By FLAVIO AGUIAR*
Artur Azevedo and the formation of Brazilian dramaturgy
“It is generally said and repeated that dramaturgy is the most stunted part of Brazilian literature (...) Our value, on this side, has not been as insignificant as it has always been said and continues to be said (Sílvio Romero, in the History of Brazilian Literature, vol. V, pgs. 1805/6).
Defending himself from the accusation of having contributed to the destruction of good taste in Brazilian theater, Artur Azevedo writes in 1904: “For myself, I frankly confess, I prefer a well-made and funny parody to all the panty and poorly written dramas, in which vice is punished and virtue is rewarded.[I]
If we look at the phrase with the rigor of a moralist, we will see the brazen signature of capitulation to the pursuit of success at the box office. However, if we also look at it rigorously, but this time with that of a formalist critic, we will see, in the sentence, the fine perception that a work of art is made according to conventions, and that an aesthetic criterion of value must be based solely on in the way they were reused, renewed or mocked by the work in question.
The question that animates this essay, however, is slightly different, or parallel to these two looks that each have their reasons; that is, that of freely resuming terms worked on by Antonio Candido in his Formation of Brazilian literature – decisive moments[ii] seek to discern the value and function of this assertion by Artur Azevedo in the context in which he launched it, and in relation to his own work, and its value and function.
Therefore, he (the essay) wants to get rid of a disguised schizophrenia that invests the historical critic of our theater and its dramaturgy in the face of the vicissitudes of both. On the one hand, he laments the “backwardness” of theater in relation to other artistic genres; on the other hand, he criticizes him, but recognizes his value, even if reluctantly and with a frown, for having become fond of the public's taste, or even having become fond of the public to a certain taste. But neither taste, nor dramaturgy, nor theater were exactly what the intelligentsia craved. Hence, sometimes, severe judgments are born, which are like predictions, because in addition to creating mats of impossibilities for the past, they also do so in relation to the future, because where the former does not exist, this danger: the Brazilian theater does not exist, the theater or national dramaturgy was not formed as it happened in other arts, or even that Brazilian society was too clumsy to allow a serious theater to flourish among us with the themes of time. Comedy flourished, and so did that of manners and its descendants, because the realistic, serious and judgmental comedy ended up rejected by the public, devastated and devastated as was its taste for the “apparent magic” of the XNUMXth century, for the cancan, for the licentiousness and for the lust barely contained by the censorship organs.
Machado's prophecy
That first prediction, that theater did not exist in Brazil, is by Machado de Assis, and was written in his article “News from current Brazilian literature”, later renamed “Instinct of nationality”, the name with which it became famous and it also helped to make its author famous. The severity of the sentence was greater because it was pronounced in the face of the exuberance of other literary genres, even if seen, the exuberance, with a certain critical eye. Machado's sentence, in the article published in New York in 1873, is symptomatic: “Whoever examines current Brazilian literature immediately recognizes, as its first trait, a certain instinct of nationality. Poetry, romance, all literary forms of thought seek to dress in the colors of the country and there is no denying that such concern is a symptom of vitality and a blessing for the future”.[iii]
At the time, dramaturgy was still thought of as an inalienable part of literary genres, and theater was thought of as the staging of a text. Machado didn't even need to write more about the theater; like a good short story writer, he reveals while concealing everything in the first sentence or first paragraph. There is the clue for the good reader of detective stories: after talking about poetry and the novel, theater and dramaturgy get lost in that generic “all literary forms of thought”… And what Machado will dictate later on is that in the contemporary Brazilian theater does not survive thought. He says that it (theater) can be reduced to “a line of reticence”. In the past, national plays were still accepted, although the scene lived more on translations. But today, on the other hand, “(…) public taste has reached the last degree of decadence and perversion”.[iv]
This, he says, despairs any pen artist who wants to confront this stronghold of bad taste, with “severe works of art”. “Who would accept them”, continues the critic, “if what dominates is the burlesque or obscene song, the cancan, the ostentatious magic, everything that speaks to the senses and lower instincts?”.
Artur Azevedo will, in a way, echo Machado's observation in his writings in the future, when he defended his activity as a playwright and “national king” of exuberant music theater. That phrase above, about a good parody being better than a badly written drama, is from an article in which the author of the most celebrated magazines of the XNUMXth century defends himself against the accusation that he was the corruptor of the theatrical taste of the time , along with Jacinto Heller. The accusation, published in the Jornal do Comércio de Belém do Pará, is by Cardoso da Mota, who had been an actor in Rio de Janeiro, according to Azevedo.
In addition to accusing the two, author and manager of the play and show Maria Angu's daughter, parody of Charles Lecocq's operetta (libretto by three authors), La fille deMme. angot, Cardoso da Mota raises the accusation of incongruity and hypocrisy against Azevedo, because, he says, after becoming comfortable with the depraved theater, “(...) today, people fight like a lion for the morality of the theater, which was the first to violate. He is currently the greatest, if not the only sincere champion of the school-theatre”.[v]
To defend himself against the accusations, echoing Machado's phrases, but without necessarily embracing his point of view, Artur Azevedo alleges that when he arrived in Rio de Janeiro, the damage was already done; he simply followed the wake of other people's navigations. And he goes further, saying that attempting serious theater has only brought him disappointments, censures and injustices; “(…) whereas, going down the path of bambochata, I never lacked praise, parties, applause and income”.[vi]
In other words: Azevedo raises the argument that, if the public is in bad taste, so is the critics. And he apologizes for citing income as an argument, but says: “(…) what the hell! It is essential for a family man who lives off his pen!…”, doubling down once again to the needs of the box office, but praising art as I work, and this in a country where blacks were still seen, and almost only blacks , carrying the large clay pots with the waste and excrement of rich or poor, family or tolerance houses, a reminder of slavery abolished less than twenty years ago.
The prediction of José Veríssimo
Let us now examine the third prediction before the second, and the reader will soon understand why. He says that Brazilian society was too clumsy or too complex to inspire the most serious and profound dramas of the time. Its most sophisticated author was José Veríssimo, and he appears in his History of Brazilian Literature, published in 1916, twelve years after Artur Azevedo's article and eight after his death.
Disagreeing with Machado’s severity, Veríssimo points out that, “within its imperfections”, Brazilian theater has a certain vitality, and this is due to the fact that, in addition to its tendency to imitate French theater, it joins “ an intimate feeling of the environment”.[vii]
It also points out, there agreeing the creator of botany lesson, that this was a thing of the past, carried away “by foreignism soon after triumphant”. He praises Pena, who he considers to be a true founder of our poor theater, at this point echoing even more the positive remarks of Sílvio Romero[viii] about the author of the novice than those of other critics, such as Machado himself. These others always praised his skills but regretted that he did not dedicate himself to a nobler genre or that he did not have time to “mature” due to his early death.
Veríssimo says that thanks to Pena’s plays, Brazilian dramaturgy and theater had a model for making comedy believable, guaranteeing it “good observation” and “exact representation”. But, he observes, in drama the opposite happens: “(…) all of this is lacking in Brazilian drama, which always offends our sense of verisimilitude”.[ix]
There is in this observation by Veríssimo an injustice to the Leonor de Mendonca, by Gonçalves Dias; but let's apologize, because, as far as we know, the drama of the author from Maranhão had not yet been staged, although he was almost seventy years old at that time.
Veríssimo tries to go deeper into the reasons for this almost congenital inadequacy of the Brazilian drama: “Our society, whether considered superior or average, has nothing but a still incoherent and clumsy sociability, of rudimentary and limited relationships and interdependencies. Few and faded are for now the conflicts of interests and passions that serve as the theme of modern drama (…)”.
Verissimo's observation, severe and interesting, also has a non-negligible implication on what, then, could be of interest to this “modern drama”. We are still close to major upheavals in Brazilian society: gunfire and the consequences of the Revolt of the Whip still resound; the peasants of Contestado, on the plateau of Santa Catarina, rise up; the national reading is still recovering from the impact of the sertões, evoking and apostrophizing the War of Canudos. Almost recently, the personal tragedy of Euclides had unfolded, the author of that book dying in an inglorious and stupid duel with his love rival.
In 1911 Lima Barreto began publishing Sad end of Policarpo Quaresma, evoking the decade of blood and violence that followed the Proclamation of the Republic and the poignant situation of the poor and the underprivileged middle classes in the Federal Capital. But all this is not part of the field of “modern drama”, whose terrain is the “superior” and the “average” society, where what really flourished, if I can borrow terms, were the bambochata of agreements of convenience in society. economics, farce in politics and comedy of manners, or tragicomedy, in social life.
Back in 1904, Artur Azevedo had already designed, in his own way, this upside-down caiporismo, because of the public and his heralds in the critics, who thought they were all the first in Brazil because they were inhabitants of the unequaled Federal Capital. He emphasizes this when denouncing that a critic considered his play the oil portrait a real “insult” to the Brazilian family. He also points out that he had another play, a drama in partnership with Urbano Duarte, banned by the Dramatic Conservatory. To conclude, he mentions that in order to be able to take to the stage Jewelery had to give up his copyright!
It is in front of this painting that Azevedo praises Heller, who he decided to take to the stage, and won the competition, Maria Angu's Daughter. For him Heller, as an entrepreneur (and this in a land where the incipient business community was used to the favors of palaces and offices), was a theater worker and for the theatre. He wanted, he says, “to obey a thought of art”. He valued the national repertoire, and the “modern” pieces, as Veríssimo wanted years later. What did he win?
“The audience ran away, and made it clear that they wanted parody, operetta, magic, laughter, laughter. He did the will of the public. Is he an adventurer? No; adventurers end up rich.”[X] Heller ended up poor; symptom, for Azevedo, of the material and spiritual narrow-mindedness that surrounded Brazilian theater.
This reading of Azevedo's article shows that the alleged narrow-mindedness of the medium, highlighted by Veríssimo, and which throughout the XNUMXth century would have been the reason, to varying degrees, for the precariousness of the practice of the arts in Brazil, must be complemented by the recognition of narrow-mindedness and specific precariousness of the material and spiritual conditions that surrounded intellectual and artistic life in Brazil. I mean, there was perhaps no shortage of dramas, not even tragedies; but the spirits to perceive them and the means to disseminate them were rare, even more so in a country of ruling classes and many literate people always moved by a “coastal spirit”, parodying the saying of Antonio Candido in light brigade[xi]. And in terms of the arts and intellectual life, anyone who goes beyond the vulgarization of Marxism knows that spirit is an infrastructure and not a superstructure, it is a productive force and not a product.
Artur Azevedo opposes two things to the difficulties of the environment. First, his erudition. In the short article, he makes a foreshortening of the excellence of the “parody” genre, of its recognition in France, citing Scarron, Meilhac and Halévy, and argues that Mrs. angot it was considered a “masterpiece of French operetta” (although it premiered in Brussels…). In other words, it seeks to show that it does not suffer from the provincial narrowness that characterizes the medium. On the other hand, it points to the end, as n'The Mambembe, that the urgent solution to some of our ills is the construction of a Municipal Theater that would give stability to elite companies. That is to say, contradicting even if fearfully the principles of economic liberalism, but riddled with favors, in force in Brazil at the time, it preaches, at least through a symbol, the need for a public policy for the Brazilian theater, which provides a basis for the scene and for national dramaturgy.
the second prediction
Let us now turn to the second prediction, which is that Brazilian theater and dramaturgy did not complete a “formation”, contrary to what happened in the other arts, especially in those of poetry and the novel. I dropped it for third place because it's his longest range shot. Passing judgment in the severe criticism of Machado, the prediction has not had a full appeal that contradicts it until today, even though several distinguished lawyers have presented arguments that contest it.
Between actions and reactions, Machado situates in Brazilian literature what can be called the “formation of a tradition”, and the awareness of it, which is more important, because without this the sense of formation is not complete. Yes, only this happened in the novel, in lyric poetry and in criticism; not in the theater.
In terms of theater and dramaturgy there was a solution of continuity. There was the initial appearance of some talents worthy of praise, where there is no lack, even if reluctantly, of praise for Pena. After the stammering of the romantic theater, it was the turn of the robust realist generation, with Alencar, Bocaiúva, Pinheiro Guimarães and their daring projects to reform the national scene and dramaturgy, in the direction of lending it seriousness and a sense of responsibility, helping to form taste and audience. But… “(…) none of that went ahead. The authors soon got bored of the scene that little by little went downhill until reaching what we have today, which is nothing”.[xii]
It is no coincidence that Machado's article was chosen by Antonio Candido to close his book Formation of Brazilian literature – decisive moments. In this key work of Brazilian criticism, Antonio Candido points out the parameters of the formation of our literature, that is, he describes it, based on the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, as a project and as a process, as a desire and as a realization, not as something that simply it was done almost by chance (just like the finding...) since the first literate Portuguese saw the land and took up the pen to give news to the king. Literature acquires the status of a certificate of spiritual maturity, as a system that brings together in a spiritual longing, not devoid of tensions, authors, works and public (which includes critics). It can be precarious, remedied next to other opulent ones, cheap or brilliant; but there is no other that expresses the ring of knowledge that delimits and at the same time frees the autonomous imagination of a people, even if never completely separated from the tradition of the West, and also from others, in our case.
In the last chapter of the work, dedicated to critical awareness, Candido first points out the wisdom of Alencar, who defines in his romantic classifications, through literature, the main moments of our social formation (the life of the primitive, the Colony and contemporary society [ then], divided into rural space and urban life). But then he cites the “Instinct of Nationality” as a resumption and overcoming of Alencar's point of view, showing that the grain of salt or leaven that makes the writer national is… “(…) a certain intimate feeling, which makes him a man of his time and his country, even when dealing with remote subjects in time and space”.[xiii]
Making this another Independence, “which has neither Sete de Setembro nor Ipiranga field”, Machado points out and Candido points out, is the work of generations. So says the author of Basic, closing the book, and even more important, giving the complete process and the project, and having achieved the desire and fulfilled the mission: “These words [by Machado] express the point of maturity of romantic criticism; the real awareness that Romanticism acquired of its historical significance. They are suitable, therefore, to close this book, where the aim was precisely to describe the process through which Brazilians became aware of their spiritual and social existence through literature, combining universal values with local reality in various ways and, in this way, way, earning the right to express their dream, their pain, their joy, their modest view of things and their fellow man”.[xiv]
It was from all this that the theater was left out. It was left out because of the judgments passed in that past when the literary, artistic and spiritual formation of the nation was completed. But it was also left out later, when the spirit of national criticism was formed in a more systematic way.
the broken marriage
In Machado's words one can read a certificate of marriage followed by divorce. There was a promising engagement between authors and the public, which was followed by a future wedding, with the Church as the stage. But then came the contentious divorce, as the public, an unfaithful and merry betrothed, went to have fun at the concert café; the bride (the sullen and spiteful authors) turned her back on him, and so did the best man (the serious critic).
But… as I said, the situation persisted. Theater in Brazil, and Brazilian dramaturgy as well, began to live almost in a world apart, far from the serious spaces where the nation and its continuous formation and reform were thought and rethought; in the theater, apparently, one only thought about his party, or his provincialism.
A new verdict was passed that theater and dramaturgy, despite the exceptions, only revived in fact, that is, they became a serious and contemporary thing of their European inspirers, from the end of the Second World War, with the arrival in national ports, the tumbles for a change, of avant-garde trends and the theater of direction. The symbol of all this was the famous staging of Wedding dress, by Nelson Rodrigues, directed by Ziembinski, in 1943 in Rio de Janeiro.
A curious circumstance of academic criteria and rigor fostered this feeling of penury in the theater and dramaturgy in relation to its literary family, seen, if not as opulent, as more remedied, and surely new rich after the generation of 45, with Guimarães Rosa, Clarice Lispector and João Cabral de Melo Neto, among others.
Na Formation of Brazilian Literature, from 1959, the theater is absent, and rightly so, it never hurts to remember. This work by Professor Antonio Candido has already been unfairly accused of having hijacked the Baroque, dealing only with Arcadia and Romanticism.[xv]. This accusation is unfair because it is anachronistic. Candido's work describes the formative process of a national literature as a project of expression of a “collective being in the world”. For an author before the Enlightenment, this is Greek, or rather, neither Greek nor Latin, it is incomprehensible; he doesn't even know what literature is, in modern terms, nor what “national literature” is, in our sense, even more so in America.
First, a national feeling was formed in literature, at the turn of the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century. Baroque was later incorporated into our national literature, as well as the Teatro de Anchieta, for example.
But in the case of the theater, a kidnapping took place, even if it was involuntary, not culpable, much less intentional. Antonio Candido, belonging to the generation of the magazine Climate, was one of those who sought to move from the spirit of generalists that had animated Brazilian intellectual life until then (the 40s) to the spirit of specialists, which would animate the later university generation, that of the magazine Parallels. From this point of view, theater was for specialists, that is, his colleague and friend Décio de Almeida Prado and others in the field. Furthermore, without the theater, the Basic it is already a work of breath; with him, it would take your breath away, both author and reader.
In any case, it happened that theater and dramaturgy were left without “their” Basic. There were, it is true, works of notable value that he and she dealt with; Décio de Almeida Prado wrote an “evolution”, for example, then wrote a “presentation”, and more recently, shortly before his death, he gave the editorial scene even a A concise history of Brazilian theater. Sabato Magaldi published his pioneering Panorama in 1962; Galante de Sousa gave the scene its The theater in Brazil, and before and after these, valuable “Stories of Brazilian Theater” were published, such as the recent one by Cafezeiro[xvi], in addition to the many studies on authors, genres, groups and periods. But the magic word – Basic – did not come to the scene, he stayed behind the scenes, or even outside the house. If he ever made it to the stage, it was at best in a supporting role; neither became a star, nor was it on the billboard.
Perhaps it should be like this: theater and dramaturgy are increasingly, and since the advent of the avant-garde at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, artistic modalities that interpenetrate in their creation. One cannot think of the theatrical text, in the XNUMXth century, if not from the awareness that it is not just a text for the scene, but an element of the scene itself, although it maintains the possibility of being enjoyed in a reading outside of it. It is difficult, therefore, to speak of formative processes in an artistic modality that is reformed almost with each re-presentation.
We are aware that a play, with a cast today, will not be exactly the same with another tomorrow. But all this, that feeling of joy that speaks of the vitality of an art made from and for the physical presence of the actor and the public, does not eliminate the feeling of pain that theater and dramaturgy were and continue to be looked at, even if in a disguised way. , like poor cousins, those barred from the dance of the arts that helped found the nation.
Final considerations: eppur si muove!
There is something profoundly unfair about this feeling. First because, undoubtedly respecting the academic scruples of Antonio Candido in his work, it is necessary to recognize that for the Brazilian intellectuals of the XNUMXth century, the process and the project of formation of a national literature included the theater, it was inseparable from it, and not understood without him.
The theater would be the armed arm of the intelligentsia, the shaper of taste, the teacher of the crowds. They thought so, so they acted, and so they criticized. Only through this conception can one understand Machado's true sulk, and also Alencar's spite when the audience, followed by Nabuco, rejects him. the jesuit, in 1875, although it is necessary to recognize that the drama, at that time, was already early, and even in its creation, in 1861, it was already epigonal, far from the rigor of Mother, for example. Until the dawn of the XNUMXth century, dramatic art remained solidly anchored in literature, and through dramaturgy it was even an integral and inalienable part of it.
The second reason why the feeling of “minority” is unfair is because, despite predictions to the contrary, the transmission of a legacy was formed in theater, obviously loaded with tensions, and also the awareness of its role. It turns out that this legacy was not the one that our intellectuality aspired to. But that's not why you can deny it. José Veríssimo himself recognized that in comedy we were happier, and we had a founding model. And we had pedigree that cannot be disputed.
Our comedy, based on the texts of Pena, Macedo, Alencar, França Júnior and others, built a legacy of vision about national society and theatrical art as a whole, through the direct creative imitation of other authors, but also through the parody, as a genre or as a stylistic trait, which are among the good theatrical achievements in the universal sense. That is, this tradition does not only fulfill a local function, that is, to allow the public to identify, even if clumsily, on stage.
It shapes the legacy of an aesthetic value, creates a theatrical style, mobilizes a dramaturgy for itself, and even, in the XNUMXth century, spills over into other fields of activity, influencing radio, cinema, television, and literature itself (let us think in the short story “Pirlimpsiquice”, by Guimarães Rosa, in first stories). That is to say, our tradition of the comedy of manners did help to form the theatrical public, not the one dreamed of by intellectuals, it is true, but an audience that witnessed the transmission of a legacy from the XNUMXth to the XNUMXth century, and which Coelho took advantage of Neto, Gastão Tojeiro, Abadie Faria Rosa and many more, and that some, such as Joracy Camargo, Álvaro Moreyra, Oduvaldo Viana, Ernani Fornari and others tried to renew.
And the great operator of the transformation of the impasse into a legacy was precisely Artur Azevedo. The roles have reversed. He, now invested with the role of good-natured husband (the author who forgives everything), went to fetch the playful bride (the public) who was amused by the imitations of the French in order to bring her back home to the national scene. He thus prevented the prankster from completely losing his mind in the vacations that arrived from across the sea. Based on the comedy of manners tradition, and even on the one he practiced when he tried to create more sophisticated comedies, he managed to nationalize music theater.
It even reigned over him with the public, through the revue theater, which recreated its forms, even lending it the feathers of a certain social criticism, albeit slight, in front of the national scene. And he also created these two summaries of our theater at the time and in the XNUMXth century, which are The Federal Capital e the mambembe.
Attesting to his awareness of his role, he had written in an article prior to that of 1904, defending his magazine from the events of 1897, the jagunço (the article is from 1898): “Alongside magazine scenes, there are also comedy scenes, a bit of observation and satire on customs, some literary concern and, in any case, a commendable effort to make spectators educated people do not leave the theater regretting having gone there”.[xvii]
Let's bring the curtain down on this sentence. Well evaluated, she realizes that when he left the scene for good in 1908, even after seeing the end of the genre in which he reigned, the magazine of the year, Artur Azevedo had fulfilled his mission, with the pain and joy that have always been in the masks of theatrical life. Brazilian theater had a function in Brazilian society and a value, or a set of aesthetic values, as a legacy for the new generations.
* Flavio Aguiar is a writer, retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP and author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (Boitempo).
Originally published in the magazine Black Room [http://revistas.usp.br/salapreta]
Notes
[I] Article published in O País. Rio de Janeiro, 16/05/1904. In Faria, João Roberto – Theatrical Ideas – The XNUMXth Century in Brazil – São Paulo: Perspectiva/Fapesp, 2001. Page 608.
[ii] Candido, Antonio – Formation of Brazilian literature – decisive moments. São Paulo: Martins, 1971. 4a. edition. Originally published in 1959.
[iii] Machado's article was published on March 24, 1873 in the newspaper New World, which José Carlos Rodrigues published in New York. In Complete work. Rio de Janeiro: José Aguilar, 1973. Vol. III, pg. 801.
[iv] Op. cit., p. 808.
[v] In Faria, cit, p. 606..
[vi] Op.Cit., pages. 607/8.
[vii] Yours sincerely, Jose – History of Brazilian Literature. Cap. 17. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1916. In Aguiar, Flávio – The national comedy in the theater of José de Alencar. São Paulo: Ática, 1984. Page 8.
[viii] V. Romero, Silvio – History of Brazilian Literature – volume IV. Cap. “Martin Pena”. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1943. 3a. ed., pg. 311 et seq. Sílvio Romero considers Pena a simple and playful spirit, but a keen observer and author of pieces that capture attention if well represented. His remark is well known that if all the documents about life in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the XNUMXth century disappeared, we could reconstruct it only with his comedies.
[ix] In Aguiar, Op.Cit., page 8.
[X] In Faria, Op. cit., p. 609.
[xi] V. Candido, Antonio – Light brigade and other writings. São Paulo: Unesp, 1992. Pág. 34. In this book, first published in 1945, Antonio Candido takes stock mainly of the literary production of 1943 and surroundings. When analyzing the novel by José Geraldo Vieira, fortieth door, says at one point: fortieth door seems to me to express some of the attitudes and states of mind of a certain coastal bourgeoisie, which had a decisive influence on the political, artistic and literary orientation of Brazil, in the period that goes from the Encilhamento to the crack of 1929. Who was nourished by European values and considered her country – in which she felt out of place – as a dotted line along the coast (...).” Today that feeling still exists, except that now he sees the country as a succession of two huge dotted lines, which are the lights next to the runways of airports from which night flights depart towards the North Atlantic.
[xii] Em Complete work, Op. Cit., pg. 808.
[xiii] Machado's phrase is directly quoted by Candido in his book. Op. cit., Vol. II, pg. 369.
[xiv] Op. cit.
[xv] V. Campos, Haroldo de – The hijacking of the baroque in the formation of Brazilian literature. Salvador: Casa de Jorge Amado Foundation, 1989.
[xvi] Cafezeiro, Edwaldo – History of Brazilian theater – a journey from Anchieta to Nelson Rodrigues. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 1996.
[xvii] This article from 1898 is a response to a criticism made by Coelho Neto to the magazine about the events of 1897. It was published in The news. Rio de Janeiro, February 17-18, 1898. In Faria, Op. cit., p. 600.
