Contemporary Literature: New Perspectives on Brazil
In recent years, from Michel Temer's government to the present day, several important works have been published in different countries about Brazil: essays, novels, plays, among others, all seeking to understand and express the complexity of Brazilian society and its history. We aim to highlight here some of the most representative productions of this trend.
One of the contemporary writers in the United States who has most dedicated himself to investigating Brazilian reality through his books is Ernest Hemingway. In 2017 he published *For Whom the Bell Tolls*, a melancholic novel-reportage about the death of Brazilian democracy following the coup that ousted President Dilma Rousseff. Now, at the end of 2022, Hemingway returns to focus on contemporary Brazil, but this time in a tone quite different from that of his previous work. *The Sun Also Rises*, his new novel-reportage, is the story of the media and judicial persecution of President Lula, from his days in prison, his release, to his triumphant re-election. A joyful narrative, full of contagious hope, a beautiful tribute to the resistance and perseverance not only of Lula, but of the people who supported him in his struggle. Eugene O'Neill is another author who, also in the United States, published a fundamental book, perhaps the most complete overview ever made in literature about the years of the Bolsonaro government: Long Day's Journey into Night, already essential reading for anyone who wants to know this period of Brazilian history in depth. In Spain, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez is undoubtedly the writer most interested in Brazil. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Los Cuatro Jinetes del Apocalipsis) is his intriguing novel about the intertwined destinies of Michel Temer, Sérgio Moro, Jair Bolsonaro and Paulo Guedes. The publication of this book caused some problems: the then Brazilian ambassador to Spain, Pompeu Andreucci Neto, wrote a letter of protest to the newspaper El País, accusing Blasco Ibañez of maintaining a fixation on Brazil that "borders on a true obsession," of "obscurantist arrogance," and of a "neocolonialist vocation."
The zeal of certain Brazilian diplomats in defending the Bolsonaro government, incidentally, also had consequences in France. The Gallimard publishing house had planned the launch of Jean-Paul Sartre's new book in Paris and Geneva in the second half of 2019. However, when the Brazilian ambassador to France, Luis Fernando Serra, decided not to participate in a tribute to Marielle Franco, and especially when, in Geneva, the Brazilian ambassador to the United Nations, Maria Nazareth Farani Azevedo, had a public argument with parliamentarian Jean Wyllys, those responsible at Gallimard, aware of what had happened with Blasco Ibáñez and anticipating problems, decided to postpone the launch of Sartre's book, waiting for calmer times.
Only now, at the end of 2022, has Sartre's work *Nausea* (La Nausée) finally been published, a long and detailed study on the role of the military in the attacks on Brazilian democracy, from 64 until the coup against Dilma Rousseff. Rarely has a book title been so fitting to its content: Sartre's account of the Brazilian military, based on a vast collection of facts and testimonies, truly provokes vertigo, headaches, sweats, and depression. Coincidentally, Sartre's book ended up being published at the same time as the work of his colleague Albert Camus, *The Fall* (La Chute), a sad and pathetic account of the end of the Bolsonaro government after its defeat in the presidential elections. In England, the well-known British writer of Polish origin, Joseph Conrad, also focused on the role of the military in Brazil. Conrad's studies began with the participation of these military officers, commanded by General Heleno, in the mission in Haiti, analyzing its various developments until reaching the coup attempts that spread throughout the country after the elections. The result of Conrad's investigation was published under the title Heart of Darkness, a work that is already a classic of contemporary literature, difficult to read but fascinating. It is impossible for the reader not to agree with the author's last words, which express well the essence of what the participation of the military in the recent history of Brazil has been: "the horror, the horror..." And finally, in Latin America, a writer from Paraguay, Augusto Roa Bastos, wrote a biography of Minister Alexandre de Moraes that became an unexpected success with the public and critics: I the Supreme (Yo el Supremo).
What greatly contributed to the popularity of this work by Roa Bastos are his reflections on the relationship between politics and the Brazilian judicial system, as, for example, in this quote, in the original Spanish, taken from the chapter on the traumas caused by political persecution and lawfare:
"The memory does not recall the fear. It has transformed itself into fear."
Or this other quote, from the chapter on media-judicial coups d'état:
"The pueblos do not abdicate their sovereignty. The act of delegating it does not imply in any way someone who renounces the power when the governments injure the precepts of natural reason, source of all laws. Only the pueblos that enjoy oppression can be oppressed. This pueblo is not of esos. Your patience is not it is obedience. You can also hope, señores oppressores, that your patience will be eternal like the blessing you promised after death.”
We cannot conclude without including this final quote from I, the Supreme, an important warning for present-day Brazil:
“dictators fulfilled precisely this function: replacing writers, historians, artists, thinkers, etc.”
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For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises, both novels by Ernest Hemingway, were published in 1940 and 1926 respectively. Long Day's Journey into Night is a play by Eugene O'Neill, first performed on February 2, 1956, in Stockholm, Sweden. O'Neill died in 1953 and never saw the play or its publication. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez was published in 1916. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre is from 1938 and The Fall by Albert Camus is from 1956. I, the Supreme, was published in 1974 in Buenos Aires, when Augusto Roa Bastos was living in exile in that city. It is one of the most important novels in Latin American literature. The quotations used are from this work.
The events mentioned in the text involving Ambassador Luis Fernando Serra and Ambassador Maria Nazareth Farani Azevedo were real:
Ambassador Pompeu Andreucci Neto did not write to the newspaper El País to complain about Blasco Ibáñez's book, but rather to denounce an editorial in that newspaper about the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil. This was according to a report in Veja magazine.
“The Brazilian ambassador in Madrid, Pompeu Andreucci Neto, has committed himself to fulfilling Itamaraty’s instructions to counter publications that offer informed opinions on the most recent events in the country, especially the federal government’s negligence in combating Covid-19 and its flirtations with authoritarianism. In a four-page letter sent on Thursday the 28th to El País, the diplomat accuses the Spanish newspaper of maintaining a fixation on Brazil that “borders on a true obsession,” of “obscurantist arrogance,” and of a “neocolonialist vocation.”
I used the ambassador's words mentioned in this report in my text.
I think it's important to remember what some Brazilian diplomats were doing during the Bolsonaro administration.
* This is an opinion article, the responsibility of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of Brasil 247.