Lima Barreto - A deftly satirical masterpiece about a man and a country caught in a violent clash between sanity and madness. Policarpo Quaresma—fastidious civil servant, dedicated patriot, self-styled visionary—is a defender of all things Brazilian, full of schemes to improve his beloved homeland.

Lima Barreto, The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma, Trans. by Mark Carlyon, Penguin Classics, 2015.


A deftly satirical masterpiece about a man and a country caught in a violent clash between sanity and madness.Policarpo Quaresma—fastidious civil servant, dedicated patriot, self-styled visionary—is a defender of all things Brazilian, full of schemes to improve his beloved homeland. Yet somehow each of his ventures results in ridicule and disaster. Quixotic and hapless, Quaresma’s dreams will eventually be his undoing.


The great Brazilian novel of the 1910s: but fittingly for the unsettled era between the great Naturalists like Machado de Assis and the Modernists of the 1920s, Policarpo Quaresma isn't a novel so much as a feuilleton, a serially-published newspaper story structured in episodic installments, lighter and more satirical (and on occasion more lyrical) than the reigning dogmatism of Naturalism would allow.
In fact the English-language equivalents that came to mind while reading were pre-Naturalists like Dickens or (especially) Twain, men of both strong moral outrage and endless amusement at human weakness. The novel fits into the Latin American tradition of the "dictator novel," even though the dictator it examines is not fictionalized (and indeed in description reminded me a lot of a present-day weak-minded authoritarian complaining about dissent), but its more general attack on nationalism, corruption, ignorance, and oligarchy is timeless.
Of course I found myself identifying with hapless autodidact, obsessive, and idealist Quaresma; but the most beautiful passages in the novel -- the sadness of the insane asylum where he (like his author) is temporarily immured, the descriptions of the suburbs which would, through the twentieth century, become the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, the last walks Quaresma takes on the bay, when the vast systems of rock, sea, and weather are the only things left unspoiled by the selfishness and shortsightedness of men -- still feel surprisingly current. A subplot in which an unmarried woman slowly goes mad because even though she doesn't care about marriage she is allowed no other function in society, is as scathing as anything in second-wave feminism.
But of course, the other thread running through the novel that most attracted me was Ricardo, the vagabond modinha composer and guitarist: because Brazil's greatest contribution to world culture being its music is such a truism in the twenty-first century that it's hard to believe there was a time when the simple idea of a man carrying a guitar in the streets of Rio was something to be ashamed of. Lima Barretto knew better; and as one of only two Black writers in the small canon I've formed of 1910s novels (the other is James Weldon Johnson), he's perhaps sharper and more sensible about the deficiencies of a culture that did not fully accept him than his white peers could have been.
A truly great book, one I guarantee I'll return to again. - Jonathan Bogart
https://www.jonathanbogart.net/the-sad-end-of-policarpo-quaresma




A covering note from Penguin Classics explained that this book was their nod to the recent entertainment that has been going on in Brazil for the last month or so. Tongue in cheek that note may have been, but Lima Barreto casts a melancholy light on the country's problems, even though the book is over 100 years old. One of the problems, it might occur to you, is that Brazil does not have much of an international literary reputation. This book goes some way in explaining why.
The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma, translated here by Mark Carlyon, is the most well-known work of one of Brazil's most revered writers; but, as is so often the case with revered writers, he died young, of a heart attack brought on by alcoholism, after having been in and out of various asylums for the insane. His writing, though, was anything but insane: it could be said that it was his clarity of vision that caused his problems in the first place.
Policarpo Quaresma is a quiet, conventional character, a clerk living in respectable petit-bourgeois circumstances, whose movements are so regular that his neighbours can set their clocks by him. However, he becomes increasingly possessed by patriotism, convinced that Brazil could become the greatest country in the world.
First he starts learning to play the guitar. This alarms his neighbours, who are already suspicious of the books he owns; as a local doctor puts it: "What for, if he has no degree? The pretension!" But the arrival of a guitar teacher is even worse, the guitar being thought an idle and frivolous instrument, fit only to be played by the underclass, or slaves. Quaresma considers it to be Brazil's national instrument, and one it is incumbent on all patriots to learn.
Things get worse: he petitions the government to make the native tongue, Tupí-Guaraní, the official language of the country; he adopts native customs, such as weeping when welcoming visitors, and, in a way that is sadly proleptic of the author's own life, gets committed to an asylum. This is by no means the end of his problems (the time he spends in the asylum is actually a welcome respite from the troubles that beset him, both from within and without). Later he turns his mind to the problems of agriculture, by running his own farm; and finally to politics.From the beginning I was strongly reminded of Bouvard et Pécuchet, Flaubert's masterpiece about two clerks who enthusiastically try to master every scientific discipline they can think of, with disastrous results. The introduction by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz confirms that Barreto worshipped Flaubert, but offers no confirmation that he read Bouvard (I consider it unlikely that he had not). The difference between Flaubert's book and this one, though, is that while Flaubert may have thought dimly of both humanity and the French republic, he didn't have to consider his country as an absurdly pretentious colonial state continually on the brink of collapse, with an incompetent executive, a military that was like a bad joke and some dubiety as to what its official language should actually be. There are also far fewer ants in France than in Brazil, and they are far less destructive to property and agriculture (Barreto was not the only Brazilian author to be driven crazy by ants).
The other difference is that Barreto's work is harder for us to read. This is a pity, as he went to some lengths to strip his style down from the fancy, almost baroque form of Portuguese that was the acceptable way of writing at the time. He did, however, write this novel at great speed, and sometimes it shows. As the translator, Mark Carlyon, politely puts it in his introductory note, "certain passages, by contemporary standards, appear dispersive"; but, as he also notes, when the book takes off, it really does. Even though we are an ocean and a century away, we get a proper sense of what Brazil's problems were – and may, in some ways, still be. - Nicholas Lezard
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/15/sad-end-policarpo-quaresma-lima-barreto-review




One pretty much knows going in where The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma is going -- that title is a dead giveaway. Nevertheless, the protagonist's struggles and Lima Barreto's critique of Brazil -- the actual subject of the novel -- make for a richer picture than the outlined course of decline and (repeated) failure might have led one to expect.
       Policarpo Quaresma is, above all else, a patriot, his love of country: "the powerful sentiment that guided his life" -- a patriotism that is, as patriotism inevitably is, far from objective, seeing everything Brazilian as superior merely because it is Brazilian and everything foreign as not measuring up. A civil servant bursting with fervor, he's reached the stage where:

The conviction he had always had that Brazil was the leading country in the world, and his great love for his homeland, could no longer be suppressed and drove him to contemplate great undertakings.

       Even his friends and neighbors find he takes things a bit far, with even his sister, Adelaide, complaining:

     It's an obsession with your friend, Sr. Ricardo, this business of only wanting Brazilian things. And the stuff we have to eat ! Ugh !

       Among his idées fixe is that Brazil should move away from the borrowed language, Portuguese, and instead (re)turn to the truly local Tupi-Guaraní, "the only one capable of expressing the beauties of Brazil, putting us in tune with our nature". A petition to that effect that he writes up is ridiculed, and then a slip at his workplace involving his dedication to learning and spreading the language leads to his dismissal, the first big blow that marks his sad end.
       Policarpo is devastated, and it takes him a while to recover from no longer being a servant of the state that he has always wanted to help realize its full glory. Only when he sets his sights on a new project, a new way to help the country forward, does he brighten up again. He buys a farm, certain that since the country is blessed with the best soil and the best climate he will be able to demonstrate what an agricultural powerhouse Brazil could be. True, the neighborhood remains impoverished -- but only because the locals won't work together to reap the possible bounties, he suspects. He'll show them .....
       Of course, his grand plans are undone here as well -- both by: "an intelligent, organized society that was both persistent and daring" (not humans, of course, but rather colonies of ants) as well as the local bureaucracy, which undermines his efforts when he refuses to participate in the local political games and maneuverings.
       Moving on, Policarpo is then convinced to do his patriotic duty and joining the: "patriotic battalion 'Southern Cross'", to fight off yet another rebellion against the government. With his pince-nez glasses he's not well-suited to either laboring in the fields or fighting on the front, and of course this too all goes south. Not that combat, for the most part, resembled traditional warfare -- indeed:

     As time passed, the revolt became a festivity, a public entertainment for the city. When a bombardment was announced on a Monday, the promenade of the Passeio Passeio Público would be crowded.

       Even in victory, Policarpo emerges the loser. A fighter for ideals, he has no place in dealings with a government that is solely self-interested. His fate is preordained, as it is much too late that he comes to understand:

     The fatherland he had wanted was a myth, a fantasy he had invented in the silence of his study.

       Policarpo had been warned early on: "Brazil presents so many obstacles ...". The determined idealist argued: "there's no obstacle that can't be overcome", but deeply entrenched interests prove him very wrong.
       If The Sad End of Policarpo Quaresma is mainly an attack on Brazilian politics and the (dis)organization of society holding the country back from realizing its potential -- those ants a force of nature showing what truly organized and selfless society can accomplish -- Lima Barreto also manages to address other issues, both amusingly and poignantly, making the novel more multi-dimensional.
       Anti-intellectualism is repeatedly comically addressed. For example, there are those who find Policarpo suspect because he reads so much: "He didn't have a degree. Why get involved with books ?" someone wonders. Books are just for scholars, is the thinking. And there's the doctor who marries Policarpo's goddaughter, Olga, who can't see his way through the books she reads: "Goncourt, Anatole France, Daudet, Maupassant [...] they sent him to sleep just like the medical books". Determined to give the appearance of a serious reader, he needs to find a way of staying awake over a book's pages -- so:

He ordered some stories by Paul de Kock with altered titles on the spine and so avoided falling asleep.

       Lima Barreto doesn't put blind faith in learning either: Policarpo's faith in science and hard data is used to good comic effect as well, as in his careful use of hygrometer, barometer, and other devices -- despite (or because of) which ...:

every forecast Quaresma made based on combining the data was wrong. When he predicted fine weather it rained; when he predicted rain it stayed dry.

       Notable, too, is Lima Barreto's criticism of the institution of marriage. Neither Policarpo nor his sister are married, and the woman closest to Policarpo, his goddaughter Olga, is deeply disappointed by the marriage she enters into. It is a step that society expects or even demands, especially from women, but Lima Barreto presents these expectations as unrealistic and oppressive. He makes a strong, sad case in describing the consequences for one girl of Policarpo's acquaintance whose second-rate fiancé abandons her, driving the girl to madness (a descent he presents very well, right down to the awful image of its end).
       With an Introduction by Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, and extensive endnotes from translator Mark Carlyon, this is a novel of its times and circumstances, dealing with local historical and political events from both a century ago and earlier; much of the specific detail remains obscure to the modern reader. Nevertheless, many of Lima Barreto's points, criticism, and observations are general enough to make for an easy to relate to story. While its satire isn't of Voltairean sharpness, there's quite a bit Lima Barreto does exceptionally well, including his treatment of the societal pressures on women to marry. An honest love of Brazil that also shows keen awareness of much that ails the nation -- at that time and, to some extent, still -- also makes it an invaluable novel of that nation. In most respects, it is also a novel that has held up very well and it remains a rewarding and entertaining read even in our times. - M.A.Orthoferhttp://www.complete-review.com/reviews/brazil/limabarreto.htm




AFONSO HENRIQUES DE LIMA BARRETO was a Brazilian novelist and short story writer. The son of first- and second-generation freed slaves, he was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1881, in the tumultuous decade that saw the abolition of slavery in Brazil and the formation of the First Republic. He worked as a civil servant and journalist, both of which provided him with a rich source of material for the satirical writings that brought him fame, as well as a platform for his political activism. Published in serial form in the prominent periodicals of his time, Barreto's novels are now regarded as amongst Latin America's finest. He died in 1922.