Ricardo Martins Rizzo
Politics,
literature
and nourishment:
José de Alencar
José de Alencar and the dissonant flavors of the nation
O
ne of the most widespread ideas on the definition of a nation is that it would be an “imagined community”. The development of
national states, the establishment of the monopoly
for the legitimate use of force on a certain territory and people has always been a political and
cultural fact, which was obliged to appeal to the
imagination to make sense. Essentially, the imagination was necessary to prove that each nation
was equivalent to one unity. Furthermore, the cultural and political task to imagine a nation – i.e., to
project an ideal of unity on a reality that was frequently diverse and conflicting – is also a collective task. The imaginary community has always
to be imagined each day, by the whole collectivity,
under the risk of disintegration.
The nation’s imagination is, therefore, at the
same time subjective and collective – converting
the images into shared social values. In order for
these values to become common, images actively
Flavors from Brazil
recognized by everyone should be sought. For
this reason, it is not possible to imagine a nation
from a void. In order for this image to appear, it
is necessary to “build” it with elements that are
in some way “ready” – be they the language, the
history, the habits, the culture, the traditions, the
customs, the flavors.
Although imaginary, the nation is not an arbitrary creation. It is in reality a political “artifact”;
however, the “art” involved in its creation refers
to the identification of the common elements for
the community, and to its projection in a narrative that can be considered a type of “collective”
biography. Such a narrative should be capable of
guiding – by imagination – the whole collectivity
towards a common historic destiny.
It is not at random that art, particularly
literature, has always played an important role
in this task of imagining communities and peoples destinies. The literary narrative has the lib23
erty of organizing and imagining the past, giving it a new shape and meaning. In Brazil, with
the Independence, the romantic authors, many
closely associated to politics, concerned with the
retrieval/invention of a national history, called on
to themselves the task of recovering the elements
of the origin of the Brazilian nationality and of
creating with them a coherent and evolutional
image of Brazil.
José de Alencar (1829-1877) can be considered the most typical of these authors, although
he was an intellectual who acted remarkably independently, with a very personal political and
cultural project. In his many novels and theatrical pieces, he produced images that have crossed
over the century, transporting national symbols.
He researched the elements of nationality, from
the native ethnography to the name of fruits,
birds, trees, places, and was able to, as few others, give them a special shape – the shape of a living unity – by which Brazil, with its many different races and regions, appeared and recognized
itself as a nation.
One of the most important elements in this
large national panorama traced by José de Alencar was the language – the very support for symbolic and literary construction. Alencar added to
the Portuguese language Brazilian shades, native
sounds, popular aspects, even though “artificial”
at several times. He registered original sounds,
innovating the syntax and the lexicon. He was
strongly criticized by those who considered him,
for this, the enemy of the purity of the language.
His intention was exactly to bring out the differences of the Brazilian way of speaking and writing in Portuguese. Along with the nation, a language should also be developed, different from
the one spoken by the ex-metropolis.
To explain why the Brazilian Portuguese
language should be different, Alencar held on
24
to the authority of science in the 19th Century,
and found in the philology of the German Jacob
Grimm the explanation to corroborate his nationalist desires: by influence of the tropical environment, the Brazilian mouth itself would become
with time different from the Portuguese mouth.
To begin with, the fact that the Brazilian mouth
was exposed to an exuberant food. In the preface
of his novel Sonhos d’Ouro (Dreams of Gold), from
1872, Alencar inquired: “a people that suck cashews, mangos, cambuca and jaboticaba, can they
speak a language with the same pronunciation
and spirit of a people who nibbles figs, pears, apricots and medlars?”
It is not an accident that the author, when
trying to pinpoint the differences between the
Brazilian speech and the Portuguese one, chose to
refer, in his amusing metaphor on the influence of
the environment on the language, to typical Brazilian fruits with strong names like cashew, cambuca and jaboticaba. The intention is to enrich the
argument with the powerful evocation of strong
national flavors that come wrapped in a sonorous
and honest pronunciation of their names. The romantic José de Alencar, creator of the Indian Peri,
of heroes and heroines of strong character that are
overcome by destiny (metaphor and metaphysics
of history), was also a realist who researched and
described what he considered to be the daily and
historic elements of nationality – but, nevertheless, elements that were present in the concrete
life of the collectivity. In this concern to register
the national way of life, Alencar mapped not only
customs and history, but also traditions and, especially, cuisine from different regions, social
classes and groups. The several flavors of the
nation compose the sensitive atmosphere of his
novels, and they are very important pieces in the
evocation of our national exuberance.
Texts from Brazil . Nº 13
Nourishment is also a defining element
of nationality, as is the nature from which it descends. Alencar recaptures the scribe Pero Vaz de
Caminha’s tradition, and in the fertile land of Brazil identifies the extravagance of a nature which
was prepared to satisfy the boldest palates – even
creating the melon, “this sweet cucumber, this
natural indigestion that the earth, gentle mother,
is careful to prepare for the stomach which desires strong emotions”.
Alencar’s most famous hero, the Indian
Peri of O Guarani (which celebrated 150 years in
2007), is the symbol - together with Iracema, the
“virgin with honey lips”, who is the name of another one of his most famous novels – the complete communion with “American nature”. The
qualities of these characters reflect the attributes
of this nature, and their high values find in the
richness of nature their most frequent metaphor.
Alencar’s Indianism encompassed a literary and
historiographic project that lead him to rebuild,
with an almost scientific care, aspects of the lives
of the Brazilian natives, not without a dose of
idealization that, more than the aesthetic conventions of Romanticism, corresponded to the author’s political beliefs. In this register of Alencar’s
Indianism, we can find the effort to describe the
concrete elements that give life to the narrated life
of the Indians. Their eating habits stand out as a
remarkable and revealing trait, not only of the descriptive inclination but also of the idealization.
In O Guarani, for example, there is a meal
which marks the approximation of the main romantic couple – the Indian Peri and the young
white Ceci, daughter of the Portuguese nobleman
Dom Antônio de Mariz. After the terrible fire
that destroyed the nobleman’s house due to an
attack from the Aimoré Indians, the young Ceci
wanders through the forest guided by her faithful protector Peri, who intends to take her safely
Flavors from Brazil
to Rio de Janeiro. Gliding through the rivers, the
couple lives their idyll accompanied by the feast
prepared by nature for those who, like Peri, know
how to gather it.
During this period, the Indian prepared
the simple meals that nature offered them. He
laid on a wide leaf the fruits he had gathered:
strawberry guava, rose apples, ice cream beans
with soft pulps, coconuts of several varieties.
The other leaf contained honeycombs from a
small bee that had built its hive on the trunk of
a cabreuva tree, thus the pure and clear honey
had a delicious perfume; it could be called flower
honey. The Indian turned a wide palm leaf concave and filled it with pineapple juice. Its fragrance was like the essence of its flavor, it was
the wine that accompanied the light banquet.
In another passage, the Indian Peri, trying
to beat his enemies, the Aimoré Indians (also enemies of his beloved Ceci’s family), takes curare, a
powerful poison, and offers his own contaminated
body to the Aimoré cannibals. Unsuccessful in his
plan, he heals himself from the poison by sucking
the sap of a tree. The passage is no less a note of
the eating habits of the “natives”, where the cannibalism differs between noble Indians and barbaric ones. In Iracema, it is the theme of the native’s
hospitality that brings together the romantic couple – the Tabajara Indian and the Portuguese colonizer Martim: “Iracema lit the fire of hospitality,
and brought what provisions they had to quench
hunger and thirst; she brought what remained
from the hunt; thin manioc flour, wild fruits, honeycombs and cashew and pineapple wine”.
The intimacy of Peri and Iracema with
Brazilian nature is demonstrated, as it can be
observed, by their eating habits. Iracema is the
guardian of the “secret of the Brazilian rain tree”.
In the same way that Peri is familiar with the ef25
fects of curare, Iracema knows how to prepare the
beverage made from the Brazilian rain tree, a tree
“of medium height with thick leafage” whose
hallucinating effects guarantee nice dreams that
have a spiritual meaning. It is Alencar himself
who explains the connection between the eating
habits of the native culture and religion, through
his explanatory notes to his novel. He explains, for
example, that the Brazilian rain tree “produces an
excessively bitter fruit, with a strong smell, that,
together with its leaves and other ingredients, the
Indians prepared a beverage that had the same
effect as hashish, of producing such lively and
intense dreams, that the person felt with delight
and as if they were real the pleasurable hallucinations of fantasy excited by the narcotic.”
The intertwining between the description
of the eating habits and the social life of the Indians is constantly present in Alencar’s Indianism,
as well as being an important trait in his regionalist novels. His literary project, besides recovering
the historic and ethnical memory of nationality,
also intends to solidify the unity of the enormous
territory of the Brazilian monarchy, distributed
throughout the continent and threatened during
the first half of the 19th Century, mainly from 1831
to 1848, by separatist rebellions and insurrections of which the Farroupilha Revolution in Rio
Grande do Sul (1835-1845) was by far the longest
and the most threatening.
Alencar’s literary work, therefore, has,
among other goals, the intention to cover the
whole nation in time and space, establishing references, values and symbols. In 1870, Alencar published O Gaúcho, where he depicts the customs of
the South of Brazil. In this novel, the author notes
that “On the immense page of the national soil,
the popular imagination writes intimate chronicles of the generations” by means of the topographic etymology. Alencar also describes, how26
ever, in referring to customs, the traits of a society
which he intends to consolidate. The gaucho hero
Manuel incorporates the virtues of the man from
the South of Brazil and leads his typical life. In the
description of his quick and improvised dinner,
we can observe elements that are part of the typical southern cuisine:
Manuel promptly made the arrangements
for his siesta; and leaving the meat roasting on
the fire, he approached the river to wash his
hands and face. The meal was quick. A big chunk
of meat with handfuls of flour; and water drunk
from the tip of the stirrup, which the lad was
careful to wash in order to serve him as a cup.
In another description, the mealtime helps
to determine social position:
In one of the extremities of the long table,
two plates were placed with silver cutlery intended for the host and his guest. Before them,
smoked a large assado de couro and a fish that
filled the enormous pottery skillet. In addition,
there were greenery and vegetables.
This was the arrangement inside the master’s house. Another one was the meals of the
subordinates: “The meal was scarce; barbecue
(churrasco), the classical morsel of the South of
the country, cheese, peaches in syrup or dried.
Manuel ate rapidly with his head down.”
In the characterization of gaucho society,
a reference to chimarrão could not be absent. It
suggests, in its almost ritual consumption, a certain household calm:
After the meal, Jacintinha prepared chimarrão; while Manuel sucked on the straw,
a few words were exchanged among the three
members of the family, calm and paced, without
effusion, but also without any resentment.
Texts from Brazil . Nº 13
Just like the explanatory notes in Iracema,
Alencar’s regionalist novel is accompanied by a
glossary, where we learn that a gaucho assado de
couro is “a meat that is roasted still attached to
the leather, serving as a casserole”.
In another of his regionalist novels, O Sertanejo, we find habits similar to the gaucho ones,
and again the description of the eating habits
determines the social inequalities and position.
The hero of O Sertanejo is Arnaldo. In a passage,
similar to the one on Manuel, there is also a light
The realistic impulse of Alencar’s novel
brings out the productive reality that governed
the social relations in the rural Brazil of the 19th
Century, although we can observe from the coloring of Brazilian meals the shades of the author’s
ideology. In the world of rural production, the
theme of slavery appears. For, as seen, Alencar
was also careful to register the socially typical
food, the urban food as well as the rural one,
the historic food, regional ones, the food in the
manor house and the food in the slave quarters.
meal that is, however, representative of the dryness of the Northeast of Brazil: “It consisted of a
chunk of dried meat, a few handfuls of flour that
he brought in his saddlebag. For dessert a piece of
rapadura, washed down with the contents of the
water skin.”
In this novel, “culinary” descriptions bring
out the social traits even more. We can note, in
this regard, the difference between Capitan Marcos Fragoso’s meal and that of the rural laborers,
both of which are representative of the elements
that are part of northeastern eating habits:
In his rural novel, of which Til (1872) is an example, there is a passage which describes minutely
a long jongo session in the slave quarters of the
plantation. Alencar reproduces the chants of the
slaves to the sounds of the energetic drums of the
samba. Let us see what they are about:
Captain Marcos Fragoso feasted with his
guests. The food already partly consumed indicated the meal was almost over; and right after
the pages served the dessert, consisting of not
only figs, raisins and nuts from the kingdom,
brought in the luggage from Recife, as well as
large bowls of curdled cheese and cream cheese,
fruits from the first waters.
On the other hand: the woodcutters returned from the woods with their arms full of
firewood, while their work mates carried baskets
of manioc, from last years crop, to the mill to
be broken into flour during the night shift. The
freed or slave women, some pounded the corn to
make the xerém.
Flavors from Brazil
I don’t eat cooked yams;
I don’t like grilled corn;
Whoever wants to see me melt
Give me roasted mendubi.
It is in the underground activities of the
slave quarters that a very representative element
of Brazilian cuisine inevitably appears: “Once in
a while the big jug of cachaça went around the
circle. Each one, after a thousand movements
and stirs of the hips, would take a big gulp, and
snapped their tongues throwing their hips with
vitality.” Within the game of fiction, while the
beauty of tropical fruits evokes the impressive
fertility of the vast national soil, the roughness of
cachaça represents the ecstasy and the violence of
a social order established against the hunger and
thirst for freedom.
Ricardo Martins Rizzo
Diplomat; Master in Political Science, University of
São Paulo and author of Cavalo Marinho e Outros
Poemas (Sea Horse and Other Poems) São Paulo:
Nankin Press, 2002.
27