Lenguajes y Voces en La Literatura Brasilera

8/14/2019 Lenguajes y Voces en La Literatura Brasilera

1/23

"Languages" and "Voices" in Brazilian LiteratureAuthor(s): Eva BuenoSource: Revista de Letras, Vol. 36 (1996), pp. 189-210Published by: UNESP Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita FilhoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27666671.

Accessed: 09/11/2013 16:45

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

UNESP Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filhois collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

preserve and extend access toRevista de Letras.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 181.15.183.213 on Sat, 9 Nov 2013 16:45:02 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=unesphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/27666671?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/27666671?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=unesp


2/23

"LANGUAGES" AND "VOICES"IN BRAZILIAN LITERATURE

Eva BUENO1

ABSTRACT: This essay is a comparative study of three works of Brazilianliterature: A came, by Julio Ribeiro, published in 1888; A horn da estrela,

The Hour of the Star, by Clarice Lispector, published in 1977, and O cobrador, by Rubem Fonseca, published in 1979. In this study, I initiallyinvestigate matters related to the Portuguese language and its relationship

with a possible "space" which it gives - or denies - to some characters,while it negotiates its own space in relation both to other European

languages and to African languages present in national territory. As asecond step, I raise some questions about post modernity and theplacement of Brazilian literature in relation to postmodernist postulatesinvented in the the first world and hastily adopted everywhere. My maininterest throughout is to question the validity of affirmations that literature- some kinds of literature - can be a privileged space for the oppressedto speak.

KEYWORDS: Language; voice; Brazil; lawlessness; postmodernity; Brazilian literature.

Introduction1992 marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus' "discovery" of

America. It also marked the 500th anniversary of another event which,especially forus, students, critics and teachers of literature, is of equal

1 Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese - College Place - Penn State University - DuBois- Pennsylvania - 15801-3199 - USA.

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 189

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/23

- if not more - importance: the publication of Antonio de Nebrija'sGram?tica de la lengua castellana . In his Gram?tica, Nebrija states tothe queen that "siempre la lengua fue compa?era del imperio"(1926,p.3). Indeed, as we all know, the conquest of America and the submission of its native inhabitants, the enslavement of Africans, have,for these more than 500 years, gone hand in hand with the systematiceffort to erase languages, and cultures, so that European languages,culture and population could take the space previously occupied by the

many peoples that lived inAmerica before Columbus' arrival. 1992 alsomarked the 500th anniversary of the resistance to this massive attemptat neutralization or outright destruction of anything non-European inthe American soil.

Obviously, itwould be naive to see this resistance as a linear, welldemarcated movement, since it has happened in different ways, sometimes as silent resistance, and sometimes as a loud scream from the

marginalized peoples. The slave insurrections - quilombos, in Brazil,or the revolution of 1791 to 1804 inHaiti - Indian resistance throughout the Americas since the sixteenth century, are some of the mostobvious examples of these different kinds of resistance. However - andthis iswhat makes the study of texts so fascinating - resistance hassometimes infiltrated into the dominant discourse which organizes thedistribution of power. In the case of works of literature, they often openthemselves to be turned "inside out" to reveal how resistance wasbuilt up precisely as a reflection about the power of representation. Inother words: the same representational process employed in "othering"those with little or no access to power in the whole continent of America- Indians, Blacks, women, homosexuals - seems to have sometimesturned itself around and broken open a space in which the "other"could represent himself/herself. In this paper, Iwant to interrogatethis process in three Brazilian fictional texts: A carne, published in1888 by Julio Ribeiro; A hora da estrela [TheHour of the Star], byClarice Lispector, of 1977; and O cobrador, by Rubem Fonseca, published in 1979.

Many aspects of these three works solicit my attention. Eventhough the first one, A carne, was obviously written at a historicaltime very different from the late twentieth century Brazil of both Ahora da estrela [TheHour of the Star] and O cobrador, it constitutes anexample ofwhat Mikhail Bakhtin (1981, p.12) wrote as a peculiar characteristic of languages: they throw light on each other. Indeed, forBakhtin, "one language can ... see itself only in the light of another

190 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



4/23

language". What interests me most directly is how in Brazil, in different historical moments these languages evolved an almost open conflict to determine which would be the "light" and which the "lighted".To focus even more, Iwant to inquire whether the presence of polys?mieechoes necessarily means that a space has been carved up by/for thedifferent voices within the language. Or, to put it a little differently,can we not say that the presence of numerous voices represents their"waste" in the historical context? Ultimately, Iwant to ask whether theregistering of the marginal - as a linguistic device or as a "voice" en

meshed in the battle of "voices" - necessarily represents an openingthrough which the subaltern/marginal/other can be heard and his/her

wishes, rights, desires acted upon.These are matters of no little consequence, and the discussion of

such topics is complex. However, the attempt at understanding theissues is of utmost importance, because what is at stake in the heartof this discussion is, as Foucault (1984) says in "The Order of Discourse", desire and power. As Foucault writes,

discourse is not simply that which manifests (or hides) desire - it is also theobject of desire; and since, as history constantly teaches us, discourse is not

merely that which translates struggles or systems of domination, but is thething for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power whichis to be seized, (p. 110)

In these three texts Ipropose to analyse, there is a close relationship between language and the material and social conditions displayedin them. Moreover, precisely because in Brazil the Portuguese language

has had to establish its privileged position as the language of powerthrough its fight against both the Indian and the African languages,this language, in itself, has become a site where the very ideology ofthe Brazilian nation rests some of its force. That is to say, althoughthere is the lure of taking language for its face value, as if it "means

what it says", there is the possibility of taking language as a farmoreradically vexed device - a powerful force which can actually define oreven create social, political, racial and gender constituencies, or, moreto my point, language can be seen as the privileged space where thenegation of these social, political, racial and gender constituencies getsaccomplished.

To illustrate this point, letme refer to Bakhtin's discussion of discourse in the novel. He states that

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 191



5/23

any concrete discourse (utterance) finds the object atwhich itwas directed already as itwere overlainwith qualifications, open to dispute, charged withvalue, already enveloped in an obscuring mist - or,on the contrary, by the "light" of alien words thathave already been spoken about it. (1981, p.276)

What Iwant to do here is to open up the dispute, and to show thatalien words had already been spoken when these texts I analyze were

written, and that the display of several languages and sub-languages inthem constitute amedley of competing strategies for the discussion ofthe arguments embodying the polisemic instance of the reality/realities

which they try to represent.

The language of the fleshWe will begin with A came, for chronological reasons, and also

because the discussion of the literary period this novels springs fromis fundamental to the understanding of the two other texts, The Hourof the Star and O cobrador. My choice of a naturalist novel to openthis discussion is due to the fact that the very nature of the move

ment, at least as itwas constituted in Brazil, is an example of whatCarolyn Porter (1990, p.272) has stated as the moment when "the voicesof those 'othered' by the dominant discourse acquire a new authority,no matter how marginalized or effaced they might be." However, evenas I acknowledge the crucial importance of the presence of the others'voices in the text, I am also aware that, as a cultural artifact which isnot available to all in society, the text alone, the novel alone does notnecessarily guarantee that the "other," the subaltern, will be heard inthe wider society.

Since A carne has traditionally been considered a naturalist text,let me offer some brief historical perspective on the nature of the

movement in Brazil. By the time the first Brazilian naturalist novelsappeared in the 1880's, the country was going through an extremelycharged political moment, when the need for a unitary idea of thenation - seen as necessary by the forces at work in the moment oftransformation of the country from a monarchic to a republican regime - either relativizes the naturalist expressions of a mechanicistview of life, or sees it as the representations of regional problems.

192 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



6/23

Another problem which has called my attention to the naturalist textsis the fact that is has been these texts, almost exclusively in all Brazilian literary history, which have been critically seen as form or asexamples of the application of a foreign model in Brazilian literature.As I see them, the Brazilian novels traditionally considered naturalist portray tensions caused by the realignment, or, better still, thesudden visibility, of elements such as women, blacks, mulattoes, andhomosexuals. The standard reading has seen this appearance as a

mere function of a "mechanicist" view of existence, or a naturalism'spreference of the ugly, lowly, and revolting aspects of life. However,in my own view, for late nineteenth-century Brazilians the idea ofBrazil was going out of control precisely because the political mo

ment - the beginning of the republican regime - facilitated the callfor a centralized idea of Brazil .which could be summarized underthe positivistic motto "Order and Progress".2

Critic Flora Sussekind (1984, p. 32) has stated that the naturalistnovels represent a space where nationality, science and literatureconjugate in a unitary vision which presents itself as truthful to thereader. Very much to the contrary, I argue that they question thesevery issues in a way that makes them very crucial registers of thestruggle against the formation of any unitary imaginary of Brazil asa republican, progressive, totalized entity. They register this struggle by the appropriation of the dominant discourse itself. That is, thevoices of those who have historically been "othered" acquire visibility, authority, even when this authority and visibility come disguisedas yet another effort to efface them. Carolyn Porter, writing aboutthe presence of these marginal voices in literature (1990, p.268), saysthat "nomatter how marginalized or effaced they may have been,"they "may be understood not as always already neutralized by theideologies they must speak through in order to be heard, but ratheras inflecting, distorting, even appropriating such ideologies, genres,

values so as to alter their configuration".In the beginning of A carne there is/are one/two dedications to

Zola, in French, followed by a Latin citation. I pass over the questionof the fact that the text, as printed, is full of mistakes. The dedication/^ read/s:

2 Iargue this point in amore detailed fashion in "BrazilianNaturalism and the Politics of Origin".

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 193



7/23

Quoi qui'il en soit, voici mon oeuvre.Agr?erez-vous la d?dicace que je vous en fais?Pourquoi pas? Les rois, quoique gorg?s de richesses,ne d?daignent pas toujous les ch?fits cadeaux des pauvres paysans.Permettez que je vous fasse mon hommage complet, lige, de serviteurf?al en empruntant les paroles du po?te florentin: [sic]Tu duca, tu signore, tumaestro.

St. Paul, le 25 janvier 1888.

Jules Ribeiro

On the next page, facing the above quoted text, there is still another dedication, followed by a Latin quotation given as number one:

A. M. EMILE ZOLA

Je ne suis t?m?raire, je n'ai pa [sic] la pr?vention desuivre vos traces; ce n 'est pas pr?tendre suivre vostraces que d'?crire une pauvre ?tude tant soit peu

naturaliste. On ne vous imite pas, on vous admire."Nous nous ?chauffons, dit Ovide, quand le dieu quevit en nous s'agitei": eh bien le tout petit dieu que

vit en mois s'est agit?, et j'ai ?crit La Chair.Ce n'est pas l'Assomoir, ce n'est pas la Cur?e, cen'est pas la Terre; mais, diantre une chandellen'est pas le soleil et pourtant une chandelle?claire.

(1) Est Deus in nobis, agitante celescimus illo.3

One can immediately ask what these two pages in French, before awork obviously written in Portuguese by a Brazilian, are doing in thebeginning of a novel. Several possibilities can be suggested, and amongthe most obvious is the fact that Julio Ribeiro wants to pay homage tohis master, as he himself says in the dedication. But why can't he writethis homage in Portuguese? Or, ifRibeiro ever sent the novel to Zola, isthe homage an end in itself, destined only to flatter the French writer?

3 Obviously, I take no responsibility forRibeiro's, nor for the typist's French. My transcription is anexact copy of the dedications as printed inA came (Ribeiro, 1975).

194 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



8/23

Or maybe the main point Ribeiro wants to make evolves around thecomparison between Zola - "le soleil" - and himself - "une chandelle" -which can be transposed also to the parallel comparison between theFrench language {"lesoleil") and the Portuguese ("une chandelle"). Ribeiroleaves no doubt about which language represents the source of light.

Obviously, it is also possible that, by initially framing his novel with threeforeign languages - French, Italian and Latin - Ribeiro is at once establishing the polys?mie character of the work while disclosing more linguistic barriers. Although it is commonly understood that the Brazilianelite of the time - 1888 - had at least rudimentary knowledge of French,it is a little unlikely that all prospective readers could understand French,Italian and the Latin quotation at the bottom of the page. The fact is that,up to the time of the 1975 edition of the novel both the typesetter andthe proof-reader did not know the French language well enough to catchsome obvious mistakes such as page-setting of the dedication inwrongorder, with the end of the letter being printed before the beginning. (Forthat matter, they did not even know Portuguese well enough, as the

many misspellings in the book show.)How could Ribeiro expect his audience to understand him at the

end of 1888? The answer is: he could not, and therefore he did not.The novel constitutes a series of linguistic and cultural codes whichare not easily accessible. It is, however, at least intriguing that in atime of much needed consensus and centralization about what Brazil

meant, there appears a novel - written by a grammarian, no less - inwhich the Portuguese language is almost lost in the middle of so manyother languages. To make this text even more difficult to understand,the novel's leading female character, Lenita, becomes a kind of vortexinwhich all linguistic, social, moral, and sexual energies in the textbecome at once centralized and neutralized. We need to rememberthat the novel was not written at a time when the linguistic vernacular had some kind of autonomy. Itwas decades later before it attainedit, if ever. According to Neil Larsen (1990, p.83), as late as 1930 the

Brazilian "[l]anguage would appear to be, formally speaking, a modelpractice of consumptive production by virtue of its capacity to 'produce' the world by engulfing itwhole" .4At the time A came was published, the Portuguese language, as itwas practiced in Brazil, could

4 Inhis brilliant discussion Larsen clarifies that "consumption" is "the ideallymediating principle"between the colonized and the colonizer's civilization. For Larsen, "[l]anguage's 'consumption'

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 195



9/23

not be a model practice of any kind of consumption, much less production. By writing his flattering dedication to Zola in French, Ribeiromarks the extremely important role languages play in his novel, anddiscloses the necessity of the incorporation of these other languagesas a function of the Portuguese language itself, while at the same timehe stresses that these languages were not available to be consumed.Paradoxically, it seems that the ability to speak French, or any otherEuropean language, constitutes the hegemonic mark of those who canspeak proper Portuguese.

In fact, nobody understands these levels of the novel, and the criticsattack Ribeiro for the dedication5 and for the presence of languages.Critic Jos? Ver?ssimo is clearly very irritated with the presence of scientific terminology, and calls this Ribeiro's "fixed idea" of showing off hisscientific knowledge and his ability to deal with other languages.However, obtrusive as they might be, it is important to stress that theselanguages appear in the text not always as linguistic acts to whichthe status of a language is given. Some of them appear as registers ofcertain ways of speaking and as written codes. In a sense, however,all of them contribute to the extreme destabilization of the linguistic

matter in the novel. It is no wonder, therefore, that Ver?ssimo, alwaysa keen year for impurities in the language, also ridicules Ribeiro because of certain idiosyncratic orthographic uses:

another puerility in which the grammarian appears isthe special orthography of words in which the groupch appears [he writes] with kh. Thus melankholia,kharacter, etc. Kil?metro is khiliometro, and the [nameof the] capital of Baviera, which has always beentranslated in Portuguese as Munich, is written in the

German form M?nchen. (1978, p. 191)

of theworld is, by virtue of forging autonomy out of culture's own consumptive moment can thenperhaps be more concretely engaged as the process of learning to 'speak' as a single 'language'themultiplicity of cultural practices that, in their mutual separation as instances of 'production,'fail to resist the mediating power of the colonizing circuit of (unequal) exchange" (p.84). As Ihope my own discussion will show, these texts dramatize precisely the resistance to speaking asingle language, the Portuguese language of the colonizer.

5 See, for instance, Jos? Ver?ssimo's reaction to Julio Ribeiro's dedication of the book to Zola,whom he calls "duca, signore e maestro": the critic's anger is not caused by the presence of aforeign language, but by the terms of the homage Ribeiro pays to the French writer (1978,p. 182).

196 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



10/23

Even though these forms do not appear in the 1975 version of thenovel, any literate Brazilian can imagine Verissimo's surprise at theiroccurrence in a time the Portuguese language was going through accommodations which deemed such orthographic mannerisms at leastobsolete, and possibly offensive, because they challenged the authority of those whose job itwas to determine orthographic changes.6 However, the presence of these forms in the book's original edition serves toshow one more degree of linguistic destabilization. Since the main linguistic code, Portuguese, was not stable enough to decide for one unified orthography, the text becomes a linguistic festival at once showingthe language's porosity and its inadequacy to convey precise meaning.Both Lenita and Barbosa have long "scientific" conversations about thenature and origin of trees, and proceed to give their Latin names,andthese polyglot exchanges are one more register of this unsteady characteristic. InA came language has no center, and the addition of scientificlanguage only heightens its de-centered existence in another language.In a sense, the Portuguese language, although it is the main languagein the novel, becomes a "supplement" to the other languages displayedin the text. Or, on the other hand, because the main language is Portuguese, the others are the necessary supplement, or the anchor whichstabilizes Portuguese in this tempestuous linguistic ocean of Brazil.

There are other registers which signal even more instability. When,about the middle of the novel, the old black witch-doctor JoaquimCambinda gathers some slaves in his shack and starts to perform aceremony, he is greeted as "mganga." The editor explains in a footnote that "mganga" is an African word" which means "lord of the time,distributor of rain" and, by extension, "theologian, priest, teacher"(Ribeiro, 1975, p.63).The black "teacher", however, speaks an almost

unrecognizable Portuguese:- Zel?mo, disse Joaquim Cambinda, uss? pens? b? nu qu? vai faz?,

lap?ssi?

6 I believe that any adult Brazilian can remember some of the ortographic changes that weremandated (from top to bottom) in their lifetime. For younger ones, maybe the only traumaticexperience in this area was the revision of the accents. Suddenly, "ele"was not "ele", for instance.These might seem small changes, but when you have been taught the reasons why some wordshad some kinds of accent, it is difficult to accept that those changes are no more. InVer?ssimo'scase, since he was part of the intellectual elite and therefore in the (ideological) space to reinforcethese changes, Ribeiro's adherence to both old or foreign forms must have been very irritating(and subversive) indeed.

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 197



11/23

- Pens?, mganga.- Intossi, uss? qu? memo si riss? ni riman?ri ri

San Migu? riz?ma?- Qu?, mganga. (p.63) (italics in the original)

A footnote immediately follows, giving a Portuguese version of thedialogue:

- Jer?nimo, voce pensou bem no que voce vai fazer, rapaz?Pensei, mestre.Ent?o voce quer mesmo alistarse na irmandade deS?o Miguel das Almas?- Quero, mestre. (p.63)

- Jer?nimo, have you thought carefully about what youare going to do, my boy?- Yes I did, teacher.- Then you really want to join the fraternity of Saint Michael of Souls?- Yes I do, teacher.

Joaquim Cambinda's language is a departure from the Portuguesenorm, and, because Cambinda is a leader in his (slave) community,his language has its own authority. In other words, Cambinda haspower: he knows his environment, controls it through this knowledgeand uses it to dominate and impose rules on his fellow black people.But Cambinda underestimates his owner's power, and his machinations, intrigues and poisonings are discovered. Cambinda confesses tothe killing of slaves and the poisoning of the whites. It seems that

what the novel has been preparing the reader to understand is thatCambinda's speech, a departure from the Portuguese norm, is of apiece with his handling with natural products of his environment: hederives his power from both. However, since he is a slave, and not awhite man, he can be accorded neither the scientific honors bothBarbosa and Lenita share, nor the recognition for speaking a foreignlanguage, much less for his obvious invention of a new one from the

mixture of Portuguese and an African language. His death comes as apunishment both for his crimes and for his handling of a scientificknowledge which belonged to the whites. His speech, therefore, is thefirst sign of his danger and, in fact, constitutes the symbol of the potential danger of allowing the handling and the mixture of things (andlanguages) that should be kept apart. Both his language and his

198 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



12/23

scientific knowledge are "brasileirismos," a form of degeneration whichcannot be permitted to flourish, since it represents danger. On the onehand, we have languages - French, English, Italian, Latin - which areall status, and on the other hand, we have a new language - mixtureof Portuguese and an African language - which has none. A came is,therefore, an attempt to dramatize this linguistic instability. In thisnovel, language proliferates, as if tomake up for the absent center, because no one single language can encompass all the others. Bakhtin'sdiscussion is again pertinent. According to him,

[e]very concrete utterance of a speaking subject servesas a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forcesare brought to bear. The process of centralization anddecentralization, of unification and disunification,intersect in the utterance; the utterance not onlyanswers the requirements of its own language asan individualized embodiment of a speech act, but itanswers the requirements of heteroglossia as

well; it is in fact an active participant insuch speech diversity. (1981, p.272)

In A carne, the text's own departure from the norm, that is, itschoice of a different orthography, is a rupture of or a "breakwith" theaccepted orthographic norm; the penchant for giving the Latin namesof plants is a rupture with the accepted norm for the novel in the Brazilian literature of the end of the nineteenth century. In sum, thesedeviations were just as unacceptable for a "work of art" as JoaquimCambinda's private branch of knowledge was considered evil, worthless, dangerous, since it could neither be incorporated as capital for

his masters, nor be legitimized by the/a scientific community. Whatseems clear is that in the structural abstraction of language from concrete experience, a certain kind of concession of concrete experienceto linguistic form ismade, but not the concession that form, itself, hasthe status of a language.7

7 Other languages appear in the text. Starting with the dedication in French, Latin and Italian, thetext continues its journey through more French, English and Latin. Barbosa writes to Lenita thathe is looking forward to giving her a "hands-shake" (sic) (Ribeiro, 1975, p.83); later Lenita isreminded of Rabelais when she realizes she ispregnant: "Les b?tes sur leurs ventr?es n'endurantjamais lem?le masculant " (p.141) (italics in the original), and finally, she chooses a Latin expressionto explain to Barbosa why she ismarrying another man: "pater est is quern iustae nuptiaedemonstrant "

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 199



13/23

The hour of the "cobrador"

Roughly one hundred years later, we can see how these anxietiesfirst expressed in naturalist texts such as A came still continue to bean important part of the agenda of Brazilian writers. The two texts

which Iwill analyse now obviously belong to a different aesthetic tradition. In the contemporary Brazil that these texts portray there is no

more room for the witcheries of a Cambinda, or for the absurd display ofknowledge of French, Latin and Italian. As I see it, the matter of language has become, now, the matter of voice, and, in an unavoidable

development, of how this voice is represented.Two texts, A hora da estrela, (1977) by Clarice Lispector, andRubem Fonseca's O cobrador (1979) are exemplary for a consideration of narrative positioning and how it has been affected bypostmodernist practice. I am aware that this practice is a highlyproblematized issue, especially ifwe take in consideration that theterm postmodernism is, itself, the subject of contentions and discussions both in the countries which export and in the countries whichimport the terminology, its significance, and its pertinence. The useof such word - postmodernism - in a Brazilian literary context, hasnecessarily to be very charged. Roberto Schwarz has already thoroughly discussed the implication of such practices in two essays,the memorable and much quoted "As id?ias fora do lugar" (1977) and"Nacional por subtra?ao" (1987).8What Iwant to emphasize, at this

point, is how the fiercely centralizing process which peaked at thedawn of the Republic in 1889 continues to be part of the subject ofliterature at this time of the twentieth century.

The issue, once again, is Brazil. But this Brazil is different fromJulio Ribeiro's Brazil. Now the nation has at last acknowledged thatthere are Blacks, Mulattoes, Asians, and Mesti?os in its midst. Brazil

(p. 154) (italics in the original). These languages, English, French and Latin, however, constitute acommon heritage which can - at least theoretically - be shared by all educated people. Lenitachooses to use French and Latin to give respectability to her plight. When she wants to refer toher love affairwith Barbosa, she uses a secret code in her letter, "cryptographic lines drawn insome code" (p.154) in both are initiates. Similarly, Joquim Cambinda's followers are initiates inhis secret linguistic and ritual code.

8 For Schwarz, "WeBrazilians and Latin-Americans constantly experience with the character ofthe "postigo, inaut?ntico, imitado" of the life we lead. This experience has been a formativeaspect of our critical thinking ever since the times of our independence" (1987, p.29). As a result,Schwarz concludes, our "sense of uneasiness is a fact" (p.29).

200 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



14/23

also has come to recognize the fact that it is not a single, Unitarianentity: the Northeast is not the South, the West is not the East. Andyet, there is a Brazil, a nation composed by Brazilians, and it needs tobe represented. How can a writer account for its diversity? How torepresent this diversity and, at the same time, keep at least the awareness of the impossibility of representing it from the outside? ForLispector, at least in The Hour of the Star, Brazil is a representation ofthe Northeast in Rio de Janeiro. For Fonseca Brazil is the highly contemporary, violent and wholly urbanized Rio de Janeiro. Or to be morespecific, Lispector attempts to incorporate her region into a newer, moreaggressive and powerful hypostization of the entire country. Fonseca,in contrast, appears to take this hypostization for granted - and thenproceed to dismantle it. Iwant to investigate what each text enablesus to infer about what it presumes to know, and whether such presumption, in turn, enables us to generalize about what kind of knowledge, if any, a narration needs to dispense to its narrator as a functionof dispensing knowledge to us. In other words, how has the role of thenarrator changed in these postmodern times, and how can we understand these changes?

How can we understand a narrative project today in which theimperative to convey some truth about real life - life represented becauseit is real - is apparently at the center of the ideological construction fora country's whole region? How to comprehend an actuality which appears always already to be the perpetually exacerbated subject of thevery art which would represent it only by exacerbating it?More to myfocus, fromwhat point of view? As we shall see, inThe Hour of The Starand O cobrador the handling of the role of the narrator will be of crucialimportance for the discussion of these issues.

Brazilian critic Silviano Santiago writes, in "O narrador p?smoderno" (1989), that "the post-modern narrator knows that the "realand the 'authentic' are linguistic constructions" (p.40). Indeed, in TheHour of The Star the narrator is conscious of his role, and starts bysaying that "the story ...will have some seven characters and I amone of the most important among them, of course. I, Rodrigo S. M."(p.13).9Next, he begins to explain his technique: "[this] story [is]patently open and explicit yet holds certain secrets - starting with one ofthe book's titles 'As For the Future,' preceded and followed by a full

9 Iam quoting from the English translation of 1987.

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 201



15/23

stop. Hopefully this need for confinement will ultimately become clear"(p.13). The narrator knows that whatever knowledge he has of his subject is fragmented, because inevitably filtered through his own intricately mediated consciousness. He protests not to know Macab?ia,the heroine, and goes on to speak about himself, thus transforminghis narration into a narrative not only of the story of the girl from thenortheast, but of the exorcism of his own devils as well. Both fictionand reality combine in a conspiratory level of metadiscourse which leadsthe narrator to say,

[f]orgive me if I add something more about myselfsince my identity is not very clear, and when Iwrite I am surprised to find that Ipossess adestiny, (p. 15)

The same anxiety is expressed by the heroine Macab?ia, who "doesnot know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly"(p.15). From the outset, Rodrigo knows that the reality he is creatingis a reality of words; therefore, he is tempted to embellish his writing

with juicy terms: "magnificent adjectives, robust nouns, and verbs soagile that they glide through the atmosphere as they move into action. For surely words are actions?" (p.15). But what kind of actionscan words be? He, Rodrigo, the narrator, senses that between his consciousness and the world there are only words. These words can comefrom the utterances of semi-literate Macab?ia, not from the "masterdiscourses" which organize society: as the narrator says, this is a "simple story," and terms such as capitalism, exploitation, or social justice, never get mentioned. The narrator abides with the character, the

most common of beings, "one girl among thousands of others like her"(p. 13),who is not "even aware that she live[s] in a technological society where she was a mere cog in the machine" (p.29). The narratorconfesses that he is biased, incapable of dealing with the subject, en

meshed in the subject's life, and yet, unable to feel the reality of asubject which ismade only of words.

Because it ismade of words which he did not invent, this subjectismade of words which are already there, already used by somebodyin the past. Answering his own question on why he writes, Rodrigosays: "Everything, all that, yes, history is history. However, let's notforget that the word is the fruit of the word. The word has to look likethe word" (p.20). Since a word always resembles another word, it has

202 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



16/23

always existed, and therefore has always been there forwhoever wantedto use it. Because Macab?ia is a word, and Rodrigo's work ismade of

words, it is inevitable that his characters will look like other words,other works. For instance, Macab?ia, the "crossbreed between one'quiddity' and another," who seemed "to have been conceived from

some vague notion in the minds of starving parents" (p.57) resemblesthe character Leonardo, inMemorias de um sargento de milicias (1852)[Memories of aMilitia Lieutenant}. However, the difference between

the two characters ismore important than merely the fact that Leonardois "the fruit of a treading and a pinch" :he is a picaro whose destiny isorganized by a narrative instance which still believes that there is hopefor the Leonardos of Brazil. Macab?ia's reality is very much one in

which hope does not exist.Her boyfriend Olimpio is also a word derived from a previous one.

Rodrigo says that Olimpio is a sertanejo who has already washed hishonor in blood. A "sertanejo", Rodrigo says, is "above all, patient"(p.65).Here we have a clear reference to the 1902 Euclides da Cunha's Ossert?es, where he says that "[a] sertanejo is, above all, strong" (p.81).The difference between the characterization of the sertanejo made byda Cunha and the one made by Lispector signals, perhaps, a less naive knowledge of the matter: the use of the word "patient," adjectivefor calm and noun for sick and bed-ridden, re-visits the characterization of the sertanejos in a Brazilian milieu in order to bring them up totheir present reality: they are no longer strong; they are just patient,long-suffering, and finally unhealthy.

At this point it is convenient to inquire whether the characterization ofMacab?ia and Olimpio are what has been called "pastiche."Indeed, they seem to embody what Fredric Jameson (1983) has discussed as pastiche: "in a world in which stylistic innovation is nolonger possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speakthrough the masks and with the voice of the styles in the imaginary

museum" (p. 115). And yet, we must ask whether, in the process ofimitating the "dead styles," the writer Lispector is not bringing thesestyles back to life. Or, to place the question closer to the meta-realitywithin The Hour of the Star, is the narrator not speaking throughthe mask of Macab?ia? Or is Rodrigo M. to be seen as a surrogatefor Lispector, and both as only parasites of the poor and miserable

Macab?ia? Or, maybe, we can see this situation as a kind of highlevel cannibalism: Rodrigo feeds on words, expressions, impressions

which have already appeared in Brazilian literature; he feeds as well

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 203



17/23

on Macab?ia and Olimpio in order to be able to represent them. Butat the same time he "feeds" on the life of his characters, Rodrigocomplains that Macab?ia has taken control of him, is "eating" him.

What we have here, then, is more than cannibalism; it is "wordbalism" of the third degree: Lispector invented the narrator Rodrigo

M. - himself a word made of bits and parts of other words - and hefeeds on the words he invents, that is, on Macab?ia, Olimpio, andthe other characters.

Ultimately, this structure exposes the author's attempt tomake ofThe Hour of the Star a dramatization of an (im)possible dialogue. Nevertheless, even as the reader can see the effort of this dramatization,it becomes clear that what is really at stake here is the continuation ofthe (re)production of Macab?ia's speech, now coded as "language," andlanguage - or the expression of it - is the passport which will allow herinto the society or damn her to eternal marginality. Macab?ia's language,like the language of Joaquim Cambinda of A carne, is a corrupted,

misspelled Portuguese. Her voice, however, is not violent; hers is thehumble, silent voice of a sacrificial victim upon whose blood the big citythrives.

There is no way to deny that The Hour of the Star tries to tell astory which makes a truth claim about an actual Brazilian society. Therehas got to be some level inwhich the elusive reality of Macab?ias andOlimpios gets represented. But how can Macab?ias and Olimpios represent themselves? Is that representantion possible in terms of a Brazilian society raided by multinationals, crushed under the eternally recurring economic disasters? Do the Macab?ias and Olimpios speak?Can they speak at all without the mediation of a narrator who belongsin a different social class? In a society ruled by oligarchies dating backto the discovery and colonization, the only possibility for the Macab?iasand Olimpios to acquire strength and some sort of representationalpower is through either the witty challenging of the establishmentportrayed inMemorias de um sargento de milicias, or through the revolts of the kind portrayed both by Cunha's Os sert?es, ormore especially by the violent resolution of Rubem Fonseca's O cobrador. In thisshort story, part of a book with the same name, it seems that Fonsecatakes up the representational anxieties present in Lispector's text and

works them towards a violent solution.The story of O cobrador is narrated in the first person by the main

character himself. He starts with his visit to the dentist. What seemsto be at first a humorous account of one more dental experience be

204 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



18/23

comes the wick of a bomb of violence. The cobrador explodes after hehas to keep silent during the dentist's work in his mouth, a time during which he is told that "the root is rotten". After shooting the dentist in the leg, the narrator/character goes to the city, where be beginshis task of charging the world what it owes him: "school, girl-friend,sound system, respect, ham sandwich from the bar at Vieira FazendaStreet, ice-cream, football" (1989, p.16).10 This is just the beginning of

what he wants back from society. Inhis furor to collect what he thinkshe has the right to, he rapes and kills and, at the end, his actionsacquire a political meaning. The "politicization" of his violence is aturning point in his understanding of the world; he realizes that hehas a mission: "now Iknow that if every person who's been screwedup did as Ido the world would be better, more just. ... to kill one byone ismere mysticism, and I am free from that crap " (p.28).

In this short story, it seems that the narrative comes unmediated,uncontaminated by a consciousness other than that of the cobradorhimself. It is as if the "hero" is the sole organizing principle of thenarrative, and the reader has to accede to his reading of his reality. Inthe case of Lispector's The Hour of the Star and Rubem Fonseca's Ocobrador, the narrator's role is dramatized in two different ways whichturn out to deliver the same sense of proximity and distance from thesubject. The seemingly different technique comes, perhaps, from thedegree of mediation Lispector wants to imprint to her narrative. InThe Hour of the Star, the heroine, precisely because she is a womanwhose existence is communicated through the consciousness of themale narrator, embodies what Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard (1984, p.81) saysabout postmodernity itself:

The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward theunpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of goodforms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to sharecollectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for newpresentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a strongersense of the unpresentable.

Inhis attempt to speak about Macab?ia, Rodrigo S. M. has to relyon the enmeshing of her conscience with his own; that is, he can only

10 Iuse my own translation of O cobrador in this discussion.

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 205



19/23

imagine representing her because, as he says, he has fallen in love withher. His incapability to represent her to the reader is further complicatedbecause of his self-consciousness about the pervasiveness of the powerofwords. Not coincidentally, this woman Macab?ia, whom he, RodrigoS.M. has invented with words, also loves words. She herself is a typist

who occasionally falls in love with words and fears silence:She rarely spoke (having little or nothing to say) but she loved sounds.

Sounds were life. The night's silence made her nervous. Itwas as if night wereabout to pronounce some fatal word. (Lispector, 1987, p.33)

Macab?ia fears silence because it provides an empty space full ofbad forebodings. Rodrigo, on his turn, leaves no doubt about the elaborateness of his craft: "Let no one be mistaken. Ionly achieve simplicity

with enormous effort" (p.11). The desire to just say what he wants tosay is countered by his knowledge that there are no sufficient, or adequate words to convey the complex silence which surrounds the character. It is as if, because the subject of his tale - the life of a sufferingindividual from the Northeast - has been told in Brazilian literature so

many times, the way to achieve effectiveness is to diffuse Macab?ia'stale into his own tale, into everybody's tale.

However, Macab?ia's silence and incapacity to represent herselfis not a mere trait in a literary character: there is a political and per

haps even an apocalyptic warning in Lispector's depiction of this girl.Macab?ia's fear of silence is an indication that, even for the silent ones,silence is oppressive, frightening. From the multitude of silent oneslike her might come "some fatal word" which will crack the night -and itwill not be spoken language at all. In this sense, it seems thatRubem Fonseca's cobrador is this very fatality which, although sharing the same situation of powerlessness and silence Macab?ia lives,finally pronounces the word in the form of action and violence. It seemsthat the cobrador is an answer to Lispector's (orRodrigo's) musings. If"surelywords are actions" (1987, p. 15), actions can also be words. Theactions of the cobrador will flood with words/actions the silent night

Macab?ia is afraid of.Rubem Fonseca's short story thus takes up the word where Clarice

Lispector abandons it. Both writers, then, are trying to give voice topeople who cannot speak. But we need to ask if these people are whatLyotard (1984) had called "the conceivable which cannot be presented"?(p.81). To what limit are these two characters conceivable and towhat

206 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



20/23

limit are they merely conceived within a discursive instance? Lyotard(1984, p.84), again, says that

a postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the text hewrites, the work he produces are not in principle governed by preestablishedrules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgment, byapplying familiar categories to the text or to the work. Those rules andcategories are what the work of art itself is looking for ... Post modern wouldhave to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior{modo).

ConclusionIn these contemporary Brazilian texts, the two writers, although

working within what can be called a postmodern literary convention,are, at the same time, discussing an old Brazilian problem of how toobtain a space for the languages and voices of the conquered,submitted, silenced people. As I see it, their discussion of a Braziliansociety has much to do with the paradox of a future anterior, that is,of a future which has always been grounded in the past: the fear ofthe oppressed. Joaquim Cambinda, ofA came, is just one representativeof a member of the oppressed people who start, like Fonseca's cobrador, to charge from society that which they think they have a right to.Lispector and Fonseca in the twentieth century, as well as Ribeiro inthe nineteenth, represent those who are - one way or another - battlingfor a space for these words. These three writers, just like other countlessartists throughout the Americas, have sensed this need and haveengaged in an effort to address it.

However, unlike the representational saturation of first-world countries, in Brazil reality continues, I believe, to constitute a perpetualrebuke even to narratives which try to incorporate into themselves thisrebuke - and therefore they open themselves up to the charge thatthey are finally only imbricating their own textuality. That is to say,these narratives might be seen as, once again, justword play which isnot backed by any real intention to do anything practical in the realworld in order to address the real problems of the real people. Theyserve the purpose every lip-service has always served: to appease theconsciousness of those who produce them, and not to fundamentallychange anything. In this regard, the violence in Fonseca's narrativeexpresses the violence of his refusal, as putative narrator, to construct

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 207



21/23

amerely hyperrealized - or texztualized - world; it is as if the point inCobrador is to destroy the world, not recreate it. In Lispector, on theother hand, there is only reflection, as if the world must be posited,over and over again, before any consideration can be allowed about itscultural or political history. For Julio Ribeiro, it sufficed to register thelinguistic idiosyncrasies and dialectal differences.

The difference is that the world in Lispector is a world that givesforth knowledge which can be narrated. The world in Fonseca is aworldthat gives forth knowledge which must be destroyed. Contemporary Brazilian literature situates itself uneasily as a discursive practice somewherein between these two extremes, with narrators either as self-consciouslypresent as Lispector's or as self-consciously absent as Fonseca's. Indeed,

with a narrator, we might say,who has not somuch lost the confidence ofwhat could be transmitted about theworld as gained the lack of confidencethatwhatever can be transmitted about theworld is finally only one morething in the world. And this world itself continues to be a source ofrepresentation because it is not beyond representation but beneath it. A

whole new way of seeing this world would be necessary for theserepresentations of it to be accepted and integrated into the whole ofBrazilian consciousness. The mediation between these two instances mustbe negotiated by the narrator, in the work of fiction.As Silviano Santiago (1989, p.43) puts it, "(n)owriting is innocent... by giving voice to the other, (the narrator) ends up giving voice tohimself, in an indirect way". And, Iwould add that, by giving voice totheir narrators, the writers ultimately give voice to themselves, carvea space for themselves. Like the "cobrador," perhaps there was a time

when writers were between a poem and a gun. The poem - literature- wins, giving voice to characters, narrators, and, of course, writers.Yet, again, literature as it is constituted in a country like Brazil, is

part of a "cultural" bourgeois structure of which the oppressed takesno part. There is a real which does not ever get represented in literature. This real, the real of the oppressed, the subaltern, might represent itself some day?not through words, but through actions. FredricJameson (1983, p. 115-6) has already warned us that "contemporary orpostmodernist art is going to be about art itself in a new kind of way;even more, itmeans that one of its essential messages will involve thenecessary failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, theimprisonment of the past." Rodrigo's affirmation in the beginning of

The Hour of the Star, that "we are all one and the same person..."(Lispector, 1987, p. 12), seems to function as an ironical afterthought

208 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996



22/23

through which Lispector stresses literature's attempt to proclaim itsidentification with the oppressed. What remains to be seen, however,is if there is time for this identification or if the oppressed of this world

will forever shun literature - the word - as a way to win the strugglefor justice and equality, and turn definitely to actions.

AcknowledgementsIwant to express my gratitude to two dear departed friends, Fran

cisco Caetano Lopes Junior and C?sar Brites. C?sar gave me theFonseca's book, and Francisco gave me the opportunity to write thefirst version of this essay forpresentation at the conference of the Modern Languages Association.

BUENO, E. "Linguagens" e "vozes" na literatura brasile?a. Rev. Let. (S?o Paulo), v.36, p. 189-210, 1996.

RESUMO: Este traba?ho ? um estudo comparativo de tr?s obras da literatura brasileira: A carne, de Julio Ribeiro, publicada em 1888, A hora da estrela, de Clarice Lispector, publicada em 1977, e O cobrador, de Rubem Fonseca, publicado em 1979. Neste estudo, investigamos inicialmente a quest?o da lingua portuguesa e seu relacionamento com o poss?vel "espa?o"

que ela propicia - ou nega - a alguns personagens, ao mesmo tempo emque ela negocia seu pr?prio espa?o tanto em rela?ao a outras l?nguas europ?ias quanto a l?nguas africanas em territorio nacional. Num segundo

momento, levantamos algumas indaga?oes relativas ? p?s-modernidade e? colocac?o da literatura brasileira diante dos postulados p?s-modernistas inventados no pr?meiro mundo e apressadamente adotados por todosos demais. O int?resse principal do ensaio ? interrogar a validade de afir

ma?oes que sustentam que a literatura - ou pelo menos algumas formasda literatura - pode ser o espa?o privilegiado em que o oprimido pode seexpressar.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Lingua; voz; Brasil; marginalidade; p?s-modernidade;literatura brasileira.

Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996 209



23/23

References

ALMEIDA, M. A. Memorias de um sargento de milicias. 10.ed. S?o Paulo:Martins, 1941.

BAKHTIN, M. The dialogic imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. CarylEmerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.

BUENO, E. P. Brazilian naturalism and the politics of origin. Modern LanguagesNotes, v. 107, p.363-95, 1992.

CUNHA. E. Os sert?es; campanha de Canudos. 33.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1987.

FONSECA, R. O cobrador. 3.ed. S?o Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1989.FOUCAULT, M. The order of discourse. Trans. Ian McLeod. In: SHAPIRO, M.

(Ed.) Language and politics. New York: New York University Press, 1984.JAMESON, F. Postmodernism and consumer society. In: FOSTER, H. (Ed.) The anti

aesthetic; essays on postmodern culture. 4.ed. Washington: Bay Press, 1983.LARSEN, N. Modernism and hegemony. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1990.LISPECTOR, C. A hora da estrela. 9.ed. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1984.

_. The Hour of the Star. Trans. Giovanni Pontiero. New York: Carcanet Press,1987.

LYOTARD, J. F. The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. Trans. GeoffBennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: The University of MinnesotaPress, 1984.

NEBRIJA, A. Gram?tica d?la lengua castellana. Oxford: s. n., 1926.PORTER, C. History and literature after the new historicism. New Literary

History, v.21, n.2, p.253-73, 1990.RIBEIRO, J. A came. S?o Paulo: Ed. Saber Ltda, 1975.SANTIAGO, S. O narrador p?s-moderno. In:_. Nas malhas da letra:

ensaios. S?o Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1989.SCHWARZ, R. As id?ias fora do lugar. In:_. Ao vencedor as batatas.

Sao Paulo: Duas Cidades, 1977._. Nacional por subtrac?o. In:_. Que horas s?o? S?o Paulo:

Companhia das Letras, 1987.SUSSEKIND, F. Tal Brasil, qual romance? Rio de Janeiro: Achiam?, 1984.

VER?SSIMO, J. O romance naturalista no Brasil. In:_. Teoria, cr?tica ehistoria literaria. Rio de Janeiro: Livras T?cnicos e Cient?ficos, 1978. p. 169-78.

210 Rev. Let., S?o Paulo, 36: 189-210, 1996

Documents

Lenguajes y Voces en La Literatura Brasilera