Dreams come untrue

Daedalus

Volumn 129, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 57-82

  De Carvalho, José Murilo ^a  

^a FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO   (Brazil)

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EID: 33748155331     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983)
2. Bronislaw Baczko, Les Imaginaires Sociaux: Memoires et Espoirs Collectifs (Paris: Payot, 1984).
3. The imagined aspect of national memories is also stressed in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
4. Ernest Renan, Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation? What is a Nation? English version by Wanda Romer Taylor (Toronto: Tapir Press, 1996), 19.
5. The role of myths, heroes, symbols, and allegories in the formation of a national identity, as applied to the French case, is discussed in Pierre Nora, dir., Les Lieux de Mémoire, vol. I, La République (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
6. See also Raoul Girardet, Mythes et Mythologies Politiques (Paris: Seuil, 1986).
7. For the American case, see Elise Marienstras, Les Mythes Fondateurs de la Nation Américaine: Essai sur le Discours Idéologique aux Etats-Unis à l'Epoque de l'Indépendance (1763-1800) (Paris: Francois Maspero, 1976).
8. Modern-day national myths are discussed in John Girling, Myths and Politics in Western Societies: Evaluating the Crisis of Modernity in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1993).
9. For a forceful demonstration of the presence of mythological elements in historiography, see Suzanne Citron, Le Mythe National: l'Histoire de France en Question (Paris: Ed. Ouvrières, 1991).
10. On the role of political myths in general, see Girardet, Myths et Mythologies Politiques.
11. For an excellent discussion of the views held by Europeans on the new land and the new peoples, see Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750-1900, trans. Jeremy Moyle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973).
12. On the Brazilian case, the classical study is Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Visão do Paraíso: os Motivos Edênicos no Descobrimento e Colonizacão do Brasil, 2d ed. (São Paulo: Cia. Editora Nacional, 1969).
13. Quoted in Holanda, Visão do Paraíso, 239.
14. Quoted in José Murilo de Carvalho, "O Motivo Edênico no Imaginário Social Brasileiro," Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 38 (October 1998): 63-64.
15. Sebastião da Rocha Pitta, História da América Portugueza desde o Anno de Mil e Quinhentos, do seu Descobrimento, até o de Mil e Setecentos e Vinte e Quatro (Lisboa Occidental: Off. de Joseph Antônio da Silva, 1730), 3-4.
16. Affonso Celso, Porque me Ufano do meu Paiz (Rio de Janeiro: Garnier, 1900).
17. One was a national poll conducted by Vox Populi and published in Veja (1 January 1996): 48-57, under the title: "O Brasileiro segundo ele mesmo."
18. The second survey was conducted in the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro by academic institutions. The results were published in CPDOC-IFGV/ISER, Lei, Justiça e Cidadania (Rio de Janeiro: CPDOC-IFGV/ISER, 1997).
19. See Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 304.
20. Data for 1959 show that only 5 percent of Americans and 10 percent of the British mentioned nature as a reason for national pride. See Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 230.
21. Caminha noted in his letter: "One of the girls was . . . so well-shaped and round and her genitals so gracious that their sight would cause shame to our women for not having theirs as she had."
22. At the very moment when the final version of this essay was being written, one-third of the national territory was punctuated by thousands of fires brought by the dry season. In the western part of the country, airports had been closed for lack of visibility due to the smoke produced by the fires.
23. The history of the destruction of Brazilian forests can be found in Warren Dean, With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). I was reminded by some critics that many other countries have also destroyed their forests and polluted their rivers. It would be silly to say that natural devastation is a Brazilian privilege. The point here is the great discrepancy in Brazil between myth and reality. Also, many countries, like England, have destroyed nature but have substituted a "cultured" nature in the form of landscape gardening. This is not a popular form of art in Brazil. Only one name comes to mind, that of Burle Marx, recently deceased.
24. Data from 1959 for the United States and England show that political institutions were a source of pride for 85 percent of Americans and 46 percent of the British. See Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture Revisited, 230.
25. On this search, see E. H. P. Baudet, Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man, trans. Elizabeth Wentholt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).
26. On the contribution of Renaissance views to the Edenic myth, see Charles L. Sanford, The Quest for Paradise: Europe and the American Moral Imagination (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1961), chap. 4.
27. Baudet, Paradise on Earth, 18.
28. Quoted in George H. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought (New York: Harper, 1962), 101.
29. Sanford, The Quest for Paradise, VI.
30. On the topic, see also Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought, chap. 5.
31. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought, 99.
32. An insightful comparison between the Brazilian and the U.S. cultures can be found in Clodomir Vianna Moog, Bandeirantes and Pioneers, trans. L. L. Barrett (New York: G. Braziller, 1964).
33. I owe the suggestion of this idea to Helena Bomeny.
34. Canudos was immortalized by Euclides da Cunha in Os Sertões, a Brazilian "founding book," translated into English as Rebellion in the Backlands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
35. On Palmares, see Décio Freitas, Palmares: a Guerra dos Escravos (Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1978).
36. Quoted in Heinrich Handelmann, História do Brasil, 4th ed. (Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia, 1982), vol. 2, 185.
37. See Ana Isabel Buescu, "Un Mythe Fondateur du Royaume du Portugal: le Miracle d'Ourique," in Claude-Gilbert Dubois, dir., L'Imaginaire de la Nation (1792-1992) (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1991), 173-181.
38. Antonio Vieira, História do Futuro, Livro Anteprimeyro, Prolegômeno a toda a história do futuro (Lisboa Occidental: Officina de A. P. Galram, 1718), 22-23.
39. On the myth of King Sebastian, see Jacqueline Hermann, No Reino do Desejado: A Construção do Sebastianismo em Portugal: Séculos VI e VII (São Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 1998).
40. On Coutinho and his idea of an empire in Brazil, see Maria de Lourdes Viana Lyra, A Utopia do Poderoso Império; Portugal e Brasil: Bastidores da Política, 1798-1822 (Rio de Janeiro: Sette Letras, 1994), 117.
41. Lyra, A Utopia, 118.
42. Quoted in Carvalho, "O Motivo Edênico," 65.
43. Lyra, A Utopia, 128.
44. Charles Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition during the years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842 (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1845), 17.
45. Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 6.
46. Marc Egnal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution Ibid., 333.
47. It must be stressed that I am talking about national political heroes. Many figures could qualify as heroes who are not political or who are political but not national. Important as it is, this qualification does not of course eliminate some inevitable degree of subjectivity involved in the definition and selection of national heroes. I have used as defining criteria national acceptance across geographical and class lines as well as permanence, that is, persistence of the hero image up to the present.
48. On the public image of Dom Pedro II, see Lilia Schwarcz, As Barbas do Imperador (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998).
49. See Paulo Miceli, O Mito do Herói National (São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 1988), 22-25.
50. On the mythicization of Tiradentes, see José Murilo de Carvalho, A Formação das Almas: O Imaginário da República no Brasil (São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1990), chap. 3.
51. Veja (1 January 1996): 56.
52. Epoca (24 May 1999): 14, 6.
53. Popular characters of the national folklore, such as Pedro Malazartes, are shown as masters of cunning. In literature, there is a famous figure, Macunaíma, described by his creator, Mário de Andrade, as a "hero of our people" and called a "hero without any character." In addition to being a master of cunning, Macunaíma is lazy, irresponsible, and a liar, fighting constantly for survival. See Mário de Andrade, Macunaíma: o Herói sein Nenhum Caráter, 16th ed. (São Paulo: Secretaria da Cultura, Ciência e Tecnologia, 1978).
54. On Pedro Malazartes as representative of popular culture, see Roberto da Matta, Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes: An Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).
55. See Alex Inkeles, National Character: A Psycho-Social Perspective (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 4.
56. Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture Revisited, 230.
57. The influence of the image of the Brazilian natives on European authors, including Montaigne, Shakespeare, Thomas More, and Rousseau, is discussed in Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, O Indio Brasileiro e a Revolução Francesa (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1937).
58. Dialogues of the Great Things of Brazil, attributed to Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão, trans. and annotated by Frederick Holden Hall, William F. Harrison, and Dorothy Winters Welker (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987), 22.
59. Luiz Agassiz e Elizabeth Gary Agassiz, Viagem ao Brasil, 1865-1866, tradução e notas de Edgar Sussekind de Mendonça (São Paulo: Cia. Editora Nacional, 1938), 589.
60. English edition: Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, A Journey in Brazil (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868).
61. Gobineau's position can be found in Georges Readers, O Conde de Gobineau no Brasil (São Paulo: Conselho Estadual de Cultura, 1976), 169, 186.
62. For Lapouge, see Georges Vacher de Lapouge, Les Sélections Sociales (Paris: A. Fontemoing, 1896), 187.
63. On Brazilian racial thought, see Thomas Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).
64. See Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: Knopf, 1946).
65. Stefan Zweig, Brazil, Land of the Future, trans. Andrew St. James (New York: Viking Press, 1943).
66. Stefan Zweig, Brazil, Land of the Future, Ibid., 8.
67. Stefan Zweig, Brazil, Land of the Future, Ibid., 4.
68. Roberto da Matta, For an Anthropology of the Brazilian Tradition, or A Virtude está no Meio (Washington, D.C.: Latin American Program, Wilson Center, 1990).
69. Eduardo Prado, A Illusão Americana (Paris: A. Colin, 1895).
70. See, for instance, Georges Vacher de Lapouge, L'Aryen: Son Rôle Social (Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1899), 370-373.
71. For a useful summary of the attempts at defining the Brazilian national character, see Dante Moreira Leite, O Caráter Nacional Brasileiro: História de uma Ideologia, 3d ed. (São Paulo: Pioneira, 1976), 302-303.
72. This author considers these attempts as totally lacking in scientific validity, being no more than elitist ideologies. For a similar approach to Brazilian identity and culture, see Carlos Guilherme Mota, Ideologia da Cultura Brasileira: Pontos de Partida para uma Revisão Histórica (São Paulo: Editora Atica, 1977).
73. Most prominent among the intellectuals who tried to define a national identity are Paulo Prado, Retrato do Brasil: Ensaio sobre a Tristeza Brasileira, 6th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio, 1962)
74. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Olympio, 1936)
75. Fernando de Azevedo, Brazilian Culture: An Introduction to the Study of Culture in Brazil, trans. William Rex Crawford (New York: Macmillan, 1950)
76. José Honório Rodrigues, The Brazilians, their Character and Aspirations, trans. Ralph Edward Dimmick (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967)
77. Darcy Ribeiro, O Povo Brasileiro: a Formação e o sentido do Brasil (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1995).
78. See, for instance, José Fernando Carneiro, Psicologia do Brasileiro e outros Estudos (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria AGIR, 1971), 51-53.
79. Veja (1 January 1996): 52.
80. A more recent national survey indicates that the characteristics that best describe Brazilians (according to more than 70 percent of the answers) are cheerfulness, affection, solidarity, tolerance, responsibility, ingenuity, competence, fairness, trustworthiness, and democracy. See Epoca (25 May 1999): 6.
81. Carvalho, "O Motivo Edênico," 68, 72.
82. On the role of Carnival in Brazil, the classical work is da Matta, Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes.