# 3 Under the sign of Job

There are two weeks now since the last post. Brazilian’s carnival, or better, Bahia’s carnival use to be so crowd and noisy, and so many foreign people come to see this popular culture manifestation... I just feel myself tired, and I must say: Uh! What sluggishness!

 

The joy is real. Maybe on Tuesday I go to see something in a historic town here in Reconcavo, and maybe I make some images over there. Today, however, I must write about something else, something that has nothing with Bahia’s Reconcavo, but its necessary to make this blog work.

 

All this movement that we see tries to show how afro influence is important to make the sui generis existence that we are able to live here. Sometimes we forget the power of Iberian cultural or the native’s nation’s intelligence. We just have eyes to see the strong and precious contribution that came from Africa. Maybe we can see over this point of view a necessary politics position against prejudice, and we find some beauty over there. But today I want to write about a man that was born on Brazil’s south, and had nothing to do with Reconcavo. His life was marked by prejudice, and we can find something interesting, and perhaps he has something in common with people here, in Reconcavo.

 Cruz e Souza was the most brilliant figure in Brazilian’s symbolism. A childish prodigy, he starts to write poems at the age of seven. His family used to live in Santa Catarina estate, in a basement 

of a great house of a rich white family. His mother was free, and his father slave. His owner gave freedom to all slaves, including his father, some years before slavery abolition in 1888. He was educated under the protection of the solar owners, and enjoined very soon the universe of art under the European canons. Early he became a master, adopted aristocratic manners, and was called nobleman by people impressed with his style. A black man with aristocratic manners... lets see.

 

The point is that there was no place in that society for a person like him. It is very suggestive the epigraph in his first book of poems, Broquéis, which was published in 1893:

 

Seigneur mon Dieu! acordez-moi la grace de produire quelques beaux vers qui me prouvent à moi-même que je ne suis pas le dernier des hommes, que je ne suis pas inférieur à ceux que je méprise.

 

It is the final part of a Baudelaire’s prose poem called At one o clock in the morning (or something like that, I don’t know the exact English translation – but it is the number X on his Petit Poèmes en Prose). This extract is just perfect not just to the book, but to get closer to Cruz e Souza’s life.

 

He was a man who had conscience about his potential and about the value of his work. Unfortunately, he also had conscience that he never could be at the place that he had the merit to occupy, just because he was black. How painful this condition can be to a human being? I mean... to be at this condition and, at the same time, to have clarity of his own reality? He couldn’t be less than he was, and couldn’t be praised like he ought to. It was a paradox, and the logical result must be suffering. As the biblical character, Job, something stronger decided that was no joy in his destiny.

 

Maybe it was even worse. Cruz e Souza never made the reclusion option. He moved to Rio de Janeiroto try a different destiny, at those times this city was the republic’s capital  – he could not give up, could he? But the important capital never gave to him anything more than a second class job, poverty and lots of people to despise.

 

There is no arrogance in this feeling of despise, but maybe some reaction to the falsity. You know... at coffee shops and literary salons people could never reject his work because it was really good. But the quality was so higher than the white aristocratic intellectual’s works, that it causes discomfort. It was the minimum. It was like putting salt over a bloody injury. Even the abolitionist guys had shown how their convictions were fragile. It was fashion to be abolitionist in 19^th century Brazil, but we know that the real comprehension of that was not so easy to that army of dummies that use to consider themselves inside the intellectuals circles at those times. 

 

I mean: people use to fight for freedom and equality. When they talks about possibilities, everything is OK, and the future is nice and full of colors. But when the imaginary future turns real, how those good people should behave? Cruz e Souza show us that those good people were nothing but a bunch of hypocrites. It explains the despise feeling. So he, as Baudelaire, prays the Lord to give him the power to make verses not to be better, but to not be inferior. What is inferior to hypocrisy? It is better not thinking about that.

 

People who smiled and said nice things about his work was the same people who denied the full development of his potential in the society life. How could he feel about that? His wife, Gavita, became crazy, and his three children were starving when Cruz e Souza died in 1898, eight years after he moved to Rio. In 1901 Gavita died, before her, two of their kids. After that, Cruz e Souza starts to be published more frequently – hypocrisy!

 

I wish I have the competence to translate some Cruz e Souza poems. I put two of them as images above, but his works stills in need of a good human translator. I used the translito http://translito.com/pt/translators/Portuguese-English software to help the translation. (It made almost all work)