vida e morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá, which was personally edited and sent for typing by the editor Monteiro Lobato; this was the only one of Lima’s books to receive such standard editorial care and for which he was well paid; it was also well advertised, being praised by both old and new literary critics, such as João Ribeiro and Alceu Amoroso Lima. At this time he applied once more for a vacancy at the Brazilian Academy of Letters; on this occasion his application was accepted, but he was not elected, although he received the permanent vote of João Ribeiro. Under the title of ‘As mágoas e sonhos do povo’ (The People’s Sufferings and Dreams), he started publishing, in the Hoje magazine, weekly feuilletons of so-called ‘urban folklore’ and he entered into a second phase of collaboration with Careta, which lasted until his death.

From December 1919 to January 1920 he was hospitalised in consequence of a nervous breakdown, an experience recounted in the first chapters of the memoir O cemitério dos vivos (The Cemetery of the Living), which was not published until 1953, when it was issued in a single volume together with his Diário íntimo (Intimate Diary). In December 1920 Gonzaga de Sá was short-listed for the literary prize of the Brazilian Academy of Letters for the best book of the previous year; it received an honourable mention. In the same month, the short-story book Histórias e sonhos (Stories and Dreams) was published, and the manuscript of Marginália (Odds and Ends), comprising articles and feuilletons already published in periodicals, was delivered to his friend, the editor F. Schettino; the manuscript was lost, however, and the book did not come to be published until 1953.

A section of O Cemitério dos vivos was published in January 1921 in the Revista Souza Cruz, under the title ‘As origens’ (The Origins); but the work remained incomplete.  In April of that year he went to the little town of Mirassol in the State of São Paulo, where a doctor friend of his, Ranulfo Prata, who was also a writer, tried to put him together again, but in vain. With his health badly undermined, he turned into a sort of recluse in his little house in Todos os Santos, where friends came to visit him and where his sister Evangelina looked after him devotedly. Whenever possible, however, he would embark on another walk through the city he loved, keeping reading, meditation and writing for home, despite the constant presence of his father’s madness, which got worse through a series of crises.

In July 1921 Lima applied for a vacancy in the Brazilian Academy of Letters for the third time, but he withdrew his application for ‘entirely personal and private reasons.’ He delivered the manuscript of Bagatelas (Trifles) to the publisher; this book was a collection of his principal journalistic work from 1918 to 1922, in which he analysed, with rare vision and clarity, the problems of the country and of the world after the 1st World War. However, Bagatelas was not published until 1923. In November 1921 he published, in the Revista Souza Cruz, the text of a speech ‘O destino da literatura’ (‘The Destiny of Literature’) that he had been due to make – but had not managed to do so – in the town of Rio Preto, near Mirassol. In December he began work on the second version of his novel Clara dos Anjos, which he finished the following January. The manuscript for Feiras e mafuás (One Thing and Another) was delivered for publication, which did not happen until 1953.

In May 1922 the magazine O Mundo Literário published the first chapter of Clara dos Anjos, ‘O carteiro’ (The Postman). His health was declining steadily as a result of rheumatism and alcoholism amongst other things, and Lima suffered heart failure and died on 1 November 1922. They found him holding the copy of the Revue des Deux Mondes – his favourite journal – which he had just been reading. Two days later, his father died. They were both buried in the São João Batista cemetery, in accordance with Lima’s wishes.

In 1953 a publisher issued some volumes of his unpublished works. But it was only in 1956, under the direction of Francisco de Assis Barbosa and with the collaboration of Antônio Houaiss and M. Cavalcanti Proença, that all his work  was published in 17 volumes; these comprised all the novels mentioned above and also the following titles that were not published during his life: Os bruzundangas, Feiras e mafuás, Impressões de leitura (Literary Impressions), Vida urbana (City Life), Coisas do reino de Jambon (A Report from the Kingdom of Jambon), Diário íntimo, Marginália, Bagatelas, O cemitério dos vivos and two further volumes containing all his correspondence – both letters sent and letters received. In the following decades Lima has been the subject of many studies, both in Brazil and abroad. His works, particularly his novels and short stories, have been translated into English, French, Russian, Spanish, Czech, Japanese and German.  He has been the subject of doctoral theses in the United States and Germany. To mark the centenary of his birth in 1981, conferences were held about him throughout Brazil, resulting in the publication of innumerable books, including essays, bibliographies and psychological studies of the author and his works. There is currently a growing interest in him among new Brazilian writers, who see him as a pioneer of the sociological novel. His literary production, which is vast in view of his early death, is gaining him – quite rightly – more and more distinction.