Oswald de Andrade's "Cannibalist Manifesto" Author(s): Leslie Bary Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 19, No. 38 (Jul. - Dec., 1991), pp. 35-37 Published by: Latin American Literary Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119600 Accessed: 06/08/2009 13:23 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=lalr. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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OSWALD DE ANDRADE'S "CANNIBALISTMANIFESTO" LESUEBARY Introduction Oswald de Andrade's "Manifesto in the Revista first number of de (MA) originally appeared Antrop?fago" review Paulo cultural directed Alc?ntara Machado the S?o by Antropofagia, other important avant-garde declarations 1928. While and Raul Bopp, inMay, are interesting as literary documents of the period (e.g. Mario de Andrade's to his 1921 collection of poetry Paulic?ia "Prefacio Interessant?ssimo" and the programmatic editorial of the May Desvairada, 15, 1992 issue of was an that immediate the avant-garde result of the Klaxon, magazine held in S?o Paulo in February of that year, theMA "Semana de Arte Moderna" has retained more immediate scholarly and even popular interest as a cultural, as well as a purely in the last The MA has, especially literary manifesto. cited in Brazil as a paradigm for the creation of a twenty years, been widely The
Brazilian
modernist
poet
modern
and cosmopolitan, but still authentically national culture. In the earlier (1924) "Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil" ["Manifesto of an "export-quality" Brazilwood Poetry"], Oswald had announced poetry that in Brazilian would not copy imported esthetic models but find its material life. Brazilwood history, popular culture, and everyday poetry will provide, of to neutralize Oswald native says here, "[t]he counter-weight originality academic conformity" the notions of poetry (1986: 187). Opposing avant-garde as "invention" and "surprise" to the erudite, imitative art he associates with the Oswald unites the search for (1822-1889), colony and the Brazilian Empire national identity with the modernist esthetic project. In this schema, Brazilian cultural production becomes both native and Brazil's "wild wilderness," far from generating second-rate cosmopolitan. copies of Continental models, will give rise to an "agile and candid" modern cultural poetry. Brazilwood poetry thus offers a solution for Brazil's perceived new at same and the time life into the international cultural inferiority, injects arena.
The playful, polemical in the MA is a radicalization
theory of cultural "cannibalism" Oswald develops of these ideas. The MA challenges the dualities and which had civilization/barbarism, original/derivative, modern/primitive, informed the construction of Brazilian culture since the days of the colony. In the MA, Oswald the colonizer's of subversively appropriates inscription as a savage territory which, once civilized, would be a necessarily America The use of the cannibal metaphor the copy of Europe. muddy permits Brazilian subject to forge his specular colonial identity into an autonomous and to dependent, national culture. Oswald's (as opposed original derivative) a cannibalization, not of Rousseau's idealized anthropophagist?himself
Latin American
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avowed and active cannibal,?neither savage but of Montaigne's apes nor but "devours" its and incor culture, it, adapting rejects European strengths them the self.1 into native porating are central texts in the continuing The two manifestos creation of to reveal with much Brazilian national culture and as controversial writings an about the structure of colonialist thought and the problems of constituting context. identity in the post-colonial to read and to translate because The MA is difficult it is built on a series to Brazilian references and to sometimes of joking and punning history obscure informing works. The annotated translation I present here is intended as well as to make to clarify these references, to this important text available an English-speaking audience. I would direct first-time readers of Oswald especially to Benedito Nunes' ao alcance de Haroldo de "Urna po?tica todos," essay "Antropofagia Campos' e cosmopolitismo. da radicalidade," and Jorge Schwartz' Vanguarda The but Randal is much Johnson sparser, English-language bibliography provides an informative in "Tupy or not Tupy: Cannibalism introduction and in Contemporary and Culture." Haroldo Brazilian Literature Nationalism de Europe Under the Sign of Devoration," Campos' "The Rule of Anthropophagy: Two Cubists: William Richard Morse's Carlos Williams and "Triangulating Oswald de Andrade," and Kenneth David Jackson's Prose in "Vanguardist as introductions to Oswald, are Oswald de Andrade," though not written to the general reader as well as useful to the scholar. Johnson's three accessible as articles, as well as Neil Larsen's "Eating the Torn Halves: Modernism in the period and to Cultura Brasileira" will be of interest both to specialists in problematizing scholars interested discussions of national and cultural context. identity in the post-colonial Louisiana
State University
NOTES 1 Other are Picabia's to this manifesto "Manifeste key precedents Cannibale" Paris, March 1920, 7) and the avant-garde Parisian (Dadaphone, review Cannibale 1920). See Benedito Nunes, (April-May "Anthropophagisme et surr?alisme," Surr?alisme de Montr?al, (Montr?al: Universit? p?riph?rique 1984) 159-79, esp. 164-65.
WORKS CITED 2 vols. S?o de. Paulic?ia Desvairade. Poes?as Andrade, Mario completas. Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, (1980). I: 13-32. de. "Le manifeste Trans. Benedito Nunes. Andrade, Oswald antropophage." Ed. Luis de Moura Surr?alisme Sobral. Montreal: P?riph?rique. Universit? de Montr?al, (1984). -. "Manifesto of Pau-Brasil Poetry." Trans. Stella M. de S? Rego. Latin American Literary Review XIV: 27 (January-June, 1986): 184-87.
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11 vols. Rio de Janeiro: Civiliza??o
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do Departamento ed. Remate de Males de Teoria (Revista de Estudos da Linguagem, Universidade Estadual de Literaria/Instituto 6 (1986). Special issue on Oswald de Andrade. Campinas) os antrop?fagos." de. re-vistas: "Revistas Poes?a, Augusto Campos, S?o Paulo: Cortez & Mor?es, (1978). 107-24. antipoesia, antropofagia. di?logo e diferen?a na cultura Campos, Haroldo de. "Da raz?o antropof?gica: Mario 44 Boletim Biblioteca de Andrade brasileira." Bibliogr?fico
(1983): 107-25.
"Urna po?tica Poes?as Reunidas. da radicalidade." de By Oswald 11 vols. Rio de Janeiro: 7 of Obras Andrade. Vol. completas. Brasileira, (1979). 9-62. Civiliza??o "The Rule of Anthropophagy: Europe Under the Sign of Devoration." Latin American Literary Review XTV: 27 (January-June, 1986): 42-60. de Oswald de Andrade. Chalmers, Vera. 3 linhas 4 verdades. O jornalismo S?o Paulo: Duas Cidades, (1976). Lucia. Totens e tabus da modernidade brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: Helena, (1985). Tempo Brasileiro, na literatura brasileira: Oswald Jackson, Kenneth David. A prosa vanguardista de Andrade. S?o Paulo: Perspectiva, (1978). in Oswald Prose de Andrade." Diss. University of "Vanguardist Wisconsin, (1972). in Brazil, Johnson, Randal. "Literature, Culture and Authoritarianism (1930 Latin 179. American 1945)." Working Papers Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Washington, D.C., (1989). Texas Papers on Latin America, no. "Rereading Brazilian Modernism." at Institute of Latin American 89-04. of Texas Studies, University Austin, (1989). or not Tupy: Cannibalism in Contemporary and Nationalism "Tupy Brazilian Literature and Culture." On Modern Latin American Fiction. Ed. John King. New York: The Noonday Press, (1989). 41-59. as Cultura Brasileira: "Modernism Larsen, Neil. Eating the 'Torn Halves'." A Materialist Modernism and Hegemony: Critique of Aesthetic of Minnesota Press, (1990). 72-97. Agencies. Minneapolis: University Carlos Williams and Morse, Richard. "Triangulating Two Cubists: William Oswald de Andrade." Latin American Review XIV: 27 Literary 1986): 175-83. (January-June, ao alcance de todos." In Oswald de Andrade, Nunes, Benedito. "Antropofagia e as Utopias. By Oswald de Andrade. Vol. Do Pau-Brasil ? Antropofagia 6 of Obras 11 vols. Rio de Janeiro: Civiliza??o Brasileira, completas. (1976). xi-liii. Oswald can?bal S?o Paulo: Perspectiva, (1979). e cosmopolitismo na d?cada de 20: Oliverio Schwartz, Jorge. Vanguarda Girondo e Oswald de Andrade. S?o Paulo: Perspectiva, (1983). Schwarz, Roberto. Que horas s?o? S?o Paulo: Companhia das Letras, (1987).
