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A mild tone: the boys from Rua da Bahia

The group that gathered around the Semana de Arte Moderna, an event held in the city of São Paulo in February 1922, never lost sight of the importance of periodicals for the dissemination and debate of ideas. The inventory of titles founded by them reveals the strategic role of this type of publication. The list begins with Klaxon, a modern art monthly (São Paulo, May 1922 to January 1923), continues with Estética (Rio de Janeiro, September 1924 to June 1925), and is followed by A Revista (Belo Horizonte, July 1925 to January 1926).

The magazine was created by the young men who met at the Café do Estrela, located on Rua da Bahia, one of the most important thoroughfares in the Minas Gerais capital and home to the Grande Hotel, the most luxurious in the city, the Municipal Theatre, bookstores, patisseries, cafes, and cigar shops. The periodical, committed to modernist ideals, was the first to circulate beyond the Rio-São Paulo axis. Significantly, relations between the mineiro and paulista writers began during the 1924 Holy Week, when the group formed by Mário de Andrade, Olívia Guedes Penteado, René Thiollier, Gofredo da Silva Teles, Oswald de Andrade and his son, Tarsila do Amaral, and the French-Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars visited São João del-Rei, Tiradentes, Belo Horizonte, Ouro Preto, Mariana, and Congonhas do Campo. Passing through the recent capital of Minas Gerais – Belo Horizonte was founded in 1897 – the so-called São Paulo caravan met with young mineiro writers such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Pedro Nava, and Martins de Almeida, all attentive readers of Mário and Oswald. This encounter began a dialogue conducted through an intense exchange of correspondence, especially with the author of Pauliceia Desvairada.

In May 1925, the decision to launch A Revista, a title chosen by Drummond, was taken, as revealed in a letter in which the poet gave the news to Mário de Andrade and requested his collaboration, expressing his fears with regards to the duration of the undertaking: “Here, in Belo Horizonte, magazines don't catch on. In any case, we are still going to make an experiment”1. From São Paulo, Mário sent an unpublished chapter of his Amar, verbo intransitivo, a novel that was published in 1927. The text was published right after the presentation, which leaves no doubt as to the importance of having the support of one of the most representative authors in the field of modernism. The magazine was directed by Carlos Drummond and Martins de Almeida, while Emílio de Moura and Gregoriano Canedo were in charge of editorial duties.

The first issue opened with a program titled “Para os céticos”, unsigned but written by Carlos Drummond, which called for intellectual renewal and the cleansing of tradition, criticized inaction in politics and declared support for nationalism. The text had a conciliatory tone, however, and did not “repudiate the civilizing currents of Europe”, avoiding iconoclastic gestures. The following issue saw a new presentation of principles called “Para os espíritos criadores”, also without authorship, but this time written by Martins de Almeida, in which matters related to regionalism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism were further discussed, with greater emphasis on the challenges arising from the field of politics.

Understandably, A Revista’s programmatic texts could not remain outside these debates, which also invaded the writers’ correspondence. Thus, for example, when dealing with the relationship between national and universal, Mário de Andrade explained his position in an extensive letter sent to Carlos Drummond in 1924: “There is no such opposition between nationalism and universalism. What we do have is bad nationalism: Brazil for Brazilians – or exotic regionalism”. Insisting on plurality, he made use of a musical metaphor to explain his point of view: “The day we become entirely Brazilians and only Brazilians, humanity will have won yet another race, won a new contribution of human qualities. Races are musical chords. One is elegant, understated, sceptical. Another is lyrical, sentimental, mystical, and disorderly. Another is rough, sensual, and boastful. Another is shy, humorous, and hypocritical. When we perform our chord, then will we be used in the harmony of civilization”2.

After the publication of the first issue, Drummond hastened to criticize the collaboration: “it's as Noah's Ark as can be”, a reference to the presence of writers considered passadistas, to use the popular contemporary term. In fact, in its three issues, A Revista featured side by side contributions from the editors and their friends, prominent names in the modernist movement – Mário de Andrade, Manuel Bandeira, Guilherme de Almeida, Ronald de Carvalho –, and renowned literary writers from Minas Gerais – Magalhães Drummond, Alberto Deodato, Godofredo Rangel, Pereira da Silva, Wellington Brandão, Orozimbo Nonato, Carlos Góes, Juscelino Barbosa. Manuel Bandeira praised the first group: “Hurrah! A Revista is very good (...). I liked his verses [Drummond’s], those by [Pedro] Nava, João Alphonsus’ (...), the critical notes by Martins de Almeida and Emílio Moura”. He ended with what was perhaps the most desired compliment: “Mário says that you are the strongest group of modernists in Brazil”. He did not miss the opportunity to advise “diplomacy in the relations with Minas Gerais’ passadismo”3. Diplomacy, in fact, was not lacking, given the mix between tradition and modernity found in the composition of the summary. The latter, in turn, occupied a large part of the covers, reprising the graphic projects of Brazilian literary and cultural magazines from the previous century.

This care, however, did not prevent the publication from being targeted by Eduardo Frieiro, a critic who enjoyed great prestige in the Minas Gerais cultural scene and who used the pseudonym João Cotó. He penned his vicious words, which bordered on discourtesy, right after the publication of the periodical: “There are four or five young students in this city who cultivate a certain literary by-product, which Mr. Mário de Andrade called pau-brasil literature. These youngsters formed a small gathering of initiates in the dynamic objectivism of the modern spirit. They needed an organ. The organ arrived, that is, A Revista. To tell the truth, the insignificance of the organ did not match the magnitude of the task. Lame in physique and brains. Rustic graphic production; nothing is done better in Grão Mogol”4.

Despite Frieiro's scathing assessment, the periodical contributed to broadening the scope of the debate around the modern ideal. Furthermore, it revealed vigorous writers who later became part of the Brazilian literary canon. After A Revista, young people from Minas could no longer be ignored by their colleagues in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, even though the publication stopped with the third issue. Its disappearance resulted from the disbandment of the group of authors that, for different reasons, left the mineira capital.

With regard to the presence of the paulistas, while true that it acted as a founding event for those responsible for A Revista, the visit to Minas equally impacted the travellers. Cecília de Lara insisted on the effects of the (re)discovery of a multifaceted Brazil, brought about by the “material contact of the original modernist group with the living Brazilian tradition, in the colours and forms of colonial art and architecture, yet remaining in Minas” 5.

It is worth remembering that, shortly before his departure, on March 18, 1924, Oswald de Andrade had published the Manifesto Pau-Brasil, which placed the issue of Brazilianness at the centre of the modernist debate. It was a matter of specifying the country's peculiar characteristics, its originality, an urgent task in view of the need to build the Brazilian nationality and, therefore, identity, which required analysing the country's historical and cultural trajectory, both with a view to proposing projects for the future in the political field and as an art of its own that did not exclude the dialogue with languages wrought under different skies, in a posture distant from the one promoted by fascisms and followers of narrow regionalisms. The passage through Minas, therefore, needs to be placed in perspective and taken in its complexity, as a route with multiple meanings and directions, of which A Revista is one of the expressions.

Tania Regina de Luca

  1. Lélia Coelho Frota (org), Carlos & Mário, Complete correspondence, Rio de Janeiro, Bem-Te-Vi, 2002, p. 122. Letter dated 20/5/1925.↩︎

  2. Letter from Mário de Andrade to Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Carlos & Mário, p. 70.↩︎

  3. Manuel Bandeira, Poesia e prosa, Rio de Janeiro, José Aguilar, 1958, v. II, p. 1388. Letter to Carlos Drummond, dated 31/8/1925.↩︎

  4. João Cotó, “Brotoeja literária” in Avanti!, Belo Horizonte, 20/8/1925. Apud Plínio Doyle, História de revistas e jornais literários, vol. 1, Rio de Janeiro, Ministério da Educação e Cultura, Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, 1976, p. 88.↩︎

  5. Cecília de Lara, “A Revista: um novo elo na cadeia de periódicos modernistas” in A Revista, edição fac-símile, São Paulo, Metal Leve, 1974, p. 76.↩︎