BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB | JORGE AMADO | 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. 1 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 Bahia 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 Sergipe 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. Brazil 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 2 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. 3 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 (Zona da Mata) and sertão . The narrow zone stretches from the states of Rio Grande do Norte to Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, 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) 4 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) 5 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.