The City and the Mountains is a novel by Eça de Queirós, author of Portuguese Realism, and belongs to the third and final phase of his work.
Published in 1901 - the year after its author's death - the 16-chapter novel is a critique of urban life, technology and the industrial revolution.
In this work, city versus countryside is the main theme in the scene, whose temporal environment is the 19th century.
Characters of The City and the Mountains
- Hyacinth: protagonist, called by the narrator "the Prince of Great Venture".
- José Fernandes (Zé Fernandes): narrator and friend of Jacinto
- Don Jacinto Galião: Hyacinth's grandfather
- belt (nickname of Jacinto): father of Jacinto
- cricket: Jacinto's servant in Paris
- Ladybird: cousin of José Fernandes who marries Jacinto
- aunt vicencia: aunt of José Fernandes
Work summary The City and the Mountains
The novel is narrated by José Fernandes, friend of our protagonist Jacinto.
The narration begins with the presentation of Jacinto and his family. Of Portuguese origin, Jacinto lives in Paris.
His grandfather (Jacinto Galião) had left Portugal to live in France when D. Miguel (brother of D. Pedro I) moved to France.
Jacinto's grandfather was very grateful to D. Miguel for the fact that he helped him.
Cintinho, Jacinto's father (who was also called Jacinto), had been a sick and sad child. He died young, before Jacinto was born.
Jacinto was a happy child and everything went well for him. For this reason, his friend José Fernandes had nicknamed him “The Prince of Great Venture”.
José Fernandes had been expelled from the University in Portugal and went to France. Some time later, he received a letter from an uncle asking him to return to Portugal to take care of the family's land, as his uncle was no longer able to do so.
José Fernandes goes and, seven years later, returns to Paris, where he finds his friend surrounded by technological innovations: telegraph, elevator, heater, among others.
Throughout the novel, episodes are narrated in which failures in Jacinto's modern equipment occur in the mansion where he lives, at nº 202 of the Campos Elísios: lack of light, problems with the elevator and plumbing.
"-My friends, there is a disgrace...
Dornan jumped in his chair:
-Fire? -No, it wasn't fire. It was the plate elevator that unexpectedly, when the fish from S. Your Highness, he was out of order, and he didn't move stranded!
The Grand Duke tossed his napkin. All his politeness creaked like poorly placed nail polish: -This is strong... Because a fish that gave me so much trouble! What are we here for then at supper? How stupid! And why didn't they bring it by hand, simply? Stranded... I want to see! Where is the pantry?"
In this way, Jacinto, who had grown up so happy, healthy, intelligent and surrounded by innovations, begins to become disillusioned with his life.
So, the friend advises him to go live in the countryside to rest from the city air. Jacinto immediately refuses.
In the meantime, José Fernandes will travel to numerous places in Europe and feel the importance he gives to his origins.
By that time, Jacinto was no longer patient with what would once have been his pleasure: parties, luxuries, modern equipment.
"... the 202 was bursting with comforts; no bitterness of heart tormented him; - and yet he was a Sad one. Because... And from here he jumped, with dazzling certainty, to the conclusion that his sadness, that gray burel in which his soul it was shrouded in shrouds, it did not come from Jacinto's individuality – but from Life, from the lamentable, disastrous fact of To live! And so the healthy, intellectual, very rich, well-received Jacinto had fallen into Pessimism."
One day, Jacinto receives the news that the little church where the mortal remains of his ancestors were buried had been buried.
He gives orders to spend the money necessary for its reconstruction. When he is informed that the work has been completed, he decides to go to Portugal.
His trip to Portugal was prepared three months in advance. Jacinto sent all the furniture from Paris to Portugal because he wanted to find there the same atmosphere as the mansion in which he lived in France.
When he arrives in Tormes (Portugal), the change has not yet arrived and he has to spend days sleeping on a straw mattress and eating modestly.
Uncomfortable, Jacinto decides that he should spend some time in Lisbon, but he likes the landscape and that makes him stay in the countryside.
Upon returning from the city where he had gone to visit his aunt, Zé Fernandes finds his friend in a good mood and lodged in Tormes.
The friend no longer worried about the change that had never arrived, as it had been sent to Tormes, Spain.
One day, Jacinto meets a poor child and accompanies him to her house. The child's family is Jacinto's employee and he is impressed by the poverty situation in which they live.
Jacinto decides to help and promises to improve the conditions of his employees by increasing salaries and building infrastructure. People are enchanted and start to express a certain devotion to Jacinto.
Finally, Jacinto meets a girl named Joaninha, whom he later marries.
At that time, furniture and equipment shipped from Paris arrived in Portugal. With the exception of a few things (the phone, for example), most of it is stored in the attic.
"...one afternoon, a long, creaking line of cars entered the avenue of plane trees, requested to put the entire parish in, and piled up with crates. These were the famous crates, which had been stranded for so long in Alba de Tormes, and which arrived, to dump the City on the Serra. I thought: - Bad! my poor Jacinto had a relapse! But the most complicated comforts, which contained that dreadful box, were, to my surprise, diverted to the immense attics, to the dust of uselessness; and the old manor just regaled itself with some rugs on its floors, curtains by the windows homeless, and deep armchairs, deep sofas, so that the rest, as he had sighed, could be more slow and smooth. I attributed this moderation to my cousin Joaninha, who loved Tormes in her rude nudity. She swore that that was what Jacinto had ordered. But after weeks I shivered. A foreman had appeared from Lisbon, with workers, and more crates, to install a telephone!"
Check the entire work by downloading the PDF here: The City and the Mountains.
Work Analysis The City and the Mountains
The novel deals with an analysis of rural and urban life. José Fernandes supports the first, while Jacinto, the second.
Jacinto cannot imagine himself without the modernity of the equipment and wants everything that is most modern.
He, who lives in Paris - considered the center of the world at that time - believes that man's happiness is in modernity. At the same time, however, he considers himself dependent on this situation, which bothers him.
His return to his origins in Portugal - which at that time was not progressing - makes Jacinto begin to value nature and give up technology.
He criticizes the urge for modernity, although he recognizes its importance. A fact that is revealed when he keeps the telephone in his house, in the house of his in-laws, José Fernandes and the doctor.
To learn more about the literary school:
- realism in Portugal
- Characteristics of Realism
Exercises
1. (Fuvest/2014) At that time Jacinto had conceived an idea... This Prince conceived the idea that “man is only superiorly happy when he is superiorly civilized”. And by civilized man my comrade understood the one who, strengthening his thinking force with all the notions acquired since Aristotle, and multiplying the bodily power of his organs with all the mechanisms invented since Teramenes, creator of the wheel, becomes a magnificent Adam, almost omnipotent, almost omniscient, and able therefore to gather[...] all the joys and all the benefits that result from Knowledge is power...[...]
This concept of Jacinto impressed our comrades in the upper room, who[...] were largely prepared to to believe that the happiness of individuals, like that of nations, is achieved through the unlimited development of Mechanics and erudition. One of these young men[...] had reduced Jacinto's theory[...] to an algebraic form: Ultimate science x Ultimate power = Ultimate happiness
And for days, from the Odeon to the Sorbona, the Metaphysical Equation of Jacinto was praised by the positive youth.
Eça de Queirós, The city and the mountains.
The text refers to the period when, living in Paris, Jacinto was enthusiastic about technical progress and the accumulation of knowledge. Considered from the point of view of the values that are consolidated in the final part of the novel, the “form algebraic" mentioned in the text would have, as a conclusive term, no longer "Suma happiness", but, yes, short
a) simplicity.
b) selflessness.
c) virtue.
d) carefree.
e) easement.
Alternative e: easement.
Jacinto acquired everything that was most modern in his time because his theory was that happiness came from power and science. But despite not lacking anything, Jacinto was not happy and forced himself to use everything he acquired:
"-Oh Jacinto, what are all these little instruments for? There was already a shameless person there who stung me. They look perverse... Are they useful?
Jacinto languidly sketched a gesture that sublimed them. -Providential, my son, absolutely providential, for the simplification they give to the work! Thus... and pointed. This one pulled out the old pens, the other quickly numbered the pages of a manuscript; that other one, over there, scraped seams... And there were still them for pasting stamps, printing dates, melting seals, strapping documents...
-But in fact, he added, it is a drought... With the springs, with the nozzles, sometimes they hurt, they hurt... It has already happened to me that I useless letters to have them soiled with bloody fingerprints. It's a nuisance!"
2. (Albert Einstein/2017) Jacinto, character in the novel The city and the mountains, by Eça de Queirós, in love with the city from Paris and for the comfort of urban life, he decides, at a certain moment, to travel to Portugal, to the city of Tormes. Such decision is made because
a) he feels a patriotic effusion for Tormes, his birthplace, from which he receives the income for his sustenance.
b) he is fully convinced that only in contact with nature and the climate of the mountains will he be able to find happiness.
c) sees himself compelled to accompany the renovation of his house in Portuguese lands, as well as to attend the transfer of the mortal remains of his grandparents, particularly those of grandfather Galeão.
d) he is fed up with the elegant and technological life of Paris and, therefore, happily seeks a new experience that, unfortunately, is frustrating for him.
Alternative c: he is compelled to accompany the renovation of his house in Portuguese lands, as well as to attend the transfer of the mortal remains of his grandparents, particularly those of grandfather Galeão.
Grandfather Galião was very rich and, therefore, responsible for all the luxury that Jacinto enjoyed in his mansion in Paris:
"-Well, don't you think so, Zé Fernandes? It's not because of the other grandparents, who are vague, and who I didn't know. It's because of Grandpa Galião... I didn't know him either. But this 202 is full of it; you are lying in his bed; I still wear his watch. I cannot abandon Silverio and the caretakers to install him in his new tomb. There is here a scruple of decency, of moral elegance... Anyway, I decided. I clenched my fists to my head, and yelled – I'm going to Tormes! I will... And you come!"
3. (PUC-SP/2016) The novel A Cidade e as Serras, by Eça de Queirós, is the development of a short story called “Civilização”. It makes the opposition between the cosmopolitan city and country life, and also
a) set the characters' action only in the cities of Tormes, a Portuguese village, and in civilized Lisbon at the end of the 19th century.
b) narrate the story of Jacinto, a very rich young man, who achieves happiness because his only objective is to be as contemporary as possible to his own time.
c) present from the beginning a narrator who has a firm point of view, namely, that of belittling the civilization of the city and exalting natural life.
d) characterize the protagonist's life only in the city of Paris, surrounded by a lot of technology and knowledge and with a very active and happy social life.
Alternative c: to present from the beginning a narrator who has a firm point of view, namely, that of belittling the civilization of the city and exalting natural life.
Throughout the narrative, Zé Fernandes questions the way of life that his friend considers to be the key to happiness:
"-Jacinto walks so withered, so hunchbacked... What is it, Jiminy?
The venerable black declared with immense certainty:
-S. Hon. suffers from plenty. It was plenty! My Prince stifled the abundance of Paris: - and in the City, in the symbolic City, outside whose cultured and strong life (as he once shouted, enlightened) the man of the nineteenth century never he could fully savor the "delight of living", he now found no way of life, spiritual or social, that interested him, worth the effort of a short run in a sling easy."
