---------------------------------------------------------------------------
**** http://www.GOANET.org ****
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Support growing the reading habit among Goa's next generation of achievers
Bookworm Library and Magazine
Bluebelle, Tamba Colony, St Inez, Goa
Contacts: Tel: +91 9823222665 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey Jim,
Thank you for your breezy invitation to the Samba evening. I am sorry I can't
be at SOB (Sounds of Brazil) at Manhattan tonight but I am sending in something
about another big boy of Brazil - the Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado. This is a
review for all of you out there about his novel 'Dona Flor and her Two
Husbands' set in Bahia, North Eastern Brazil. If you or your friends can
publish it somewhere, I am sure Jorge Amado and the Brazilians would be
delighted. and remember me whne you sip the caipirinha!
Brian
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOK REVIEW
Jorge Amado, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. Translated from the Portuguese by
Harriet de Onis. First published in Portuguese in 1966. This edition, London:
Serpents Tail, 1999.
Happiness leaves no History. A happy life is not the subject for a novel
this pronouncement by Professor Epaminondas Souza Pinto to Chimbo could well be
the sentiments of Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado with respect to his craft in
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. After a riotous romp through the first 400
pages of this 550 page novel, Dona Flor (or Floripedes Paiva Madureira) the
wife of the good Dr Teodoro Madureira, who has everything she could possibly
want in life feels empty in her fullness. Should she succumb to the vile
attentions of her first husband, the passionate and happy gambler and rake
Vadinho? Or should she remain faithful to her Dr Cough Syrup who has
carefully set aside Wednesdays and Saturdays for lovemaking?
A novel set in Bahian society of North-Eastern Brazil, from where the author
hails, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is a sustained interrogation of the
institution of marriage. The iron bed on top of which most of the action
takes place is the barometer of a happy or unhappy married life a detail
significant when Dona Flors first runaway marriage is in her teens and the
next when she is 30. Her opening gambit in the wiles of Bahian society is
aided by her shrewish mother Dona Rozilda who oversees a stream of suitors for
her, some come as far as Amazonas and Belem -- only to be repulsed by Dona
Flor (I dont like him Hes as ugly as a dog.). The surreal dream sequence
later when Dona Flor, in a ring-a-round-a-rosy has her suitors around her
pleading their suit as her second husband --while she holds them transfixed
with her sluttish movements -- lays bare, marriage as a proposition in exchange
for the cherry.
Much like Isabella (played by Penelope Cruz) in Woman on Top (2000) directed by
Venezuelan Director Fina Torres, Dona Flor teaches Bahian cooking at her
Cooking School for Savor and Art, in Salvador. It is her financial
independence (and her savings) which bail out both her husbands at critical
junctures the first to pay off a gambling debt, and the second to mortgage
their house. At every stage Dona Flor, makes decisions about her own life, many
of which fly in the face of established wisdom. And she is ready to take the
consequences and grow.
But while this, at times meager, plot line runs its course, what redeems the
novel is the uncountable number the virtual panoply-- of endearing characters
the novel is peopled with. These are vignettes of Bahian society which are as
lovingly delineated as the places which feature their activities. In their
hopes, their foibles, their joys and their sorrows, the novel transcends its
milieu and achieves a universal significance.
In the idyllic Saturday afternoons the members of the amateur orchestra, make
it a point to come together for rehearsals (considered as the ultimate in
boredom by Dona Gisa) setting aside all social differences losing themselves
in their instruments. The sons of Orpheus include the harassed surgeon Dr
Venceslau Veiga with his violin, the lonely bachelor Dr Pinho Pedreira on the
flute and Adriano Pires who grew humble in the presence of his mighty
violincello.
Madame Claudette, practitioner in the oldest profession, the sensation of
Paris, now pushing seventy, is described reduced to desperation, sharing a
filthy tenement with roaches and rats. Like Saramagos dark vessel, the
Highland Brigade which crosses the Atlantic between London and Buenos Aires,
she had disembarked in Salvador in the full vigour and charm of her forty
years via Buenos Aires, Montevideo, São Paolo, Rio.
Isabella, like Cuban director Umberto Solass heroine Amado (Amado, 1983)
critiques domestic society and the fig-leaf of morality. An interesting
contrast in paradigms of marriage and sexuality, Amado detests her husbands
animal love, preferring that of the intellectual Marcial. Isabella on the
contrary is overpowered by the onion-smelling Vadinho. This despite the efforts
of her prim bassoonist husband, In just a minute he, her new husband,
crossing the frontiers of good breeding and modesty, jettisoning sheets and
nightgown, in a whirlwind of caresses and words, wildly, in a gale of famished
mouths, knowing hands would withdraw her from her modesty and shame, reaching
the subsoil of her moist truth.
Vadinhos poetry evokes the Song of Solomon, when he runs his hand down Flor
You have the tail of a siren, your belly is the colour of copper, your
breasts of avocado.In their hideaway Itapoã, The sea breeze loosened Flors
straight black hair, and the sun brought out its bluish tinges. To the murmur
of the waves and the lulling of the breeze, Vadinho took of her clothes, piece
by piece, kiss by kiss. Yet this is also the sea of Yemanjá who summons the
winds of death and oversees the terrifying war of the gods the gotterdamerung
-- where Exu, the guardian of the spirit of Vadinho loses battle on the final
pathway, to the deities of Angola and the Congo.
At the end it is the paradox of love which lingers in Dona Flors outcry, I
know that I will only be happy if you are not here, if you go away. I realize
that with you there can be no happiness, only dishonour and suffering. But
without you, however happy I might be, I do not know how to live, I cannot
live, Oh never leave me. Even though the translation creaks towards the end,
the pathos is there. The novel is an unputdownable read. A useful list of
foreign words and expressions is included at the end.
Dr Brian Mendonça
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
9818432507
