Revista de Antropofagia (1928-29) [PDF, 70mb]

"Antropofagia Incorporated": A Concept or a Movement?

    The "Semana de Arte Moderna" in São Paulo sounded the opening salvos of the Brazilian modernist discourse in 1922. Its publications are often tied with the proclamation and reassertion of Avant-garde ideas within the intelligentsia of São Paulo that had matured and amalgamated into a coherent thought movement. I argue that this movement defined an effort to re-evaluate and re-constitute the role of intellectualism and replaced it with the objective observations of the self within the Brazilian context. This""thought movement" reflected itself as a modernist esthetic expression in the art, literature, and architecture of the period.

    At least at its inception, the modernist movement in Brazil appears to be a single stream. We can, however recognize multiple currents within that stream. "Antropofagia" is an example of one such important later conceptual current (Boaventura)¹ that dealt with the process of Brazilian identity construction through metaphoric cannibalization within a rapidly transforming and essentially urbanizing industrialized economy (Perrone 18).²

    In essence, the "thought movement" of modernism was a cultural movement, because its participants critically conceptualized their own relationship to the existing genres. These participants consciously tried to break from the formulaic aspects of the field of cultural production that existed at that time. While initiating this break, the participants of the movement "experimented" with new forms of artistic expression (Shklovsky 28).³ These forms consisted in the use of the visual arts ⁴ as well as the production of various periodicals such as Klaxon, Terra Roxa, etc (Lara 15).⁵ Klaxon's first issue was published on May of 1922, with the subtitle "mensário de arte moderna, São Paulo".

    Klaxon did not claim to be""cannibalistic", and in its first issue, the editorial appears to be its "manifesto". It would not be fair to assume that Klaxon was an anthropophagic periodical. However, we can see that some of the elements in Klaxon are indeed anthropophagic. This manifesto can be divided into the following parts- Significação, Esthetica, Cartaz and Problema. The unclaimed cannibalism of Klaxon, in my opinion, lies in the following lines from the manifesto that was published in the first issue under the heading Esthetica on May of 1922: "Klaxon sabe que a natureza existe. Mas sabe que o moto lyrico, productor da obra de arte, é uma lente transformadora e mesmo deformadora da natureza" (2)⁶ .  How different is this transformation and deformation of nature from the metaphoric "Antropofagia"? Klaxon continues in the Cartaz as follows: "Klaxon tem uma alma collectiva que se caracterisa pelo impeto constructivo. Mas cada engenheiro se utilizara dos materiais que lhe convierem... " (3)⁷ .  Here Klaxon equates a writer's profession to that of an engineer. In a way, the statement about the ability to utilize and incorporate various materials can be interpreted as "cannibalistic". This entails a certain assumption: that not all cultural production of Brazilian modernism was anthropophagic. And, in addition, that "Antropofagia" as a category could be applied only narrowly to describe the artistic production that appears after the publication of the Manifesto Antropófago. This manifesto, like the previous manifestos, such as Pau-Brasil, tends to base itself on a call to overthrow "the status quo" of the prevalent power structure (Vinkler 105).⁸

    Interpreting "Antropofagia" and its manifestations can be problematic due to limitations on our interpretations. One way to interpret it is to look at Oswald de Andrade's remarks about himself and about""Antropofagia" in his preface to the first edition of Serafim Ponte Grande. We must note that although this edition is dated 1933, the author, on the back cover states: "Este livro foi escrito de 1929 (era de Wall-Street e Cristo para tráz".  First, there is recognition of situational differences between Europe and Latin America, and this recognition is compounded with an explanation of how Oswald decided to become "boêmio" instead of a revolutionary:

Asituação""revolucionária" desta bosta mental sul-americana, apresentava-se assim: o contrario do burguez não era o proletário - era o boêmio! As massas, ignoradas no território e como hoje, só a completa devassidão econômica dos políticos e dos ricos. Os intelectuaes brincando de róda.  De vez em quando davam tiros entre rimas...Com pouco dinheiro, mas fóra do eixo revolucionário do mundo, ignroando o Manifesto Comunista e não querendo ser burguez, passei naturalmente a ser boêmio. (Andrade 6)⁹

Second, we could closely read his dissatisfaction with the status quo that modernism had perhaps reached in the following lines:

O movimento modernista, culminado no sarampão antropofagico, parecia indicar um fenômeno avançado. São Paulo possuia um poderoso parque industrial. Quem sabe se a alta do café não ia colocar a literatura nova-rica da semi-colônia ao lado dos custosos surrealismos imperialistas? 

Eis porém que o parque industrial de São Paulo era um parque de transformação. Com matéria prima importada. Às vezes originária do próprio solo nosso. Macunaíma. (Andrade 8)¹⁰

    The language that Oswald de Andrade uses is curious because he claims here that the modernist movement culminated in "rubéola"¹¹ , and he goes on to explicitly draw the reader's attention to the same industrial transformation that I had mentioned earlier. The key to understanding "Antropofagia" as a concept lies in understanding the paragraph quoted above. Oswald de Andrade on the one hand refers to Brazilian Modernism as a movement, while on the other hand he refers to""Antropofagia" as a phenomenon and not as a movement.

    The balance between the originality and the imported in his statement is, in my opinion, tipped more towards imported rather than domestic, because of the use of words like semi-colônia, or""às vezes".¹² Oswald de Andrade characterizes "Pau-Brasil" in the same preface as "operação imperialista".¹³ He also publishes a list of his own "obras renegadas" in the first edition of Serafim Ponte Grande. We may not be able to satisfactorily explain the reasons for this negation. Perhaps Oswald de Andrade's entry into the Communist Party could have marked this shift?   The answer to the characterization of Pau-Brasil as an imperialist operation cannot simply be found in his anger, then how can we try to understand the sources of his frustrations? Perhaps one way to look at these frustrations is to reflect on the nature of the articles that were being published in the first run of the "Revista de Antropofagia". Oswald's dissatisfaction with the first series (dentição) is described in the article titled "A View on Brazilian Literature: Eating the Revista de Antropofagia" by Kenneth David Jackson as:

The first ten monthly numbers of the magazine appeared between May 1928 and February 1929, directed by Antônio de Alcântara Machado and managed by Raul Bopp. Oswald de Andrade, in a letter dated March 1929 on stationery of the "Clube de Antropofagia" (Cannibal Club"), wrote to poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade soliciting contributions to the second phase: "não houve transformação e sim ortodoxia. O Alcântara não entendeu o sentido do movimento. Pensou que era troça e publicou durante meses inutilidades amenes. Evidentemetne errei em tel-o convidado para dirigir a Revista...Agora a cosa é outra. Estão à frente Bopp e Oswaldo Costa..." (Jackson 1-9)¹⁴

    The "Revista de Antropofagia"¹⁵ that represented the view of the""Anthropophagists" appears only in 1928, roughly six year after the appearance of the modernist Klaxon. I term this period of the absence of "Revista de Antropofagia" as a period of "pseudo-hibernation".¹⁶ This gap simply may be reflective of the fact that the modernist vanguards recognizing the need for the deployment and explanation of""cannibalistic" elements of modernism decided to vent these feelings to the general audience using the "Revista".

    The first issue of "Revista de Antropofagia" is important as it represents the moment in which the "Revista" organizersto  voice their own concerns, aspirations and intentions in an organized journal that could potentially reach wide masses, initially in São Paulo and then in the rest of Brazil. The "Revista" is thus an attempt to popularize "Antropofagia" among the general masses. For the purpose of this essay, I have examined some parts of the first issue of the "Revista". In the first issue of this journal that was published as said earlier in 1928, we see the publication of Oswald de Andrade's "revolutionary" "Manifesto Antropófago", however can we be certain to state that the overall tone of the first run of this Revista was the same as that of the Manifesto? Was this journal indicative of the mood of the Brazilian modernist writers?

    One can argue the validity of the fact that the modernist movement was to be a simple conscious effort to recognize the break with the past, and an effort to understand "the self". The self here can be loosely equated to the concept of "Brasilidade", but the participants like Mario de Andrade seem to have expressed their doubt about their own Brazilianess.¹⁷ Of course, one cannot deny the fact that the previous generations of authors and artists had also defined this "Brasilidade", sometimes sub-consciously within the national context. In the periodicals of the movement one can observe one notable difference, an effort to break from the "spirit" of the past. This modernist rupture is aptly described by Menotti del Picchia: "As grouping around the general idea of liberty and against the 'contemplative and stagnated faquirism'" (Picchia).¹⁸

    It is interesting to see how the "modernist ethics of reaction" is reflected in the Revista, combined with the anthropophagic dialogues.  If the tone of the manifesto can be summarized using lines from it, then we see the radical changes that Oswald was proposing through the Manifesto. Apart from his famous satirical second sentence from the manifesto, "Tupi or not tupi that is the question", we see a strong position taken:

Queremos a Revolução Caraiba. Maior que a Revolução Francesa. A unificação de todas as revoltas eficazes na direção do homem. Sem nós a Europa não teria sequer a sua pobre declaração dos direitos do homem. (Andrade 3)¹⁹

Although this "position-taking" is admirable and grandiose, it is almost utopian. Was this "Caraíba" revolution possible, given the circumstances that were present in Brazil during the 1930s? Or was it simply a call to Brazilian intellectuals to define the essence of Brazilianess? How is one to interpret this call? In my opinion, Oswald de Andrade's "Manifesto Antropófago" was not about fomenting a physical revolution, but rather an ideological stance on recognizing Brazil's anthropophagic past along with the trans-culturation of European civilization on the "sub-continent".²⁰ This recognition provided the validity for the free expression of the self that is indeed a necessity for satisfying this atavistic urge.

    This necessity to return to a search for the previous rather than the primitive is one trait that the Anthropophagic argument banks on. This return to the previous is qualitatively different from what is considered primitive. One cannot also deny that the total cultural production of the time in Brazil did not solely reflect the modernist agenda (Bourdieu).²¹ Perhaps, the need for this return to the exploration and re-evaluation of the origins of Brazil was acutely felt by the avant-gardes of Brazilian modernism due to the profound changes in the city of São Paulo in which they primarily resided and functioned? This need can be understood as São Paulo was undergoing substantial demographic changes because of increased""foreign" as well as "internal" immigration to the region (Nitolo).²² I do not consider this anthropophagic theme to be xenophobic, for it is one inclusive theme that is not necessarily imagined. It is real and it is constantly re-enforced during the modernist discourse.

    Brazil's encounter with""Antropofagia" is a well researched topic on which I do not wish to dwell for the purpose of this essay, but the violence of "death" and reconstitution of "life" as a different ideological category needs to be re-emphasized just as they were emphasized by Oswald de Andrade in his "Manifesto Antropófago".²³   This manifesto is ideologically different as it deals with the taboos against the cannibalistic practices in the occidental society. Also, the manifesto is an effort by the author, directed towards explaining the essence of a particular movement. So to say that Anthropophagic discourse in Brazil was only conceptual will be erroneous, I propose that Anthropophagic discourse in Brazil is not only conceptual, but it shows some elements of an organized movement. Revista can be seen as a mouth-piece of this""movement". The compromise will be to accept the anthropophagic discourse as a dual discourse: the discourse of a concept and also the discourse of a "current or flow" with the elements of organized movement that I mention earlier.

    However, the devouring of the other does not necessarily have to be physical. That ideas can be devoured, not plagiarized, and re-constituted is what Oswald de Andrade declares:

Morte e Vida das hypothese. Da equação eu parte do Kosmos ao axioma Kosmos parte do eu. Subsistência. Conhecimento. Antropofagia. (Revista- "Manifesto de Antropófago")²⁴

The concept of death being a "hypothesis of life" is combined with an outlook that enforced a shift in the understanding of the surrounding world. From the equation that makes "me" a part of the "space" to the concept that the "space" is part of "mine" is essentially anthropophagic. This is because the argument here emphasizes not simple internalization of the ideas, but that of the understanding and incorporation of these ideas. This ideological internalization cannot be attributed to be the equal of "Antropofagia" for a simple reason: the resulting internalization leads to the reproduction of a virtually similar concept. There are changes in such reproduction, but these changes can be minimal. On the other hand, during anthropophagic discourse, we see a qualitative modification of the internalized values. This same qualitative modification is referred to by Oswald de Andrade as a synthetic phenomenon in his article A Crise de Filosofia Messiânica:

Porque enfim, e a seguinte a formulação essencial do homem como problema como realidade:
1. termo: tese - o homem natural
2. termo: antitese - o homem civilizado
3. termo: síntese - o homem natural tecnizado (Andrade 79-129)²⁵

    The change from the old into a qualitative new can be interpreted as a transition from death to life. This allows us to examine this change as a normative category with universal application. In the Brazilian literary context the same category, in my opinion, transcends the normative tendencies of status quo and attains a "metaphoric character". This reconstitution of "life" in anthropophagic terms can be described as an internalization of not only the metaphorically masticated product i.e. the values, but the creation of a new and different "ideological" compound that is different from its original constituents.

    António de Alcântara Machado notes in Abre-Alas, in the opening article of the first issue of "Revista de Antropofagia":

Assim a experiência moderna (antes: contra os outros; depois: contra os outros e contra nós mesmos) acabou despertando em cada conviva o apetite de meter garfo no vizinho. Já começou a cordeal mastigação.

Aqui se processará a mortandade (êsse carnaval). Todas as oposições se enfrentarão.
Até 1923 havia aliados que eram inimigos. Hoje há inimigos que são aliados. A diferenca é enorme. Milagres do canibalismo.

No fim sobrará um Hans Staden. Êsse Hans Staden contará aquillo de que escapou e como os dados dêle se fará a arte proxima futura. (Machado 1)²⁶

Is this about telling the untold story of Hans Staden? Or about the opinion that the Brazilian milieu internalized the cannibalistic assimilation of ideas and various art related genres as a norm from the time of Hans Staden? Is this narrating of a story of literary ideological cannibalization continued right up to the conscious break that was characterized by the Modern Art week? The famous phrase from V. Hans Staden about the "Ali vem a nossa comida pulando" is strategically placed in bold letters at the bottom on the first page of the first volume of the Revista. The emphasis on the cannibalistic inclinations of the participants denotes, in my opinion, an agreement about the role of anthropophagy in the modernistic discourse that I had mentioned in the beginning of this essay.

    Mario de Andrade's poem""Manhã" on the first page is romantically modernist. I use the term "romantically" to denote the romantic elements that are within this poem. The tendency to use the romantic elements within the modernist discourse can be interpreted by some as Modernism, as a logical continuation of Romanticism. This conclusion, in my opinion may have some validity when it comes to describing the expressive emotions of a poet using similar words to those used by the romantics.

    One assumption may be that the language structures and meaning of words are constantly evolving. This attribute of instability, perhaps, could have forced a modernist poet or writer to deploy similar vocabulary as it was done by the authors of the romantic period. However the images that these similar words portray and convey are substantially different from those of their predecessors. In this portrayal we find the rupture that is often described to be iconoclastic in its nature (Johnson, 186-214).²⁷ One can never ignore the simple fact that the participants of Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo were born during the epoch of Romanticism in Brazil.²⁸ The context in which and the style by which the poets and authors of the modern period depicted the new intentions is important for the analysis of their creations.

    In "Manhã" the strophes ofthe poem do not follow the rigid patterns of traditional poetry. Words such as "O jardim estava em rosa, ao pé do Sol..."²⁹ may be distinctly romantic, but the reference to the fact that the land was so clean that one could kiss it without having to deal with the ants can be interpreted as trouble of a kind in paradise. Was there a perceived trouble in the paradise called Brazil? Is this trouble symbolically depicted as a constant tension that is apparent in the writings of the modernist authors? "This tension, often combined with the break with the style of the previous romantic period, is also obvious in the arrangement of the strophes" (Hulet 6).³⁰ For example, in""Manhã", we find this arrangement to be 4-3-4-6-6 lines. Along with these differentiations, we find relevant usage of Brazilian indigenous words along with the presence of "mata" or "selva" and""selvagem" in the modernist discourse.

    The wilderness of Brazil has a constant presence in the sub-conscious self of Brazilian writers such as Mario de Andrande. In "Manhã" we see nature intersecting with profane urban intellectualism. The key for understanding this poem is the desire of Mario de Andrade. The author does not wish for a woman's company in the garden, but instead hypothetically wishes the presence of Lenin, Carlos Prestes, and Gandhi.

    The politicization of modernism and its collaborative "ideological" discourse is another trait that is obvious in the writings published in the Revista. When Mario de Andrade wishes for the presence of these radical personalities,³¹ this presence is requested for specific reasons.  These reasons may seem rather trivial at first to the reader who is not aware of the socio-economic transformation in Brazil at this period. Mario de Andrade wishes that he could tell them the names of Brazilian fish as well as acquaint them with landmarks like Ouro Preto or Marajó. Can we see the anthropophagic argument in Manhã:""Coisa assim que puzesse um disfarce de festa, No Pensamento dessas tempestades de homens"?

    Besides Mario de Andrade, regarding Oswald de Andrade we find an interesting article by Plinio de Salgado about the Tupi language. The author proposes novel criteria for the study of Tupi, this criteria essentially evolves around the break from catechesis and compares the language to a real Eucharist as follows:

A nossa lingua tupy, não a devemos estudar, mais com um senso grammatical, philologico, mas com um senso humano. O idioma ou os idiomas falados pelos povos americanos precolombianos representam uma verdadeira eucharistia: o homem commungando com a natureza.
   
E sob este ponto de vista que devemos tomar os elementos verbaes polyryntheticos da lingua dos nosos selvagens. Veremos desdobrar-se aos nossos olhos a través de cada palavra, de cada raiz, toda a alma do nosso índio (Salgado 6).³²

    In this same article, we see an historical examination of various methods of studying the Tupi language. The author refers to Tupi language as "our Tupi". Does this mean that using the images of Tupi was one effort to establish the separation between "Brazilian" and""European" approaches to the study of languages in the modernist context?

    This is the discourse of""incorporating" that can be understood as repetitive. The fact that the arguments of the contributors to the Revista were to be repetitive is noted explicitly in the "Nota Insistente" which appears on the final page; written by both the editor Alcântara Machado and the manager Raul Bopp:

Neste rabinho do seu primeiro numero a "Revista de Antropofagia" faz questão de repetir o que ficou ditto lá no princípio... A "Revista de Antropofagia" não tem orientação ou pensamento de espécie alguma: só tem estômago. (Machado & Bopp 8).³³

    One of the causes of frustration that Oswald de Andrade had expressed in his letter to Carlos Drumond de Andrade perhaps lays in the fact that the original series of "Revista" acquired a distinctly repetitive character. This repetitive character for Oswald de Andrade signified the lack of his "ver com os olhos livres" ideology.

    In the final analysis, we can note that the Brazilian anthropophagic discourse in Revista de Antropofagia should be examined as a brazen attitude or a deliberate stance in which the intellectuals of the vanguard thumbed their noses at the complacent dynamics of formalist, memorialistic and a romantic literary past. The term "Antropofagia" possesses a dual character: as a concept and as a movement. Understanding this dual discourse in the context of the 1930s is important if we are to comprehend the complexities of Brazilian Modernism. This duality, in my opinion, reinforced the discourse of""incorporated national identity" that is reflected in the writings of Brazilian modernists as a synthesis of both: indigenous and foreign.