Brazilian literature - Cristo Raul

CHAPTER II
PERIOD OiF FORMATION (1500-1750)
The Popular Muse—Sixteenth Century Beginnings— Jesuit In-
fluence—Seventeenth Century Nativism—The "Bahian" school
Gregorio de Mattos Guerra—First Half of Eighteenth Century
—The Academies—Rocha Pitta—Antonio Jose da Silva.
IT
Is a question whether the people as a mass have
really created the poetry and legends which long
have been grouped under the designation of folk
lore. Here, as in the more rarefied atmosphere of art,
it is the gifted individual who originates or formulates the
central theme, which is then passed about like a small
coin that changes hands frequently; the sharp edges are
blunted, the mint-mark is erased, but the coin remains
essentially as at first. So that one may agree only halfway
with Senhor De Carvalho, ^ when he writes that
"true poetry is born in the mouths of the people as the
plant from wild and virgin soil. The people is the great
creator, sincere and spontaneous, of national epics, the
inspirer of artists, stimulator of warriors, director of the
fatherland's destinies." The people furnishes rather
the background against which the epics are enacted, the
audience rather than the performers. Upon the lore and
iQp. Cit. P. 51.
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