Raízes de Gilberto Freyre

Journal of Latin American Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 1-20

  Skidmore, Thomas E ^a  

^a BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 85010089450     PISSN: 0022216X     EISSN: 1469767X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X01006277     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Gilberto Freyre “ sua cieWncia, sua filosofia, sua arte (Rio de Janeiro, 1962). The only contributor to this volume who raised questions about Freyre's work was, appropriately enough, Joa4o Cruz Costa, a Paulista. Benzaquen's approach is primarily that of an explication de texte. He focuses on Freyre's language-the metaphors, contradictions and conversational quality of the prose. He says relatively little about the use of evidence, or the relationship of Freyre's analysis to the contemporary intellectual scene.
2. This does not mean that there was no understanding, that climate and disease might not be inextricably tied together. As early as 1860, one highly scientific team of medical researchers on tropical diseases emerged in Bahia, establishing an international reputation for original research. Unfortunately, they were unable to gain national influence and their presence only lasted until about 1890. Julyan G. Peard, Race, Place and Medicine “ The Idea of the Tropics in Ninetheenth-Century Brazilian Medicine (Durham, NC, 1998). For a survey of the place of race in Brazilian research institutions in the 1870-1930 era, see Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, The Spectacle of the Races. Scientists, Institutions, and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870-1930 (New York, 1999). In the 1900-1930 period, there were specialists in public health who were articulate defenders of Brazil's climate. The most prominent was Afra#nio Peixoto.
3. James Bryce, South America” Observations and Impressions (New York, 1912), pp. 419-20. This climate of opinion about race is described in more detail in Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into White” Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York, 1974). For a revealing analysis of the 1910 revolt, see Zachary Morgan, The Legacy of the Lash (unpubl. PhD dissertation, History, Brown University, 2000).
4. For a more detailed treatment see Skidmore, Black into White.
5. Gilberto Freyre, Tempo morto e outros tempos. Trechos de um diaUrio de adolesceWncia e primeira mocidade (Sa4o Paulo, 1975), p. 33. Needell quite rightly warns against putting too much faith in these diary entries, since Freyre had a habit of rewriting earlier works. Furthermore, much of the diary was lost or had deteriorated, leaving the question of whether the surviving entries are representative of all the original entries. Needell, Identity, Race, Gender and Modernity’, p. 52.
6. While in the USA Gilberto repeatedly reiterated his commitment to Brazil. Freyre, Tempo morto, pp. 31, 74, 97, 128.
7. Freyre described his long and close relationship with Lima in his preface to the posthumously published Oliveira Lima, MemoUrias (Rio de Janeiro, 1937).
8. Interestingly, Oliveira Lima, intellectually alienated from Brazil, echoed Armstrong's view that Freyre should abandon Brazil. Oliveira Lima advertiu-me” Na4o pense em fixar-se no Brasil. Escritor no Brasil? Eomesmo que pretender alguém patinar em areia ‘. ‘ Gilberto Freyre, Tempo morto, p. 133. The diary entry is identified as Recife, 1924.
9. Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism” Changing concepts of race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 76-90. Scientific racism died hard in the USA and Europe. It proved difficult for anti-racist scientists to reach any consensus, even in the face of the rising Nazi threat as related in Elazar Barkan, Mobilizing Scientists Against Nazi Racism, 1933-1939’, in George W. Stocking, Jr., Bones, Bodies, Behavior (Madison, 1988), 180-205. Even after the war was over, it was a struggle for the UNESCO-sponsored scientists to formulate and defend their 1951 statement disavowing typological raciological science. Donna J. Haraway, Remondelling the Human Way of Life ‘, in the same work, pp. 206-59.
10. Gilberto Freyre, Social Life in Brazil in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,’ which was published in the Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 5 (Nov. 1922), pp. 597-630. A Brazilian edition is available in Freyre, Vida social no Brasil nos meados do seUculo XIX (Recife, 1985), 3rd ed.
11. Freyre would certainly not have argued with Tolstoy's conception of history “ To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals, and study the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are moved’. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York, 1942), pp. 919-20. Freyre may even have been inspired by Tolstoy on this point.
12. Gilberto Freyre, Tempo morto, p. 125. The diary entry is for Recife, 1923.
13. Many of his old friends found his new foreign airs insufferable. O Gilberto Freyre recém-chegado da Europa na4o deve ser apresentado como figura ideal, mas ao contrário, como indivaduo sob muitos respeitos antipático, irritante, esnobe, usando um monóculo que lhe acentuava o ar pedante, um Derby hat, roupas e meias ingle#sas e americanas’. Diogo de Melo Meneses, Gilberto Freyre, p. 108.
14. Joaquim Inojosa, Um Movimento’ imaginaUrio. Resposta a Gilberto Freyre (Rio de Janeiro, 1972).
15. The columns are reprinted in Gilberto Freyre, Tempo de aprendiz (Sa4o Paulo, 1979) 2 vols. The columns are largely light ‘ chronicles which reflect little of Freyre's more serious thinking.
16. Freyre, Pessoas, coisas e animais, pp. 71-2. He was eventually rescued by José Olympio, the legendary Rio publisher, who took over the rights to Casa Grande & Senzala in 1940 and remained Freyre's principal publisher thereafter.
17. This problem was noted several decades ago in James Lockhart, The Social History of Colonial Spanish America’, Latin American Research Review, vol. 7 (Spring, 1972).
18. Anasio Teixeira, Gilberto Freyre, mestre e criador de sociologia ‘, Gilberto Freyre “ sua cieWncia, pp. 492-3.
19. Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala, pp. 14-17.
20. Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala, p. 338.
21. Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, Raézes do Brasil Caio Prado Junior, Formacnah o do Brasil contemporaWneo (Sa4o Paulo, 1942).
22. Certain passages about sexual practices in colonial Brazil outraged some readers and thus caused a minor scandal. Gilberto Freyre “ sua cieWncia, p. 504.
23. Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala, p. 303.
24. Freyre would have been delighted with Tolstoy's definition of his most famous work” What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even less it is a poem, and still less an historical chronicle. War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to express in the form in which it is expressed’. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1353. The words could have been Freyre's in describing his work. Tolstoy was one of Freyre's favourite authors and Russia was one of Freyre's favourite countries to compare to Brazil.
25. Marcos Cueto, Visions of Science and Development” The Rockefeller Foundation's Latin American Surveys of the 1920s ‘, Marcos Cueto (ed.), Missionaries of Science The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin America (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 1-22.
26. Skidmore, Black Into White, pp. 180-4.
27. Recognition of this fact and possible explanations for it were a major theme in the seminar on Freyre, held in Rio and Sa4o Paulo in August 2000. Folha de Saho Paulo, August 19, 2000.
28. Skidmore, Black into White, pp. 32-7.
29. Recognition of this fact and possible explanations for it were a major theme in the seminar on Freyre, held in Rio and Sa4o Paulo in August 2000. His impact could be seen in the important collection whose authors identified themselves as his followers “ A. Carneiro Lea4o et al., A margem da histoUria da RepuUblica (Rio de Janeiro, 1924).
30. Hermano Vianna, The Mystery of Samba (Chapel Hill, 1999), p. 90.
31. David J. Hellwig, African American Perspectives on Brazil's Racial Paradise (Philadelphia, 1992).
32. Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, The Negro in the Americas (New York, 1946), Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery “ A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (New York, 1963).
33. Adolfo Justo Bezerra de Meneses, Gilberto Freyre e uma nova visa4o do mundo’, in Gilberto Freyre “ sua cieWncia, p. 323.
34. The story of this attack has been told at length elsewhere. For an introduction, see Thomas E. Skidmore Fact and Myth” Discovering a Racial Problem in Brazil ‘, in Calvin Goldscheider (ed.), Population, Ethnicity and Nation-Building (Boulder, 1995), pp. 91-117. Curiously enough, Fernandes virtually never mentioned the name of Freyre or the titles of his works in his extensive critique of the Freyrean thesis.
35. Eduardo Portella, Gilberto Freyre, além do apenas moderno’, Rumos” os caminhos do Brasil em debate, 1, vol. 1 (Dec 98 Jan 99), p. 36.
36. Freyre launched a bitter attack on Dom Helder Camara, the well-known Archbishop of Recife who had sympathised with the pre-coup populist movement. The division between them reflected the deep cultural and political fault line which was widened by the coup of 1964. For a source critical of Freyre's role, see Assis Claudino, O monstro sagrado e o amarelinho comunista (Recife, 1985).
37. Freyre elevated his critical stance on modern times and ways into a book-length analysis. Among other trends of which he disapproved was modern architectural design-especially as epitomised by Brasalia. Freyre, Brasés, Brasil & Brasélia (Lisboa, 1960).
38. Ruth Benedict's classic national character study of Japan was The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston, 1946). While Mead's comparable study of the USA was And Keep Your Powder Dry (New York, 1942).
39. For a comparative analysis of the impact of the two writers in their respective countries, see Thomas E. Skidmore, Onde Estava a Malinche’ brasileira? Mitos de origem nacional no Brasil e no México ‘, Vozes, vol. 91 (No. 3, maiojunho de 1997), pp. 107-18.
40. Roberto da Matta, Carnavais, malandros e herois (Rio de Janeiro, 1979).
41. The saga of the quest for a scientific ‘ definition of national character is recorded in Alex Inkeles, National Character “A Psycho-Social Perspective (New Brunswick, 1997).