Oswald de Andrade`s "Cannibalist Manifesto"

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
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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
36
Literary Review
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.
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completas.
Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, (1980). I: 13-32.
de. "Le manifeste
Trans. Benedito Nunes.
Andrade, Oswald
antropophage."
Ed. Luis de Moura
Surr?alisme
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P?riph?rique.
Universit?
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"Manifesto of Pau-Brasil
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-.
"Cannibalist Manifesto"
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