The Collection

By Mark J. Curran

"The Collection" is meant as an introduction to and summary of Curran's primary and secondary holdings on Brazil's "Literatura de Cordel" now at the Latin American Library of Tulane University. The book relates the story of how the "cordel" collection was put together including telling of its primary sources, the poets themselves and "cordel" stands or "barracas" in cities or towns that sold the broadsides from the mid - 1960s to 2013. Photos and short biographic entries of the poets, printers and publishers are a big part of the story. The lengthy second part of the book is comprised of the lists of the broadsides themselves (accordng to title by the author's choice, author following when known), xeroxed copies of historic titles, and Curran's library of secondary sources dealing with the collection. The author believes that this book has most everything a prospective researcher or "aficionado" needs to know about the Mark J. Curran Collection of "A Literatura de Cordel."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Aug 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781698709154

Mark J. Curran

Mark J. Curran is Professor Emeritus from Arizona State University where he worked from 1968 to 2011. He taught Spanish Language as well as the Survey of Spanish Literature, a seminar on "Don Quixote," and Civilization of Spain and Latin American Civilization. He also taught the Portuguese Language (Brazilian Variant) as well as a Survey of Luso-Brazilian Literature, Luso-Brazilian Civilization, and Seminars on Chico Buarque de Hollanda and Brazil's Folk-Popular Literature (the "Literatura de Cordel"). He has written forty-four books, eight in academic circles before retirement, thirty-six with Trafford in retirement. Color images of the covers and summaries of the books appear on his website: www.currancordelconnection.com His e-mail address is: [e-mail]

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Copyright 2021 Mark J. Curran.

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ISBN: 978-1-6987-0914-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-0915-4 (e)

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CONTENTS

Prologue – The Unexpected Connection

PART I. 1966 THROUGH 1967

1 The Beginning – Saint Louis University

2 Go To The Northeast. Build A Respectable Collection Professor Manuel Cavalcanti Proença

3 Recife – The São José Market

Edson Pinto. Literatura De Cordel

José Bento Da Silva

The Folheteiro

José Francisco Campos

João José da Silva

Ariano Suassuna

José Soares

4 First Foray to The Interior – Caruaru, Pernambuco

Dila (Soares)

5 Campina Grande, Paraíba

Manoel Camilo Dos Santos

Manoel Camilo’s Interview

6 Juazeiro Do Norte Ceará – Padre Cícero And Cordel

José Bernardo Da Silva

Manoel Caboclo E Silva

7 The ‘Pinga – Pinga’ To Natal

Mário Brito, Long – Time Agent Of Cordel

Folklorist Luís Da Câmara Cascudo.

8 Last Efforts in Recife and Environs

Joaquim Batista De Sena, Interview, Fortaleza, Ceará

José Costa Leite, Condado, Pernambuco

9 Salvador - Bahia De Todos Os Santos

Rodolfo’s Written Interview 1967 (From A Literatura De Cordel)

Cuíca De Santo Amaro

Permínio Válter Lírio

Erotildes Miranda Dos Santos

10 Rio De Janeiro – Fieldwork, Collection and Research

José João Dos Santos (Azulão)

11 Other Poets from The Interior – Minas Gerais, The Amazon

A Cordel Vendor, Pirapora, Minas Gerais, The Gaiolas Of The São Francisco River

Cordel In The Amazon Basin, 1967

Belém Do Pará

Cordel In Manaus, Amazonas

12 Back To Recife, May, June of 1967

PART II. SPORADIC COLLECTION TO 2005

1 Brazil 1978

Brasil 1978

João José Dos Santos (Azulão) 1978

Apolônio Alves Dos Santos

Gonçalo Ferreira Da Silva, 1978

Franklin Maxado

Raimundo Santa Helena

A Pioneer Poet, Antônio Oliveira

2 1981

Rodolfo Coelho Cavalcante, Salvador Da Bahia

Cuíca De Santo Amaro, 1981 And 1990

3 Cem Anos De Cordel – São Paulo 2001

Valdeck De Garanhuns

Zé Lourenço

J. Borges

Abraão Batista

Téo Azevedo

J. Barros (Left), Jerônimo Soares (Right), São Paulo

Gonçalo Ferreira Da Silva

Joseph Luyten

Audálio Dantas, Curator Of Cem Anos

4 2002 São Paulo

5 2005, The Cordel Congress, João Pessoa

Abraão Batista, Juazeiro Do Norte

Marcelo Soares

José Costa Leite

New Poets

Varneci Nascimento

Cordel from Fortaleza

Old And New Voices Of Researchers On Cordel

José Alves Sobrinho

The New Female Presence In Cordel Research

Professor Gutenberg Costa

Arnaldo Saraiva

6 Last Encounter with Poets of Cordel and Minor Collecting. 2013 In Belém Do Pará

PART III. THE XEROXING FROM 1978 TO 2005

1 The Casa De Ruy Barbosa, Rio De Janeiro In 1966 And 1967 And Later The Fundação Casa De Rui Barbosa

2 The Origenes Lessa Collection

3 The Núcleo De Pesquisa Da Literatura De Cordel In The Fundaçao Cultural Do Estado Da Bahia Salvador

4 The Biblioteca Da Literatura De Cordel, At The Universidade Federal De Paraíba, 1989

5 Meeting Átila De Almeida At His Home In Campina Grande, 1990, Perusing The Vast Collection, Note Cards Once Again And Then Xeroxing

6 The Final Xeroxing: The Fundos Villa – Lobos At The Institito De Estudos Brasileiros At The Universidade De São Paulo, 1996

Collecting Through The Mail

Addendum I. Titles From Retrato Do Brasil Em Cordel Sent To Tulane

Addendum II. Folhetos De Cordel Not In Retrato Do Brasil Em Cordel Sent To Tulane

Addendum III. Xeroxes From The Mark J. Curran Cordel Collection

Addendum IV. Secondary Works Related To Cordel Listed In Retrato from The Mark J. Curran Collection Sent To Tulane

About The Author

001_a_lbj6.jpg

A Map of Brazil

Source: PAT • The free, open source, portable atlas • Version 1.1,

Retrieved June 22, 2020. https://ian.macky.net/pat/map/br/br blu.gif)

PROLOGUE –

THE UNEXPECTED CONNECTION

In 2020 I had written a book combining fact and fiction on a trip from Manaus to Rio Grande do Sul on the International Adventurer Expedition Ship. I thought Brazilian Studies Association people would want to know about that as well as all the books on my web site (www.currancordelconnection.com). I had discovered Chris Dunn’s role as President of BRASA and wrote him an e-mail recalling our meeting at the BRASA meeting in Recife, Pernambuco in 2000, asking if my note could be put in the bulletin. He said sure, and it happened. Months later I received an email from Chris saying he had run across Retrato do Brasil em Cordel in the Tulane Library. There was an apparent after thought at the end of the email: What are your plans for your collection? I answered saying I was open to consider offering the entire thing to Tulane, explaining my thinking of a similar arrangement with the Library of Congress ten years earlier after the Symposium on Cordel in 2011. No contract resulted mainly because I had desisted because of all the paperwork and in effect tabled the idea. Back to Tulane: I expressed to Chris my admiration for the Latin American Studies Program dating back to 1963 when I was applying for graduate school. Chris put me in touch with Dr. Hortensia Calvo of the Latin American Library and it all unfolded from there.

PART I

1966 THROUGH 1967

1

THE BEGINNING –

SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY

In the fall of 1966 in a graduate course on the Brazilian Novel at Saint Louis University, my professor Dr. Doris Turner one fine day brought a small stack of broadsides or chapbooks to class. They were folhetos and romances from Brazil’s literatura popular em verso or literatura de cordel. She had collected them as a folk curiosity in her travels in the Northeast a few years earlier on a Fulbright to do her dissertation on Jorge Amado. Knowing of my small-town background and being raised on a wheat farm on the Central Kansas plains, she said they might be of interest, story – poems, as it were, of a rural population in Brazil’s Northeast. Months later they became the topic for an application for a Fulbright – Hays Research Grant for dissertation work in Brazil; the application was successful, and I was off to Brazil in June of 1966 to begin work. The major task ahead was a collection of the broadsides, at least enough for a decent sample to begin the dissertation. I soon discovered they were closely related to the works of many of the major literary figures of the Northeast – Ariano Suassuna, Jorge Amado, the dramatist Alfredo Dias Gomes, and a neighbor in Minas Gerais, João Guimarães Rosa. Thus, the dissertation was broadened to relate folk – popular literature to erudite works. The collection, however, came first. The process would last for almost fifty years, from 1966 to 2013, and this is the story from its beginnings to its end.

I add for any interested reader: a pictorial account of much of what I will share is in Fifty Years of Research on Brazil. A Photographic Journey, my book published by Trafford Publishing in the U.S. in 2014. And a detailed account of travel, observations, and complete diary on that first important year in Brazil is Adventures of a ‘Gringo Researcher’ in Brazil in the 1960s – In Search of ‘Cordel’ (Trafford, 2012). And out of necessity I may borrow from other of my books as well; I urge any possible reader to consult them as needed. The current monograph however is more specific in nature - the actual collection of the cordel.

A small but important note: in 1966 cordel or literatura de cordel was a little used or understood term. The story – poems it comprises were known to intellectuals and scholars as literatura popular em verso. The poets and printers themselves had myriad terms depending on their geographic region: folheto, folhete, abc, livrinho, etc. The term literatura de cordel was probably first used in Brazil by the renowned folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo in his pioneering books on the phenomenon, Cinco Livros do Povo the first. I came to use the term at the suggestion of Ariano Suassuna and it became the title of my first book in Brazil, approved and the Portuguese checked by Ariano himself. It was he who suggested the simple title A Literatura de Cordel. It means literature on a string and refers to the pamphlets or broadsides first sold in Portugal in Lisbon by blind men, the broadsides sold in markets displayed on strings, or cords, or wires. It also became known as a literatura de cegos. I can say that I cringe yet today when Brazilians talk of cordéis, a generic name for the story – poems. I prefer folheto or romance. Okay; that’s out of the way. My 1973 book was as far as I know the first ever with that simple title which took hold and became seminal; and unknown to me at the time, Suassuna had chosen the cover woodprint illustration to be done by a then young and upcoming woodcut artist – J. Borges. More history.

2

"GO TO THE NORTHEAST. BUILD A

RESPECTABLE COLLECTION" PROFESSOR

MANUEL CAVALCANTI PROENÇA

My first mentor in Brazil was Army Reformed Colonel Manuel Cavalcanti Proença, a renowned professor of Brazilian Literature and writer of major studies on figures of the 1950s and 1960s like Mário de Andrade, José Lins do Rego and João Guimarães Rosa. Professor Proença however had another interest: the broadsides of Brazil’s literatura popular em verso. His interest stemmed from a historic moment in Brazil - 1924 - when as a young officer he took part in the Coluna Prestes, chasing escaped leftist and communist Luís Carlos Prestes whom Jorge Amado dubbed later as O Cavaleiro da Esperança through the interior of São Paulo State, up through Minas Gerais and on into the Northeast ending in the rebel’s capture and imprisonment. It was that adventure for Colonel Proença that became in time O Termo de Cuiabá and then the seminal Trilhas do Grande Sertão. His first interest was botany, inspired on what he saw in the backlands; only later did he turn to literature.

It was Proença and friends, an eclectic but important duo, Manuel Diégues Júnior a cultural anthropologist, and Orígenes Lessa, a journalist and writer of short stories, that convinced the stodgy leaders of the Casa de Rui Barbosa (Américo Lacombe among them) that the literatura popular em verso was important and in danger of being lost forever due to the fragility of the broadsides. The Casa financed the endeavor of the travel to the Northeast and purchase of extant materials, and a major collection was accumulated and later housed in Rio de Janeiro. Today comprising some 9000 broadsides, it began with the stimulus of that trio of Brazilian intellectuals.

In a very short meeting with Professor Proença in June of 1966 at his home in Flamengo, a very nervous, young Fulbrighter asked if he would be mentor and possible director of the dissertation. Seeing my sincerity, he said yes. Instructions were short and simple: Go to the Northeast, read the books on ‘literatura popular em verso,’ build a respectable collection, come back here in six months and we will start to work. That was the promise.

3

RECIFE – THE SÃO JOSÉ MARKET

Recife was a major nexus of cordel production and sales in Brazil in 1966. It became my home base for six months of study, research, and travel to meet poets and printers, writers and scholars of literature and folklore and investigate their surroundings – town or city, state or region. There were three or four major libraries with related books on northeastern folklore including the folhetos and romances, but also the singer of tales, or oral poet of improvised poetry. All were first suggested to me by informal mentor Ariano Suassuna: the library of the Law School of Pernambuco, the State Library of Pernambuco, and the Instituto Joaquim Nabuco de Pesquisas Socais, the first and last most important. But the poets could be found at one central place: the plaza outside the old downtown market of São José in Recife and atrium of the São José church. It was there I would discover the principal shop where you could buy cordel: the market stand [barraca] of Edson Pinto, Literatura de Cordel.

EDSON PINTO. LITERATURA DE CORDEL

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Edson Pinto. Literatura de Cordel

Edson was always friendly to me with a big smile, and he sold me, in all, perhaps 300 to 400 broadsides over the six-month period. You must recall I was a rank beginner, naïve, and just beginning to understand cordel. It was clear that almost all the poets who came into the Recife market, a smattering local, but most from various places in the interior of Pernambuco, Paraíba and other states, brought him their newest story – poems, sure there would be a market for them. I would return to my colorful boarding house A Chácara das Rosas from market forays at least twice a week with a fistful of new poems. At first, I did not really know what I was buying and was interested in the title and the topic as much or more than the poet himself. I learned later that often the name of the author of the story – poem was not placed on the cover and even then, not always reliable, more soon on that. I am positive however, that it was at Edson’s stand that I bought dozens of the folhetos and romances from Recife icon João José da Silva’s typography. They carried his name as editor or editor-proprietário but also used almost exclusively the foto – cliché decorated covers, often with pictures of movie stars of Hollywood. I recall that Da Silva’s forté (or that of his stable of writers) aside from the João-Maria love romances were the adventure stories, dozens of variants of the courageous back lander theme. John Wayne or Randolph Scott or Gene Autry might be on the cover! I will recall my one short conversation with João José in a moment.

An aside, at some point that year I met a minor poet whose penname was Palito at the São José Market. Our conversation got around to the foto – cliché covers, and he used them as well. He laughed, saying, Oh, that #$$%^^ was cheap! Cheap! We would just go to the ‘Diário de Pernambuco’ and buy the throw – away photos of movies and movie stars they used to advertise the films currently showing in Recife and then put them on the ‘folheto’ and ‘romance’ covers. (I cannot vouch for the precise details of the process, but I am positive it was the same used by ‘O Luzeiro do Norte’ of José João da Silva.)"

I might add that a popular cinema was located immediately across the street from the São José market and church plaza, extremely modest, even poor, and I can only surmise customers of the market attended films there. An aside: the infamous cordel poet of Bahia Cuíca de Santo Amaro was a self – proclaimed fanatic of the movies.

I cannot honestly say if I purchased classics from the old João Martins de Atayde Press or José Bernardo Typography in Juazeiro at that time, but probably did, maybe several dozen. The great majority of those authors were purchased in Juazeiro do Norte on another visit to be recounted later. But I did adopt a technique, probably disdained by collectors, of indicating in the upper left-hand corner of the cover of the folheto or romance the place where I bought it: R for Recife, JP for João Pessoa, C for Caruaru, CG for Campo Grande, N for Natal, J for Juazeiro do Norte, R or Rio for that city, B for Bahia, P for Pirapora Minas Gerais, Br for Brasília or Belém for that city, and so on. Sometimes on the back cover, at the bottom, I would put the place of purchase and the date of purchase (but not the date of printing, far from it). I don’t regret either technique.

Incidentally, one will see an occasional story – poem with handwriting in pencil or even ink on the inside back cover or even front cover, often with ciphers, this the calculation of the poet, printer or agent for sales and cost to buyers. (I wrote somewhere you could do a monetary history of those 50 years just by the notations in Brazil’s evolving currency cruzeiros velhos, cruzeiros novos, reais and such.) In my early days in the mid – 1960s discounts at Edson Pinto’s poetry stand and others to come could almost be ridiculous, the more you bought, the better the price. This was not just to me, but to anyone making such a purchase.

As I said, I would bring home handfuls tied in string by Edson, meaning 10 to 20 to perhaps 40 broadsides each time to the boarding house on Rua do Riachuelo near the Law School across the Capibaribe River in downtown Recife. I have this memory of storing them in a soft, very large suitcase in my room, to be eventually filled when I would travel south to Bahia and Rio after the six – months sojourn in the Northeast. My friends in the boarding house would tease me for buying this worthless ‘merda’ and doubt my motives, kidding that I really was an agent of the hated CIA and this was my cover, lousy at that. Such conversations took place often. Why would you, a rich American, be dealing with this crap? I made converts, and in the ensuing months friends in the Chácara, home on visits to the interior of the entire Northeast, began to bring me folhetos from their towns. I take some pride in the fact this gringo ingênuo educated some young men about their own folkloric traditions. Oh, one thing leads to another, it was a safe answer in those politically turbulent times to say, honestly, that I was studying Brazilian folklore (and not economics or politics like many Fulbrighter colleagues). The word is pronounced correctly folclore in Portuguese, but many in the Northeast said, foque – lore.

Just as important was the contact with poets or their agents in the church atrium, outside the São José market, witnessing their arrival to the market, setting up shop to sell their poetic wares to the sure to arrive customers, interviewing some of them, taking photos, but most important, hearing them sing or declaim their verse. I’ve written many times of this unforgettable, entertaining event called a performance by some, and in one sense, true. I bought many broadsides from the various poets, but never as many as from Edson. Here from A Literatura de Cordel (Recife, UFEPE,1973) is that description:

"Um dos mais notáveis aspectos dos folhetos é o método de vendê-los nas feiras das cidades. O vendedor, freqüentemente o próprio poeta, trabalha cedo de manhã. Leva os folhetos numa mala às vezes velha e rota devido aos anos de serviço e a experiência do poeta. Também leva uma espécie de estante portátil para exhibir a mercadoria, dispostos os folhetos na forma de cartas de baralho. Os fregueses, atraídos pela exibição dos livrinhos, começam a se congregar, e assim que chegarem à quantidade esperada pelo poeta, ele anuncia que vai cantar tal e qual folheto.

"Começa, naturalmente, com um poema que ofereça elementos de humor, tristeza, ou talvez uma vingança (conforme o contéudo), mas, com muita ação ou ‘movimento’. A melodia é tradicional; a mesma usada para todos os poemas de selmelhante métrica. O tom da voz é alto, há pouca variação e assim o canto é quase monócromo. Muitas vezes o poeta não é fiel à melodia, mas a beleza da voz e fidelidade ao tom não são o único importante, pois o ritmo e conteúdo também são essenciais. Este método de cantar é quase o mesmo daquele utilizado pelo cantador no seu repente ou desafio.

"Quase sempre, em pouco, tempo, junta muita gente; para o poeta tanto melhor, pois sua execução melhora conforme o tamanho do público. De vez em quando, o poeta deixa de cantar para comentar os acontecimentos do poema, mais comunmente de maneira engraçada. Acontece, às vezes, que o poeta canta quase até o fim da história e recusa-se a terminá-la: se quiserem saber o fim, então, compram-no.

"Repete-se esta cena em todo o Nordeste com graus variáveis, dependendo da habilidade do vendedor. Há vendedores que recitam o verso, mas não cantam, e outros que não fazem nem uma coisa nem outra. Talvez o mais eficaz deles seja o vendedor de mercado de São Cristóvão no Rio, que vende empregando microfone e amplificador (aparelho que segundo alguns poetas é immoral, segundo outros é indispensável). Porém, de qualquer maneira que se utilize, este é o método mais direto e interessante de vender. É importante para compreender o elemento oral da poesia e o uso da métrica no folheto. Porém, deve ser compreendido que muitos folhetos,