By EDGARD PEREIRA*
In addition to evaluation, literary criticism is a deep dive into the essence of the work, guided by ethics and vocation. An invitation to understanding that transcends nationalism, rescues forgotten voices and oxygenates the canon, revealing the strength and intrinsic value of the text.
1.
Producing literary criticism means opting for a second-degree writing about a text, whether by a canonical author or someone who deserves to be recognized. It is important to note, from the outset, the semantic contiguity between critic and evaluator, an approximation that rescues one of the meanings of evaluating, that is, appreciating, recognizing the greatness of something, estimating the merit of something.
Among the countless theoretical judgments on the role of criticism, I value a brief note by Antônio Olinto: “The instruments of criticism are not exclusive to anyone. They are available to anyone who gives them time, study and research. The scientific knowledge thus acquired will be added to a greater or lesser degree of calling, of vocation, capable of converting, in a Gestaltian way, the learning of the science of literary work into a new dimension of understanding and vision of things and time. […] Aesthetics and ethics go hand in hand, and I cannot appreciate an analysis made without the primacy of a living and renewed ethics, the one that exists in the insubordinate work and in the gesture of rebellion. Insubordination and rebellion that the fiction of our time has, in its best examples, tried to express.”[I]
The essentials have been said about the critic's profession: specific training, vocation, interest in the field of knowledge, the ability to transform reading into analysis, sensitivity to the spiritual atmosphere of the context, a sense of ethics. I have a certain grudge against the habit of subjecting literature to nationalism.
I recognize the efforts made by romantic writers, tireless in their sketching of the tropical landscape, interested in simultaneously consolidating Brazilian speech and themes. They paved the way for the development of the journey of nationality, which was later carried out by modern writers.
José Veríssimo's stance on Brazilian literature is not rooted in the exacerbated nationalism assumed as a fixed clause by Sílvio Romero and, more systematically, by Antonio Candido, in Formation of Brazilian Literature.The latter deserves recognition for his effort to reinterpret the literary heritage, with a flexible outline, breaking away from a jingoistic vision, constructed by conservative thought, with immobilist features.
Benjamin Abdala Junior asserts: “The understanding of this new Brazil — which intended to be sovereign and developed — then called for new interpretations of our formation, nuanced political, social, economic and cultural aspects that had repercussions in our contemporary times”[ii]. João Alexandre Barbosa, in the preface of the 1a Series of Studies, by José Veríssimo, adds: “As can be seen, it did not exclude the national aspect, but made it more sophisticated: the critical method became more specific as the idea of nationality of the literary work began to act no longer as an exclusive factor, but as an ingredient in the set of elements for understanding the work — among which, as we have seen, the talent of execution stood out”[iii].
Alcir Pécora, evaluating João Adolfo Hansen's stance, which sometimes went against the priorities embraced at the time in the academic sphere, considers: “João Adolfo Hansen produces an implacable critique of the modernist and nationalist teleology that predominated in the field of Brazilian literary studies, radiating mainly from São Paulo, and, in particular, from USP itself. This teleology, which treats the cultural history of Brazil as an evolution destined to the achievement of a national spirit, whose realization would occur in São Paulo Modernism, had several consequences, some quite reductive, such as submitting the concept of “literature” to that of “Brazil”, as well as showing disinterest, possibly like no other American country, in colonial literary production”.[iv]
2.
The debate surrounding nationalism in the literary field has cooled down since the mid-70s. Afrânio Coutinho, with the publication of Paths of critical thinking (1974), had the merit of laying the foundation for this hermeneutical vein, after mobilizing brilliant minds over decades. Literature evolves according to social dynamics, harboring traces of historical changes in behavior, attitudes and aspirations.
If it were possible to exchange symptoms and themes associated with signs of nationality instead of nationalist indices, perhaps the results would be more productive. Regarding the deepening of these issues, it is worth noting the balance observed since the 50s between theoretical production and creative material. As Brayner states: “cultural moments are a constant field of exchange in which both the poetic impulse and speculative and inquiring thought germinate.”[v].
A leap into the past, with the purpose of circulating ideas. In the years from 1940 to 1960, a generation especially dedicated to literary criticism flourished, working in footnotes of Brazilian newspapers. In a context of great cultural effervescence, in which literature enjoyed prestige, competition between peers was fierce. It was a time of great confrontations and debates, from those between Catholic and socialist writers, which were the scene of vehement conflicts.
Major newspapers are published, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, but also in Recife, Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte, almost all of them equipped with militant critics, such as Sérgio Milliet, Antonio Candido, Agripino Grieco, Olívio Montenegro, Álvaro Lins, Oscar Mendes, Eduardo Frieiro, Augusto Meyer, Tristão de Ataíde, Wilson Martins, Tasso da Silveira.
Adonias Filho, directing the prestigious supplement Letters and arts from the newspaper Tomorrow, in a column (“Through Supplements”) in which he gave an overview of literary supplements, written under the pseudonym Djalma Viana, he refers to the then candidate for critic in this way: “The uneducated Mr. Antonio Candido, although he didn’t know how to tell a novel from a pair of shoes, still had a field day and there were those who saw in him a modernized, formalistic and fragrant Zé Veríssimo”[vi].
The mocking tone expresses a certain intolerance towards criticism with a sociological bias. Antonio Candido's production, as can be seen, was not celebrated by his peers from the beginning. In the press of the time, the first references to his intervention as a literary critic were met with unpromising, or even adverse, comments. Derogatory assessments were commonplace in cultural supplements, when the focus was on the work of the novice critic. “Antonio Candido views with great suspicion the manifestations of literary exoticism — the representation of local color — which suits the taste of the provincial or foreigner who seeks in our literature the equivalent of the images of bananas and pineapples”[vii]. Despite the sociological framework of his theoretical arsenal, A. Candido does not lose his unsurpassed place as a master.
3.
From various sources, the comments collected do not lose their ephemeral, fleeting air when they are transformed into a book. From the specific circumstances, a review on an electronic blog, an article presented at a Congress or published in literary journals, comes the renewed breath, the light, unpretentious tone, the simple and everyday language in which they were written, without neglecting the specificity of literary theory.
Comments that are more than exhaustive in their hermeneutics, the texts that follow seek to demarcate grooves and signs of an unarmed attempt at understanding. Many of them have not lost the profile of indomitable reviews that, in a kind of perceptive deciphering of codes and passwords, welcome unjustified or poorly explained authors excluded from the status of the canon and the courtiers.
Each historical period produces its interpreters and evaluators, who are responsible, in theory, for the inclusion of works that, although confined to the oblivion of the blind spots of the rear-view mirrors of consensus, do not lose the brightness of their transparent light. I consider criticism to be an activity that propels culture, by awakening interest in the literary production of a given context. To this end, it is urgent to free ourselves from the idea that an author's critical fortune qualifies him or her for restricted access to the canon.
Without abandoning the fair play that should pave the way for every undertaking, it is important to emphasize the elegance of considering all average production as worthy of analysis, in the first instance, without distinguishing what can be seen as a more robust aspect of the collection from another apparently less expressive contribution. The quality filter comes next, taking into account that several factors interfere in intellectual work.
The act of reading presupposes a dialogue between several voices: between the reader and the text, the author and the text, the reader and the author, between the subject and the world, and so on. Around these instances, the context moves, a kind of subsoil on which people write, encompassing all the agents involved in the production of writing.
4.
I will open a parenthesis for a preliminary consideration of what is understood here by understanding, an expedient for effective reading. Understanding goes beyond the passive assimilation of constitutive elements of what can be delimited as formative indexes of a field of knowledge.
This concept derives from a loan from the theory developed by Eduardo Prado Coelho in The coastal letter (1979). By comparing two positions regarding literature, Prado Coelho contrasts two lines of knowledge, one based on the line of extension, the other driven by understanding. The first perspective is based on the accumulation of concepts and theories, in the configuration of a scientific repertoire tending to achieve more knowledge, achieved in a line of horizontality.
The second seeks to find less knowledge by incorporating, in its vertical dive, the notions of intensity, projections and obsessions, as indexes that configure a conception of space, the literary space. If in the first case, we have the formation of a field of knowledge, founded on a repertoire of concepts originating from sociology, in the second paradigm, concepts are welcomed, albeit diffusely, from psychoanalysis, semiotics, cultural studies, and theoretical postulates of reception, articulated in an unstable balance, such as glimpses of utopia and exercises of identification and displacement.
In the field of relations between literature and psychoanalysis, it is thought that the aim is not to analyse an author through his work, but that it is the critic who analyses himself through his critique of the work. In the field of relations between literature, history and sociology, it is thought that a text only exists through its reception, that it is the execution of the poem that constitutes the poem, and that the historicity of literature is determined by a complex network of reactions and expectations. Criticism is conceived as a text-to-text, understood as a body-to-body: body-to-body as conflict, body-to-body as love. It is about making the text a singularity, a becoming, a catastrophe, a line of flight, an event.[viii].
Moving away from a demand articulated to absolute certainty, typical of the positivist bias, essay writing is conceived as an experience exiled from the ideological field. Eduardo Prado Coelho postulates a new paradigm: a discourse that develops less in accordance with the parameters of knowledge, in the dimension of a new (other) use of knowledge. Based on a refusal of a one-dimensional stance, centered on the emphasis given to form and sign, the aim is to outline a discourse driven by the interest in capturing the strength and value of the text.
The process of identification or participation in a creative reality, triggered by reading, arouses in the reader a mental activity of a cognitive and liberating nature. However simple it may be, any story provokes in the reader an effective possibility of interaction, anchored in logical, suggestive and intuitive data, capable of corresponding to the secret expectations of knowledge. The risk of ending up in a purposeless and chaotic unfolding, if there is one, will only occur if the limits of literariness are exceeded.
My book Saturday Matinee projects itself in this context. Avoiding conceptual pirouettes, it seeks to describe the consulted material, framing it within the genre to which it belongs, revealing its aesthetic strategies and interests. Without neglecting the striking biographical contingencies, the strategies associated with the context and the most relevant aesthetic effects.
Without ignoring the relationship between literature and context, we must incorporate the evidence that, no matter how intensely, literary works are marked by the disordered impulses of social structures. We seek to develop a reading that is attentive to the ethical condition, to the relationship between criticism and history, investigating literary elements in terms of their formal and conceptual conditions, semantic suggestions and the symbolic spectra of the political unconscious.
The intentional mix of canonical and new authors serves the idea of sharing literary heritage. Finally, in due time: I get along better with Paulo Coelho than with pedestrian imitators of Jorge Luis Borges and Vargas Llosa. The incorporated proposal consists of complementing and expanding the manuals and compendiums.
Oxygenate the gatherings, renew the arteries and environments, enlarge the maps, shake the dust off the shelves and canvases. Disinfect the sarcophagi and corridors, exterminate the stains on the walls and moldy furniture, the stench of cronyism and mutual favors.
*Edgard Pereira is a retired professor of Portuguese Literature at the Faculty of Letters of UFMG. Author of, among other books, The wolf of the cerrado (Imago).
References
ABDALA JUNIOR, Benjamin. Multiple borders, plural identities.New York: Routledge, 2002.
BARBOSA, João Alexandre.Preface. In:VERY VERY, José. Studies of Brazilian literature.Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; New York: University of Chicago Press, 1976.
BRAYNER, Sonia. Colloquium – letters, 26. Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Fund, 1975.
RABBIT, Eduardo Prado. The coastal letter. Lisbon: Moraes, 1979.
COUTINHO, Afranio (org.). Paths of critical thinking.Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Americana Prolivro, 1974.
OLINTO, Antonio. The truth of fiction.Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Graphic Arts Company, 1966.
PÉCORA, Alcir. “Original contribution”. Review of Seventeenth-century witticisms and other essays, by João Adolfo Hansen. Sketch. Curitiba: ed. 234, Oct. 2019.
VIANA, Djalma. Critics, hurry up!. Tomorrow, Rio de Janeiro, year 2, n. 79, p. 2, March 21, 1948. Supplement Letters and Arts. Through the Supplements.
Notes
[I] OLINTO, 1966, p. 7.
[ii] ABDALA JR., 2002, p. 110.
[iii] BARBOSA, 1976, p. 18.
[iv] PECORA, 2019.
[v] BRAYNER, 1975, p. 98-99.
[vi] VIANA, 1948, p. 2.
[vii] ABDALA JR., 2002,
[viii] COELHO, 1979, p. 72-73.
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