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

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BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB|G.M. (JOSÉ DE ALENCAR (1829-1877)| – PERFIL DE MULHER| 18th January 2018 6.30-9 PM YEAR FOUR of the Brazilian Bilingual Book Club – Embassy of in London 2018- the year of #LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

Senhora -Perfil De Mulher (1875)

translated as

SENHORA - PROFILE OF A WOMAN (1994)

A riveting tale of how a woman ends up buying a husband & a beguiling love story, too!

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

A masterly early Brazilian psychological novel, with a very 21st century feel, exploring the meaning of marriage … as a commercial venture & suitably convenient arrangement.

Appearances are deceptive as Aurora shows off her trophy husband during her promenades in fashion-conscious Rio de Janeiro.

Before you notice, you will have been drawn into the evolving mind games with vivid background ‘photographs’ of the landscapes particularly of souls/minds.

Sheer pleasure in the act of looking!

Masterly storytelling, from the pen of the most Brazilian of souls, debating timeless moral and ethical themes in the lifespan of human relationships in their multiple guises and metamorphoses.

Intertextual references abound: Shakespearean drama, English novel traditions, Sir Walter Scott, Feuillet’s Monsieur Camors-type character construction, Byronian poetry, G. Sandian morality, Balzacian philosophy, Gérard de Nerval’s Aurélia & Camors, Machado de Assis (Ressureição, Contos Fluminenses) and more metamorphosed into a delightful, discreetly erotic, and thought-provoking Fluminense (=Brazilian) novel!

DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS:

ENGLISH Senhora Profile of a Woman (1994) translated by Catarina Feldmann Edinger ISBN-10: 029270450X ISBN-13: 978-0292704503

PORTUGUESE 1875 Senhora – Perfil de Mulher

Various editions available in Brazil

Free download from:

First part: https://digital.bbm.usp.br/bitstream/bbm/4646/1/001813-1_COMPLETO.pdf

Second part: https://digital.bbm.usp.br/bitstream/bbm/4645/1/001813-2_COMPLETO.pdf or http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/bv000139.pdf

SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATION

Senhora -Perfil de Mulher is one of the late novels, published in June/July 1875 and the third of a trilogy signed under one of the author’s pennames ‘G.M.’ , which has the appendix ‘Profile of a Woman’ after the name of the woman character in the title. 2

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

Lucíola was published in 1862, Diva in 1864. The latter two carry the name of the main character but the last one is entitled ‘Senhora’ meaning ‘Mrs., Lady, Ma’am’ and the reader soon finds out that the name of the lady of the third novel – Aurélia Camargo.

The first name of the main character is Aurélia and evokes references to classical literature. From the Latin family name Aurelius, derived from the Latin aureus (from aurum, gold) which means ‘golden’. A number of minor early saints had this name (e.g. Aurelia of Strasburg (4th century), Aurelia of Regensburg (died 1027, Catholic saint)) had this name because of the meaning ‘golden’ and not as a reference to the Latin family. Also, the mother of mother of Julius Caesar (100 BC-44 BC) was Aurelia Cotta (120 BC-54 BC).

There are various extant editions of the 1875 publication of Senhora by the leading publishing house and bookshop at the time - B.L. Garnier, founded in1844 and operated until 1936. The front cover also tells us that the publisher was the Publisher- Editor of the Historical Institute (located at Rua do Ouvidor 69, Rio de Janeiro). Originally, the novel appeared two volumes. The first volume carries a curious note to reader at the end of Volume one. It states that Senhora and the preceding two novels attributed to the author (G.M.) are not his own – the alleged author is but an editor of a story to which he became privy thanks to its main ‘actors’ and that it is a true story. A hint perhaps that it is based on some true characters. Equally, he elaborates on the heightened expressive language, which he thought of toning it down, but gave up as he did not think he should remove the hues, which the colourist had included initially. He concludes the woman stoutly resists all seductions and impulses of her own passions and does not fall prey to sensations and that, in fact she embodies the heroism of virtue in her noble stance. It is signed as ‘J. de AL.’ It seems that this note to the reader creates an intermission foreshadowing nuances of the forthcoming parts. It seems to add an element of playfulness – a sort of game- playing with the reader, and very modern, reminding us of Machado de Assis. Notably, it hints at possible real-life story on which the novel could have been based, which has been overlooked in Brazilian literary commentary. It should be noted that the translation into English places the note to the reader at the beginning of the novel and, by the same token, misses some of the literary devices aptly used by José de Alencar. In the second volume, after the end, we find an additional eight-page Note (pages 241-8) with a preamble which tells us that the feuilleton of Jornal do Commercio (founded in 1824, the oldest newspaper in Latin America, ceased paper publications in 2016) had published two witty letters signed by a Paula, a name of a woman. Following the publication of Paula’s letters, a friend of hers (a woman as well) produced an answer discussing the book and making remarks about its content. 3

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

It comments that ‘as studies of literary criticism are rare amongst us, without disparaging anyone, we reproduce the letter so that the readers can judge it for themselves.’

O folhetim do Jornal do Commercio, escripto por uma penna elegante inseriu a propósito deste romance duas espirituosas cartas assignadas com o nome feminino de Paula. Logo depois appareceu na mesma folha uma amiga da escriptora, a discutir as observações e reparos contidos naquellas cartas acerca do livro. Como sejam raros entre nós os estudos de critica litteraria, sem fermento de despeito, aqui transcrevemos essa carta afim de que o leitor julgue por si da procedência das censuras.

The letter is fascinating. The friend tells Paula de Almeida in the fashionable Laranjeiras borough about a visit to the Itamaraty cascade, where Luiza had showed

Paula’s two letters and how the group discussed the novel. This reminds us of social media chatter in our days, but the letter contains various relevant points including discussions of other authors and their works. As the writer of the reply had not read the novel before, the group seemingly asked her to write their comments on their behalf. She writes from Petrópolis on 2nd May. A reference to some woman literary critic perhaps?

By discussing the construction of the souls of characters, which rendered in 21st century terminology- would be read as ‘minds, mentality’ (soul as commonly translated from the French esprit or Slavovic дух/душа in 19th c. meant wit, intellect, manner of

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT thinking/reasoning), thus the reference to psychological novel makes sense as it was also the terminology used in the incipient science of psychology in the second half of the 19th century. The translator into English missed this, and muddled it with ‘psychic’ … The letter writer adds a comment on how characters could be constructed – dramatic as in Shakespeare or philosophical as in Balzac but goes on to remind Paula of how Octave analogy, which appears in the novel.

In addition, the anonymous letter writer adds a curious post scriptum asserting she is not acquainted with the author, neither is she an admirer as she has never met him. She concludes by stating that very much like she appreciates beauty/marvels, she does not ask the book about the brain who thought it or the hand which wrote it.

The novel became a bestseller and continues in print to date. The translation into English appeared in Senhora Profile of a Woman (1994) translated by Catarina Feldmann Edinger (1944-2006) and published by the University of Texas Press in Austin. There is an In Memoriam piece about her in the Translation Journal 2007 http://translationjournal.net/journal/39feldmann.htm

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

Her introduction is, similarly to other introductions to translated works, a single point of view at a particular time and tries perhaps too hard to fit the novel into her own research work ignoring some key clues contained in the text. The part in which she speaks about the challenges in translating J. de Alencar is the sort of typical litany of complaints, which in fact show the lack of knowledge of language and cultural milieu in which it evolves. Needless to say, translation of classics requires wide-ranging research and acquaintance with the intellectual atmosphere of the time and solid linguistic knowledge. Senhora was published two years before the death of the author and as our book club members will recall, there were early translations of his novels and O Guarany, which certainly provide any translator with invaluable resources. The translation does not include the Note which appears at the end of the 1875 edition, briefly outlined above. The fourth part Resgate is translated too literally - the word ‘redemption’ would be a better rendition of the sense. There is a film adaptation by the prolific film and TV series director Geraldo Vietri (1927-1996) Senhora made in 1976. The soundtrack is by the notable singer Francisco Petrônio (1923-2007). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN0kbZ9Tui8 There are multiple references to singing, music and opera, which operate as a vibrant sound background which jointly with the many acts of looking or ways of seeing generates a series of synesthetic sequences. The reference to portrait paintings contributes to the whole landscape of imagination created by the act of reading. It is a novel, which deserves to be reread and re-appraised. Equally, it should not be reduced to banal monetary/financial arguments as it contains much more. J. de Alencar was ahead of his time and touched on moral and ethical issues, which are timeless and perhaps have gained even more relevance in the 21st century world.

BIOGRAPHY

JOSÉ MARTINIANO DE ALENCAR JÚNIOR (1829-1877)

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

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José Martiano de Alencar’s legacy remains invaluable to this date; his oeuvre is a testimony of his aspiration to ‘brazilianize’ the . He can be credited with the creation of the Brazilian literature, and by the same token, with forging a national identity and delving into mythmaking, nation building, mixing of races and recovering various aspects of the history of the whole country. For him, the Brazilian literature similarly to the Brazilian nation is independent from Portugal but heir to the significant achievements of the Portuguese people. Ideas of national identity had been developing and effervescing following the independence of Brazil in 1822. Significantly, those debates echoed those, which had been unravelling throughout 19th Europe. Various commentators argue that his works represent the spirit, heart and soul of Brazilians.

He wrote the so-called ‘Indianist’, urban and psychological, regional and historical novels and much more. Furthermore, his writings introduce a novelty, a fictionalization of history, as the narratives about the native indigenous peoples of Brazil that existed at the time were those of either missionaries or adventurers. José de Alencar identified this lacuna and set out to write from the standpoint of a citizen of the young nation, Brazil.

Considering the relevance and breadth of his oeuvre for the intellectual history of Brazil, it is rather disappointing that it has been relatively neglected. It could be argued that the current limited scholarship is a reflection of the bias as he became best known for the label ‘indianist’. The fact is that his oeuvre represents a limitless source of appraisal of the emerging institutions in the first century of the independence of Brazil and the all-pervading sense of Brazilianness, or Brazilian national identity. His works contain in-depth critical analyses of those institutions and the people that led them, ruthlessly pointing out failures, such as corruption, in them.

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

José de Alencar was born in the town of Messejana in the State of Ceará on 1st May 1829 and his family moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1830 as his father, formerly a governor of Ceará, became a senator and had to move to the capital to pursue his political career. During his childhood and teenage years, José de Alencar was known as ‘Cazuza’.

He read law (in São Paulo with one year in Olinda). He returned to Rio de Janeiro practicing as a talented lawyer specializing in various legal matters (e.g. habeas corpus, democratic representation, constitutional affairs, electoral reform, abolition of slavery, etc). He was a voracious reader from an early age and read J. Stuart Mill and various European and universal authors.

J. de Alencar was a founder member of the Brazilian Bar Association in 1843 and served as the Minister for Justice (1868–70) during the reign of Dom Pedro II and resigned following a disagreement with the Emperor. This caused a great deal of resentment in the author considering the significant contributions he had made. He also served as a deputy. The author returned to his law office; also he developed various activities as a journalist, playwright, linguist/philologist, ethnographer and historian.

As a journalist, he would become involved in various controversies. Under the pen name Ig, he wrote a fierce criticism in Cartas sobre a Confederação dos Tamoios in the Rio de Janeiro daily newspaper regarding the 1856 epic poem Confederação dos Tamoios by Domingos Gonçalves de Magalhães, Viscount of Araguaia (1811-1882), a favourite of the Emperor Dom Pedro II. Alencar produced a critique of the contemporary romantics advancing his own literary and aesthetic theory. Often engaging in polemics, particularly through the feuilleton articles and chronicles (Ao correr da pena) for Correio Mercantil from 1854 and, later a series of controversial letters, under the pen name Erasmo (inspired by Desiderius Erasmus), Letters to the Emperor and Letters to the People (nation); to the Viscount of Itaboraí on the Financial Crisis, to the Marquis of Olinda and the New Political Letters to the Emperor highlighting failures to deal with various topical issues of institutions. Following the publication of the first series, the real name of Erasmo was uncovered but he continued to use it in that series. He also wrote under the pseudonyms G.M., J. de AL and SENIO.

His works for theatre are equally relevant. He wrote plays and also an operetta A Noite de São João (The Eve of the Feast of St John). Some of his plays came under the scrutiny of the censor instigating a debate about the state of the Brazilian literature. His abolitionist views are present in several plays, including Mãe (‘Mother’, 1860). The Jesuit is a play that contains a severe critique of the role of the Jesuits in Brazil. A theatre named after him was conceived of at the end of the 19th century, the Theatro José de Alencar in , capital of Ceará, located at the square that carries the name of the author as well, a historic listed building inaugurated in 1910, which has become an arts centre.

José de Alencar collected oral poetry and songs in the northeast known under the title O nosso cancioneiro, a series of letters and commentaries sent to Joaquim Serra in 1874. Luís da Câmara Cascudo (1898 —1986), the notable anthropologist and ethnographer was the first to regard O nosso cancioneiro as an invaluable primary source of Brazilian north-eastern folklore and ethnography.

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

Alencar argued that he was writing in the Brazilian language. He even outlined a grammar for Brazilian Portuguese, which reveals significant knowledge of contemporary ideas on grammatical theory.

Iracema, an anagram of America, is a paradigm in Brazilian novel writing. Machado de Assis, his contemporary, hailed it as a masterpiece in January 1866. Notably, the Brazilian modernists would revisit his works and read them critically using various components of José de Alencar’s original ideas, particularly in the context of the 1922 Week of Modern Art. There are various confluences, for instance, in the characters and plot of Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma and José de Alencar’s Iracema and O Guarany. Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) refers to Iracema in his 1928 Manifesto Antropófago.

José de Alencar married Georgina Augusta Cochrane in 1864. She was the daughter of a wealthy businessman and homeopathic doctor, Dr Thomas Cochrane (cousin of Lord Cochrane)who had published a very popular book on Homeopathy (six editions from 1849: Medicina Doméstica Homoeopathica ou Guia da Arte de Curar Homeoepathicamente ) and was developing railways and created the tram company Carris de Ferro in Rio de Janeiro in 1859, subsequently taken over by the Baron of Mauá. José and Georgina had six children. Mario Cochrane de Alencar (1872 –1925) followed in the footsteps of his father and remained a loyal friend of Machado de Assis. Augusto Cochrane de Alencar (1865-1827) was a diplomat and politician, served as an interim foreign minister (1919) and ambassador of Brazil to the United States.

José de Alencar’s life was relatively short. In 1876, Alencar travelled with his wife and six children to Europe planning to stay for two years in order to recover his health. He had been suffering from tuberculosis. They visited England, France and Portugal but returned to Brazil eight months into their trip as Alencar’s health began to deteriorate. He passed away on 12th December 1877.

List of Main works:

Novels: Cinco Minutos (1856); (1857); O Guarani (1857); Lucíola (1862); Diva (1864); Iracema (1865); (1865 — 1866); O Gaúcho (1870); (1870); O Tronco do Ipê (1871); (1871 — 1873); (1871); Sonhos d’Ouro (1872); Alfarrábios (1873); (1874); (1875); Senhora (1875); Encarnação (1893 — posthumous)

Theatre plays: O Crédito (1857); Verso e Reverso (1857); O Demônio Familiar (1857); As Asas de um Anjo (1858); Mãe (1860); A Expiação (1867); O Jesuíta (1875)

Chronicles: Ao Correr da Pena (1874)

Autobiography: Como e Por Que sou Romancista (1873)

Critical and other writings: Cartas sobre A Confederação dos Tamoios (1856); Cartas Políticas de Erasmo (1865 — 1866); O Sistema Representativo (1866)

Further details and websites (in Portuguese):

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

#LiteraryGreatsBRAZIL #ReadBRAZILIT

• José de Alencar was a Patron of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Chair 23): http://www.academia.org.br/abl/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?sid=239 • There is a museum and cultural centre dedicated to the author – Casa José de Alencar (the former home of author’s father) in Messejena and some of his works can be seen at http://www.cja.ufc.br/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45 &Itemid=28 • Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural de Arte e Cultura Brasileiras: http://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/pessoa3332/jose-de- alencar

• Most of his works are available for free download from the Brazilian National Library: http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/pesquisa/PesquisaObraForm.do?select_action =&co_autor=71

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

Nadia Kerecuk Creator and Convenor of the © Brazilian Bilingual Book Club of the Embassy of Brazil in London

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