Mário de Andrade

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The Man Who Reinvented Brazil

 

Mário de Andrade is a name that follows me for a very long time. Once at school, back to my 1st grade, I was asked to go to Mário de Andrade Publish Library to do a research. When you are a kid, every place that has a person’s name is very intriguing. You first thing that the name is from a politician, or a doctor who donate a lot of money to the City Hall, or an important person from history, a warrior maybe. I though that Mário de Andrade was a mayor from the past, but never though, until probably high school, that he was much more important than that: he was the man who reinvented Brazil.    

Opposite of what you certainly think, Andrade didn’t start his artistic career as an author. In fact, he never had formal education in literature. He was a prodigious pianist as a little boy and studied music instead, since this was his passion. He was, though, an autodidact in history, arts and poetry and had mastered the French language, getting in touch with works of Rimbaud and other poets from symbolism. For certain, that wasn’t an easy job for a little boy who was born at the end of the 18th century, in 1893. Therefore, even while studying music, he was already producing his own poems without pretensions of being the great author he turned out to be.

At this point, you are probably thinking why is the public library from Araraquara, my hometown, named after Mário de Andrade. It is not only because he is one of – or maybe the – best author from 20th century in Brazil, but because he wrote one of his masterpieces there (Macunaíma), in a farmhouse his family owned. He lived most of his life in São Paulo, a big city which was one of his poem themes, but in 1913 he moved to this countryside property after his brother died in an accident during a soccer game. He abandoned, then, his music studies, and when he was finally prepared to go back to his hometown he could no longer play piano, as he developed a problem on his hands, which trembling very often. However, he didn’t abandon his passion for music and became a teacher. At the same time, he showed a bigger interest in literature than he ever had. He published his first work in 1917, a collection of poems called There is a drop of blood in each poem under the pseudonym Mário Sobral. This work has vestige of Brazilian culture, although with strong French influence, and even though didn’t have the repercussion he expected, he kept working on his writings and researches about the Brazilian popular culture. During that time, he met a group of young artists who were interested in the European Modernism. They created the Group of Five, composed by the poets Mário de Andrade, Oswaldo de Andrade and Menotti del Picchia and the artists Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfati. Together, they organized the most important artistic event of vanguard in Brazil: The Week of Modern Art, which we will discuss further soon.

Mário was not only a poet, college professor and musicologist, but also novelist, critic and, of course, an art historian. His contributions to the record of Brazilian popular culture is immense and is not only visible in his literary work. In 1935, during an unstable political moment in Brazil, Andrade was able to create a unified Department of Culture in São Paulo with Paulo Duarte, a writer and archaeologist. One thing Andrade really wanted to do while funding director was to conquer and disseminate the Brazilian culture throughout the country. He expanded his work in folklore and folk music, bringing also his collection of recordings to the Department. Cultural and demographic research was, then, one among several important works he had done. In 1938, Paulo Duarte was exiled and Andrade resigned his position at the department, moving to Rio de Janeiro, where he would be a college professor. In 1941, he went back to São Paulo to take the position as funding director at the Department of Culture back, but he wasn’t as enthusiastic as he was before. Four years later, Andrade died of heart attack at the age of 52. 

During basically all his life, Andrade’s work wasn’t publicized as it should have been, for he had several divergences to the govern of president Getúlio Vargas. But after 1955 with the publication of Complete Poems his name could finally be canonized.

As we could see, Mário de Andrade is a national hero who not only helped bringing the artistic vanguard in vogue to his country, but also contributed to the reinvention of Brazil, with all his research about popular culture and its use into his writing work. Macunaíma is the best example, which, as a reminder, we will discuss very soon. Talking about Macunaíma, if you already read it or are reading it, what are your impressions so far?

 

About Araraquara

Araraquara is a green and beautiful college town. We call it Morada do Sol (Where the Sun lives) because it is very sunny and hot mostly all the time. There are also lots of folktales there, and I want to tell you the one about the snake.

A baby once was rejected by his mom and thrown into a river in front of one of the oldest churches of the city to die. This baby, then, becomes a snake, who lives underground the church. Every time it moves, it breaks a piece of the church, which was never finished. To protect the population against the snake, it was built a sculpture of an eagle, who supposedly protects the city. This is one among other versions of this folktale.

Good to Know

English Translations of Mário de Andrade:

  1. Andrade, Mario de. (1933) Fraulein. Trans. Marharet Richardson Hollingsworth. Macaulay, New York.
  1. Fraulein (Amar, Verbo Intransitivo). Trans. Margaret 1933.
  1. Popular Music and Song in Brazil. 1936. Trans. Luiz Victor Le Cocq D’Oliveira. Sponsored by the Ministry of State for Foreign Affairs of Brazil: Division of Intellectual Cooperation. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1943.
  1. Hallucinated City (Paulicea Desvairada). Trans. Jack E. Tomlins. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 1968.
  1. Macunaíma. Trans. E.A. Goodland. New York: Random House, 1984.
  1. Brazilian Sculpture: An Identity in Profile/Escultura Brasileira: Perfil de uma Identidate. Catalog of exhibition in English and Portuguese. Includes text by Mário de Andrade and others. Ed. Élcior Ferreira de Santana Filho. São Paulo, Brazil: Associação dos Amigos da Pinateca, 1997.

 

Published Works in Brazil 

  1. Há uma Gota de Sangue em Cada Poema, 1916
  2. Pauliceia Desvairada, 1922
  3. A Escrava que não É Isaura, 1925
  4. Losango Cáqui, 1926
  5. Primeiro Andar, 1926
  6. O clã do Jabuti, 1927
  7. Amar, Verbo Intransitivo, 1927
  8. Ensaios Sobra a Música Brasileira, 1928
  9. Macunaíma, 1928
  10. Compêndio Da História Da Música, 1929 (Reescrito Como Pequena História Da Música Brasileira, 1942)
  11. Modinhas Imperiais, 1930
  12. Remate De Males, 1930
  13. Música, Doce Música, 1933
  14. Belasarte, 1934
  15. O Aleijadinho de Álvares De Azevedo, 1935
  16. Lasar Segall, 1935
  17. Música do Brasil, 1941
  18. Poesias, 1941
  19. O Movimento Modernista, 1942
  20. O Baile das Quatro Artes, 1943
  21. Os Filhos da Candinha, 1943
  22. Aspectos da Literatura Brasileira 1943
  23. O Empalhador de Passarinhos, 1944
  24. Lira Paulistana, 1945
  25. O Carro da Miséria, 1947
  26. Contos Novos, 1947
  27. O Banquete, 1978 (Editado por Jorge Coli)
  28. Dicionário Musical Brasileiro, 1989 (editado por Flávia Toni)
  29. Será o Benedito!, 1992
  30. Introdução à estética musical, 1995 (editado por Flávia Toni)

 

Bibliography:

Andrade, Mário de. Macunaíma. Trans. E.A. Goodland. New York: Random House, 1984.

___ Macunaíma. MediaFashion: São Paulo, 2008.

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