Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

22 BRAZILIAN LITERATURE
to a study of the nation's self-consciousness. The fact
belongs to literary history; only when vitalized by the
breath of a commanding personality does it enter the
realm of art. The history of our own United States
literature raises similar problems, which have compelled
the editors of The Cambridge History of American Liter-
ature to make certain reservations. "To write the in-
tellectual history of America from the modern esthetic
standpoint is to miss precisely what makes it significant
among modern literatures, namely, that for two centuries
the main energy of Americans went into exploration,
settlement, labour for sustenance, religion and statecraft.
Tor nearly two hundred years a people with the same
traditions and with the same intellectual capacities as their
contemporaries across the sea found themselves obliged
to dispense with art for art." -*^ The words may stand
almost unaltered for Brazil. It is indicative, however,
that where this condition favoured prose as against
verse in the United States, verse in Brazil flourished from
the start and bulks altogether too large in the national
output. We may take it, then, as axiomatic that Brazilian
literature is not exclusively national; no literature is, and
any attempt to keep it rigidly true to a norm chosen
through a mistaken identification of art with geography
and politics is merely a retarding influence. Like all de-
rivative literatures, Brazilian literature displays outside
influences more strongly than do the older literatures with
a tradition of continuity behind them. The history of
all letters is largely that of intellectual cross-fertilization.
From its early days down to the end of the XVIIIth
century, the literature of Brazil is dominated by Portugal;
20 New York, 1917. P. X.