Rio de Janeiro - Continente Multicultural magazine is putting together an article on the Brazilian literary canon, and in order to do so it has polled writers, critics, etc. We were asked to suggest 10 titles in the area of fiction and poetry - works with sufficient quality to join the list of works fundamental to understanding a literature. Establishing a canon is as thorny a task as choosing the best Brazilian World Cup squad of all time, given the simple fact that old names do not lose their luster over time, and new names are continually appearing.
At any rate, some older works take preference, for the simple reason that their importance tends to increase with the passing years, with critical opinion, biographies, monographs, etc. The canon thus begins to ossify, with classics becoming ever more fixed in the pantheon. In voting for a Brazilian literary canon, who would dare leave out definitive works such as Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis or The Devil to Pay in the Backlands (Grande Sertão: Veredas) by Guimarães Rosa?
Well, I would. As this was a simple magazine feature, without financial or publishing downsides for the authors involved, my notion was to forget classics of this sort and vote for 10 works which seem perfectly legitimate as literary expressions of our country, but which perhaps (in my opinion) would not make it into the final list. My list included six prose works and four works of poetry:
I don't know if these titles can push aside others such as Education by Stone (A Educação pela Pedra) by João Cabral de Melo Neto, Macunaíma by Mário de Andrade, A Rosa do Povo by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and so forth. The problems with notions like that of the canon is that those voting begin to concentrate increasingly on an agreed-upon list in which certain titles are considered untouchable, until it becomes unlikely that a more recent book will have a chance to edge its way in. The most recent of the books I have listed here is that by Rubem Fonseca, from 1983, over two decades years ago. I will be interested to see what the most recent title in the final "canon" is.
This exercise seems like something for people with too much time on their hands, but it is an inevitable mechanism of the culture. Everything needs a nucleus, a core, a group of elements concerning which everyone agrees. Everyone needs a ruler and a compass, and that which we call the "canon" is a ruler for measuring those who appear. I believe that the list which I have given above is an exacting filter, one capable of saying to novices: "That's what we have up till now. And you, what do you have to offer?"
* Translated by Tom Moore, who writes the column Rio Life for BrazilMax.
by Machado de Assis or 
(Grande Sertão: Veredas) by Guimarães Rosa?
(A Grande Arte) by Rubem Fonseca 
(Nove, Novena) by Osman Lins
(A Educação pela Pedra) by João Cabral de Melo Neto, 
by Mário de Andrade, 