By FLAVIO AGUIAR*
A novel about the freedom of passions, and about the passion for freedom
Ivana Jinkings, heroine of the Brazilian publishing world.
1.
My first close contact – today we would say a third-degree immediate contact – with the story of Anita and Giuseppe Garibaldi happened when I was around 14 or 15 years old, in 1961 or 1962. I was excited by the Legality Movement, led by Leonel Brizola, to ensure João Goulart's inauguration as president of the Republic, and by the ideas of resistance and freedom. In addition, I was beginning to become acquainted with so-called adult literature.
He was already an avid reader, having devoured all of Monteiro Lobato's works for children, parts of The one thousand and one nights, all the adventures of the series of Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, those of Tarzan, among many other books. He was an avid reader of Yellow Collection, where the star of Edgar Wallace reigned, of detective novels of all types and quadrants, of MistéEllery Queen's Rio Magazine, from the comics of Wonderful Edition and Epic, as well as being a regular at the Sunday matinees at the Capitólio and Marabá cinemas, filled with westerns, pirate films, swashbucklers or war films, as they were called at the time.
At these matinees there were also melodramas, which we kids hated and pejoratively called love films, but which were part of the atmosphere and played a part in my teenage passion for Garibaldi. I had recently received a copy of the novel as a gift from an older cousin. Spartacus, Spartaáco in Portuguese, by the North American writer Howard Fast.
It was in the midst of this whirlwind of adventures that one day I bought, with my allowance money, a copy of MemóGaribaldi's laughter, in the old Livraria Vitória, on the popular Rua da Praia, in what is now called the Historic Center of the capital of the gauchos.
An aside: the bookstore belonged to the late Arnaldo Campos, whom I knew and maintained a friendship with. He had a reputation as a communist. At the very least, he was left-wing, but a very special left-wing. Anyone who bought a copy of The capital I received a copy of the Bible as a gift! Upon reading the initial chapters of the book, I was immediately fascinated. There were the ancestors of the gauchos and Farroupilhas, whom I had already known a little through reading history textbooks, with somewhat pale descriptions. They were now portrayed with the idealized colors of a romantic adventurer. They were called “the best knights in the world”, they were brave, fearless, and fought in the company of the valiant Italian Carbonari, led by the caudillo Giuseppe Garibaldi and directed by the revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini, from the for me mythical London, all canonized by the aura of exile.
Another aside: what were those carbonari from distant Italy doing there, in the middle of “my” pampas? Only later did I clarify the question. They belonged to the organization Young Italy, "Young Italy”, led by Mazzini, who fought for Italian unification, dominated by the Austrians in the north, the Pope in the center and the Bourbons in the south. The Brazilian monarchy was an ally of the Austrian Habsburgs. So, fighting against the Court and the Empire of Rio de Janeiro was also fighting against Vienna!
There were descriptions of astonishing feats, such as the transportation of two warships from Lagoa dos Patos to the ocean, across the pampas and winter, each pulled by fifty yokes of oxen.
There was also a tinge of melancholy and misfortune hanging over them. Not infrequently, despite their bravery, they wasted opportunities, suffering defeats, hesitations and shipwrecks. One of those boats that had crossed the pampas sank in the middle of a storm off the coast of Santa Catarina, taking with it dozens of dead, including many Italians.
There were poignant sacrifices, such as those of the American John Griggs, torn apart by imperial artillery in the battle of Barra de Laguna, in Santa Catarina, and of the Italian Luigi Rossetti, the sophisticated, intelligent and libertarian, editor of the rebels' official newspaper, The people, fallen facing the enemy alone, near Setembrina, today the municipality of Viamão, in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre. Rossetti was the one who introduced Garibaldi to Bento Gonçalves and Count Tito Lívio Zambeccari, another Carbonari, both imprisoned in Rio de Janeiro.
The cherry on the cake of this painting worthy of the brush of a Eugène Delacroix (as in Freedom Guides the People, of 1830, or in Scèin the Massacres of Scio, from 1824) was, decidedly, the story of the passion of Ana de Jesus Ribeiro, who would become Anita, and the caudillo Garibaldi. This passion of excessive romantic standard would lead them through the labyrinth of the Rio Grande do Sul revolt, the defense of Montevideo against the forces of Oribe and Rosas (when for a moment Garibaldi counted on the help of his old adversary in the Battle of Laguna, Admiral Mariath) and the fight for the liberation and unification of the future Italy, called Risorgimento).
Although it makes brief reference to Anita's later death, the narrative of Memórias stops on July 2, 1849, when Garibaldi, with a few thousand followers, having Anita on horseback at his side, "dressed as a man” (sic), leaves Rome and heads north, in a frustrated attempt to reach Venice, which was still resisting the Austrian allies of the Pope, like the French who were attacking the future Italian capital to reestablish the Holy See’s dominion over it.
And this entire epic narrative, with moments of lyricism, also romantic and somewhat melodramatic, came under the seal of one of my most favorite literary heroes (in fact, to this day), Alexandre Dumas, Pére! Garibaldi and Anita began to occupy the Pantheon of some of my favorite heroes, such as D'Artagnan and Constance Bonacieux, Edmond Dantès and Haydée Tebelen. I must point out that in these Memórias I also came into contact, for the first time, with a character who, later, in my novel, would come to the forefront: Andrés Aguiar, known as The Black ou Garibaldi's Moor.
This emblematic reading has become indelibly embedded in my memory. As I later embarked on a “career” as a writer, it only grew. It came to the forefront of my imagination from the early 90s onwards, when I made the decision: I had to write something about it.
2.
Yes, there was, but what and, above all, how? My first explorations in this area led me in the direction of a short story. A writer, my fictional double, was carried away and carried away by the story of the romantic and revolutionary couple and set off in search of traces of it in remote places, in the plateaus of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, in the mountains around the Antas River, in the sandy sandbank that, between Lagoa dos Patos and the ocean, through “the longest beach in the world”, connects the municipalities of the northern coast of Rio Grande do Sul to São José do Norte, in Barra da Lagoa.
Finding traces here and there, such as old uniform buttons, rusty blades from old knives and other objects of the sort, the writer becomes increasingly fixated on the character Anita and at the same time loses himself between delirium and confusion, ending up disappearing without a trace. It is suspected that she disappeared into the past, which would give a fantastic touch to the narrative. Other times I would get excited, imagining the beginning of a film. At the opening, a frozen field with snow falling appeared. Through the scenery, blurred by the flakes, a column on horseback emerged, led by a red-haired and bearded knight (Garibaldi) and the title card: Brazil, Southern High Plateau, 1839, as if it were a film produced in the United States, with Robert Redford in the main role, but with Gloria Pires in the role of Anita, standing out from the kitsch-Hollywood scenario.
These were somewhat harebrained ideas that, fortunately, did not prosper, although the first one, the short story, still holds some charm for me. Through them I became convinced that my main target was Anita, not Giuseppe, although, of course, the latter was an indispensable supporting character. But the questions remained: what and how to write. I began to read about the subject. In the bibliography that I attached at the end of the novel, 19 books are listed that directly helped me shape the characters in the novel.
In fact, I have read much more. Here I will limit myself to referring to those who opened up paths for me. Also vi many things, live or through memory. But the most important source for the novel was reading. I emphasize that, at the time, there was no biography yet Anita Garibaldi, a Brazilian heroine, by Paulo Markun, a book that summarized much of what had been written about her before, released only in 1999, at the same time as the novel.
The first impactful source was the biography written by Wolfgang Ludwig Rau, Anita garibaldi, the profile of a Brazilian heroine, in the 1975 edition. It was the first comprehensive account of the vicissitudes of his life that I found, written meticulously, methodically and abundantly in documentation. I supplemented this reading with other historical or fictional accounts. It struck me that sometimes in these narratives fiction and history were mixed.
For example: I read the Italian novel The general's lady, an epistolary fiction in which Anita writes letters about her adventures to her family who remain in Laguna, whose author, also called Anita Garibaldi, is the couple's great-granddaughter. Imagine my surprise when, as I continued reading, I came across the work of a historian who cited these letters as if they were, in fact, written by "heroine of two worlds”!
I noticed a tone in the books, sometimes discreet like a basso continuo in a baroque musical piece, other times more prominent like a first violin: the ideological head of the couple was the caudillo; Anita had become a warrior and heroine only “for love”, an image that suited a conservative reading of the female presence and which, in fact, was the title of a book published about her in 1949.
But along came signs and references that things were not quite like that. Ana Maria de Jesus Ribeiro came from a family where there were people who sympathized with the cause of the Rio Grande rebels. She had been touched, therefore, by this virus of rebellion. She had incorporated it. I found accounts, perhaps somewhat legendary, perhaps historical, that said she was anti-slavery: where there is smoke, there is fire, as the saying goes. Her first husband, Manuel Duarte de Aguiar, a shoemaker, had been sympathetic to the imperialists, part of the disagreement between the two.
What had united Giuseppe and Ana was certainly an overwhelming and mutual passion. But this, if necessary, was insufficient to explain her behavior. Ana would assume a new identity: Anita, the Italian diminutive for her name, which, on her own account, became her own name and took on a life of its own later on. She often participated – even against Giuseppe’s clear will – in the skirmishes and battles that awaited her, on rivers, at sea or on land, always revealing, even when alone, an iron and indomitable determination, both in her escape from the Santa Catarina plateau, when she thought Giuseppe might be dead, and in her escape from Mostardas, with her newborn son, when she got the imperial soldiers who were guarding her drunk and rode off across the pampas on horseback with the baby boy in her arms.
In the future Italy, she left Nizza (today Nice, France) and went to Rome to fight with Garibaldi and the resistance fighters, crossing enemy lines at great risk to her life. No, the actions of this courageous woman did not fit into the image of a person simply dazed or enlightened by a powerful “passion” but rather the limiting depths of her discernment and independence. Instead, it must have been the great passion of bodies and souls that met around mutual desire and also a common ideal.
At the moment I was reaching this conclusion, I found, in the rare books section of the Florestan Fernandes Library, at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at USP, the book that was fundamental to writing the novel: the biography – The Life of Giuseppe Garibaldi - by Gustavo Sacerdote, published in 1933. There was a combination of reasons for this to happen.
3.
I didn’t want to write a fictionalized biography of Anita. I wanted to write a historical novel. I still had the Lukacsian idea that the best key to a novel of this kind is to put secondary characters in the foreground and the historical protagonists in the background. But which characters?, I asked myself.
In Gustavo Sacerdote's book I found the list of Italian legionaries who returned or went to the future Italy with Garibaldi, in 1848/1849. Some of these legionaries were not Italian. There was Ignacio Bueno, a Uruguayan. I found Andrés Aguiar again (with a photograph of him), The Moor of Garibaldi. And there was a mysterious José da Costa, whom Garibaldi refers to in one of his letters as "il mulatto Costa”, saying that he was fierce in combat and that he challenged his enemies openly. And that is all that is known about him.
There you have it, I said to myself: I have discovered the perfect character. He is historical, he was there, but he is almost a blank page: an invitation to imagination and fiction. I will tell his story, and his relationship with Garibaldi and… with Anita. Andrés Aguiar was also a tempting character. But almost everything is known about him. He was the freed slave of a Uruguayan officer, who gave him his family name and, in addition, the "had given” to Garibaldi. He had become a sort of bodyguard for him and Anita. He had a jovial character, treated children well, had fought in Rome and died heroically, pierced by a bullet or a grenade fragment, depending on the version, on June 29-30, 1849. There are several paintings that depict his death, or his corpse.
This was another important detail. In addition to bringing enormous documentation about Garibaldi and the Risorgimento, Gustavo Sacerdote's voluminous book presents a wealth of iconography about his biography and the Garibaldian struggles. It made up for a deficiency of mine: I had only been to Italy once, in 1989, more specifically to Rome and its surroundings, and I was unfamiliar with many of the places where Garibaldi and Anita had been. As for Brazil, Gustavo Sacerdote's book had some deficiencies, presenting, for example, images of more or less Amazonian Indians mixed with the pampas and the southern plateau. But in this regard I made up for it with other sources and my own personal knowledge.
That was how I convinced myself that I had in my head, heart and hands reasons to write what, on the back cover of the Boitempo edition, Luís Fernando Veríssimo called “a great novel”: “(…) bringing a secondary character – a supporting character – in Anita’s life to the foreground, he places him alongside the reader, as a traveling companion and confidant, in this crazy and admirable adventure through two worlds. Aguiar telling Costa telling Anita, lives that gave rise to a great novel. Prepare to be fascinated”.
So I had a target, Anita; a protagonist who was both historical and free to the imagination, Costa; and I took from historical sources or created several supporting characters, in addition to Garibaldi himself. I will give some examples. Historical: the aforementioned Luigi Rossetti, a revolutionary and refined intellectual; General Netto, proclaimer of the Riograndense Republic; Colonel Joaquim Teixeira Nunes, nicknamed “The Hawk”, commander of the two Black Lancer Brigades of the Farroupilha Army, hated and sworn to death by the imperialists, who finally managed to assassinate him on November 28, 1844.
I say “murder him” because he was beheaded when he was already wounded and a prisoner of the troops that were pursuing him, such was the hatred they felt for him; Father Ugo Bassi, an Italian revolutionary, sentenced to death and executed by the Austrians near Bologna, on August 8, 1849.
Fictional characters: Sergeant Charrua, a former Charrua Indian obsessed with the idea of “finding a homeland”; and a whole gallery of female characters, starting with Costa’s mother, a slave brought from Africa to Recife, Brazil, where the protagonist grew up and where he died, during the historic demonstration of September 30, 1866, when republican and abolitionist students rushed to the city center and confronted the imperial cavalry; later, from the top of a balcony of the building where a city newspaper operated, the poet Castro Alves improvised his famous poem in which he says that “the square belongs to the people, as the sky belongs to the condor”; his granddaughter, Ana Guadelupe, also appears there, having collected a supposed manuscript, the origin and basis of the narrative.
Well, I had everything: protagonists, supporting characters, a surviving manuscript, a narrative line to unfold, but… what would be the leitmotiv of this narrative, the knot, nucleus, seed of a reflection, which would make this narrative a novel, the matrix of an individual experience or several individual experiences retained in a memorable one, reflecting a collective condition of life in a given cultural, social, historical context?
4.
I found it when I was leafing through the lives of Anita and Giuseppe as seen by Costa, as if it were a simultaneous structure, where one can see the beginning, the middle and the end in a single glance. They are characters who choose to change their lives, on several occasions, to the point of changing identities, like Ana de Jesus who becomes Anita; Giuseppe, who goes from being a failed guerrilla fighter to a national hero and a renowned Italian and European parliamentarian; Costa, who begins his days as a boy who escaped from slavery and ends them as a supposedly French businessman who settles in Brazil.
At the same time, they choose to try to change the world they live in, fighting for their ideals, whether in Brazil, Uruguay or Europe. In a way, they manage to make the world change, but not in the way they imagined. In other words, they make a movement thinking of going from A to B, let's say, but they end up arriving at the somewhat unexpected unknowns X, Y or Z. It is the acceptance of this indeterminacy of movements that transforms their trajectories into experience, into something that can be told and retained in memory, as Walter Benjamin wants in his essay "The narrator”.
In these unsuspected movements, the experience of narration always leads us to encounter a sensation in which gain and loss are mixed, like the one experienced by the character Ana Guadelupe, Costa’s granddaughter, at the end of the novel, when she finds a handkerchief that he had taken from the hand of Anita, whom he had known and lost: “Some annoying flies had come to rest on the dead man’s face. She then noticed that a handkerchief was sticking out of the pocket of the frock coat he was wearing. In an instinctive gesture, she took it and covered his face, as if to spare him the inconvenience. As she did so, she saw that the handkerchief had the initials AG embroidered in red on one of the corners. She felt comforted by his kindness in having a handkerchief embroidered with her initials: Ana Guadelupe. It was only after reading the manuscript that she understood the true meaning of the letters. But the handkerchief had gone to her godfather’s tomb, taking with it, and forever, his secret.”
That said, all that remains is to say, in homage to each and every character in this novel, whether historical or fictional: this is a novel about the freedom of passions, and about the passion for freedom.
Thank you.[1]
* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/48UDikx]
Essay presented as a paper at the panel “History, Identity and Literature”, at the International Colloquium of the 200 Years of Anita Garibaldi, organized by the Santa Catarina Culture Foundation, on August 11, 2021.
Reference
Flavio Aguiar. Anita: romance. São Paulo, Boitempo, 1999, 332 pages. [https://amzn.to/4fQbf8D]
Note
[1] I realized that my novel Anita (Jabuti Award 2000), published in 1999, is celebrating its 25th anniversary since its release by Boitempo Editorial. To celebrate the date, I am publishing this essay, written in 2021, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Anita Garibaldi's birth.
Most of the time a novel has a single author. But this does not mean that it is always a solitary adventure. It can be a supportive one. In the case of Anita I received help, through writing suggestions, access to sources or in other ways, from the following people: In Memoriam: My brother Rogerio Wolf de Aguiar. Historian Sandra Jatahy Pesavento, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Professor Ulrich (Uli) Fleischmann, from the Lateinamerika Institute, Free University of Berlin. And more: Zinka Ziebell, Valter de Almeida Freitas, Sandra Guardini T. Vasconcelos, Rejane Coutinho, Mauro Marcelo, Marlene Petrus Angelides, João Roberto Faria, Iole de Freitas, Druck Isabel Florentino.
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