Lyricism in the Brazilian Novel

Brazilian writers remain bound by the need to register and document people’s reality, as part of a commitment by Brazilian authors to document the nation. This demand has never been negotiated, and I believe it may have been a contributing factor to the repression of the lyrical style and the analysis of prose lyricism. As stated by Antonio Candido in ‘Literatura e subdesenvolvimento’,³ the undeniable social and economic problems of the country are subjects which Brazilian writers cannot avoid. This factor has led to a sort of hegemony of the realist pattern of literary construction – and to its critical judgement. Nonetheless, the presence of social realism⁴ in Brazilian literature is not a result of social issues only and can also be understood as an attitude on the part of the literary milieu which sees the social documentary approach as an elementary and natural responsibility.

This social realist principle is responsible for the over-dissemination of realism in many contemporary narratives in Brazil, in which there is a great focus on urban life and violence, as well as on the everyday tragedies of common citizens.⁵ The engagement expected of writers is usually understood as an explicit representation of the social conflicts experienced in the country – a direct reference, with a documentary character. In political terms, however, this facet of realism (among the many other facets of this artistic representation) has often been used as a tool to assimilate the inequality and social difficulties faced by the Brazilian population – incorporating the discussion proposed by authors addressed here, such ←3 | 4→as Beatriz Jaguaribe (2007) and Tânia Pellegrini (2012).⁶ The author may depict loneliness, violence, ruptures and the struggles of daily life in large Brazilian cities, but the predominant aestheticization of psychological and physical violence acts more as a device for acceptance and resignation than a trigger for concrete political engagement. Certainly this aesthetic realism is not the only technique in Brazilian literature, but it is interesting to observe the impact it has had. Even though this aesthetic may not be hegemonic in the present, it has already generated its own nomenclature and debates within literary studies.

However, it is important not to establish a dichotomy between socially engaged literature and the presence of lyricism in prose. My argument does not imply that any type of over-realistic approach in Brazilian prose cannot achieve lyrical moments. Rather, I suggest that social realism and prose lyricism have not even been considered alongside each other until now, and that may be the reason for this absence of major studies about prose lyricism in Brazil. I consider that there is a certain prejudice against lyrical narrative due to the widespread assumption that prose lyricism is not an appropriate vehicle for social engagement. This preconception is not new; there is a recurrent perspective of aloofness and alienation attributed to the lyric; lyricism is habitually seen as ‘timeless and unworldly, remote from historical conflict’, as Scott Brewster suggests.⁷ I explore the origins of this attitude later on, as well as discussing how lyricism provides counterpoints to this presumption. As we will see in Chapter 2, an idealization of the newborn nation occurred in literature during Romanticism and, after this phase had concluded, prose lyricism began to be treated with caution. This stance could be attributed to the functional rhetoric demanded by the intensely political nature of earlier Latin American novels, which served the tangled relationship between politics and fiction, as developed by Doris ←4 | 5→Sommer in Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America.⁸ However, the problematic attitude to lyricism can also be observed in the underdevelopment of more imaginative – that is to say, creative, fantastic and imagistic – narratives in Brazil, in contrast to the other countries of Latin America, an aspect pointed out by Beatriz Jaguaribe.⁹

If the political commitment that is expected of Brazilian writers can be expanded to include prose lyricism, it will acquire a broader and enriched repertoire. The ontological depth that lyrical resources add to any novelistic theme can be understood as a diverse way of bringing political awareness to the debate. In this sense, we can make a case for the social concerns of authors such as João Guimarães Rosa and Osman Lins, who expressed in some of their works an awareness of the Brazilian people and their difficulties metaphorically, through aspects of the lyrical and an intense literary construction.

In this book I focus on how prose lyricism has been overlooked in Brazilian literary historiography, discussing the work of relevant scholars. I also draw into the discussion the more recent contributions of the few investigators who have chiefly dedicated their studies to the insertion of lyricism in literary narratives.¹⁰ The intention is to complement these studies, focusing on a broader perspective that also addresses representative examples of the lyrical novel in Brazil from the early twenty-first century. I connect lyrical authors and works across time, introducing lyrical novel-writing as a tendency in Brazil that is yet to be investigated in depth.