Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

14
BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
position from the purists, yet it recognizes the ineluc-
table course of speech. The noted Colombian philol-
ogist Rufino Cuervo, in a controversy with the genial
conservative Valera, voiced his belief that the Spanish
of the new world would grow more and more unlike the
parent tongue. ^^ In the same spirit, if with most unacademic
hilariousness, Mencken has, in The Amer-
ican Language,^'^ indicated the lines of cleavage between
English and "American." Brazilian scholars have naturally
assumed a similar attitude toward their own
language and have, likewise, met with the opposition of
the purists. It does not matter, for the purpose of the
present discussion, whether the linguistic cleavage in any
of the instances here given will eventually prove so
definite as to originate new tongues. Such an outcome
is far less probable today than it was, say, in the epoch
when Latin, through its vulgar form, was breaking up
into the Romance languages. Widespread education
and the printing press are conserving influences, acting
as a check upon capricious modification.
One of the soundest and most sensible documents upon
the Portuguese language in Brazil comes from the pen of
the admirable critic Jose Verissimo.^^ "As a matter of
fact," he writes, "save perhaps in the really Portuguese
period of our literature, which merely reproduced in an
11 Rufino Jose Cuervo (1842-1911) was called by Menendez y Pelayo
the greatest Spanish philologist of the Nineteenth Century.
A species of national pride finds vent in philological channels through
the discovery of "localisms" in each of the Spanish-American republics.
At the most this is of dialectic or sub-dialectic importance, but it illustrates
an undoubted trend and supports Cuervo's contentions.
12 New York, 1921. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
13 Estudos de Literatura Brazileira. Sexta serie. Rio de Janeiro, 1907.
Pp. 47-133-