Electronic Cordel Literature

Rio de Janeiro - There has been much talk recently about the possible decadence of "literatura de cordel," which probably reached its apex, in terms of commercial success, in the forties and fifties. Historical discussion of the cordel highlights the enormous numbers printed, with individual pamphlets published in hundreds of thousand of copies, perhaps even a million. To begin with, I urge a certain amount of caution here.

Enthusiasts for the cordel are notoriously unreliable when dealing with these kinds of figures, above all when it was something they themselves published. Not that they are mendacious. It is just that they have a tendency to see these things from a rather poetic point of view. The guy who says that he sold 100,000 copies is the same one that write verses like "Dei um murro na cara de Sansão / que acabei com a queixadado jumento" (I gave that guy Samson such a beating / that I ended up with the jawbone of the ass). Be careful!

It is hardly possible (nor was it at the time) to know if the pamphlet on the death of Getúlio Vargas sold a million copies or not. But even leaving questions of statistics aside, there is no denying that sales were higher than they are today. Analysts in a hurry see this as the decline of the cordel, and announce its imminent extinction.

Really? I don't think so. In analyzing market phenomena in general, we can see that "bubbles" are very common: an enormous increase in production and sales, followed by a vertiginous dropoff. Production reaches a "peak" and immediately begins to fall.

This, however, does not mean the "death of the cordel." It means that the cordel, even at the price of 1 real, is intended for people who often do not have a real to spare. Radio and TV have replaced it to a great extent, with the cordel only preferred by those who value "poetic information," a sort of esthetic confirmation of the facts that is one of the principal attractions of the cordel. Its Golden Age has ended, but this does not mean it is dying. For me, it simply means that it has contracted, retracted, and today is comfortable in a much more modest, but nevertheless stable, market niche.

New cordelistas appear. Interest in the cordel is increasing among the middle class. New resources (computer, internet) are helping to preserve this form of literature. Because when we talk about the cordel we are talking about two things: 1) the 11x16 cm pamphlets; 2) the body of popular northeastern poetry and lore that is published in these pamphlets. Even if the pamphlets should one day disappear, what is important is that the body of poetry survives, the poems, the literary part of the phenomenon, which is more important than its physical embodiment. There is electronic cordel being published on the Internet, without paper, but accessed and read as one reads a newspaper or a blog. It is the cordel without the pamphlet, discovering a new way to reach readers and stay alive.