Resolving Doubts With Roberto Schwarz

MARCOS FALLEIROS: The area of concentration to which we belong inthe UFRN [Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte] mas-ters program has comparative literature as its title, which gen-erates a good deal of discussion on the Byzantine nature ofthe history of this method and on the rules that seem quite ludi-crous in their truisms. Recalling a line of Antnio Cndido thatsays to study Brazilian literature is to study comparative litera-ture, I wonder if, more than that, to practice literary criticism isnot to always be making comparisons, in order not to furtherextend the presence of analogical thought in any rational activ-ity. How do you relate your work to this issue?

ROBERTO SCHWARZ: Anyone studying Brazilian literature inevitablyruns up against the fact that many of the things that are done herewere done previously in another, more prestigious, place. So tostudy the actual process of Brazilian literature, you cannotignore this: the genres were not created here. This is a startingpoint, which easily leads literary criticism to a tiresome position,which is the search for sources, conducted with a mind to exposethe works, so as to create doubt as to the originality of the Brazil-ian author, since he always came after. It is a mistaken angle,which has given rise to bitter discussions and is now behind us.Today it is rare that someone expects Brazilian authors to createex nihilo, or starting from a strictly local tradition, just as, more-over, no one thinks anymore that the authors from the countriesthat serve as models for us have started from scratch. This ques-tion of absolute originality fortunately seems to be a thing of thepast.

Cultural Critique 49Fall 2001Copyright 2001 Regents of the University of Minnesota

RESOLVING DOUBTS WITHROBERTO SCHWARZAN INTERVIEWTRANSLATED BY R. KELLY WASHBOURNE

Afonso Fvero, Airton Paschoa, Francisco Mariutti, and Marcos Falleiros

FVERO, FALLEIROS, MARIUTTI, PASCHOA 156

Stated bluntly, the literature that was created in this countrytakes off from a literature that was created previously in anotherplace. First point: that is not necessarily a slight, nor is it necessar-ilyfar from itan advantage. Second point: for better or worse,literature created here does not come out the same as the modelsit adopted. There is an interesting topic there. If you study thatdifference together with the difference between the respectivesocieties, you then see that comparative literature has the merit,or could have the merit, of coming to a more complex view ofwhat contemporary society is. This would be a contemporarysociety understood not only as national, but as a more or lessarticulated and very unequal system of societies. In fact, one ofthe good things about literary history, even the most commonone, like a textbook version, is that in certain respects it is morelimited than the respective social studies, since by definition ittakes Western history and tradition as its starting point.

In our case it always refers to Portugal, to the Renaissance,to the Baroque; there is always the European nineteenth century.Even when it is on a modest level, literary history does not haveto accept national confinement. It suffices to think of the organi-zation of high school texts, with their general overview onschools, for example, Romanticism, followed by the chapter onits trajectory here. In works of sociology or history, at times it isas if Brazil drained off into itself, as if what happens here dis-pensed with consideration of the rest. In literature, even when acritic says uninterestingly, and aiming to discredit, that [Jos de]Alencar is in the debt of Cooper or of Chateaubriand, he is none-theless referring to a realm that is wider and more complex,where there are foreign models, debts, authority, transformation,overcoming, etc., on the individual level and on the internationalone as well. But that comparatism that is congenital, in a mannerof speaking, of literary studies is no guarantee that the latter willproduce good results. In short, there is a certain kind of confine-ment of the social reflection, be it to place, be it to the moment,something empiricist, let us say, that in literary history existsless, since it has as an infused reference a world tradition and aworld scene tableau of nations.

RESOLVING DOUBTS WITH ROBERTO SCHWARZ 157

MF: Yet I was hoping that deep down you did not agree strongly withcomparative literature, or with certain methodologies of compar-ative literature, when they make one lose sight of the specificitiesthat you find. I have a permanent research project tied to myactivities at the UFRN, whose title is Formas Brasileiras [Formsof Brazilian expression], which takes as its foundation the Dialt-ica da malandragem [Dialectic of the rogues life] by AntnioCndido and his work on Machado de Assis, where that expres-sion even appears, though not prominently, for example in Aovencedor as batatas [To the victor go the potatoes].1 The topic of theproject is that the theoretical coherence of his works of literarycriticism force one into an expansive search for the specificnoteto use the term you used recently in Le Mondeof any ofthe countrys cultural manifestations, which, in our case, wouldbe the literary and the Brazilianwhich would be lost in certainleanings of the comparativist approach.

RS: If you make a salad in which all the worlds works are together,irrespective of specific traditionsamong them the nationalonesthen in fact you do lose everything. The shabby reputationof comparative literature comes from that, from the cases inwhich it compares everything to everything arbitrarily and failsto take into account the actual contexts that are necessary to theconfiguration of the specific and to the perception of their impor-tance. Yet once you duly construct the contexts, the comparisonbetween the works of different languages and cultures clearlycan be of greater interest, and often indispensable. In the case ofBrazil, or of Latin American literatures, comparison is necessaryto the very understanding of what is at stake. How to imagineour literature engendering, let us suppose, Romanticism or mod-ernism out of itself? Moreover, it is equally clear that, whenreworked in local circumstances, those tendencies and schoolspass through transformations that say something about thechanged circumstances and also something about themselves,and should not be considered on the normative model of erroror of decharacterization.

Something will have to have been engendered, and if it hasa clear profile, with interesting developments, it will bring


elements of a new form that is tied to the local organization oflife. The critic has to have the discernment for assessing theexternally influenced portion and the role of determinationthrough dynamism internal to the context, and mostly for identi-fying and interpreting the value of the latest fashion. Schools andstyles do not say the same thing at home and abroad, where,moreover, they can come to make themselves at home, but inanother way. As we are experiencing a moment of unification ofthe world process, the unequal and calculated development in thevarious spheres becomes more tangible and more obviouslyrelevant. International disorders are gradually ceasing to belaughing matters or sources of vexation and appearing as whatthey are: powerful forms of the course of contemporary society,of its internal differences.

You recall that Antnio Cndido states that to study Brazi-lian literature is to study comparative literature. On a certainlevel, it is an affirmation that is true for all national literatures,that without comparison they would not be distinguished fromothers. But what was on the agenda, if I am not mistaken, was aparticular kind of comparatism, dictated by their young-countrystatus, a country up from its colonial state and eager to beendowed with an advanced culture, one that is unique but likethat of the nations that serve as its model. The kind of compara-tism, in short, that is implicit in the very idea of Formao da Lit-eratura Brasileira [Development of Brazilian literature] is that itis necessary to the self-knowledge of countries like the LatinAmerican ones.

To that end, Antnio Cndidos work on O cortio by AlusioAzevedo is a high point.2 The essay orbits between the searchfor influences, a comparison of forms, the comparison of soci-eties, the reconstitution of contexts, the identification of latentdynamisms, structural analysis, aesthetic discussion, politicalcriticism, ideological demystification, and so on: always sensibly,without terminological fetishism or losing sight of the issues athand. The important thing is that the relation of value betweenthe spheresespecially between the national cultures on theartistic plane but not only thereis deautomated. The Frenchmodel is not always better than the Brazilian imitation. The novel

of a less complex society is not necessarily inferior; the nationalcan be as awful as the foreign; the white is not better than theblack; science can be fatuousness and blindness; the deliberateform is not more worthy than the latent formyou get the idea.One cannot fail to acknowledge appraisals and distribution ofhonors that make up part of reality, but they need to be adoptedjust the same. They are self-evident points from which one maynot easily draw conclusions. In countries of dependent devel-opment, freedom of spirit before established honors, especiallythe international ones, those of the mother country, is rare andrequires a kind of courage that has the force of a revelation.

I am not going to summarize the essay now, but I do want togive some idea of the interest that some of his approaches attract.Based on the analysis of the main character and on the rhythm ofits action, Antnio Cndido could characterize a particular typeof work unique to the Brazilian transition from slave labor to freelabor. It is a brutal and animalized form, from which the relativeEuropean dignification of labor is absent, or even in which theelimination of labor is present, by the proslavery order. It is cor-relative of a modality also unique to very primitive economicaccumulation, which determines the course of the novel and ischaracteristic of the country. To take up the word you used, wehave a particular slant, with its own developments on the level ofliterary form, the configuration of classes, the idea of labor, etc., aslant to which we are historically linked and which exists as one of thevariants of contemporary society, unfortunately for us in this case.

The comparisons are then established: with Zolas novel, inwhich, as Antnio Cndido explains, the distance that separatesthe world of labor from the world of property in France sug-gested a different organization of materials. We see this with thedialectic of the rogues life, discussed in the analogous essay, inwhich the Brazilian social structure appears from another angle,compared, in turn, with the rigidity of Puritan law, presented inHawthornes The Scarlet Letter.3 If we understand Brazilian lit-erature as a system, the comparisons with the representation ofpoverty in Machado de Assis are possible, as they are with thereconsideration of sloth in Mario de Andrade, with brutalism inSo Bernardo, with the Oswaldian utopia, and so on: the internal


comparisons making up the system, the external ones markingtheir differences.

The approaches preceded by good contextualization andstructural analysis are always acceptable and belong to the gen-eral, shall we say, academic realm. But there is a special merit, forBrazilians (and Brazilianists), in the critical explorations thatseek to characterize the natures developed in the country, in itsliterature and in its practical life, for better or worse, and try toconsider them side by side with the world. These developments,which rule in us and are our issue, in addition to their ability togrowit, too, for better or worseare at the disposal of ourimagination. To ignore them would be to be blind to the value ofliterature.

MF: Thats related to the critical arrogance that you attribute toOswald de Andrade in the essay A carroa, o bonde e o poetamodernista [The wagon, the streetcar, and the modernist poet].

RS: Yes. The sense of ones own uniqueness can be arrogant, just asit can be depressed or lucid. At all events he is interesting in thathe represents the collective direction, which does not settle intothe universalist and anodyne perception.

MF: But the true quality literature will reveal that, not simply reflectit, dont you think?

RS: It will configure and explore it. But, frankly, Im not sure whatsimply reflect means. In principle, they are terms that defendthe imagination against simple perception, which is good. But inthe general course of the debate, I think that expression became astraw man with a conservative function, contrary to criticalobservation.

MF: Is it when the artist manages to consciously uncover that so henot only presents it thematically, but also incorporates it in theformal construction?

RS: It may be consciously; it may not be. Antnio Cndidos essayson O cortio show, for instance, that Alusio Azevedo sought towrite a novel that was in step with the Naturalist theories of theday, which today are difficult to swallow, which takes nothingaway from the books continued success, for reasons that werenot the novelists. The fact is, behind the cheap ideology, thexenophobia, the determinist clichs about race and environment,


is the dynamism of the plot, which imitates the course of theaccumulation of wealth and makes of it a form. It is that coursethat prevails and recharacterizes the rest, giving it truth, orrather, making the logic of capital and class antagonism relativizethe racial oppositions, which on the conspicuous level, which isthat of the authors conscience, seemed to be the determiningones.

MF: Which does not exclude the quality of the artist: unconsciouslyhe had sensibility.

FRANCISCO MARIUTTI: With respect to the idea of labor that appears inO cortio, in Machado de Assis there is a counterpoint in whichbrutality is of another order. Brs Cubas and Bentinho have anidea and a specific mode of labor that presuppose slavery and atthe same time are not mixed together at all with slave labor.

rs: Brs Cubas wont work even at gunpoint. Bentinho has a law-yers office, but his work doesnt seem to count for much, com-pared to property ownership. But in Machado there are thosewho work hard, like Dona Plcida, who is a terrible figure. Itwould be interesting to compare with Paulo Honrio, or withJoo Romo, on the points of excessive exhaustion, the lack of theintrinsic value of effort, his lack of recognition, and also theresults. They all have to do with the background of slavery. Andthere are Machadian characters who work hard and grow rich:brother-in-law Cotrim and Sofia Palhas husband. Since the crit-ics started from the premise that Machado did not have a realistseye, no onebefore Faorolooked closely. But the truth of themodel of enrichment Machado depicts is of great interest. Cris-tiano Palha is there. He is a great worker, but he gets rich becausehe has a nose for crises and because he fleeces poor Rubio.

FM: Palhas idea of work is speculation.MF: He seems quite modern, a CEO, thus our contemporary.FM: Palha is extremely modern.RS: And Cotrim goes from slave contraband to the swindles of sup-

plies in the war in Paraguay. They are complementary types, andtheir strength lies in their aggregate, which needs to be recon-structed critically.

AFONSO FVERO: Roberto, as for the view of labor in the literary work,I recall an essay of yours on Cyro dos Anjoss book O amanuense


Belmiro [Diary of a civil servant], an essay published in O paide famlia e outros estudos [The paterfamilias and other studies].In Cyros novel there is a first-person narrator, Belmiro him-self, descendent of a family that had an important rural past, anoligarchy, the grandparents were powerful, etc. But Belmirobecomes a landless landowner, a contemplative, possessionlessfellow who goes to live in an urban center, specifically Belo Hor-izonte of the 1930s, working there as a modest civil servant in theAnimal Protection Bureau, in an alienating activity. Do you thinkthat the labor situation in that novel is well configured? Youressay demonstrates that if the narrator were in the third person,it would not work well. So, as in the case with O cortio, in whichthe writer takes aim at what he saw and hits the mark on what hedid not see, as you have just said, would we have in the case of Oamanuense Belmiro a somewhat unconscious bulls-eye?

RS: I think so. I have a good story about that article. It was commis-sioned to serve as the preface to a new edition of O amanuenseBelmiro. The editor, who was a friend of Cyro dos Anjos, took it tohim for his approval. To my mind, the article values and praisesthe book, but it does not stick to the author, rather it makes of thelimited conscience of the author-narrator a component of thepower and the truth of the novel.

AF: Begin with the epigraph that you put to it.RS: Cyro read it and said, Its an interesting work, but Id rather it

didnt come out.MF: What was the epigraph?RS: The epigraph is by Adorno: Great works are those that are suc-

cessful in their most questionable points.MF: And in relation to Machado, how do you see his level of con-

sciousness? I always sensed in his settings a defense, thus I beganto make use of the idea of consciousness: that the artist has to beconscious, and you are not really saying that, but I always senseda defense of Machado on your part in that all that you uncover inthe work was intentional, conscious.

RS: The connection between the authors intention and the quality ofthe works, and even the meaning of them, is an open question tobe considered case by case. When one speaks of people, the clearconscience is a virtue, beyond question. As for the works, which



are not judgments but configurations, its another matter. You canwrite great works having limited consciousness of doing so, andyou can write terrible works having a considerable degree of clar-ity. My having said that, lucidity in art is a kind of superiority,which Machado had to a high degree, which certainly character-izes his greatness. It is enough to think of the intelligence withwhich he renders unfit a figure as ideal and beyond reproach asBentinho. Even so, the authors intention is neither an absolutefact, nor the only one.

MF: Yet there is a school of thought hostile to Machado that performsthe kind of reading that could fall under what you termeda symptom of the nations general small-mindedness. I thinkthat runs through Graciliano Ramos, Lima Barreto, even Mriode Andrade, as if Machado thus were seen as somewhat conniv-ing and enjoying all those misfortunes he represents, sadistic-ally. There is where the pertinence of looking into his level ofartistic consciousness comes in. You were just talking aboutDona Plcida and a moving passage came to mind, the one thattalks about the boring work she was doing. You were born forthis is what her parents would say to her, who was born of anillicit, somewhat clandestine, conjugal relationship, and waspractically the daughter of a trampling and a pinch likeLeonard in Memrias de um sargento de milcias [Memoirs of a mili-tia sergeant].4

RS: But thats the case, you can be sure. He remade a scene from Sar-gento de milcias in an adjusted register. Adjusted in the sense ofrealism. Antipathy toward Machado was tied, and perhaps still istied, to the faithlessness with which he faced the near future.Being the most civilized of all, he distanced himself from the ver-biage and imposture of the, shall we say, First World: the adher-ence to material and cultural progress with which the well-offclasses, often well intentioned, led others to believe in theirdetermination to fix the colonial rift in society. He doubted thatwhen it came right down to it the moral obligation of the pro-prietary classes toward the landless classes would prevail overeconomic interest. It was a pessimistic view of the path that classrelations in the former colony would take. To many who didnot pay heed to what they read, it seemed a respectable form of


gallantry. To others, who noticed what it was all about, it seemedan intolerable lack of generosity, nobleness of character, andpatriotism. The lack of a foreseeable solution for the country, orrather, skepticism in relation to the proposals that were on thetable, causedand causeuneasiness and anger. One ofMachados acts of daring was the unabashed subordination ofpsychology, of the recesses of the human soulwhich workedthrough lame excusesto the play of objective interests.

MF: A critical register, right? Its different from the reading thatyou give in Um mestre na periferia do capitalismo [A masteron the periphery of capitalism], but I sense there a betrayal ofthe narrator represented in Brs Cubas who, from the ironictone in his ever-present mockery, seems to be distanced by theauthors voice and sensitized by the story of Dona Plcida, whichgradually makes the text poignant. This would also deny thataverse reading of a sadistic Machado, enjoying himself amid themisfortunes.

RS: Harshness is not always cruelty. I think the Dona Plcida episodeseems a high moment of lucid compassion, without the dimin-ishing effects of sentimentalism.

AIRTON PASCHOA: Returning to Graciliano Ramos, I normally read abit of his work, but I dont know much of his critical biblio-graphy: is it common to speak of class position in Graciliano?Graciliano is seen as a Communist author, and since almost all ofus are progressive liberals, or are in the leftist camp, that sympa-thy doesnt get one very far. How do you see class position in hiswork?

RS: I also am not aware of the bibliography. But as far as I know thatpoint has not been studied. Youll notice Im being unfair here toMarcos.

MF: To lean toward the authoritarian line is an aspect I have not stud-ied clearly and affirmatively [in A retrica do seco (The rhetoric ofdryness), masters thesis, USP, 1990]. I mention GracilianoRamos, Major Grao, son of a colonel, and I establish schematicrelations between his prefect accounts and the narrative of theexecutor, Paulo Honrio. In a parallel way, in the narrativedynamism of the initial pages of So Bernardo, which Lafetcalled narrative synopsis, I see plagiarism of the Communist


Manifestos euphoric, optimistic, textual process with the enter-prising bourgeoisie. But I also see a kind of catharsis of thatauthoritarianism. Especially in So Bernardo, a catharsis of I willovercome, which was the strong ideological foundation of thefamily setting in Graciliano, with the father bankrupted andhumiliated by the relatives. At all events, the harshness of hisstylerhetorical, judicial, extremely adjectival despite what issaid and what Graciliano himself thoughtwas probably also aNortheastern consequence, homologous to the economy ofhunger and the mold of the rent earth. But I find it extremelyproductive to delve further into that vein.

RS: The point there is to identify class positions as components ofstyle. For instance, there are the different drynesses of Gracil-iano, Joo Cabral [de Melo Neto], also of Euclides [da Cunha],who can polarize with the wet, sluggish, and pot-bellied side ofGilberto Freyre. Perhaps one can set up the system of class posi-tions inserted into their writings, which deal with a singleregion, and perhaps the system will say something new. Just aswe arent in the habit of doubting narrators, of identifying inthem a particular and self-interested social point of view, neitherare we in the habit of doubting the narrative diction, whosesocial point of view can entail a bias that changes everything.Keeping in mind that class positions, with their complementarypoles, are unspecified and poorly analyzed in the Brazilian his-toricosocial thought. There is virgin territory there.

What is the class position of Gracilianos prose? Is that some-thing that exists? I think so, but the answer is not easy. When yousay that the writer was Communist, you havent gotten any-where. If you say that his tone is authoritarian, that may be true,but its not enough. What are the other classes in the particularconstellation? What are the oppositions? What are the alliances?What is the history of the totality? What are the relations of own-ership and labor involved? The intonations could belong to localhistory, but the writing belongs to the development of literaryprose, and the totality poses a problem whose tensions we mustexplore. It is a kind of issue seldom examined. Joo Cabral deMelo Neto is an Avant-Garde writer: would that mean that theuniverse of classes does not exist in his work and in his diction?


MF: I understand Joo Cabral as a consequence of Graciliano Ramos,as if giving an aestheticizing expression to the Northeasternstyle, with all its historical characterization.

RS: Thats a theory worth developing.MF: Its interesting on that score that we say in the academic

sphere, such-and-such author is exhausted. Students are beingsteered toward masters degrees and doctoral theses on authorsof little account because everythings already been said aboutDrummond; dont do any more theses on Drummond.

RS: The opposites the casein Brazilian literature there is much tobe discovered, even in the major figures.

MF: A short time ago I had to insist that a student of mine continuestudying Guimares Rosa, arguing with her that there is nodefinitive reading. She was already ready to give up the ideabecause there are already a lot of theses. But actually, the read-ings are weak.

RS: I think thats a good agenda for the leftist critic. To try to under-stand what the most remarkable styles represent in terms of classposition, in terms of class position objectified in language, butalso taking into account the complexity of the works, with thezeal for search and discovery, and not simply to label. Clearly,class position is not the ultimate basis, since it can be questionedand requalified by the totality of the work. But it is a piece of datawhose simple presence places the aesthetic discussion in the fieldof historical relevance of the conflicts they relate.

MF: With all the subtlety and detail of class situation that was restoredin style.

RS: Its an agenda that requires an appropriate autodidacticism, inthe spirit, so to speak, of a historicosocial stylistic. We must trainour attention to the social character of the intonations, the angu-lations, the procedures, and the ideas in the text as well as in life.

AP: You already gave an initial kick when you spoke of Mrio deAndrades developmentalist style, which lies somewhat on thatpath, because you sought to explain that gigantism of his, thatpronomial association with the people in search of a betterBrazil. I think its a bit along those lines that you speak of tryingto search for style.

MF: On another topic, I think that the Dialtica da malandragem and


your work are very connected to Lucien Goldmanns idea ofstructural homologies. How do you tie that in?

RS: Goldmann was read and studied at the school. In my generation,as far as I know, the Goldmannian was Michael Lwy, who thenwent on to study with him in Paris and to this day, in literary crit-icism, is a faithful disciple. As for the structural homology idea,I think it would be forced to associate it with Goldmann alone,though the term may be tied to his theorizations. The effortto link the ordering of the aesthetic world to the real historicalorderings is the very basis of materialist criticism with a struc-tural slant. Its in Marx, Lukcs, in the members of the FrankfurtSchool, and moreover in Antnio Cndido and, through him, inthe work of several Brazilian critics of succeeding generations.One might say that Goldmann, competing in the sphere ofFrench structuralism, which was antihistorical, has tried to dobetter with Marxist instruments, which are historical, which thestructuralists were also doing in their way.

MF: Like in Dialtica da malandragem?RS: In fact, there is a parallel. Antnio Cndido, toowho is from the

same generation as Goldmanndeveloped a type of historicalstructuralism to respond for the left to the antihistorical struc-turalism that had formed in the social sciences and in literarycriticism. I imagine that the similarity is due to that theoretical-political context they have in common, and not to influence. Itsworth remembering that the best of critical thought by the Brazil-ian left depends in some way on historical structuralism. I canthink here of Caio Prado Jr. and Celso Furtado, to give only twoexamples.

mf: On the topic of the polemic over your metaphor ideas out ofplace, there was, around the time of your books debut in 1977,a series of refutations on that point. Recently, in 1995, in an inau-gural class by Alfredo Bosi, he took it up again. The retrospectivestudent who begins with your text and goes, for example, toSrgio Buarques Razes do Brasil [Roots of Brazil], will find therethe expression we are exiles in our own homeland, and otherdevelopments that make me wonder if you dont have a moredirect debt to Razes do Brasil.

RS: Certainly it is not my observation that the ideas in Brazil are out


of place. It has been the main commonplace of Brazilian criticalthought since independence. What my work seeks is to explainthe reason for that feeling and for its acceptance; the reason forwhich, given the Brazilian social structure and given its insertioninto the order of nations, the set of ideas of the modern nation,especially liberal ideas, here seem to be out of place. The conserv-ative explanation, and at times that of anti-imperialist national-ism, lays the blame on the importation of foreign ideas, whichwould be antinational frivolity. One would need only to not fol-low the movement of ideas of the time for all to be authentic andremain in place. Already the dialectic explanation, at least as I seeit, seeks the cause in the greatly imbalanced and authoritariansocial structure, which makes the ideas of the societies that serveas our model, and are less unjust, give the impression here ofbeing displaced. The unknown of the equation lies not in theimportation of ideas but in the relation of classes that must bechanged. When Srgio Buarque said that we feel homeless inour own homeland, he was giving the definitive formulation tothat sort of impression in order to critique it. The expression is onthe first page of Razes do Brasil and refers to the disturbancescaused by the introduction of European culture into a land withvery different physical characteristics.

They are problems tied to the initial period of colonization,to the first contact of the Europeans with the American soil.Later, in the chapter on Rural Inheritance, Buarque deals withthe incompatibility of slave labor with bourgeois civilizationand modern capitalism. There we already see historical contra-dictions, internal to society and generating their own paradoxes.Certainly I owe much to that chapter. Nevertheless, since I wasguided by the system of Machadian paradoxes, as well as newanalyses that Fernando Henrique [Cardoso], Fernando Novais,Maria Sylvia, and Octvio Ianni were developing at the time, Iwas led to shift emphases and to accentuate not incompatibility,but compatibilitynaturally oddbetween slavery, bourgeoiscivilization, and capitalism.

AP: What is the root, do you think, of all the difficulty in understand-ing your work; is it because sometimes you skewer Braziliancritics a bit?


RS: I dont see the difficulty in terms that are specially linked to mywork. Dialectic unsettles and offends common sense, which whenall is said and done is Manequeist and tied to a narrow sphereof action. In my case, it wants to know if the ideas are in placeor not, and thats all there is to it.

mf: Recalling what you said in the interview with Movimento pub-lished in your book of essays O pai de famlia e outros estudos, onthe ideas that the right called foreign in relation to their appli-cation to Marxism in Brazil, you were saying that there wasan abiding situation in Brazil of the relevant difficult. That inter-ested me a great deal because I was seeking to find out if Gracil-iano Ramos was trying to equate, using Marxist means, Brazil tothe literature it produced. And in a nonpartisan way, becauseeven if he was affiliated with the now-consecrated PC [Commu-nist Party] later, or even if he wasnt, he had a Marxist mentalbehavior, often a quite simple one, independent of lines ofconduct that decreed now we must think in such-and-suchmanner.

RS: In point of fact, Marxism in Brazil produced diverse results, fromvery bad to quite good. When it was applied as an availabletheory, which furthermore had the scientific authority of theCommunist Parties behind it, keen on the political justificationof the USSR, it misfired. The classic case was the adoption in thiscountry of the outlines of European history tied to the passage offeudalism to capitalism, when in Latin America they were on thepassage from the colony to a particular kind of independence, inthe orbit of the new capitalism. The really foundational merit ofCaio Prado Jr. lies in having resisted the first application andhaving reconstructed the Marxist categories in a critical spirit,that is, in keeping with the historical experience of the formercolony. As for spontaneous materialism of the sort that you arereferring to in Graciliano, it can be linked to Marxism or not. Theimpartial, clarified sense of material needs is a great thing, but itdoes not even need to be from the left.

FM: Let me touch back a bit on the question of how your work isunderstood. I recall that some ten years ago I commented to any-one who today is anywhere near fifty, the generation of Z Miguel[Wisnik], Alcides [Villaa], Zenir [Campos Reis] [professors at the


Universidade de So Paulo, School of Literature], that I wasdoing a course with you at Unicamp. They all recalled the samething: Ah, Roberto, we liked him a lot, for several reasons: hewas the only professor who didnt wear a three-piece suit. Hewas close in age and . . . he was a leftist! But we didnt understanda word of what he was saying. I was amazed at that, since I thinkyoure a very didactic professor; what I read is complex but itdoesnt present me with difficulties of understanding, and, ofcourse, I perished the thought that, no, theyre dunces, Im intel-ligent and understand. What do you think of that? Does it haveto do with the larger propagation of the texts by authors likeWalter Benjamin, Adorno, in that period from 1960 on?

RS: I always wished to be clear, and I hope to have made headwaysomewhat on that score. Its also true that at that time the authorsI draw my inspiration from were not known, and today they are.

AP: Once someone spoke of you thus to me: Ah, Roberto, a child ofLukcs! And its not just Lukcs, right? Theres Adorno . . .

RS: The labeling craze is a trap, and at times is a sign of the lack of anissue, or of disinterest in the issues at hand. When I was in thecollege, the sociologists were dividedso to speakinto Weber-ians, functionalists, and Marxists, and these latter into Leninists,Luxemburguists, Lukcsians, and still others. When in the pre-1964 period things began to heat up, the concerns changed: Isthere going to be revolution or not? What are the progressiveclasses? Which are the rights loopholes? What are the possiblealliances? These are questions that cluster more substantiallythan the filiation to great European names who have no opinionon the topics that in fact we are discussing. When there is anobject, what matters is the explanation, not the filiation. So, at thetime, when Celso Furtado was explaining underdevelopmentand the obstacles in overcoming it, no one thought to ask if hewas Marxist. Or rather, to be precise, they did, but it was of littleaccount.

Returning to your question, I began to read Lukcs in 1959,Adorno in 1960, and Benjamin in 1961, on a foundation of Marx-ist sympathies from before, and owing also to the great Germanbookstores there were in So Paulo at that time. I had knowledgeof Lukcs through my parents, who had frequented his lectures

in Vienna in the 1920s. Adorno was known at the school as one ofthe authors of The Authoritarian Personality, a study in social psy-chology that was seen as exemplary for its methodologicalrefinement. I knew nothing of this critic and philosopher. When Ibought the Dialtica do Esclarecimento [Dialectic of enlighten-ment], it was for the title, because I enjoyed dialectic and enlight-enment. Benjamins work was unknown to me, and I bought iton account of the index, because there were Kafka, Brecht, KarlKraus, and an essay about the narrator, a topic that was interest-ing to me. With Lukcs I had a notion of what dialectical criti-cism could do. But since I especially liked Kafka and Brecht andaspired to be an Avant-Garde writer, I always kept some distancefrom him and I felt more at ease with the other two, which nev-ertheless I did not understand as well, since they are harder.Besides that fact, my parents were anti-Stalinists from personalexperience, so there was a part in Lukcs that I never swallowed.Still, I made much use of his essays on the nineteenth-centurynovel. In short, labels dont reveal the whole author.

mf: They are forms of unculturedness. With that we go back on thespecific trail of Brazilian culture. The unreliable narrator BrsCubas would have a behavior of that sort, and I recalled that astudent [Cristina Castilho, a masters student from UFRN, 1999],during a course I gave, asked a question on her interpretation ofMachado. I would like to bring it up just for fun and also as aprovocation, since I understand you are a friend of FernandoHenrique [Cardoso]. She asked if Fernando Henrique, with theforget what I wrote business, wouldnt be a new version ofBrs Cubass unreliability.

RS: I think its absurd how the press made waves with that line.Fernando Henrique obviously was telling his listeners that theyshould not repeat in the decade of the 1990s what he had writtenin the 1960s, because the times were not the same. Perfectly rea-sonable! He is very conscious of being a worthy intellectual andI am certain that he would never think of throwing out what hewrote. There is nothing wrong with changing. What is question-able is the content of the change.

MF: You wouldnt see, in this case, any of Brs Cubass unreliability?RS: There are several approaches that one could choose from between


the Brazilian elite seen by Machado and the current one, in whichthe president is an important figure. But that forget what Iwrote is the wrong angle. For Macaco Simo, whos a govern-mentalist, to stay still is to be a whipping post. But returning tothe parallel, one of Machados acts of daring was to see in theBrazilian elite the fusion of the Europeanizing and refined char-acter with the uncivil character, originating in the brutality ofclass domination, with colonial reminiscences. Does that combi-nation endure in Brazil today? Could our capitalist moderniza-tion plan be a variant of it? How so? Along those lines it wouldbe possible to look for analogies.

AP: In Cebrap, when you gave that talk on Dos meninas [Two girls],you spoke of how the critic is also in his time, and that youopened your eyes to Machado after the coup in 64. You saidthat there are historical moments that truly push for culturaladvancements. Do you think that today, with the modernizationof capital and globalization, a similar moment may be upon us?

RS: 1964 was notable for what came afterward, but also for what camebefore. From 62 to 64 Brazil underwent a moment of prerevolu-tion in which mostly the students, but also the culture in general,realigned themselves according to popular interests. They openedtoward them, trading in their traditional class alliances. Thevictory over all erecting of class barriers, the infusion of generos-ity and intelligence brought by that change of alliances, by therechanelling of cultural fluxes, fed the Brazilian culture fordecades, and something of it lasts to this day. Among otherthings, it was that that the post-1964 regime tried to stifle. In thenew scene, which was no longer softened by the previous pop-ulism, the fiercely antipopular stance of a part of the most civi-lized classes in the country became clear. Suddenly, Machadiandisbelief no longer seemed a literary itch or a habit of tempera-ment, but became a symbol for a well-founded conclusion in thecountrys affairs.

Changes today are different. The general keynote has beenstruck on the world scale for the victory of capital over labor andfor technical innovations. The defeat of labor affects expectationswith a profundity that we scarcely realize. As for technical inno-vations, it remains to be seen. I have German friends who tell me


enthusiastically that their fourteen-year-old child is a Europeancitizen. He travels around the continent, is a polyglot, spendshours a day in front of his e-mail, chatting with friends all over.Will that lead to something new? Is there something like that inBrazil?

We in literature know that the matters and academic cur-ricula are changing. Just think of cultural studies. There is alsogoing to be a conceptual transformation; for instance, well seea revision of the history of Brazil in light of globalization. Aninteresting example is Luiz Felipe de Alencastros new book, Otrato dos viventes [Caring for the living].5 The topic is the colonialperiod. The idea is that the economic process had joined togetherwhat the sea had put asunder: Brazil as a unit of production,Africa as the supply unit of slave labor. A structural line, whichaccording to Luiz Felipe continued decisively until 1930, resulted:the workforce necessary to Brazilian production was not beingreproduced here (since after the Africans, the European immi-gration came), or, on the other hand, the Brazilian ruling classuntil recently took no responsibility for the social reproduction ofthe workforce necessary to the country, for it was negotiatedwith the African slavers or with the European governments.There would lie one of the keys to the national inorganicity ofwhich Caio Prado Jr. spoke. They are bold schemes, very sugges-tive to those who would take an interest, for example, in BrsCubass social irresponsibility.

But returning to globalization, I suppose that there is some-thing of it, and of the attendant national dearticulation, inFelipes interest in the fantastically antisocial mechanisms of thecolonial market, antisocial to a laughable extreme. The further-ing of slave traffic kept those mechanisms in place for a long timein the interior of the independent nation, on which theyimpressed their own barbarous features, which in turn now, andbefore they have been extinguished, are resurging powerfully. Itis as if the civilizing force of the nation had been only an inter-regnum in the history of capital.

O trato dos viventes comes out twenty years after FernandoNovaiss great book, Portugal e Brasil na crise do sistema colonial[Portugal and Brazil in the crisis of the colonial system], which it


simulates, and to which it gives continuity on many points. ButFernando, who conceived of his schemes on the crest and in thecrisis of developmentalism, wrote in the perspective of thenational destruction of the colonial order, while Felipe, writinglater, is under the (recent) impression of the vast disproportionbetween the force of the world market and the national project.This comparison, which I cannot delve into now, points towardthe conceptual modifications suitable to the new moment.

What, in this changed perspective, becomes of the idea ofdevelopment of Brazilian literature? Antnio Cndido estab-lished and chronicled, in the gravitational sphere of politicalindependence, the specific process of a national literary accumu-lation, or rather, of a progressive internal linking of works, writ-ers, and audiences, with their own dynamism, which at a certainpointin Machado de Assiss workpermitted assimilation ofthe external cultural influx with his own discernment. On theone hand, this process of creation of a certain autonomy man-aged to be completed on its own level. On the other hand, it ispart of the general course of things toward something like a moreintegrated, more organic, and more self-possessed nation. Thedecisive instance naturally is the economic one, and the obviousparallel is with Celso Furtados workhe is from the same gen-eration as Antnio Cndidowhere the progress of the internalmarket is chronicled. The process would be complete in themoment in the future in which the means of economic authorityare interiorized. Now, that point of inflection seems more distantthan before, so much so that one of Furtados latest books has thetitle A construo interrompida [Interrupted construction]. Wheredoes that leave literary construction, which was completed, in thecontext of national construction, which was interrupted? Theseare suitably topical questions, worthwhile asking. It is clear thata development does not vanish because it is part of another thatis interrupted. Yet its value changes. Could there be a bit ofwishful thinking in it? What is its meaning in a moment of disar-ticulation? What are its possible roles? Is it inspiration, critique,ideology, or resistance?

AP: Or rather, its the national through wishful thinking.FM: Last week you attended the publication of one more issue of the


review Praga. Dont you think that, in spite of the refined intel-lectual environment, at the debate a very strong tendencywas shown to critique political matters todayby definition col-lective mattersin a very personalized, simplistic way, of theFernando Henrique is the problem variety?

RS: Its complicated, and Fernando Henriques case for intellectualson the left is unique. Im going to respond in a general way,because I dont recall enough about the Praga debate. Recapitu-lating at random, what are the biases that the personalization ofthe political analysis brings to the left? One consists of attribut-ing to Fernando Henrique the difficulties caused by the currentstage of world capitalism or by the countrys class structure.Therewith the opposition can imagine that the left, if it reachespower, will not have to face the same constraints. The reducedmaneuverability that the eventual electoral victory would give tothe left, and mostly the true difficulty, which lies in the crisis ofthe socialist proposals and which is world-historical, is obscured.This is the kind of problem to which the critical sense and imag-ination of the anticapitalists have to be applied. Having statedthat, there is no way to avoid discussing the passage of the leftistintellectual, with leadership, to craftsman and leader of a center-right alliance, responsible for another cycle of conservative mod-ernization. It is a paradigmatic trajectory. Does this change offields representas the president and the intellectuals who werewith him thoughta lifting of the blockade and progress for thecountry? And what if the change of alliances turns out to havebeen but a new victory of capital? The ideological and culturalmeaning of that step, with its consequences and justifications,are going to be part of our dialogue for quite some time, andrightly so.

MF: One of the things I find quite rich in Ao vencedor as batatas,6 evenin the chapter on the importation of the novel in Alencar, is note20, practically an essay, which talks about Benjamin. It delvesinto the narrator, and in your own language. Its revealing forpeople who have a lot of access to the text through certain moreavailable features, such as the figuration of the seafarer and thesedentary farmer for oral narrative, or the difference, whichwinds up mechanized, between oral narrative and novel. You do


a simultaneous synthesis of all your work and of Benjaminsessay, and then situate Jos de Alencar. This ends up showinghow the literature produced under our conditions is complexafter all, in its ingenuousness and in its divergences, since it isdealing with a prebourgeois element, which Benjamin wouldattribute to oral narrative, and meanwhile it is dealing with theimportation of the novel. There are certain passages that I wouldlike to clarify. Take this one, for instance: Through one of thosehappy impostures of Romantic literature he [Alencar] joins theauthentic popular vein to the modern and restorative Romanti-cism of evocation [there is a category of evocation I would likeyou to talk about it], whose long-breathed rhythm builds thesymbiosis of meditation and spontaneitythe profound, naturallink with nature and community faked in the visionary pose[that expression: visionary pose]that is the poetry of theschool and the sense of the world that it opposes to bourgeoissociety. You also quote Hlderlin and make a series of observa-tions that seem to be complex on account of the situation inwhich Alencar, who is mixing the advanced narrative form of thenovel with popular oral narrative, was working. Though inEurope there was probably more historical influence on the cau-sation of novelesque form, here the play of importation withbelatedness creates more complexity, with precarious aestheticresults in this case.

RS: The combination of popular orality and learned complexity is atopic in Brazilian literature. The great figure there is GuimaresRosa. There is a remarkable doctorate on that topic, by a Mexicanpoet and critic, Hctor Olea, on the intertext of the rose [Uni-camp, Departamento de Teoria Literria, no date]. Hctor docu-ments the almost unbelievable frequency of allusions to theBible, to Plato, Plotinus, Dante, and other classics that occur inalmost every sentence. One is left with the impressionthoughthe thesis may have other intentionsthat Guimares Rosas lit-erary method in a certain sense consisted of taking phrases fromclassics and translating them into rustic speech, in language andsituations. That doesnt prevent it being an ultrarightist solutionto the difficulty of linking the local and the universal. The combi-nation of regional inflections from Minas Gerais and arguments


derived from philosophical tradition constitutes a most conse-crated armament, one of those differences of time and place thatare, in some way, characteristic of Brazil. The security of orality,of the speech of the illiterate, hides the audacity of the assembly,which is no less wild than Oswald de Andrades most Cubistprose.

There is a veneer of naturalness hiding the extravagance ofthis operation. At another point, there are questions of the sametype in Alencars prose, especially in the novels about plantationlife. The diction of those books has something of the yarn to it,while it is prompted by the Romantic sense of nature, of time,and of impending catastrophe, a feeling whose complexity is dif-ferent. But the Romantic cult of popular ingenuousness allowedfor a kind of viable amalgam in which the impelling and embrac-ing view of integration between collective life and naturealearned achievement, tied to the rejection of biases imposed bymodern lifetakes the characteristic of popular wisdom. But tobe frank, Im thinking more of my argument here than of Alencarsnovel, so I wont go out on a limb with these observations. Any-way, I think its true that the Romantic view of nature in Alencarat times slips from nostalgic distance toward the picturesque,and that that slip, understood in its comicality, would become abrilliant solution taken up by the modernists.

MF: You end Ao vencedor as batatas speaking of Machado de Assis assomeone who completed his social ascension at the time when hewould shift to his second phase. At the same time you alwayswarn against biographism. And in fact that process in Machado isvery perceptible. It seems, as is typical in his interpretation, thatnow he is masking the mockery with a certain independence,saying, Look, Im not going to be that well-intentioned littleangel from my first phase any more, I know how things work.How does this relate to the biographical?

RS: The problem was well used by Sartre in The Problem of Method. Atone point, polemicizing with vulgar Marxism, he states that thereis no explicative value in asserting that Valry is a petit-bourgeois,since there are many petit-bourgeois that are not Valry, or rather,great poets. Between the complexity of the works and the sum-mary definition of the class positions of their authors, there is a


great disproportion, which suggests that we need to understandthe social process as more complex, and not the artistic processas simpler. The right question, according to Sartre, goes againstmaterialist common sense. When the works are studied in theircomplexity, they allow one to ask good questions of the empiri-cal, even biographical, context, in which they arose and whichthey are overcoming on the level of the imaginary. Moving to thecase of Brazil, its not a question of reducing the strength of theMachadian oeuvre to precariousness, injustice, or the backward-ness of national conditions, or to the routine of a civil servantslife; on the contrary, its a problem of allowing oneself to beguided by the remarkable work and then to ask what, in anapparently quite inauspicious environment, or in an uninspiringbiography, allowed that kind of transcendence to be possible. Thereplies could be interesting.

AP: And in poetry is there anyone of Machados importance? [Car-los] Drummond [de Andrade]?

RS: In fact, Drummond is one of the few Brazilian authors whoattempts to say difficult things. The other day I took part in thequalifying exam for Vagner Camilos thesis on Drummond andpolitics. Its a study on the relations between the poet and Com-munism. The promises and the frustrations of political commit-ment are there, without banalization.

MF: You call difficult things problems that he would confront, riskshe takes?

RS: I was not thinking of physical risk, but of the labyrinth of prob-lems. In the great European writers, the analytical and cognitiveeffort is great: something analogous to cutting-edge sciencewhen it is venturesome. To enter seriously into the impasses oflanguage, of the inner life, or of politics, is something uniquelydifficult. Here in Brazil, even in the case of the greats, there is acertain complacency with irrelevance, inasmuch as it is literarilywell-handled. To poke ones knife into thought, as Machadowanted to, is rare.

fm: Maria Augusta Fonseca spoke to me of a roundtable in which youparticipated at Santa Catarina, where you critically read CaetanoVelosos book Verdade Tropical [Tropical truth]. Is that going to bepublished?


RS: I read his book with great interest, and there is much there to dis-cuss. Unfortunately I have no musical education, so I wouldntknow how to take up the issues in the site in which they had themost weight, namely, in the songs.

The books qualities are really great. Caetanos sense of real-ity is vast and sharp, of the sort we admire in the great realistnovelists. Portraits of friends, fellow musicians, and rivals arenotable, and the central figurehe himselfis a problematichero of the greatest contemporary relevance and scope. Thesummaries of the aesthetic-political-marketological debates arequite substantial and lively. As testimony on the artistic trade, hedoes not cut a bad figure alongside what [Manuel] Bandeira andDrummond gave us on that score. Caetanos theory is that JooGilberto aesthetically made explicit and modernized an evolu-tionary line that had been evolving from the rhythms of Bahiaand Rio and that now, in their new Joo-Gilbertian form, cameinto circumstances in which it interacted with the best of con-temporary popular music without debasement.

The parallel with Antnio Cndidos construction and withthe status he confers on Machado de Assis is amazing. I couldntgo into its musical merit, but the argument shows how the motifof development is widespread in the country. A while ago, Otliaand Paulo Arantes published Sentido da formao [Meaning ofdevelopment] (So Paulo: Paz e Terra, 1997), where they reviewthat kind of problem in literature, painting, and architecture. Themotif apparently is ripening for a more abstract and more thor-ough treatment, which, if I am not mistaken, Paulo himself has inpreparation.

Having said all that, I also think that the books positions oncentral issues are faulty. I want to cite two of its stances that tomy mind considerably distort the perspective and abort a certaintrajectory that had been traced. Relying on quarrels and hurlingscorn, which in the end were more a part of show business thanthe class struggle, Caetano rails against the left as if it, which wasbeing persecuted, was or had been in power. Were left withthe sad impression of the well-patronized rebel who, moreover,downplays the role of leftism in his social nonconformity, whichis one of the inspirations of his art and whose historical origin is


evoked quite beautifully in the opening chapters on life in SantoAmaro and Salvador before the coup in 64. Another limitationis the almost total silence on the lowering cost of the mercantili-zation of culture that, moreover, is manifest on virtually everypage, and whose open consideration, though not critically, is oneof the strengths of the work. I make these observations since thebook intends to explain and point out paths.

Notes

The interview took place in March 1999, and it appeared originally in Novos Estu-dos Cebrap no. 58 (November 2000). The interviewers were Afonso Fvero, AirtonPaschoa, Francisco Mariutti, Marcos Falleiros. The transcription of the recordedtape was performed by scholarship winner in scientific initiation Ector PabloDantas Beserra, graduating (1999) in literature from Universidade Federal do RioGrande do Norte (UFRN).

1. Ao vencedor as batatas: forma literria e processo social nos incios do romancebrasileiro [To the victor go the potatoes: literary form and social process in thedawn of the Brazilian novel], by Roberto Schwarz (So Paulo: Livraria DuasCidades, 1977).

2. Antnio Cndido, De cortio a cortio, in O discurso e a cidade (SoPaulo: Duas Cidades, 1993). [O cortio is available in a recent translation inOxfords Library of Latin America series (The Tenement, trans. David H. Rosen-thal [New York: Oxford University Press, 2000]). Trans.]

3. Antnio Cndido, Dialtica da malandragem, in O discurso e a cidade.4. Novel by Manuel Antonio de Almeida, trans. Linton L. Barrett (Wash-

ington, D.C.: Pan American Union, 1959).5. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O trato dos viventes (So Paulo: Companhia

das Letras, 2000).6. Roberto Schwarz, Ao vencedor as batatas.


Resolving Doubts With Roberto Schwarz

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