Modern Rio in the 20s

If in 1922 the Modern Art Week came to teach us how to be modern, what were people like Agrippino Grieco, Alvaro Moreyra, Gilka Machado, Lima Barreto, Orestes Barbosa, Edgar Roquette-Pinto, Théo-Filho, Bertha doing in Rio that year? Lutz, J. Carlos, Ismael Nery, Pixinguinha, Sinhô, Elsie Houston and many others, all active and productive, in addition to João do Rio (died in 1921) and Di Cavalcanti, Manuel Bandeira, Ronald de Carvalho and Villa-Lobos, that we happen to “lend” to Semana? Everyone was already “modern”, in the sense that they did things that no one had yet done in Brazil. This is just one of the provocations by journalist and writer Ruy Castro in this interview given to Journal of Unicamp. In metropolis by the sea, published by Companhia das Letras in 2019, Ruy describes a modern Rio de Janeiro well before the modernists of São Paulo. The then capital of Brazil already had a vibrant culture, to the point of not needing a cultural event to modernize its thinking and art.

This interview inaugurates a series of content to be presented by the Unicamp Communication Secretariat (SEC). It is part of a comprehensive project that includes several activities to be carried out throughout the year to discuss the meanings and impacts of the events remembered in 2022, such as the centenary of Modern Art Week and the bicentenary of Brazilian Independence. These include artistic events, lecture series, seminars, book launches and exhibitions. Such activities will be organized by an interdisciplinary committee and promoted by the teaching units and other sectors of Unicamp in its three college, in a program that will extend from February – the month in which Modern Art Week took place – until the end of 2022. Check out part of this program in this link.

Access the opening of the programming that will be broadcast on TV Unicamp.

Jornal da Unicamp – In your book you state that Rio de Janeiro in the 20s was already modern in ideas and form. What makes Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s modern?

Ruy Castro - It was not just a big city, but it was THE big city in Brazil, in fact the only one. When it was 11:30 at night in Rio, it was still 1899 in the rest of the country. It was also a city of professionals - writers, journalists, caricaturists, graphic and plastic artists, editors - not of dilettante playboys, amateurs, children of rich farmers and urban landowners. In Rio, people wrote and drew for a living. The market was huge and it was not necessary to do something among friends to get published. And, if the automobile was the symbol of speed and modernity at that time, see the difference: Rio already had, since 1905, the magazine phon-phon, a great sales success for 50 years. Seventeen years later, in 1922, modernists created the Horn, which also had a horn in its name, but was read only by those who wrote to it and only lasted eight issues. Rightly so, it was almost unreadable.

Jornal da Unicamp - What led you to choose the cultural life of Rio de Janeiro in the 1920s as the theme of this book?

Ruy Castro: My motivation was a question I had been asking myself for many years. If in 1922 the Modern Art Week came to teach us how to be modern, what were people like Agrippino Grieco, Álvaro Moreyra, Gilka Machado, Lima Barreto, Orestes Barbosa, Edgar Roquette-Pinto, Théo-Filho, Bertha Lutz, J. Carlos, Ismael Nery, Pixinguinha, Sinhô, Elsie Houston and many others, all active and productive, in addition to João do Rio, who had died in 1921, and Di Cavalcanti, Manuel Bandeira, Ronald de Carvalho and Villa -Wolves, who by any chance did we “lend” to Semana? Everyone was already “modern”, in the sense that they did things that no one had yet done in Brazil. And, if we were to extend this cast to those who would arrive in the following years - as Semana and 1922 usually does - we could add Adhemar Gonzaga, Aracy Cortes, Bidu Sayão, Carmen Miranda, Ismael Silva, Mario Reis, Francisco Alves, Oswaldo Goeldi, etc. None of them were “modernists” - that is, they worked with those verbal tricks, nor did they write “better” instead of “better” or “smoke” instead of “we were”. But when writing the metropolis by the sea, I concluded that a comparison with Semana would be a mistake. There was no possibility of comparison, nor any need for it. So, in the book, I reserved for the Week the space that I thought was proportionate and, even so, limited to the participation of the locals, without whom, in fact, it would not have existed.

Jornal da Unicamp - You describe Rio de Janeiro as a literary world. How did this translate into the landscape and daily life of the city?

Ruy Castro - Look at the printing industry in Rio at that time, the number of newspapers, magazines, publishers and bookstores, all existing as a function of the market. In this market there was room for anything new. A novelist like Benjamim Costallat sold thousands of copies per edition and, if literary restrictions are placed on him, we cannot forget that they can be placed on almost any writer, at some time. Others, such as Theo-Filho, Julia Lopes de Almeida and Chrysanthème were also best sellers, in the sense that was given to it. Poetry existed in several styles, Gilka Machado could choose his editor. Poets published in commercial magazines, bought on the street, not in literary magazines. But the most important thing was the number of writers in Rio. There were dozens, dozens! In the beloved neighboring city, in 1922, there were Monteiro Lobato, Paulo Setubal, Paulo Duarte and who else? The people of Semana were still unknown and, in fact, would continue to be so for some time.

Unicamp Newspaper - The 1920s in Rio brought major changes for women, in fashion, behavior and with feminist agendas. Can you tell us more about these women?

Ruy Castro - Rio was the headquarters of the Diplomatic Corps, with its ambassadors, consuls and heads of legations. They lived here with their families. Their teenage or adult daughters got along with locals their own age and, coming from more advanced centers, it was normal for them to get along with the locals. The girls in Rio were the first in Brazil to go out alone, drive a car, call their friend or boyfriend “you” instead of “Sir”, wear short skirts and smoke in public. They were also the first to read Pitigrilli, D'Annunzio, Pierre Loti and Elinor Glyn, the author of It. In the first 20 or 25 years of the century, Rio produced writers such as Carmen Dolores, Julia Lopes de Almeida, Crysanthème, Rosalina Coelho Lisboa, Albertina Bertha, Mercedes Dantas and Gilka Machado. Bertha Lutz was just one of the feminists in the square. Not to mention Eugenia Álvaro Moreyra, who didn't need to write a line to be the most daring woman in the country. There are countless records of intense circulation of these women in men's circles in cafes, bookstores, exhibitions and conferences.

Jornal da Unicamp - Although the book's theme is Rio de Janeiro, you mention the Modern Art Week of 1922, which took place in São Paulo and which turns 100 years old this year. Why?

Ruy Castro - Because a certain academic and official ideology sold the idea that, without it, Brazil would never have gotten out of “backwardness” in 1922. In fact, those who needed to catch up and get out of behind were the young men who did it - Parnassians, intellectuals from salon and, worse than alienated, integrated into the power system that kept Brazil with 80% illiterate: the perrepismo [of PRP, Partido Republican Paulista, the party of power], with which they had economic and friendly links.

Jornal da Unicamp – So we can say that there was the Art Week of 1922, but that there is also an academic construction about the Week of 22. What's the difference?

Ruy Castro - This construction is a posteriori of the week. I don't think that figures like Mario de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade or Menotti del Picchia had the intellectual conditions to purposefully create a movement aiming to give expression to a cultural or racial hegemony in São Paulo or anything like that. They weren't that sophisticated. From the entry of Paulo Prado into history, on the eve of the Week, then yes, one thing could have led to another. Even so, for the first 50 years, this merger only fermented slowly, in the books of some scholars. The official and overwhelming Week only began in 1972, with great participation from USP and other universities, the Ministry of Education, the National Book Institute, the entrance exam and also a dazzled press.

Jornal da Unicamp - There are many ambiguities intrinsic to São Paulo Modernism. We would like to explore this topic a little. The Week was an event for São Paulo residents and for São Paulo residents, or there was some type of incorporation of cultural elements from other cities, such as Rio de Janeiro. How did this incorporation happen?

Ruy Castro - Until February 1922, the modernists of São Paulo were perfectly ignorant of what was happening in the rest of the country. But not from Rio. They knew about Ronald de Carvalho, Manuel Bandeira, Graça Aranha, Elysio de Carvalho and others, and they also knew that, without them, they would not speak “not even to a bandstand at Bixiga, let alone at the Municipal Theater”, as wrote Oswald de Andrade. Through them, they met Villa-Lobos, whose performance took up at least 50% of the three nights together during the week. Not to mention that, without Di Cavalcanti, it probably wouldn't have even existed - he had the idea, made contact with Paulo Prado [at Graça Aranha's suggestion] and gathered the locals. Today, 100 years later, modernists from São Paulo admit that there were also incipient “modernisms” in Rio, in Belo Horizonte, Recife, Natal, Maceió. And there really was. The only thing that Rio doesn't participate in this modernism championship, it was already modern, it didn't need to be “modernist”. Speaking of which, every ism is a derivation of something that already exists, right? Modernism, for example, is a derivation of modern...

Unicamp Newspaper - Parnassianism and Symbolism, dominant in the Rio cultural scene, correspond to a modern aesthetic (see France). However, São Paulo Modernism declares these movements to be overcome. Is there an opposition between Modernism and the Modern?

Ruy Castro - Parnassianism was already empty in Rio even before the deaths of Olavo Bilac and Emilio de Menezes, in 1918. And, around 1920, we were already in the third Symbolist generation! See the anthologies by Andrade Muricy and Massaud Moisés. There was also a lot that did not lend itself easily to classification, such as the poetry of Mario Pederneiras, the Eu by Augusto dos Anjos [written and published in Rio], the light verse by Olegario Marianno. Compare this with the pre-22 Parnassianism of Mario de Andrade and the pre and post-22 of Menotti Del Picchia, Guilherme de Almeida and Sergio Milliet. As I said, they were the ones who needed to modernize. Oswald himself used a Coelhonettian style of Parnassianism in prose, see his speech in the garden of the Faculty of Law in 1919, in homage to a tree planted there a few years earlier by Rui Barbosa.

Unicamp Newspaper - Semana de 22 in fact presents a set of works – in painting, literature, music, sculpture, etc. – or a set of suggestions that would be implemented in the future?

Ruy Castro - Does anyone know which paintings and sculptures displayed in the foyer of the Municipal Theater on those nights shocked the audience? Can anyone quote the excerpt from The condemned, novel by sketches of Oswald, read on the stage of the Municipal Theater, would have provoked the famous boo? Will anyone know what Menotti del Picchia said in his speech? And is there a document proving that Mario de Andrade read his “Ode to the bourgeois” to the coated Washington Luiz, Carlos de Campos and other top hats present? And if you read it, what did they think? [They must have liked it, because they never broke ties with the modernists, quite the opposite]. What I wanted to see Mario write was an “Ode to the Archbishop”, denouncing the priests of whom he was a fanatical devotee.

Jornal da Unicamp - If Semana de 22 was an elegant and official event, sponsored by São Paulo's coffee elite, how can it be seen as revolutionary? Wouldn't that be a contradiction?

Ruy Castro - The elite of São Paulo found the Week to be a fun and cheap joke, which did not take away from them and only did them good, giving them an image of being liberal and advanced - which it was not. Washington Luiz was best man at Oswald and Tarsila's wedding, and Oswald put a certain “Anthropophagy Club” at the service of the election of Julio Prestes, candidate to succeed Washington Luiz in 1930. Oswald and Julio were also old friends. The party ended for perrepistas and modernistas, not by chance, at the same time - in 1930, when Washington was overthrown. Without collusion with power, Modernism in São Paulo would not have been able to exist.

Jornal da Unicamp - Movements that were offshoots of Modernism, such as Anta, Verdeamarelismo and Integralismo by Plínio Salgado, with links to Fascism, have not been remembered in current celebrations. This seems to be part of a trend in studies on the Week, which both excludes members and includes undue members, such as Jorge Amado, José Lins do Rego, Graciliano Ramos and others. In your opinion, why does this happen?

Ruy Castro - Yes, among the “legacies” of Modernism we cannot forget Integralism, born from Verdeamarelismo and Anta, “dissident” movements from Pau Brasil. But would they be that dissident? Both Pau Brasil and the others were nationalists, Indianists and primitivists, basically inspired by Gonçalves Dias, who they said they abjured. If this fight came from 1924 and would have established a “left x right” fracture in Modernism, how can it be explained that, in 1928, Plínio Salgado collaborated on the first two issues of Anthropophagy Journal with full-page articles about the Tupi language? Would it be possible for someone to collaborate on the magazine without Oswald's authorization? -And then Plínio? As for the political difference between them, it is not true that Oswald was on the left and Plínio on the right. This was the version he started selling much later. In fact, in the 1920s Oswald was on the right and Plínio was on the extreme right. As for Northeastern writers being a consequence of Modernism, just see Oswald's opinion about them when they began to emerge: he called them “buffaloes” who would set back national literature. Then, for “ideological” reasons, he began to support them and even tried to become one of them, with his naturalistic novel Ground zero.

Jornal da Unicamp - The importance of the Week of 22 was built on a negative image of Rio de Janeiro's culture. In your book you deconstruct this idea. If we look, however, at Modernism without comparison, in itself, how important is it? Which works are important?

Ruy Castro - They were more funny than original. Oswald, for example. Pau Brasil poetry and joke poems are by-products of poémes-élastiques and poèmes-blagues, by Blaise Cendrars, from ten years earlier. Isn’t Anthropophagy (which, in the end, became Oswald’s manic obsession, far beyond the humorous manifesto of 1928) a derivative of Picabia’s “Canibale Manifesto”, from 1920? Your novels João Miramar e Serafim were classified in 1957 by Cendrars himself as “almost illisible”. In fact, they aren't even romances. As for The condemned, a book in three parts, published separately, and which Oswald says he wrote “between 1917 and 1921”, just read the last pages of the last part, “The staircase”, published in 1934. They show a carousing and beautician character suddenly converted to the dictatorship of the proletariat, in fact Oswald himself. But, in real life, this only happened from 1931 onwards. So Oswald was just lying, as always, and trying to copy his story and show that, in 1921, he was already “left-wing”. As for Mario, “Paulicéia desvairada” is a regionalist and somewhat exaggerated poem. There was not even a shadow of that madness. When criticism was more authorized, Macunaima used to be accused of “a romantic lack”. And the deluge of letters that Mario left all the time deals with a single character: Mario de Andrade. It is the greatest exercise in epistolary self-bustification in the Portuguese language. They are also proof of their alienation: in those millions of letters, there is not a single reference to the 18 do Forte, the Revolution of 1924, the Coluna Prestes and not even the Revolution of 30, which changed the lives of all of them - in which country he lived? And there are others. Luiz Aranha's poems are fun, but as for Menotti, Guilherme, Sergio Milliet, etc., it's better not to talk, right? In fact, the exegetes of Modernism also prefer not to talk - because it is difficult to talk about Modernism and use them as examples...

Jornal da Unicamp - The focus of Modernist criticism in relation to Rio culture was centered on the Brazilian Academy of Letters. What would you say about that?

Ruy Castro - In 1922, Agrippino Grieco had already tired of making fun of the Academy. The best is that of the uniforms of dead academics, which were to be converted into cloth for billiard tables. After the deaths of Machado, Nabuco and others, no one was taking the Academy seriously. But the modernists attached great importance to it - so much so that, from 1930 onwards, just eight years after the Week - they began to happily join it. Within a few years there were Guilherme de Almeida, Menotti del Picchia, Ribeiro Couto, Candido Motta Filho, Cassiano Ricardo, Manuel Bandeira and Alceu Amoroso Lima, all identified with Modernism. Oswald ran for it twice, saying it was out of mockery, but wouldn't such mockery be an acknowledgment that he cared for her? In fact, from what I know, the Academy Library is full of his books with loving dedications to academics. For me, all of this is just coherent: the modernists were passers-by who tried to modernize themselves. And they are still trying today - now by the hands of their exegetes...