Brazilian Tales | Page 9

for years has been the lot of woman particularly in the Spanish and Portuguese nations, it is surprising that woman's prominence in the literary world should be what it is.
The name of the original seventeenth century spirit known as Sor In��s de la Cruz (Mexico) is part of Spanish literature. Only recently has she been indicated as her nation's first folklorist and feminist! Her poems have found their way into the anthologies of universal poesy. The most distinguished Spanish poetess of the nineteenth century, Gertrudis G��mez de Avellaneda, was a Cuban by birth, going later to Spain, where she was readily received as one of the nation's leading literary lights. Her poetry is remarkable for its virile passion; her novel "Sab" has been called the Spanish "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for its stirring protest against slavery and its idealization of the oppressed race. She was a woman of striking beauty, yet so vigorous in her work and the prosecution of it that one facetious critic was led to exclaim, "This woman is a good deal of a man!"
But South America has its native candidate for the title of Spanish "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and this, too, is the work of a woman. Clorinda Matto's "Aves Sin Nido" (Birds Without a Nest) is by one of Peru's most talented women, and exposes the disgraceful exploitation of the Indians by conscienceless citizens and priests who had sunk beneath their holy calling. It seems, indeed, that fiction as a whole in Peru has been left to the pens of the women. Such names as Joana Manuele Girriti de Belzu, Clorinda Matto and Mercedes Cabello de Carbonero stand for what is best in the South American novel. The epoch in which these women wrote (late nineteenth century) and the natural feminine tendency to put the house in order (whether it be the domestic or the national variety) led to such stories as Carbonero's "Las Consequencias," "El Conspirador" and "Blanca Sol." The first of these is an indictment of the Peruvian vice of gambling; the second throws an interesting light upon the origin of much of the internal strife of South America, and portrays a revolution brought on by the personal disappointment of a politician. "Blanca Sol" has been called a Peruvian "Madame Bovary."
Although Brazil has not yet produced any Amazons of poetry or fiction to stand beside such names as Sor In��s de la Cruz or Gertrudis G��mez de Avallaneda, it has contributed some significant names to the women writers of Latin America. Not least among these is Carmen Dolores (Emilia Moncorvo Bandeira de Mello) who was born in 1852 at Rio de Janeiro and died in 1910, after achieving a wide reputation in the field of the short story, novel and feuilleton. In addition to these activities she made herself favorably known in the press of Rio, Sao Paulo and Pernambuco. Her career started with the novel Confession. Other works are The Struggle, A Country Drama, and Brazilian Legends. The story in this volume is taken from a collection entitled The Complex Soul.
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The present selection of tales makes no pretense at completeness, finality or infallibility of choice. This little book is, so to speak, merely a modest sample-case. Some of the tales first appeared, in English, in the Boston Evening Transcript and the Stratford Journal (Boston), to which organs I am indebted for permission to reprint them.
ISAAC GOLDBERG.
Roxbury, Mass.

THE ATTENDANT'S CONFESSION
By Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
First President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
So it really seems to you that what happened to me in 1860 is worth while writing down? Very well. I'll tell you the story, but on the condition that you do not divulge it before my death. You'll not have to wait long--a week at most; I am a marked man.
I could have told you the story of my whole life, which holds many other interesting details: but for that there would be needed time, courage and paper. There is plenty of paper, indeed, but my courage is at low ebb, and as to the time that is yet left me, it may be compared to the life of a candle-flame. Soon tomorrow's sun will rise--a demon sun as impenetrable as life itself. So goodbye, my dear sir; read this and bear me no ill will; pardon me those things that will appear evil to you and do not complain too much if there is exhaled a disagreeable odor which is not exactly that of the rose. You asked me for a human document. Here it is. Ask me for neither the empire of the Great Mogul nor a photograph of the Maccabees; but request, if you will, my dead man's shoes, and I'll will them to you and no other.
You already know that this took