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Coutinho's Controversy: The Debate Over the Nova Crítica
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
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The arena of Brazilian literary criticism during the 1950s was one of heated polemics and angry debates between the “old” and the “new” critics. In many ways, this protracted encounter involved a clash of world views as much as of concepts of literature and criticism. For one thing, the opponents of the nova crítica had a wholly different cast of mind from the new critics. Whether they utilized the reigning impressionistic or sociological approaches to literature and criticism, or whether they were merely dilettantes who dabbled in letters at their leisure, they all tended to view literature in other than a literary framework. To the new critics, this orientation was the same thing as saying that literature was only a satellite responding to the gravitational pull of other forms of knowledge—history, sociology, or psychology, for example. Its main function, therefore, was to illuminate the style of an epoch or the personality of the author, even that of the critic himself. Such a concept of literature was totally unacceptable to the new critics, who insisted on regarding literature in its own right, as a separate but equal planet in the universe of the intellect. Further, the new and the old critics locked horns over the measure of importance that subjective considerations should be allotted in literary criticism. The former wished to minimize them dramatically, maintaining that criticism was a rational, objective discipline; while the latter objected strenuously to such minimization, holding that criticism was primarily an exercise of the critic's creative imagination. The debate over subjective and objective attitudes in literary study is part of the broader issue of the relative merits of the modern, scientific mode of thought and the traditional, personalist mode that had characterized Brazilian literary criticism.
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- Copyright © 1979 by the University of Texas Press
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Notes
1. For the sake of convenience in usage, certain Brazilian critics are referred to as “new critics,” but this is not meant to imply that any of them was a new critic in the English or North American style.
2. Coutinho's bibliography is extensive, but among his works the following are central to the nova crítica in both its polemical and mature stages: Correntes Cruzadas (Rio, 1953), a collection of articles, mostly polemical, from his column “Correntes Cruzadas,” in the Diário de Notícias from 1948 to 1953. Here he outlines passionately what is wrong with Brazilian intellectual life and what needs to be done; Da Crítica e da Nova Crítica (Rio, 1957), more articles from “Correntes Cruzadas” column, contains a blistering attack on the rodapé, as well as essays on what Coutinho sees as encouraging signs of change; A Literatura no Brasil (Rio, 1955–59), 5 vols., the capstone of Coutinho's efforts at professionalization. It is a literary history based on esthetic periodization; A Tradição Afortunada (Rio, 1968), describes and traces the development of a nationalist spirit in literary criticism from the earliest times, but especially during the nineteenth century. Coutinho considers this trait the one constant in Brazilian literary history; Crítica e Críticos (Rio, 1969), still more from “Correntes Cruzadas” column. Contains an interesting assessment of the significance of the Congresses of Criticism and Literary History to the process of professionalization.
3. The contributions of the earliest systematic literary historians—Sílvio Romero, Araripe Júnior, and José Veríssimo—were recognized by most new critics. But as their works were influenced by the determinist theories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these figures were respected above all for their intellectual rigor and fidelity to literature. Coutinho admired what he saw as Romero's and Araripe's attention to method and their nationalist concern. As for Veríssimo, though to many he marks the beginning of an esthetic criticism, to Coutinho he was a mere impressionist.
4. The nova crítica was fed by a number of sources besides the anglo-American New Criticism. These included, among others, Russian Formalism, the Spanish Stylistics school, the works of Benedetto Croce, Coleridge, and Aristotle. But it was the New Criticism and its leading practitioners that had by far the greatest influence on Coutinho personally. The basic principles of the New Criticism were: the primacy of the text in literary analysis, the unity of the text, and the belief that literature is an autonomous discipline. One of Coutinho's conscious objectives was to dispel the myth that the Brazilian is, by nature, incapable of rigorous, sustained, analytical thought. Such a view was widely held before the advent of the nova crítica and had even been expressed by such prominent critics as Osório Borba and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda.
5. Coutinho, Correntes, p. 148.
6. Coutinho, No Hospital das Letras (Rio, 1963), pp. 5–10.
7. Coutinho, Recepção de Afrânio Coutinho na Academia Brasileira de Letras (Rio, 1962), p. 28.
8. Coutinho, Correntes, p. 366.
9. Ibid.
10. Quoted in Crítica e Críticos, pp. 121–22.
11. Fausto Cunha, A Luta Literária (Rio, 1964), p. 53.
12. Álvaro Lins, Literatura e Vida Literária (Rio, 1963), p. 149. The rodapé is a type of journalistic book reviewing intended to inform the public of new works. To Coutinho, it was unscholarly. He wanted “serious” criticism to be housed in professional journals, not in the newspaper.
13. Ibid.
14. Coutinho, Correntes, pp. 284–87.
15. Ibid., pp. 308–10.
16. Ibid., p. 362.
17. Ibid.
18. Nelson Werneck Sodré, “Conceito de Literatura Brasileira,” Semanário, 7–13 May 1960, p. 8.
19. Coutinho, Recepção, pp. 49–50.
20. Coutinho, A Literatura 1:28.
21. Ibid., p. 29.
22. Adonias Filho, “Dois Críticos,” Jornal de Letras, out. 1954, n. 64, p. 6.
23. Cunha, A Luta, p. 51.
24. Ibid., p. 54.
25. Oliveiros Litrento, “Vida dos Livros,” Jornal de Letras, junho 1960, n. 130, p.7.
26. Wilson Martins, “A Nova Crítica,” Boletim Bibliográfico 23 (1958):58.
27. Oliveira Bastos, “Importação e Consumo de Teorias,” Diário de Notícias, 12 Nov. 1961, p. 1, Sup.
28. Antônio Houaiss, Crítica Avulsa (Salvador, 1960), p. 283.
29. Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Clareza e Mistério da Crítica (Rio, 1961), p. 174.
30. Ibid., pp. 174, 193.
31. Ibid., pp. 194–95.
32. Ibid., p. 204.
33. Ibid., pp. 176–77.
34. Ibid., p. 186.
35. Euryalo Cannabrava, “Enciclopédia e Método Científico,” Anhembi (julho 1957), n. 80, p. 285.
36. Euryalo Cannabrava, “Definição de Experiência Estética,” Diário de Notícias, 21 Apr. 1957, p. 4, Sup.
37. Euryalo Cannabrava, A Cultura Brasileira e Seus Equívocos (Rio, 1955), p. 6.
38. Euryalo Cannabrava, Seis Temas do Espírito Moderno (São Paulo, 1941), p. 211.
39. Ibid., p. 212.
40. Ibid., p. 216.
41. Coutinho, Recepção, p. 55.
42. Sodré, “Conceito,” p. 8.
43. Monteiro, Clareza, p. 200.
44. Houaiss, Crítica Avulsa, p. 183.
45. Monteiro, Clareza, p. 176. It would seem that Coutinho's hopes for freeing criticism of cliques had, to some extent at least, been realized by 1965, when Otto Maria Carpeaux attributed the dramatic change in criticism from newspapers to books and journals in part to the fact that “acabaram-se os cliques, as panelas” (Jornal de Letras, no. 184 [julho 1965], p. 5). However, this important shift was made possible in large measure because criticism had by then staked out its own territory; it was firmly wedded to the university and the university-related journals, so that the newspaper no longer provided the sole avenue of publication. In other words, critics were no longer dependent on the newspaper cliques; they had achieved the status of professionals.
46. Ledo Ivo, “De Flor em Flor,” O Estado de São Paulo, 15 Feb. 1958, p. 4, Sup.
47. Wilson Martins, “Dimensões de um Crítico,” O Estado de São Paulo, 6 Sept. 1958, p. 2, Sup.
48. Adonias Filho, “A Crítica,” Correio da Manhã, 13 Mar. 1954, p. 6.
49. Carlos David, “Crítica da Crítica,” Diário Carioca, 25 Apr. 1954, p. 2, Sup.
50. Mário Chámie, Alguns Problemas e Argumentos (São Paulo, 1968), p. 11. For more on the new mentality see: Alceu Amoroso Lima, “A Crítica Recente,” Diário de Notícias, 30 Apr. 1961, Sup., p. 2, and “O Neo-Modernismo,” Diário de Notícias, 29 Apr. 1956, Sup., p. 1; Fábio Lucas, O Compromisso Literário (Rio, 1964), p. 113; César Leal, Os Cavaleiros de Júpiter (Recife, 1969), pp. 190, 214; and José Guilherme Merquior, A Razão do Poema (Rio, 1965), pp. 170–71. For a grudging acknowledgement of the triumph of esthetic criticism, see Assis Brasil, “Por um Crítica Reflexiva (1),” Jornal de Letras, no. 258 (fev.–março 1972), p. 3. For more on unversity-related criticism and on curricular reform, see Afrânio Coutinho's interview in the Jornal de Letras, no. 247 (fev.–março 1971), p. 7. See also the proceedings of the Congresses of Criticism and Literary History. For additional information on Coutinho's role, see any number of sympathetic accounts by Eduardo Portella, including his tribute in A Literatura no Brasil 5:239; see also Rui Mourão's tribute on p. 540 of the same volume. For a general and a favorable account of both Coutinho and the nova crítica, see Leodegário A. de Azevedo Filho, Introdução ao Estudo da Nova Crítica no Brasil (Rio, 1965).
51. Sérgio Milliet, Diário Crítico (São Paulo, 1959), 10, p. 126.
52. John L. Stewart, in The Burden of Time (Princeton, 1965), on p. 50 makes the point that the Nashville Agrarians in the United States were, for the most part, aggressively nonprofessional.
53. Temístocles Linhares, “Os ‘Impasses’ da Crítica Estética,” Diário de Notícias 13 Jan. 1957, pp. 1, 4, Sup.
54. Houaiss, Crítica Avulsa, pp. 183–84, 182.
55. Osmar Pimentel, A Lâmpada e o Passado (São Paulo, 1968), pp. 101–2.
56. Oliveira Bastos, “Importação,” Diário de Notícias, p. 1, Sup.
57. It is also true that Coutinho himself attacked those he felt were not nationalistic enough. His entire polemic against the distinguished academic critic Antônio Cândido is a case in point. He attacked Cândido's Formação da Literatura Brasileira (1959, vol. 1) in his essay Conceito da Literatura Brasileira (1960) as unpatriotic and mistaken for using the term “colonial” literature to describe pre-Independence literature in Brazil. To Coutinho, such terminology not only represented the detested historical periodization, but it also ignored what he saw as the incipient Brazilianness of the literature of the pre-Independence period.
58. Monteiro, Clareza, pp. 145–46, 150.
59. Sodré, “Conceito,” p. 8.
60. Coutinho, Recepção, pp. 61, 64.
61. Coutinho, Correntes, p. 366.
62. Coutinho, A Literatura 1 (1968):54.
63. Massaud Moisés, “Introdução à Literatura no Brasil,” Anhembi (set. 1960), pp. 50–51, 63.
64. Mário Chámie, Alguns Problemas, pp. 47–48.
65. Massaud Moisés, Pequeno Dicionário da Literatura Brasileira (São Paulo, 1968), p. 118.
66. Chámie, Alguns Problemas, p. 48.
67. Cassiano Ricardo, “A Literatura no Brasil,” Jornal do Comércio, 1 July 1956, p. 3.
68. The many practitioners of the nova crítica during the period include Eduardo Portella, Euryalo Cannabrava, José Guilherme Merquior, Franklin de Oliveira, Leodegário A. de Azevedo Filho, Luiz Costa Lima, and Othon Moacir Garcia, to mention a few of the best known. Coutinho himself lists some sixty other new critics in volume 5 of A Literatura, but this is no doubt an inflated estimate. For various reasons—dislike of Coutinho, extreme individualism, the disinclination to be associated with the excesses of the campaign—few people called themselves new critics, even when they practiced the nova crítica. It is also true that a number of critics, such as Oswaldino Marques, may have come to esthetic criticism independently, through their own readings. Coutinho felt that there was no need for either disciples or labels because, by the mid-1960s, the basic principles of the nova crítica had become widely accepted.
69. Nelly Novaes Coelho, “Teoria e Crítica,” Jornal de Letras, no. 171 (nov. 1963), p. 7.
70. Cassiano Ricardo, “A Literatura,” Jornal do Comércio, p. 3.
71. “Afrânio Coutinho na Academia de Letras,” Jornal de Letras, no. 153 (maio 1962), p. 1.
72. Luiz Fernando Nazareth, “Tempo Presente!,” Jornal de Letras, no. 164 (abril 1963), p. 4.
73. Franklin de Oliveira, A Fantasia Exata (Rio, 1959), pp. 120, 125.
74. Fábio Lucas, Compromisso Literário (Rio, 1964), pp. 112–13, 116.
75. Oswaldino Marques, “Tarefas da Pesquisa Literária,” Diário de Notícias, 26 July 1964, p. 1, Sup.
76. Coutinho, Correntes, p. 344.
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