By DANIEL AFONSO DA SILVA*
The entire year of 2024 passed without a single word from our greatest memorialist. Abandonment. Indifference. Silence. The exact opposite of the uproar of 1972.
Boom: noise, loud noise, loud noise, prolonged rumble. Hurricane, gale, storm. Bang. Breaking harmonies. Storing conventions. Shaking structures. Droughts and wets. Tragedy and innovation. Disorder and convulsion. Almost never in salvation. Almost always in mutation. Announcing bad weather. Without dawn or good days.
This is what was seen, felt and acted in Brazil in that distant 1972. A sad year. Which, ultimately, was not a good one. A symbolic year of the economic miracle. When the country grew a lot and grew well. But – in addition – it also killed a lot of people. It was the most brutal moment of the regime. Hard line and strong arm.
It was the height of General Médici's presidency. Far short of Brazil as a Power and far beyond Pra frente Brasil.
The reference was the parrot's perch. Sitting the thorn. Without moderation or scruples. In fact, it was said “the beans scruples of conscience”.
The transition from the Castello Branco period, from AI-1 and the promise of civilian returns in 1965 to now in 1972 was nothing more than a fleeting chimera. The stacking of Institutional Acts had distorted any possibility of back to the 17s. The freshness of the good old bossa nova was fading – Act after Act – into the air. “Never fight again” became longing. A thousand longings. Inaugurated in the incontinence of goodbye.
Goodbye smiles from the days of JK. Goodbye illusions from the eve of 1964. Goodbye out of tune with any heart. Because, from now on, in the chests of the out of tune, the hearts would stop beating.
The children of the homeland were made children of the other. And, by determination, they were forced to keep quiet. “Be quiet.”
It was like that, it was like that. A lukewarm moment. Sad. Confusing. 1972.
With the worst – without the best – of all carnivals. Full of plots and signs. Agonies, anomie. Reigns of 1937-1945, 1946, 1954, 1961, 1964 and, of course, 1968. Estado Novo and after. Years of lead. Nerves of steel. Hearts harpooned, diminished in tenderness and without Celly Campelo to console.
Gilberto Gil was Back in Bahia. Had returned in Espresso. Bathed in heat, color, salt, sun. But it was not enough. Very little. Everything was not enough. Until “the earth stopped”.
And it stopped not for a day or a week. The earth stopped for entire generations, for eternity, for timeless moments. All because of one book: Chest of Bones. An intention: Memoirs. And an author: Pedro Nava.
Everyone knows and the world saw it: it was a storm. Otto Lara Resende emphasized that it was a “foundational book, in the sense that it is a book that alone gives news of culture. More important for Brazilian literature than Marcel Proust for French culture. Simply brilliant”. The great poet, a citizen of Itabira, limited himself to saying everything by saying “a chest of surprises”. The historian Francisco Iglésias, also in summary, would say everything with “event”.
That was it and that was it. Ephemeris. Surprises line by line, page by page.
Punch in the stomach. Complete stun.
Anyone with some spiritual cultivation immediately understood what it was about. Chest of Bones it was the key needed to instantly abstract and ignore the existence of the Médici presidency, that horrendous management, that Brazil without destiny and those people without reason. This is the disturbing nature of the work, provided in layers.
Those with more culture who traveled through it got goosebumps, looked back and were perplexed. The best of the greatest Brazilian memoirs of all time – Nabuco, Graciliano, Gilberto Amado – were exuded everywhere. Starting with My training (1900) Prison Memories (1953) and Story of My Childhood (1954) who seemed like soul mates Chest of Bones. The best of Brazilian acting – Paulo Prado, Mário de Andrade, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto Freyre – as well. As well as the best of all the Arts. From visual arts to urbanism to music. Coming firmly to poetry and prose.
Who, thus, closed their eyes reading Chest of Bones could, at some point, open them by reading some poetry. Anyone who entered the work at a trot would find themselves at some bend in the road sagarana ou Corps de Ballet. And, not infrequently, stuck lost in corners of Great Sertão: Veredas.
Chest of Bones that was it: something spectacular, disturbing, disconcerting. And it was just the beginning of Memoirs by Pedro Nava which were completed in six volumes: Chest of Bones (1972) Captive Balloon (1973) Iron Floor (1976) Beira-Mar (1978) dark cock (1981) and The Perfect Circus (1983)
And, more, Chest of Bones inaugurated the trance that led Brazilian literate society to deep meditations. Which, seriously, remain relevant to this day and raise essential dilemmas contained in questions such as: momentum 1972 would have some equivalence with the momentum 1956 or with the momentum 1930 - 1930: momentum Drummond; 1956: momentum João Guimarães Rosa?
With the acceleration of redemocratization, through a “slow, gradual and safe” opening, this reflection faded. But, for those who chose to be left in life, the question remains. And, therefore, immortalizes Pedro Nava. Who was a prodigy, from the beginning to the end of his life.
Born in Juiz de Fora in 1903, he moved to Belo Horizonte to study medicine and became a positive and intense part of the avant-garde mining in the 1920s. His friends and accomplices, traveling companion, were Emilio Moura, João Alphonsus, Abgar Renault, Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, Ciro dos Anjos, who created The magazine, in 1925, which would be one of the most important vectors of Minas Gerais modernism in conjunction with São Paulo modernism in 1922.
Pedro Nava was central to this publication. Making prints, articles, reviews and poems. Being The deceased, from 1928, his most outstanding poetic piece. Which left Mário de Andrade disconcerted. And Vinícius de Morais, Manuel Bandeira and Murilo Mendes too. It was where he, Pedro Nava, made explicit the sensitivity of his excellence.
To the point that, at the time, Mário de Andrade confided to Carlos Drummond de Andrade that “the little review that he [Pedro Nava] published in Magazine about painting left me with a strong impression of a well-organized mind for criticism”. “As for his poetry, I don’t know yet, but it seems to me that he will be the most talented of all of you. With his poetry” (see The Friend's Lesson, letters from Mário de Andrade to Carlos Drummond de Andrade, edited by Drummond in 1982).
“The most brilliant of all of you. With his poetry.” It could have been. But it wasn’t. Pedro Nava would dedicate himself to medical sciences, publishing, from then on, mostly in these areas. Leaving the effective circuit of high and beautiful literature absorbed. His poem The deceased would be inserted into the Anthology of Contemporary Brazilian Leap Year Poets by Manuel Bandeira, in 1946. But that was it. After that, a blackout. Everyone imagined that the doctor had cannibalized the artist. But no.
Nearing the age of seventy he began to make public his greatest work. A life's work, begun with Chest of Bones. A portrait of “my people” (…) “just as it is, racially, the portrait of the formation of other family groups in the country. With all the defects. With all the qualities”. Zero cliché and zero stereotype. And so, almost history, almost memory, almost poetry, almost literature, almost genealogy, almost testimony, almost document and almost everything in a single moment. With strong satire and beautiful wit. Making its reader relive, here and there, the best of Camões, Vieira and Machado. And, here and there, the best of Drummond, Rosa, Nabuco.
Forty years after the death of Pedro Nava – who died dramatically in Glória, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in May 1984, after morally complex personal complications –, the silence is astonishing. The whole of 2024 passed without a single word about our greatest memoirist. Abandonment. Indifference. Silence. The exact opposite of the uproar of 1972.
*Daniel Afonso da Silva Professor of History at the Federal University of Grande Dourados. author of Far beyond Blue Eyes and other writings on contemporary international relations (APGIQ). [https://amzn.to/3ZJcVdk]
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