grace spider (José Pereira da Graça Aranha) was born on June 21, 1868, in São Luís, in the state of Maranhão. Later, he graduated in Law, practiced law, was one of the founders of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, entered the diplomatic career and participated in the Week of Modern Art in 1922.
The writer and diplomat died on January 26, 1931, in Rio de Janeiro, and left a work characterized by its nationalist character, in addition to presenting symbolist and, mainly, naturalist traits, as his best-known book demonstrates — Canaan — in which the discussion about miscegenation and racial superiority is present.
Read too: Lima Barreto – great author of Brazilian pre-modernism
Biography of Graça Aranha
Graça Aranha (José Pereira da Graça Aranha) was born on June 21, 1868, in São Luís, in the state of Maranhão. Later, in 1882, he entered the Recife Faculty of Law. Thus, the young abolitionist and republican graduated in 1886 and went to work as a lawyer in the city of Campos, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Then, he moved to Porto do Cachoeiro, a city in Espírito Santo, which was later the setting for his novel Canaan. Still, in 1897, before publishing his first book, helped found the Brazilian Academy of Letters and took possession of chair number 38, whose patron is the poet Tobias Barreto (1839-1889).
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Over the next two decades, he pursued a diplomatic career in Europe. When he returned to Brazil for good, he began to dialogue with young artists from São Paulo, who were looking for a new form of aesthetic expression. Thus, he helped organize the 1922 Modern Art Week and was responsible for the opening speech of the event.
In 1922, the writer was imprisoned for almost a month due to suspicion that he was involved in a conspiracy against President-elect Artur Bernardes (1875-1955). Two years later, Graça Aranha broke up with the Brazilian Academy of Letters, as he considered her very conservative. He died on January 26, 1931, in Rio de Janeiro.
Read too:Euclides da Cunha – another great highlight of pre-modernist prose
Literary Characteristics of Graça Aranha
The works by Graça Aranha are included in the premodernism and have the following characteristics:
Nationalism
regionalism
Lack of idealizations
sociopolitical criticism
philosophical reflection
interior monologue
Naturalist and Symbolist features
Works by Graça Aranha
Canaan (1902)
Malazarte (1911)
Life Aesthetics (1921)
modern spirit (1925)
the wonderful trip (1929)
my own novel (1931)
Canaan
![Cover of the book Canaã, by Graça Aranha, published by the publisher Martin Claret.[1]](/f/ea8f1d80818eabd0adbbcad1b1234c95.jpg)
the story of the novel Canaantakes place in Porto do Cachoeiro, in the Holy Spirit. Milkau and Lentz are the protagonists of the narrative. The two are German immigrants, and despite having opposing views on life, they end up becoming friends. Thus, the narrator uses the characters to make philosophical reflections linked to the determinism naturalist.
The narrative begins when Milkau arrives in Porto do Cachoeiro. Through Roberto Schultz (owner of a large warehouse), he meets Lentz. The two young people have different ideas about miscegenation. Milkau is in favor of mixing races, but, in defense of his idea, he lets through the racist tone, since he believes that the mixture of a "superior race" with a "savage" can renew civilization:
“MILKAU — The time for Africa will come. Races are civilized by fusion; it is in the encounter of the advanced races with the virgin, savage races that there is conservative rest, the miracle of civilization's rejuvenation. The role of superior peoples is the instinctive impulse of the unfolding of culture, transfusing body to body the product of this fusion that, after the darkness of gestation, takes the capital accumulated in the infinite generations. That's how Gaul became France and Germania Germany.”
These words by Milkau, by the way, reflect the whitening policy carried out in Brazil at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, stimulated by pseudoscientific ideas and, therefore, mistaken of the era. In a kind of opposition to this miscegenation process, Lentz defends the superiority of Europeans and he sees in the mixture of races a delay, because, according to him, it produces an inferior race and culture:
“LENTZ — I don't believe that merging with radically incapable species results in a race on which civilization can be developed. It will always be an inferior culture, a civilization of mulattoes, eternal slaves in revolts and falls. Until the race that is the product of such fusion is eliminated, civilization will always be a mysterious artifice, every minute ravaged by the sensualism, bestiality and innate servility of the black. The social problem for the progress of a region like Brazil lies in the replacement of a hybrid race, such as the mulattoes, by Europeans. Immigration is not simply a case of simple aesthetics for the future of the country, it is above all a complex issue that interests the human future.”
Later, Milkau meets Maria Perutz, daughter of immigrants. However, she is pregnant with a boy named Moritz Kraus, grandson of the man her mother worked for as a servant before she died, leaving Maria an orphan and in the care of the Kraus family. However, when they learn of the pregnancy, the boy's parents throw her out of the house.
She is working in a coffee plantation when she is in labor pains and seeks refuge near some cashew trees, where she gives birth to her son, who is eaten by pigs. she then accused of killing her own son, she is arrested. Milkau takes Maria out of prison, and the two flee, in search of the "promised land", that is, the illusory Canaan:
“The enchanting night retired, the world tired of being equal; Milkau celebrated in a shiver of hope the delicious transition... Anyway, Canaan was going to reveal itself... The new light without mystery arrived, and illuminated the floodplain. Milkau saw that everything was empty, that everything was desert, that the new men had not yet emerged there. With her helpless hands, she touched the Vision that had dragged him. At human contact it stopped, and Maria turned again to Milkau the primitive dying face, the same bruised eyes, the same shriveled mouth, the same martyrlike figure.
[...]
— Do not tire in vain... Don't run... It's useless... The land of Promissão, which I was going to show you and which I was also eagerly seeking, I don't see it anymore... It has not yet dawned on Life. Let's stop here and hope that it comes in the blood of the redeemed generations. Don't despair. Let us be faithful to the sweet illusion of Mirage. He who lives the Ideal takes out a loan with Eternity... […].”
In this way, the romance Canaan shows itself very linked to the nonaturalism of the nineteenth century, by making explicit the defense of the superiority of one race over another and the whitening of Brazil, through miscegenation, as a solution to the country's socioeconomic problems.
See too: Sagarana - great book of short stories by Guimarães Rosa
Fun facts about Graça Aranha
Graça Aranha was a friend of the abolitionist Joaquim Nabuco (1849-1910).
The author was the only founder of the Academia Brasileira de Letras who had not yet published a book.
The writer lived a love story with Nazareth Prado (1875-1949), despite both being married.
your theater play Malazarte premiered in 1911 in Paris.
Your book Love letters, published in 1935, brings together some of the love letters that the author sent to Nazareth Prado.
Image credit
[1] Martin Claret (reproduction)
by Warley Souza
Literature teacher
