BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB | | TIETA DO AGRESTE | 16th AUGUST 2018, 18.30-21.00

2018 – The year of reading Brazilian Literary Greats & unlocking the power of our minds!

JORGE AMADO (1912-2001)

Tieta do Agreste (1977)

translated into English as

Tieta (1981, 2003)

The subheading ofTieta do Agreste offers a snippet view of the way the story is told: ‘the goat shepherdess or the return of the prodigal daughter, in a melodramatic feuilleton in five sentimental episodes and a stirring epilogue: Emotion and suspense!’

Longest racy, bawdy, laughter-inducing and politically incorrect novel by Jorge Amado with blended story-telling styles: From the medieval morality plays to the traditional Brazilian Cordel oral literature, the picaresque Brazilian and foreign novels and piquant Brazilian soap operas.

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What is the symbolism of the nanny goat in the novel? Only goats in the story: kids, does and nannies but no sheep or rams! Has Jorge Amado covertly secreted rituals of animal sacrifice from his religion the Candomblé – the sacrificial nanny goat Tieta?

The underbelly of rural with a cast of stereotypical and colourful characters: ruthless entrepreneurs, randy teenagers, underage sex-workers, corrupt politicians and clergy; incestuous wickedness, unhappy old women, money-obsessed relatives, a voyeuristic narrator and a shameless harlot, at times disguised as an honourable wife, turned into a money-making madam in a big city.

Discover the paradise-like Mangue Seco beach near the state of with its white sand dunes and coconut trees, the state of Bahia as a highly sophisticated industrial hub with one of the largest and very green hydroelectric plants, and a bit of green campaigning regarding Titanium*.

Enjoy and laugh out loud! Or speculate: Could it be a garrulous caricature by an aging and biased Bahian patriarch trying to be excessively hip?

* Despite the long narrative, the author fails to explain what titanium, a very versatile metal, and titanium dioxide are. It is a white powder with high opacity and brilliant whiteness, used as a pigment and opacifier for a broad range of applications in paints, plastic goods, inks and paper and used in many white or coloured products, including food, cosmetics, UV skin protection products, ceramics and rubber products. Titanium dioxide has low toxicity unless inhaled continuously and its wastes are highly regulated. is currently one of the largest producers of titanium dioxide.

DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS:

ENGLISH

1981 Tieta translated by Barbara Shelby Merrello , published by the Souvenir Press Ltd: London and reprinted in Abacus by the Sphere Press Ltd in London in 1982; reprinted again in 2003 by University of Wisconsin Press in Maddison.

ISBN-10: 0299186547 ISBN-13: 978-0299186548

PORTUGUESE

1977 Tieta do Agreste, pastora de cabras : ou, A volta da filha prodigá : melodramático folhetim em cinco sensacionais episodioś e comovente epilogo,́ emoca̧ õ e suspense! Editora Record: Rio de Janeiro

ISBN-10: 8535914048 ISBN-13: 978-8535914047 ASIN: B00CZMR6RG

Various editions & free downloads available – e.g.: https://lereumvicio.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/tieta-do-agreste-jorge-amado.pdf

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SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATIONS

Jorge Amado wrote the novel Tieta do Agreste, pastora de cabras: ou, A volta da filha prodigá : melodramaticó folhetim em cinco sensacionais episodioś e comovente epilogo,́ emoca̧ õ e suspense! at the popular Buraquinho beach near Salvador, the capital of Bahia and in London in 1976 and 1977. The novel was published on 17th August 1977; the first edition run was of one hundred and twenty thousand copies and the second fifty thousand in the same month. It was illustrated by the artist and engraver Calasans Neto (1932-2006). The text of twenty-third edition was revised as a definitive text by the author’s daughter Paloma Jorge Amado and Pedro Costa.

The novel contains five episodes or sections. It starts with a typical cordel structure and the wood engravings featured in the first edition illustrate the reference to this traditional type of oral literature. The oral poetry is published in chapbooks illustrated by some very talented engravers. It also contains headings which remind us of the medieval autos sacramentales, morality plays, which came to Brazil with the Portuguese and have been performed since then. The Christian religious tradition is subverted tough from the outset as instead of sheep, there are goats. In the translation into English, nanny, buck and kid goats are shiftily translated as ram and goat. Goats are very relevant animals for the Candomblé religion, which the author practiced throughout his life. Some of the passages also remind us of the 18th and 19th century English and European picaresque novels. One could speculate that the author also imparted a script-like text in certain sections, mindful of possible future adaptations for television as a soap-opera.

The novel is set in Mangue Seco, a small fishing village and beach in the town of Jandaíra, the last beach along the coast of the state of Bahia on the border of the state of Sergipe. Sant'Ana do Agreste is a fictional town in the novel.

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The word agreste, which is contained in the title, is relevant and often misunderstood. This word has the meaning of rural, rustic, country bumpkin or uncouth individual and in Brazil it has an additional meaning. It refers to a narrow zone of Brazil (see map below in purple no. 3) between the Atlantic Forest () and sertão . The narrow zone stretches from the states of to Paraíba, , , Sergipe and Bahia. It tapers as it reaches Rio Grande do Norte. There is significant rainfall in the agreste with fertile soils and many deciduous trees. Its flora is very particular and important. There are various partnerships between the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and the Brazilian North-eastern Plant Association and other bodies since 1992. http://static1.kew.org/science/tropamerica/pne.htm http://static1.kew.org/science/tropamerica/pneprogrammes.htm

The Subregions of Northeast Brazil 1 • Meio-norte, 2 • Sertão, 3 • Agreste, 4 • Zona da Mata

The translation into English as Tieta is by Barbara Shelby (1932-2014), published by the Souvenir Press Ltd in London in 1981, reprinted in Abacus by Sphere Press Ltd in London in 1982 and reprinted again in 2003 by the University of Wisconsin Press in Maddison. The subtitle was rendered as The Goat Girl, or The Return of The Prodigal Daughter, A Melodramatic Serial Novel in Five Sensational Episodes with a Touching Epilogue: Thrills and Suspense!

The words cabrita and bode were translated variously, as mentioned above. Certainly, there are no sheep, lambs or rams in the original. Also by translating pastora de cabras as ‘goat girl’, an important component and a reference were missed. A younger reader may confuse it with the GOAT meme – ‘Greatest Of All Times’ or the like. Pastoras or pastorinhas are part of the Brazilian folklore for Christmas festivities dating back to medieval Portuguese shepherd songs for the nativity cycle, which migrated to Brazil. Girls or women dressed in red and blue line up and sing and perform.

Painting by Sérgio Pompêo - As Pastorinhas: Fé, Esperança e Caridade (The little shepherdesses: Faith, hope and Charity)

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Barbara Shelby grew up in New Jersey, USA. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and worked in cultural exchange for the United States Information Agency in Brazil, Ecuador, Spain, Costa Rica, Argentina, Peru and Washington DC, with short postings at the United Nations, Belgium, Zaire, and Tunisia from 1960 to 1987.

Barbara Shelby translated twelve books by Brazilian authors: Jorge Amado, Gilberto Freyre, Antonio Callado, João Guimarães Rosa and Dom Helder Camara for Alfred A. Knopf and other publishers.

Barbara Shelby (1977)

She married Agustin Merello, an Argentine national in 1976. The couple retired to Austin, Texas, in 1987, were linked to programmes at the University of Texas. Barbara also taught at the LBJ Library for ten years. The couple travelled widely, visiting Agustin's family in Argentina, the North American Institute in Barcelona, of which Barbara had been a director, her small medieval house in Talamanca in Spain, and the market town of Tregaron in Wales, from which her ancestor Evan Shelby emigrated for the USA in 1735.

The novel has also been published in German, Slovenian, Spanish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and Czech.

Tieta do Agreste was adapted for the Globo Television Network by Aguinaldo Silva (1943- ) broadcast from 1989 to 1990. In 1996, Tieta was made into a film by Cacá Diegues (1940- ). Various cordel thematic adaptations of the novel have been created since its publication.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

JORGE AMADO

(10th August 1912 – 6th August 2001)

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Image from the Exhibition of Jorge Amado’s and Zélia Gattai’s ‘A Casa do Rio Vermelho’ at the Shopping Iguatemi, Salvador in Bahia.

Jorge Amado became a popular best-seller Brazilian writer with works translated into 48 languages; a best seller surpassed only Paulo Coelho (1947- ). His books about Bahian life became very popular and have disseminated a view and image of one of the states of Brazil, Bahia, often inadvertently conflated with Brazil, throughout the world. Jorge Leal Amado de Faria, the eldest son of Colonel João Amado de Faria and Eulália Leal, was born at the family cocoa farm Auricídia in town of Itabuna on the 10th August 1912. He attended the Jesuit College, Colégio Antônio Vieira, and Ginásio Ipiranga in Salvador and read law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He married Matilde Garcia Rosa (1913- 1986) and they had one daughter (deceased at 15) in 1933, but separated in 1944, and he lived with a writer, Zélia Gattai (1945- 2001), of Italian descent from São Paulo (1916-2008) from 1945; they married in 1978 and had two children. As a teenager in Salvador, from 1928 to 1933 he joined, the ‘Academia dos Rebeldes ’– the Academy of Rebels, a group led by the journalist and poet Pinheiro Viegas, with fellow writers as members: João Cordeiro, Dias da Costa, Alves Ribeiro, Edison Carneiro, Valter da Silveira and Clóvis Amorim. Their academy was one of the modernizing literature and arts movements in Brazil in the 1920s. They poured scorn on the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Ironically, Jorge Amado later accepted the honour of becoming a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (1961). Jorge Amado always highlighted the fact that he was a professional writer and journalist living off his books and articles. He started writing early in his life, at the age of 14 as a police reporter for a local newspaper, Diário da Bahia, and joined in the bohemian life in Salvador. He started publishing his novels at the age of 19. As a professional writer, he displayed singular adroitness at positioning himself politically and ideologically throughout his life. Jorge Amado moved to Rio de Janeiro, the then capital city of Brazil, in the effervescent 1930s period. In 1932, he would become a member of the Brazilian communist party and, subsequently, he was arrested for participating in the Communist Conspiracy in Rio de Janeiro in 1936. The Estado Novo, the ‘New State’ the period in the Brazilian political regime from 10th November 1930 to 31st January 1946, under the President Getúlio Vargas (1882-1954) suppressed conspiracies in the

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1930s. This included the censorship and destruction of books deemed to broadcast dangerous ideologies in 1937. In a controversial move, as the winds of international politics changed with the Molotov–Ribbentrop (Soviet-Nazi) Pact, Jorge Amado went on to edit the cultural literary supplement of the Meio-Dia newspaper (1939-1942), one of the rare newspapers in Brazil, which supported Nazi Germany during the World War II. This triggered off a sharp rebuke from one of the leading founders of Modernism, Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954), who accused Jorge Amado of spying for the Nazis, urging him to leave the state of São Paulo. Jorge Amado become a deputy for the Communist Party in 1945 and participated in the drafting of constitutional amendments on religious freedom and authors’ rights but voted against the admission of any Japanese immigrants to Brazil during the presidency of Eurico G. Dutra (1946-1951). The Communist Party was regarded unlawful and its registration withdrawn in May 1947 as the Cold War began. In October 1947, Brazil broke off diplomatic relations with the Former Soviet Union. In 1948, Jorge Amado moved to Paris, where he met numerous left-leaning intellectuals and artists, for example, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Picasso (1881-1973). In 1950, Amado moved to Dobříš, Czechoslovakia writing The World and Peace and was awarded the 1951 Stalin International Peace Prize. He then travelled extensively in the Soviet Union, China, Western and Central Europe. Because of his militant writings, he was swiftly translated in China, Korea, Vietnam and the former Soviet Union. However, it is thanks to Jorge Amado’s German translator, Curt Meyer-Clason (1910-2012), that his works were translated and published in the former German Democratic Republic from the 1950s. Some have categorized his novels as socialist realism, influenced by the Soviets, but Jorge Amado tended to refute this. In 1956, after Stalin’s crimes were denounced by Nikita Khrushchev (1894- 1971), Jorge Amado somewhat changed his approach to writing, returning to his Bahian roots. On his return to Brazil he worked for the Globo TV network. Adaptations of his works as soap operas - telenovelas - would make his best-selling fiction even more popular both in Brazil and abroad. The soap opera Gabriela, Cravo and Canela was first broadcast in 1975 and there was a remake in 2012. Globo TV network sold the broadcasting rights to various countries. Portuguese-speaking countries learned a lot of via this medium. Many themes recur in Jorge Amado’s fiction: local Bahian myths and history, Afro-Brazilian traditions brought by slaves from various parts of Africa, mixed races and religious syncretism, illustrated, for example, by Candomblé. It originated in Brazil from a blend of the Catholic faith and African religious traditions. Jorge Amado practiced it and became an ‘Obá de Xangô’ (Oba of Shango). His texts contain a broad record of the Bahian variety of Portuguese. In addition, they also contain a catalogue of local rude, offensive and derogatory words. Equally, there is significant debauchery and bawdy discourse in his stories. Some of his stories are unsuitable for young readers and many schools in Brazil do not include his novels in their curricula. There is an interesting interview by Clarice Lispector with Jorge Amado (Manchete, 1975). In one of the exchanges, she asked him to describe his own books. Jorge Amado replied: São os livros que eu posso fazer. Busco fazê-los o melhor que posso. São rudes, sem finuras nem filigranas de beleza; são, por vezes, ingênuos, sem profundezas psicológicas e sem angústias universais; são pobres de linguagem e muitíssima coisa mais. São livros simples de um contador de história da Bahia. They are the books which I manage to write. I try to make them as good as possible. They are rude, without any shade of refinement or filigree of beauty; they are naïve at times without either psychological depth or universal

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anguish; their language is poor and loads more. They are simple books of a Bahian storyteller. [N.K.]

Jorge Amado always aimed at appealing to the masses with his plain writing. He also considered that translations into other languages would be easier as well. He was a best-selling author as well as a successful entrepreneur.

Our book club discussed his Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958) in the first year and Dona Flor and her two husbands (1966). The post for the latter is available at https://sistemas.mre.gov.br/kitweb/datafiles/Londres/en-us/file/cul-bookclub- 14-donaflor.pdf

Further details about his life and works are available at the site of the Brazilian Academy of Letters: http://www.academia.org.br/abl/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?sid=244 and

The ‘Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado’, launched on Jorge Amado’s 70th birthday, is housed in an impressive blue colonial building in Largo do Pelourinho (its official name is José de Alencar Square). Readers can view Jorge Amado’s archives there: http://www.jorgeamado.org.br/

About Candomblé

(2009) Léo Neto, N. A., Brooks, S. E. Alves, R. R.N. ‘From Eshu to Obatala: animals used in sacrificial rituals at Candomblé "terreiros" in Brazil’ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1746-4269-5-23

Enjoy your reading!

2018- the year of #LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

Attendance is free, but booking is essential: [email protected]

©Nadia Kerecuk Creator & Convenor of the © Brazilian Bilingual Book Club

@BrazilEmbassyUK

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