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Silence Without Pedro Nava
by Daniel Afonso da Silva
Estrondo: noise, loud noise, strong sound, prolonged rumor. Hurricane, gust, storm. Explosion. Breaking harmonies. Storing conventions. Shaking structures. Droughts and floods. Tragedy and innovation. Disturbance and convulsion. Almost never in salvation. Almost always in mutation. Announcing bad weather. Without dawn or good days.
This was what was seen, felt, and acted upon in Brazil in that distant 1972.
A sad year. A year that, in the end, was not good.
A year that was a symbol of the economic miracle. When the country grew a lot and grew well. But – in addition – many people also died. It was the most brutal moment of the regime. Hard line and strong arm.
This was the peak of General Médici’s presidency. Far from Brasil Potência and far beyond Pra frente Brasil.
The reference was the pau de arara. Sitting down. Without moderation or scruples. In fact, it was said “the scruples of conscience are few”.
The transition from the Castello Branco period, the AI-1, and the promise of civilian returns in 1965 – now in 1972 – was nothing but a fleeting illusion. The accumulation of Institutional Acts had distorted any possibility of returning to the 17th. The freshness of the good bossa nova of the past was disintegrating – Act after Act – in the air. “No more fights” was turning into nostalgia. Nostalgia for many. Inaugurated in the incontinence of goodbye.
Goodbye to the smiles of the JK era. Goodbye to the illusions of the eve of 1964. Goodbye to the off-key with some heart. Because, from then on, the hearts of the off-key ones stopped beating.
The children of the fatherland were turned into children of another. And, by determination, they were forced to be silent. “Be quiet”.
This was it, was it.
A moment of numbness. Sadness. Confusion.
1972.
Full of enigmas and signs. Agonies, anomies. Rebirths of 1937-1945, 1946, 1954, 1961, 1964, and, of course, 1968. Estado Novo and then. Years of lead. Nerves of steel. Hearts pierced, diminished in tenderness, and without Celly Campelo to console.
Gilberto Gil was Back in Bahia. He had returned in Expresso. Soaked in heat, color, salt, sun. But it was little. Very little. Everything was little. Until “the earth stopped”.
And it stopped not for a day nor for a single week. The earth stopped for generations, for eternity, for timeless moments.
All because of a book: Baú de Ossos. An intention: Memórias. And an author: Pedro Nava.
Everyone knows and the world saw: it was a storm.
Otto Lara Resende emphasized that it was a “foundational book, in the sense that it is a book that alone gives notice of the culture. More important for Brazilian literature than Marcel Proust for French culture. Simply genius”. The major poet, citizen of Itabira, limited himself to saying “a box of surprises”. The historian Francisco Iglésias, also in summary, would say everything with “an event”.
This was it and was it.
Ephemeral.
Surprises line by line, page by page.
A punch in the stomach. Total disorientation.
Whoever had some cultivation of the spirit understood immediately what it was about. Baú de Ossos was the necessary key to abstract and ignore the existence of President Médici’s presidency, that horrible management, that Brazil without direction, and that people without reason.
This is the disturbing character of the work, provided in layers.
Whoever had more culture traveled through it, shuddered, looked back, and was perplexed. The best of the highest Brazilian memorialistic writing of all time – Nabuco, Graciliano, Gilberto Amado – exuded from every part. Starting with Minha formação (1900), Memórias de Cárcere (1953), and História de Minha Infância (1954) that seemed to be the souls of Baú de Ossos. The best of the interpretation of Brazil – Paulo Prado, Mário de Andrade, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Gilberto Freyre – also. As well as the best of all the Arts. From plastic arts to urbanism to music. Approaching, with firmness, to poetry and prose.
Whoever, thus, closed their eyes reading Baú de Ossos could, at some moment, open their eyes reading Alguma Poesia. Whoever entered the work at a trot, in some curve, would find themselves in Sagarana or Corpo de Baile. And, not difficultly, lost in the alleys of Grande Sertão: Veredas.
Baú de Ossos was this: something spectacular, disturbing, disconcerting. And it was only the beginning of Pedro Nava’s Memórias, which were concluded in six volumes: Baú de Ossos (1972), Balão Cativo (1973), Chão de Ferro (1976), Beira-Mar (1978), Galo-das-trevas (1981), and O Circo Perfeito (1983).
And, more, Baú de Ossos inaugurated the trance that led Brazilian society to profound meditations. Which, in seriousness, still remain relevant and pose essential dilemmas contained in questions such as: did the 1972 momentum have any equivalence with the 1956 momentum or with the 1930 momentum – 1930: Drummond’s momentum; 1956: João Guimarães Rosa’s momentum?
With the acceleration of redemocratization, through a “slow, gradual, and secure” opening, this reflection faded. But for those who chose to be gauche in life, the question remains. And, being so, immortalizes Pedro Nava. Who was a prodigy, from beginning to end of life.
Born in Juiz de Fora in 1903, he moved to Belo Horizonte to study medicine and became part of the avant-garde mineiro of the 1920s. His friends and companions, compagnon de route, were Emílio Moura, João Alphonsus, Abgar Renault, Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, Ciro dos Anjos, who created A revista, in 1925, which would be one of the most important vectors of the modernist movement in Minas Gerais, hand in hand with the modernist movement in São Paulo in 1922.
Pedro Nava was central in this publication. Creating impressions, articles, criticisms, and poems. Being O defunto, of 1928, his most outstanding poetic work. Which left Mário de Andrade disconcerted. And Vinícius de Morais, Manuel Bandeira, and Murilo Mendes also. It was where he, Pedro Nava, expressed the sensitivity of his prime. To the point that, in the time, Mário de Andrade confided to Carlos Drummond de Andrade that “the critique that he [Pedro Nava] published in the Revista about painting left me with a strong impression of a well-organized spirit for criticism”. “As for his poetry, I don’t know, but it seems to me that it will be the most off-key of all of you. With his poetry”. (vide A lição do Amigo, letters from Mário de Andrade to Carlos Drummond de Andrade, edited by Drummond in 1982).
