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The irreverence of the greens

The first issue of Verde was published in September 1927, with the subtitle “monthly magazine of art and culture”. The magazine’s periodicity, as announced on the cover, was strictly maintained until the fourth issue, while the fifth, of January 1928, came out only in June, together with a supplement for the months of February to May, during which distribution was interrupted, and featured an innovation: green was replaced with red on the cover, with no reasons given for the change. In May 1929, a new issue was published, supposedly marking the continuation of the periodical, now in its second phase, although this was a promise that remained unfulfilled.

The appearance of the magazine was surprising for the fact that it was printed in Cataguases, a small town in the interior of the State of Minas Gerais, then of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, located just over four hundred kilometres from the capital, Belo Horizonte, and because it was produced by a group of very young writers. In the opening issue, the oldest of these, a poet and the only published author, Henrique de Resende (28 years old), was the director, while the editorial duties were overseen by Antônio Martins Mendes (22) and student Rosário Fusco (17). These were joined by Ascânio Lopes and Cristóforo Fonte-Boa (21), Guilhermino César and Oswaldo Abritta (19), Francisco Inácio Peixoto and Camilo Soares (18), all listed in the first issue’s summary.

The title, in turn, can be read from different perspectives. “Verde” (green) suggests young, immature, inchoate, characteristics that were immediately picked up by supporters and critics, but which were also evoked by the editors to emphasise other semantic contents associated with the term: freedom, originality, joy, transformation, strength, willingness, modernity. Declaring yourself “green” therefore meant subscribing to a programme. But the colour also evoked nationality: the exuberance of nature, so important in the composition of the country, expressed in the forests and displayed on the national flag. In a context strongly influenced by the search for Brazilianness, this meaning cannot be underestimated, even though some distancing from Plínio Salgado’s green-yellow current is necessary.

One aspect that stands out in Verde is the presentation of contributors in the summary, which occupied most of the cover. Except for the fifth and last issue of the first phase, the order in which they appeared did not signify a relationship with the sequence of texts within the magazine. Thus, the poem Sinal de apito, by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, headed the September 1927 summary, despite not being the first piece of the issue. In fact, with the exception of Ascânio Lopes, the other members of the magazine's group, who met at Café do Fonseca, were only mentioned after the collaborations from Belo Horizonte (Drummond, Emílio Moura, Martins de Oliveira, and Roberto Theodoro, a pseudonym of Aquiles Vivácqua) and Juiz de Fora (Edmundo Lys and Teobaldo de Miranda Santos). This can be interpreted as a strategy to legitimise to the project, which, after all, was not limited to small Cataguases.

After noting that the magazine was aimed at “an audience that doesn't exist”, the unsigned and rather laconic introduction linked the group's youth to the preaching of a new art and, in line with the search for the national spirit that characterized the modernist movement from 1924 onwards, it states the intention to “Brazilianize Brazil”. The combative tone and the eagerness to divulge modernism were made clear in the following text, by Henrique de Resende, which also played the role of an editorial and that reads: “Minas accompanies S. Paulo and Rio in all their modern stylistic expressions”, so much so that, according to the writer, in addition to Belo Horizonte and Juiz de Fora, represented in the first issue, also in Cataguases the “modern spirit hoisted the yellow green flag of reactionism, lining alongside those who strive for the triumph of our land’s most beautiful intellectual crusade” 1.

Meanwhile, the Manifesto do Grupo Verde de Cataguases, printed on green paper, with no date, was only made public with the third issue, in November 1927. Signed by the nine members of the group and using an irreverent tone, the text proclaimed independence (“We are us. We are GREEN”), dispensed with guides (“We have no spiritual fathers”), external influences (“We all made a point of forgetting the French language”), and made a commitment to the nation (“simply, to sing the Brazilian land. Don't like it? It matters little").

The defiant impetus, so typical of manifestos, needs to be contextualised. The group's correspondence with Alcântara Machado, Drummond, and, above all, Mário de Andrade reveals the intense dialogue carried out through letters and shows that these very young men were not immune to the advice, suggestions, and guidance of their older colleagues2.

Rosário Fusco, a true driver of the magazine who contributed to every issue, both with texts and/or drawings, and author of much of the unsigned content in Verde, was described by Mário de Andrade as “independent, restless, willing to step on the flames to be able to confirm afterwards that fire really burns”3. He did not hesitate to send letters to national and international writers. He communicated the arrival of the new publication to Alcântara Machado and Mário in September 1927, when the debut issue had already been prepared, and requested collaboration. Mário soon sent texts – including an excerpt of what would become Macunaíma, which was published the following year, and the poem Homenagem aos homens que agem, written in partnership with Oswald and signed Oswaldário dos Andrades, full of praise for the “azes de Cataguazes” (“Cataguases aces”) and published in the magazine’s fourth issue. In his chronicle in the Diário Nacional, he wrote about the new magazine: “The Mata zone in Minas is witnessing an astonishing phenomenon. Cataguases has just launched over Brazil the square pages of Verde, a clean, agile, and well-printed magazine”4.

Mário, as well as Alcântara Machado, attempted to rally forces around the new title: he brought in several collaborators, as the correspondence exchanged with Rosário Fusco shows: “I'm sending you a poem by Ascenso Ferreira, a heck of a poet from Recife” and, in another missive, he asked: “you didn't tell me if you received the unpublished poem (...) by Fingerit that I sent”5. He also bemoaned the “lack of attention to the (...) Verde guys” from his friend Manuel Bandeira, who did not contribute to the periodical6. Alcântara, in turn, advised Rosário Fusco on the cover's graphic design: “If I were you, I would simplify it a bit more. Lots of little typographic drawings make it uglier. On the cover, in addition to the green margin, a black square surrounding the summary would suffice”. These suggestions were accepted starting with the fourth issue. He also collaborated with distribution and sales – “Send immediately: 20 copies of each of the issues that have already been published (1, 2, and 3) to Casa Garraux. From number 4 onwards, send 50 copies. It's like I'm telling you”7.

The inexistence of a periodical that could act as a mouthpiece for modernist ideas perhaps also weighed heavily on the enthusiasm of Mário de Andrade, Carlos Drummond, and Alcântara Machado, who spared no effort to support the magazine. Terra Roxa e outras terras..., launched in São Paulo, circulated between January and September 1926, before the arrival of Verde, while the first issue of Revista de Antropofagia, also based in São Paulo, came out in May 1928, when the distribution of the Cataguases periodical had been interrupted, since the fourth issue was dated December 1927. And it is worth noting that in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in October 1927, Festa, who claimed a different tradition from the one instituted by the 1922 São Paulo Semana de Arte Moderna, began its run.

The summary of the second issue eloquently testifies to the strength of modernist sociability, considering that while Verde continued to welcome writers from Cataguases and those responsible for A Revista (Belo Horizonte, 1925-1926), it now also hosted Alcântara Machado, Mário de Andrade, Couto de Barros, and Sérgio Milliet, mentioned in the order in which they appear in the summary, and the notable additions of Ribeiro Couto and Yan de Almeida Prado. In subsequent issues, other important figures sent their texts to Cataguases, such as Oswald de Andrade, Guilherme de Almeida, Paulo Prado, Prudente de Moraes, neto, Murilo Mendes, Peregrino Júnior, José Américo de Almeida, Ascenso Ferreira, Abgar Renault, João Alphonsus, Pedro Nava, Blaise Cendrars (French), Marcos Fingerit (Argentinian), Ildelfonso Pereda Valdés and Nicolás Fusco Sansone (Uruguayans).

Considering the ephemeral nature of literary magazines, to reach the fourth issue while maintaining a strict periodicity was no small feat. In January 1928, Carlos Drummond confessed his admiration in a letter to Mário de Andrade: “What do you say about this admirable group from Cataguases that is revolutionizing Minas Gerais with its magazine? I was struck silly, my friend. I never thought they would reach three issues, let alone four”8. These remarks prompted the recipient's agreement – “As for the admirable you use for the little Cataguases gang, I think the qualification is absolutely correct. They taught all the modernists in Brazil a big lesson and are truly interesting”. This did not prevent him, however, from pointing out limitations, when, in the same missive, he insisted:

“(...) you should send some prose to Verde. And Nava too. And João Alphonsus too. And Martins de Almeida (what happened to him!) too. Verde's prose is intolerably weak. Positively terrible. Not only for lack of technique, which is excusable in youngsters, but also for the absence of new ideas (...). I positively cannot send any more than I already do."9

Criticism was not restricted to the private sphere, as shown by Mário de Andrade’s observations in a Diário Nacional chronicle about Verde’s third issue. After calling it "positively brilliant" and imbued with "prodigious joy and ingenuity", he mentioned the "miracle" performed by the young men of Cataguases, who were "so brave, so impetuous and so happy that they end up bringing the world to life", but also noted that “the theoretical part, criticisms, manifestos, essays, is the magazine's weakness. Clear information and firm selection are lacking, flustered assertions abound”. With this caveat, he wondered: “But it is necessary to remember that these boys who own Verde are still dancing in the eighteen-year-old room. The maxixe is already well-seasoned but sometimes goes out of step. In the end, everything will work out, I guarantee”10.

Attacks, however, were plentiful. Tristão de Ataíde, then one of the most respected literary critics in the country, less than a month after Mário de Andrade's assessment, was much less condescending. He began by complimenting the group who oversaw A Revista, after which he fired:

“Minas has now returned to modernism. And it came back in a magazine from... Cataguases. The situation may be a little comical, but against evidence there can be no resistance. What Rio and São Paulo do not have, this fundamental elementary thing, without which it is not even possible to talk about any literary movement, a magazine, this commonplace thing that for us is so metaphysical – it exists in Cataguases. The title is Verde but there’s writing on it. A manifesto has already appeared, also printed in green. And three issues were published with a lot of knickknacks, a lot of commissioned modernism, a lot of good stuff, but some really interesting and new things, bringing together the collaboration of the best current names. The group (Rosário Fusco, Henrique de Resende, Martins de Oliveira, etc.) like all groups, proclaims independence from God and the whole world, but reveals the sensitive influence of Mr. Mário de Andrade, who remains the most typically original and most influential force of the modern movement.”11

The group gathered around Festa, led by Tasso da Silveira, also criticised the young men from Cataguases with a very professorial tone:

“First of all, lads, you need to convince yourself of one thing: you see, if the old norms of verse have fallen, the Law of verse persists. If the old rhythms were abandoned, it was so that new rhythms would emerge. Not to facilitate your entry. Quite the opposite. The art of the hour is selective. Mercilessly selective.”12

The provocation, which must be contextualized with the disputes over the origins of modernism, generated immediate solidarity from Mário, as shown in the correspondence exchanged with Manuel Bandeira13 and the previously mentioned December 1927 chronicle. The text in Festa prompted a reply from Cataguases, by Francisco Peixoto, published in the supplement that came with the fifth issue, in which Tasso was mockingly referred to as master.

The boldness of the greens was also manifested in the creation of the Editora Verde publishing house, which was responsible, in 1928, for Poemas cronológicos, by Henrique de Resende, Ascânio Lopes, and Rosário Fusco; Meia-Pataca, by Guilhermino César and Francisco Inácio Peixoto, and, the following year, Treze poemas, by Martins Mendes, and Fruta de conde, by Rosário Fusco.

As is customary in literary magazines, financial difficulties, together with the dispersion of the group, contributed to the demise of the periodical, which did not survive the 1929 issue, dedicated to the recently deceased poet Ascânio Lopes.

Mário de Andrade cleverly contrasted the two modernist magazines from Minas Gerais in a July 1932 chronicle, where he highlighted Verde's combative and irreverent tone, which, in its own way, was reminiscent of Klaxon (São Paulo, 1922-1923):

“The two Minas Gerais groups, from Belo Horizonte and Cataguases, distinguished themselves enormously as a collective psychology. The one from Cataguases certainly could not present figures of such remarkable personal value as Carlos Drummond de Andrade in poetry and João Alphonsus in prose. However, it had a much brighter reality and, above all, a much more interstate and fruitful action. Deep down, the artists from Belo Horizonte were much more... capitalist than they could have imagined... And in fact the group dissolved into individualism, and only served the bourgeois function of introducing us to at least two writers of great value. The group from Cataguases did not produce anyone that can compare with these, but with the magazine Verde it managed to centralize and rally the modern movement in Brazil, something that A Revista from Belo Horizonte had failed to do. The latter selected values. Verde denounced the advances of the modernist idea in the country. Verde called to arms, while A Revista named generals.”14

Tania Regina de Luca

  1. Henrique de Resende, “A cidade e alguns poetas”, Verde, year 1, n.º 1, Sep. 1927, pp. 10-11.↩︎

  2. The systematic analysis of the correspondance of the Verde members was conducted by Ana Lúcia Guimarães Richa Lourega de Menezes, Amizade “carteadeira”: o diálogo epistolar de Mário de Andrade com o Grupo Verde de Cataguases, PhD thesis in Letters, São Paulo, FFLCH/USP, 2013. Unfortunately, the complete set of letters is not reproduced. Available at: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8149/tde-10122013-122154/. Accessed March 2021.↩︎

  3. Mário de Andrade, “Livros”, Diário Nacional, year 1, n.º 236, 15/4/1928, p. 11. Transcribed in Verde, year 1, n.º 5, Jan. (Jun.) 1928, p. 11 (supplement). Available at: http://bndigital.bn.br/acervo-digital/diario-nacional/213829. Accessed March 2021.↩︎

  4. Mário de Andrade, “Livros e livrinhos”, Diário Nacional, year 1, n.º 89, 25/10/1927, p. 2. Available at: http://bndigital.bn.br/acervo-digital/diario-nacional/213829. Accessed March 2021.↩︎

  5. 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. 122 (undated letter) and p. 132 (letter dated 21/9/1928), respectively.↩︎

  6. Marcos Antonio de Moraes, Correspondência de Mário de Andrade & Manuel Bandeira, São Paulo, Edusp, Instituto de Estudo Brasileiros, 2001, 2nd ed., pp. 377-378, letter from 30/1/1928. Bandeira defended himself in a letter from 4/2/1928, p. 380.↩︎

  7. Apud Plínio Doyle, op. cit., pp. 122 and 123, respectively.↩︎

  8. Lélia Coelho Frota (org), Carlos & Mário, Correspondência completa, Rio de Janeiro, Bem-Te-Vi, 2002, p. 306. Letter dated 2/1/1928.↩︎

  9. Idem, p. 310. Letter dated 21/1/1928.↩︎

  10. Mário de Andrade, “Livros”, Diário Nacional, ano 1, n.º 136, 18/12/1927, p. 11. Available at: http://bndigital.bn.br/acervo-digital/diario-nacional/213829. Accessed March 2021. On the same occasion, he exposed his interpretative divergences with the magazine Festa, which constituted a non-explicit defence of the Cataguases group.↩︎

  11. Tristão de Ataíde [Alceu Amoroso Lima], “Os novos de 1927”, O Jornal, year 10, n.º 2786, 1/1/1928, p. 6. Available at: http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/docmulti.aspx?bib=110523. Accessed March 2021. The matter of Mário’s influence would continue to prove fertile, as shown by his observations to Henrique de Resende. See: Telê Porto Ancona Lopes (org.), Mário de Andrade. Táxi e Crônicas do Diário Nacional, São Paulo, Duas Cidades, Secretaria da Cultura, Ciência e Tecnologia, 1976, pp. 81-82. Mário’s cited text was transcribed in Verde, 2.ª phase, year 1, n.º 1, May 1929, p. 21.↩︎

  12. Tasso da Silveira, “A enxurrada”, Festa, year 1, n.º 4, Jan. 1928, p. 5.↩︎

  13. Marcos Antonio de Moraes (org.), op. cit., pp. 377-378, letter dated 30/1/1928.↩︎

  14. Telê Porto Ancona Lopes, op. cit., p. 550. The text, titled “Cataguases”, was originally published in Diário Nacional, year 5, n.º 150, 10/7/1932, p. 3. Available at: http://bndigital.bn.br/acervo-digital/diario-nacional/213829. Accessed March 2021.↩︎