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My sentimental chronicle of the city of São Paulo

Guilherme de Almeida [i]

Tradução de Joshua Bayliss[ii]

 

 

 

Out of memories, which are poets,
Don’t make historians!
Paul Géraldy

 

 

 

This shall be, I believe, a simple personal tributeaccomplished for my own reasons. Whosoever is interested is therefore invited to feel completely unrestricted, free from any contestation. It is as if I were “talking to myself”.

 

But that is extremely interesting! I say that to even myself. Which reminds me of a certain fellow who was walking in the road talking to himself, and one who I walked alongside once, right up close to him, curious to try and hear what he was saying, and as we went along he suddenly entered...

 

Estação da Luz

 

It was there that São Paulo began for me. Country boy, from the Interior, I would go every now and again with my parents to the capital, and I would step onto the ground greeted by powerful blows of water vapour and the strong smell of charcoal from the huge protuberance of brown iron and little red bricks that was the São Paulo Railway, that quintessentially English monument.

 

I get the impression that not only for me – a child – but also for everyone and everything that it was there that the true São Paulo of this century began. Tallest tower in the city, with its huge clock marking the correct Time, standing right there like a compass’ point, it was from there the city was set to grow, in concentric circles characterized by harsh and violent phases of evolution. It became the most common and essential postcard that, upon the dawnof this century, every visitor would send to anyone they knew: “São Paulo – Estação da Luz”.

 

Around that tower many respectable names of both the Empire and the pages of Silva Leme set up their mansions. A magnificent garden exploded into greenness, brandishing several flowers and an aquatic carpet at its feet. And it became the second essential postcard of the time: “São Paulo – Jardim da Luz”.

 

Bairro da Luz

 

My first neighbourhood. Around 1904. Solar baronial. Address: Largo do Jardim, n.1. That “Largo do Jardim” was the part of the current Avenida Tiradentes, between road São Caetano and the Quartel da Luz. Single story mansion, grand garden running alongside it, with waterfall and fishes, and an orchard at the end. I attended the Ginásio São Bento. Obligatory route: Rua Florêncio de Abreu from door to door, without shortcuts. After the Seminary was moved, which stayed put in there, I would pass through a Confeiteria Minerva, I would cut through the Rua da Estação (nowadays called Rua Mauá) and...

 

...I didn’t always go straight to school. One day, I turned back to the left and came to a barren area, where a big troupe of gypsies had just set up their campsite. The huge wagons painted in vivid colours, their Norman horses with enormous kegs; their smithy, bellows and anvil to hit their copper cauldrons; their trained bear that danced to the tambourine; their outfitted ladies covered in ruffly clothing who told people’s fortunes and dictated the buena-dicha; the fear that the families had for these “child snatchers” and... the lack of fearwhich I myself had. The pleasure and happiness, with which I would skip my lessons an go to befriend those strange people: its leader with the golden earring in one ear and who had a daughter who liked to talk to me, and who I would always go to see and who one day left, and her father invited me to go as well, but I... shall I go? Shall I not go?... I didn’t go.

 

“You are one of us” he said to me, and he gave me a little golden earring. And only 30 years later, in Paris, when in a deserted road one Sunday, the “Rue de Balzac”, a random gypsy read my hand, it was then that I remembered him asking me: – and what if I had accepted the invitation?... the opportunity had gone.

 

Extremely important the Neighbourhood da Luz. The station there, the Garden in front, the manor houses by Rua Florêncio de Abreu and Rua Brigadeiro Tobias.

 

(…)

 

The Triângulo

 

(…)

 

O Brás

 

In the grubbiness of the coal-coloured horizon, close to the Tamanduateí which ran off the crying of the weeping willows, plunging their hair into the running water, against the background of the Gas Company’s black balloons. There the “Nuova Italia” began, known commonly by the name of Brás, right? I ask someone who is carrying white shirts that had come up from the Market and stopped, for a moment, next to me.

 

— “Mà che Nuova Italia?! Quello, la giù, è il proprio Brasile che incomincia!”

 

And he explains to me that “Brazil” is simply an anagram of “Il Bras”...

 

Yes: the Brazil that was starting to believe in itself. I turn around. And it is after a lot of thought that around the Rua Quinze I finally arrive at the Largo da Sé, where the Gothic forest of the New Cathedral immediately starts to take form. And, around Benjamin Constant, I reach the Largo São Francisco. There it is, waiting for me.

 

 

A Faculdade

 

(...)

 

Nocturno Galante

 

(...)

 

Vivacidade

 

(...)

 

Praça da República

 

For me, particularly and especially, since I am nothing more than a simple verse-maker, my Republic Square was always my poetry teacher.

 

It was with her that I learnt, for example, the seasons. Full of sycamore trees – that intelligent European tree, barometric, which offers shade in summer, dead leaves in autumn, loses its leaves in winter to let the sun through, and in spring becomes green anew, being the picture of happiness in the form of life, it was between República’s alleys, once, one emotional afternoon, that I saw that woman, who went:

 

Flower on the tarmac, enchanting silken rose,

Suggestion of an autumn evening,

There is, in the sleepy leaf which is falling,

The reluctance to be leaving,

Solitude extinguished of the promenade it chose...

 

 

There, on the nights of the 11th of August when I was a student, the nocturnal commemoration came together, with flowers left at the foot of the herm of my glorious brother, with whom I shared both soul and arms, who “was a poet, he dreamt and loved in life” and who died rather young; and there, during my time as a soldier in 32, another 4 legendary young heroes fell, right there, where during “my” month of May I wrote the last sonnet of my “Nós”.

 

...yawns pensively

In the landscape’s infinite sadness...

 

Yes, May…

 

 

Marian Intermezzo

 

Mary’s month.

 

There we were, on one of thoseafternoons. Through the neighbourhood’s old road which was my second neighbourhood, one grey and cold afternoon disguised as an Autumn day, I went along slowly, re-following the route I had already taken so many times, recognizing the things I knew so well. He suddenly called me with his bell-like voice: crepuscular voice of “Angelus” which was like a long crystal struck at its top by a light knock of felt.

 

And he went with me. He went along telling stories. The altar was completely white...and he went up... and the candles went alongside him like in Jacob’s ladder... I stayed back there, in the boat, watching the door go up and down, a rhythm mimicked by beating of my childish heart... Because a sailor’s blouse should appear there: arrive, go in... when the faded hairs, free, fluttering on the Marseillais cap, passed by me, and went along, and stayed there in front, between the first banks, the lights of the alter became entangled with them and created an aureole... Not for a single instance would I divert my gaze from that clear halo: it was like some dazzling screen, a fascinating obstacle between me, who was back here, and God, who was on the altar... No, it wasn’t true. There was, yes, a moment in which I didn’t see the faded hairs on the sailor’s cap: – it was when, accompanying the “Ave Maria”, I closed my eyes to underline with dreams certain words of the blue prayer... these words, “Full of grace... blessed between women”.

 

What is that, poet? Wake up! Come and see, over there and up above...

 

 

The Avenida

 

Long indeed. And steep indeed. I see it under two guises and during two times of the year: the three days of Carnaval and the remaining 362, sometimes 363 in the block calendar.

 

Carnaval. Typically paulista. That “paulista” that for the patricians of other States means caipira, unfriendly, incredibly dry. The Carnaval of Avenida. The procession.Private cars. Almost all limousines and, then, closed up, with chauffeur and also sometimes even valet-de-pied, in livery, family crests discretely engraved onto the fly. And, between the crystals of the carrosserie, the “fantastically” fine ladies, indefinitely separated from the rest, parading, “corretíssimas”, without a hint of streamers,confetti or lança-perfume.

 

After Carnaval, there was still, for fun, in front of the charming bit of ancient woodland, nowadays called “Parque Siqueira Campos”, the festive “Trianon”. The word Belvedere engraved onto the Vale do Anhangabaú, now showed, in the opaline distance, the now tentacular Cidade-Polvo that that was coming, was coming...

 

Ah! The frivolous “Trianon”: that which, according to a social chronicler of the time, the philosopher Passos Pedroso, noble enemy of Galicianisms, in an vernacular and senile indignation, insisted in calling “Three Dwarves”... there was, at the road’s level, a great bricked terrace, with two lateral pergolas inhabited by pigeons and roses. He had, in his basement – a spacious room for parties – a restaurant, a bar, a tearoom, a platform for an orchestra. It was there that the great official banquets for illustrious visitors took place; and where one danced, principally, under the tutelage of the distinguished Professora Madame Poças Leitão, and the dances of the “Sociedade Harmonia”. There, for the first time, “Jazz” appeared in São Paulo. And how it was loved! On the terrasse, one night, they were alone, whilst in the room below

 

 

The blacks of Jazz almost grinded all things,

On edge by blows of air like china, stay,

Close stay to me! It’s all in ruin, I,

I wanted us to stay together, thus

Not even one embrace ‘twixt us would fit.

 

 

There, at an old, famous Carnaval, the North-American ambassador Morgan offered the paulista society the most sumptuous fancy-dress ball of which we remember in our annals of divine frivolity. Divine indeed... because...

 

...miraculously, from the simple grain of a coffea plant, and from the caprice of being able to savour and offer others a “cafezinho”, these stubborn people created that fundamental artery for the heart of Brazil – necklace of palaces back then; skyscrapers now – that Eugênio de Lima three quarters of a century ago had idealized, realized, and had baptized AVENIDA PAULISTA, that which infects – with its megalomania – the neighbourhoods, North-South-East-West, as if it was there, in fact, although not straight away, that this contemporary São Paulo had been born: the great...

 

...S. Paulo of the ABC.

 

Like even a children’s book’s ABC, through which the Future now learns.

 

But, what can I say? Can it be...

 

*

 

...Can it be that I am that lunatic that was speaking to himself, and that I thought I had accompanied to try and make out what he was saying, and we went along, and suddenly he went into the station. Can it be?

 

---

[i] Almeida, Guilherme de. Pela cidade. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2004.

[ii] A presente tradução foi feita por Joshua Bayliss, estagiário da Universidade de Birmingham na Casa Guilherme de Almeida em agosto de 2013. O Programa de Estágio entre as duas instituições, existente desde 2012, possibilita a estudantes graduandos de Português da Universidade de Birmingham uma experiência de tradução de literatura brasileira para o inglês, sob orientação do Centro de Estudos de Tradução Literária.

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