The Greatest Poet that God Creole

“They say I am crazy / because I climbed a coconut tree / I came down with the coconut / from the coconut tree / and I opened the coconut to see if the coconut / was hollow. (Anonymous Author). ²

I

There are several studies on Cordel Literature in Brazil. The extraordinary fact that Cordel Literature is produced by the poor for the poor and has survived the technological impacts on the means of modern communication secures its place as a continual object of study.

Cordel Literature derives from Luso-Hispanic (Iberian) popular ballad forms, and has been reshaped by oral tradition in African orature, particularly in the totemic figure of the griots with their orikis [poems] and akplaôs [short stories]. Thus, Cordel Literature has acquired a specific form which gives it such a singular originality that its creative influences have spread to more sophisticated spaces of Brazilian art. Examples include the sertanejo ³ dimension of the monarchical amorality in the works of Ariano Suassuna, the concreteness of the economic language of poetry of João Cabral de Melo Neto, the constructivism of Guimarães Rosa’s novels, Luiz Gonzaga’s dazzling solar music, the social chronicle of José Lins do Rego’s regionalist novel, Marcos Acioly’s “northeasternist” epic poems, the classic Rebellion in the Backlands by Euclides da Cunha, the discontinuous epic narrative of Glauber Rocha in the film “Black God, White Devil” and the telluric atmosphere of the film “The Cangaceiros” by Lima Barreto—both recognized internationally. The influence of Cordel Literature is also evident in other artistic forms—theater, music, plastic arts, soap opera—whether popular or erudite.

Research from 1980 indicates the existence of approximately 2600 active poets in open air markets, bus stations, and public squares, in addition to the hundreds of daily radio programs. These figures provide an idea of Cordel’s scope of production as well as its reach. This data not only justifies the academic interest in analyzing its various dimensions, but also its effective popular recognition and extensive techno-scientificism that uses Cordel in educational programs and as a media resource of political propaganda.

Documents register the edition of the first folhetos (foiêtos in popular speech) in 1893, when Leandro Gomes de Barros, a poet from Paraíba, published the first folhetos in an 11 x 15 cm format with 8 to 16 pages or 32 to 48. The Cordel product was differentiated from the traditional book (this originally, since today, its reproduction is recorded and even videoed) by a title above the reproduction of a rustic etching, done from a wood cut. In the 1940s and 1950s plates or stamps of Hollywood stars such as Gable and Garbo were also used on the covers of the folhetos, above all on those that described great love affairs.

The singer-cordelista-guitar player-oral poets who create their arts, through industrial and commercial production, and represent it orally accompanied by the ganzá, small guitar, fiddle or tambourine, are multimedia artists, in opposition to modernity and difficult to categorize. They employ narrative and dramatic technical resources such as onomatopoeia (aboio, ⁴ cries interwoven into each scene, imitations of animal sounds, brief discourses alternating suspense and laughter) and gestures particular to each tone of the story, to capture the attention of the spectators.

Seen as secondary art of the common masses because of socio-racial origins, few countries have a phenomenon of popular culture as expressive as Brazilian Cordel Literature. There are “almost 40 million readers . . . in a unique form that mixes poetry, humor and epic,” writes novelist João Antônio (in the article “No Cordel, A Força da Terra” (Jornal da Tarde, November 26, 1994). Antônio considers the “Mysterious Peacock” (in verse, anonymous author) as the extraordinary moment of this production, prior to “the wave” of fantastic literature or magic realism. Cordel is a sub-realist reporting of various Brazilian coats of arms. Its critical and humorous plundering flees from the causality of fictional operations and the mental schemes of surrealism’s psychological unveiling. Each poet is a reporter, an expert at interweaving life, death, and the fantastic...