Oswald de Andrade
b.1890–1954, São Paulo, Brazil
The Brazilian poet, novelist and critic, Oswald de Andrade was a vital force in Brazilian modernism and a founding member of the Semana de Arte Moderna (Modern Art Week) in São Paulo in 1922.
Guilherme Almeida and Oswald d’Andrade, Mon Coeur Balance and Leur Âme, Typographia Asbahr, São Paulo, 1915
Book rebound in gilt-lettered leather and marbled cloth boards, with its original paper covers retained, 248 x 168mm. Signed and inscribed by Oswald de Andrade (São Paulo, 1917).
Dr. Elizabeth Cooper (UCL Institute of the Americas Fellow) writes,
Mon Coeur Balance and Leur Âme (1916) are two of the earliest publications by Brazilian modernists Oswald De Andrade and Guilherme de Almeida. Literary scholar Jorge Schwartz has argued that the plays mark an important ‘proto-modernist’ moment, holding in the balance the ‘contradictions between the symbolist-decadent tradition and the emerging Brazilian modernist movement’ (Schwartz 2004). Indeed, both Andrade and Almeida were founding members of the Semana de Arte Moderna (Modern Art Week) in São Paulo in 1922, marking the beginning of a coherent Brazilian modernism. These works are unique and rare windows onto the development of Oswald de Andrade’s oeuvre and his theoretical writings such as the 1924 Manifesto da Poesia Pau-Brasil and the 1928 Manifesto Antropófago (Cannibalist Manifesto) (Galvão Júnior 2013). Furthermore, they offer new insights into the relevance of Andrade’s work to Brazilian artists in last half of the 20th century, such as the concrete poetry movement of the 1950s, and Tropicália of the 1970s.
As the title ‘Théâtre brésilien’ indicates, Andrade and Almeida hoped Mon Coeur Balance and Leur Âme would form the ‘foundation’ of Brazilian theatre. Writing in 1916 Paris – in French – the ostensible contradiction of creating a Brazilian identity/aesthetic through ‘non-native’ cultural forms was central to Andrade’s and Almeida’s modernist vision. The use/re-use of French culture and language was simultaneously intended as a critique of contemporary constructs of Brazilian national identity, and a critique of European global dominance based on an ideology of cultural superiority (Sarah Lazur 2019).
French culture, and Belle Époque culture in particular, was the paradigm/lens through which bourgeois and upper class Brazilians imagined their entrance into modernity during the late 19th and early 20th century (Needell 1994). Francisco Pereira Passos’ (Mayor of Rio, 1902-1906) ‘Parisian Reforms’ were the quintessential example of this phenomenon. Passos’ vast demolition and redevelopment project was explicitly modelled on Haussman’s transformation of Paris and aimed to create a ‘Tropical Paris’ in Brazil. Significantly, Mon Coeur Balance and Leur Âme also includes a dedication to Washington Luís Pereira de Sousa, the mayor of São Paulo at the time who later becomes the 13th President of Brazil and the last of the First Republic (1889-1930).
While Eurocentrism dominated hegemonic visions of the Brazilian nation during the early 20th century, challenges to such politics were gaining momentum at the grassroots level and within artistic and literary circles (Skidmore 1974; Graham 2010). Theresa Meade has argued that it was during the First Republic that they began a ‘self conscious conversation about Brazil’s national character’ (Meade, 2010). Indeed, early 20th century Brazilian society was marked by profound social changes – including urbanisation and the re-construction of Brazilian society after the abolition of slavery in 1888. Written in Europe amidst the horrors of WWI and the revolutionary fervour in Russia, with an eye towards the massive social transformations going on within Brazil, one can see in Mon Coeur Balance and Leur Âme the ways in which Andrade’s concept of ‘cannibalism’ took shape as an alternative way to conceptualize global cultural influences and power relations.
£4,500
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