Jorge Leal Amadou Di Faria. Jorge Amado: “Literary Pele. Public and political activities

It is well known that every great writer is a special world, a special universe. But the created world always exists in tense relationships with the real world, and these relationships are very different. In order to say their own word about life, some artists need to construct a fictional world with a special geography and a special history - be it the city of Glupov of Saltykov-Shchedrin, the district of Yoknapatof William Faulkner, or the mythological Middle Earth of the remarkable English prose writer J.-R.-R. Tolkien. In Latin American literature, Juan Carlos Onetti, known to our readers, went this way, inventing a special city for his novels - Santa Maria.

There is, however, another type of writers - writers whose universe we call "Balzac's Paris", "Dostoevsky's Petersburg", "Dickensian London". The creative fate of these artists is inextricably linked with capturing a certain historically authentic "chronotope", absorbing its unique currents, and elevating documentary everyday life to the rank of myth. The choice of the first or the second of the two paths is an intimate question of the writer's work. For the reader, one artistic result is important. And if we talk about the Latin American culture of the 20th century, then here is perhaps the most brilliant example of the second path, the path of translating geographical reality into great literature - the work of Jorge Amado.

Jorge Amado was lucky enough to be born in the vicinity of Bahia, one of the most colorful and amazing cities in the world. And Bahia was lucky that on an August day in 1912, in the family of the owner of a small cocoa plantation south of the city, someone was born who in the future was destined to give the picturesque and resounding world around him a second life - a life in art, to make it the property of world culture. An artist not of local importance was born, not just in love with his native corner of the earth, but an artist who saw in the local, regional national, in the people of Bahia - the embodiment of the Brazilian folk character.

Bahia (the full name given to the city by the Portuguese colonialists was San Salvador da Bahia) lies in the northeast of Brazil, on the coast of a cozy bay. The city stretches along the beaches of the bay, climbing up the slopes of the hills. Everything here is lumped together: ancient mansions and churches built in the 17th-18th centuries in a magnificent baroque style, skyscrapers of the most modern banks and offices, Negro huts ... As in any seaside tropical city, life takes place mainly on the street, always filled with a motley crowd : here they trade, arrange performances, eat, fight, invite, bet... However, the amazingness of Bahia is not yet in this. To appreciate it, one must look into the past.

Bahia was one of the first centers of the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. A plantation economy was formed around the city (sugar cane and tobacco were bred, then cotton and cocoa), based on slave labor. Caravans of ships with black slaves from Africa sailed to Bahia, since the natives of the country - the Indians - could not be turned into slaves. The Portuguese colonists took black and Indian women as concubines, sometimes marrying them, gradually the overwhelming majority of the population of Bahia and the entire northeast of Brazil became mulattos and mestizos, descendants of three mixed races. As a result of ethnic mixing, a completely new folk culture was formed. For centuries, the Negroes maintained African pagan cults and held on to them the more stubbornly the more viciously they were persecuted by white lords and Catholic missionaries. It was a form of protest against slavery. Negro beliefs merged with similarly pagan beliefs of the Indians, who were just as persecuted and oppressed. When Negroes and Indians were forcibly converted to Catholicism, they adapted the new religion to their pagan cults. Catholic saints were identified with idols, with "orisha". Thus, the holy trinity of Christians turned into the mighty orisha Oshala, who can appear now in the form of the young man Oshodian, then the elder Osholufan. Saint George slaying the dragon seemed a fitting fit for the god of the hunt, Oshossi. But even white people, faced with the alien and dangerous nature of the tropics, easily adopted Negro and Indian beliefs. Moreover, the influence of the Negro and Indian worldview strengthened and preserved the pagan, pre-Christian elements in the Iberian folklore brought by the Portuguese.

In the folklore art that flourished in Bahia and spread from here throughout Brazil, researchers distinguish between the original Negro, Indian or Iberian elements, but all this is fused into a new, original whole - Brazilian. A wild, multi-day holiday - carnival - was born from the combination of the traditional festival of a European medieval city and a pagan holiday in honor of the onset of autumn. The wrestling, which was done by Negro slaves from Angola for the amusement of white seniors, was overgrown with music and songs and turned into capoeira - a unique wrestling-dance, where each lunge is accompanied by complex acrobatic movements.

By persistent and desperate struggle, the Brazilian Negroes achieved the abolition of slavery (in 1888), and much later, the recognition of the right to preserve their tribal cults. The priests were forced to put up with the fact that the holidays of Catholic saints are accompanied by pagan processions and dances, that, having begun in the morning in the church, the holiday ends at night with a general dance on zeal - candomble (or macumba). In addition, these customs became the property of the entire diverse population of Bahia, lost their cult character, turned into household rituals, loved for their mass character and fun. The amazingness, the uniqueness of Bahia lies precisely in the fact that in the big city of the middle of the 20th century, folk art is not reduced to the role of handicrafts and amateur activities, but lives a natural, full-blooded life, uniting the masses of the townspeople into a folk collective.

The Bahian calendar is rich in holidays - and each has its own songs, its own dances, its own rituals. The holiday is in full swing on the streets, squares, beaches, no one organizes it, people flock themselves and unite in a coordinated rhythm. The creators of the holiday are the poor of Bahia. Residents of wealthy neighborhoods remain curious spectators. However, often they are carried away by the imperious rhythm of general fun. The Bahians know how to turn even hard work into a holiday. Fishing enthusiasts come from all over the city: fifty to sixty fishermen pull out a giant net, their bodies move in time with the song that all the inhabitants of the fishing village sing - women, children, old people - to the accompaniment of drums and rattles.

“Don't think that the people of Bahia have an easy life. On the contrary, it is a poor city in an underdeveloped, almost impoverished state, although it has enormous natural wealth. There are far fewer opportunities for the people here than, for example, in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. The difference lies in the people's civilization, the people's culture, which makes life less cruel and harsh, more humane ... "- writes Jorge Amado in the book "Bahia, the good land of Bahia." * Yes, the art that creates the people and with which they fill their everyday life, helps to endure poverty and social injustice, inspires cheerfulness and hope. (* Jorge Amado. Bahia, boa terra Bahia. Rio de Janeiro, 1967, p. 60.)

Jorge Amado from childhood joined the cruel severity of folk life, and folk art, enlightening this severity. “The years of adolescence spent on the streets of Bahia, in the port, in the markets and fairs, at a folk festival or in a capoeira competition, in a magical candomblé or on the porches of centuries-old churches - this is my best university. Here I was given the bread of poetry, here I learned the pain and joys of my people,” says Amado in a speech delivered in 1961 upon entering the Brazilian Academy of Literature. college. And at the age of fourteen, he fled from mentors and wandered, until his father found him, through the steppes of the state of Bahia. Another course at the University of Folk Life... (* Jorge Amado, povo e terra. Sao Paulo, 1972, p. 8.)

Amado's literary activity began with the novel Carnival Country in 1931. This was followed by "Cocoa" (1933) and "Sweat" (1934) - an unvarnished, dryish-protocol description of the work and life of laborers on a cocoa plantation and proletarians from the outskirts of Bahia. The young writer was deeply influenced by world revolutionary literature of the 1920s. In Portuguese and Spanish, he read The Quiet Flows the Don by Sholokhov and The Rout by Fadeev, Cement by Gladkov, The Iron Stream by Serafimovich, The Week by Libedinsky, books by Michael Gold and Upton Sinclair. Influenced by the then widespread theory, Amado perceived revolutionary literature as "literature of fact". In the preface to "Cocoa", the writer, formulating the task of such a "maximally honest", documented depiction of social processes, asks: "Won't this be a proletarian novel?"

"Cocoa" and "Pot" found a warm response from the participants in the revolutionary movement in Brazil. But Amado was not satisfied with his first books. He wanted the theme of the formation of class consciousness to be soldered to purely national forms of life and thinking. All that he heard and saw during his adolescent and youthful wanderings around the city - songs, legends, traditions - all this was torn to paper. So Amadou wrote his first cycle of novels about Bahia: "Jubiaba" (1935), "Dead Sea" (1936), "Captains of the Sand" (1937).

In The Dead Sea, Amadou found the poetic narrative key he needed: every situation, every action of the characters has, as it were, two possible interpretations, two meanings: ordinary and fabulous, real and legendary. In real terms, the heroes of the novel live a miserable life in a fishing village, die at sea, leaving widows and orphans. In the legendary plan, they communicate with the gods and the sailor does not return from the voyage, because he becomes the lover of the sea goddess Iemanji. The folklore myth that Amadou used in the book is extremely common in Bahia. And to this day, on February 2, on the day of the goddess of the sea, Iansan (or Iemanji), residents go to the beaches, float flowers on the waves, women throw modest gifts into the water - combs, beads, rings, to appease the formidable goddess, to beg her to return her husband or groom unharmed.

The theme of the formation of the class consciousness of the Brazilian worker is also in this novel, but it is hidden in the story of the legendary life of the daredevil Guma and makes itself felt only in echoes: either by the mention of a strike in the port, or by the vague dreams of the teacher dona Dulce about social justice. And only at the end of the book, the combination of two motivations - everyday and poetic - highlights the true outcome of the story.

The fate of sailors' widows is spoken of many times in the Dead Sea: in stories remembered throughout the port, in songs, in Guma's thoughts, in Livia's prayers. And now the premonitions came true - Livia was left alone with a child in her arms. But she did not fall into eternal bondage to the manufacturer or the owner of the brothel. Libya has found its way, independent, difficult. The first of the women of the port, she went to the sea on the "Winged" next to the men - Guma's comrades.

But there is another, song-fabulous reason for Livia's decision. According to the deep faith of all the people of the port, a sailor who died in a storm, saving his comrades, becomes Yemanji's lover. It is she who, jealous of her chosen one, unleashes a storm and takes her beloved to the distant lands of Ayok, where he will belong only to her. And Livia believes that in the sea, having taken the place of Guma at the helm of his boat, she will snatch her husband from the hands of the goddess, she will again experience the joy of love. And when her boat rushes past the sailors, Livia herself seems to them Iemanzha, the mistress of the sea.

The marvel that sailors await in song and legend is wrestling. And each bold step, freeing from fear and humiliation, brings a miracle closer. A miracle will be performed by strong, free, beautiful people. Guma could become such a person. Livia becomes such a person. People are like gods - this is how one can designate the idea of ​​that poetic transformation of reality into a legend that takes place in a novel.

This transformation appears clearly in the language of the novel. Heroes don't think like that, they say. In the dialogues of the characters, Amadou reproduces colloquial turns and grammatical irregularities that are characteristic of common colloquial speech. In the indirect transmission of the thoughts of the heroes, in their internal monologue, all irregularities disappear, linguistic features characteristic of folklore appear: repetitions of words and whole phrases, leitmotif phrases, quotes from folk songs sound. Next to the dialogue, the language of internal monologues seems elevated, close to a prose poem. The linguistic failure demonstrates the gap between the everyday life of the heroes with the ignorance, poverty, rudeness imposed on them - and the high poetic structure of their feelings, their spiritual abilities.

The Dead Sea, like the rest of the novels of the first Bahian cycle, especially Jubiaba, brought a new note to Brazilian literature. Interest in folklore has spread among the Brazilian intelligentsia since the 1920s. Magazines and poetry groups emerged (Pau-Brazil, Yellow-Green, Revista de Anthropofagia), which promoted Indian, less often Negro folklore as an original element of national culture. Bright works were created (Raul Bopp's poem "The Serpent of Norato", Mario de Andrade's novel "Makunaima") based on Indian myths and legends. However, folklore remained for these writers a special, charming, but closed world, disconnected from modernity with its social conflicts. Therefore, in their books one can feel the shade of admiring an exotic, decorative spectacle.

There was another approach to folklore. Realist writers of the 30s, and especially Jose Lins do Rego, in five novels of the Sugar Cane Cycle, spoke about many beliefs of Brazilian blacks, described their holidays, macumba rituals. For Lins before Rego, the beliefs and customs of Negroes are one of the aspects of social reality (along with labor, relations between masters and farm laborers, etc.), which he observes and studies.

Amadou does not observe his heroes, does not maintain the distance that exists between the object of study and the researcher. The legend, born of the people's imagination, opens up as a reality that exists right now. Amado the narrator appears as a commentator on the folk legend, who knows all the authentic details. Folklore is not depicted - folklore penetrates into every cell of the narrative, determines the plot, composition, psychology of the characters. The feelings of the characters are strengthened, enlarged, as in a folk song. Amadou talks about his characters, as a song or a fairy tale tells, which always unequivocally evaluates people. In The Dead Sea, Rosa Palmeyrao embodies maternal, sacrificial love, Esmeralda - low, treacherous passion, Livia - that only love that is stronger than death. The heroes of the novel, like the anonymous authors of songs and legends, know only light or dark, pure or low, friendship or betrayal. And so directly, so sincerely, the narrator shares the worldview of the characters that the fabulous atmosphere of the novel seems real, that the reader is ready to believe in the existence of Iemanji and the distant land of the sailors of Ayok. The scene with the candle is remarkable in this sense: the friends of the deceased Guma are looking for his body and for this they light a burning candle on the water - according to legend, the candle will stop over the drowned man. A doctor, an educated person who does not believe in sea signs, is also floating in the boat. But Guma's friends dive in the most dangerous places so tirelessly, selflessly, only a candle slows down a little, that the doctor begins to tensely follow its movement. And the reader follows the stops of the candle and waits for the body of Guma to appear in the hands of his comrades. Fascinating is the faith of the heroes of the novel in a fairy tale - the best hypostasis of their life, their natures, their relationships.

Captains of the Sand (1937) marked a new stage in Amadou's artistic search. It would seem that in comparison with the "Dead Sea" folklore motifs here somewhat recede into the background, go into subtext. On the other hand, the closeness and merciless truthfulness with which the fate of a group of Bahian homeless children is considered in the novel resemble the sociological protocol of Amadou's first books - "Cocoa" and "Sweat". The life of these impoverished teenagers appears before us in every detail, sometimes funny, sometimes grossly repulsive. Amadou clearly labels the racial and social characteristics of each member of the group. He strives for the utmost accuracy in conveying the speech of the characters, not being afraid to shock the reader. Nevertheless, this element of hard documentaryism is firmly fused in the novel with another element - folklore and poetry. Poetry is invariably present in the miserable life of Amado's heroes. "Captains of the sand", "dressed in rags, dirty, hungry, aggressive, throwing obscenities and hunting for cigarette butts, were the real masters of the city: they knew it to the end, they loved it to the end, they were its poets" - such is the author's comment, plays an important role in the artistic whole of the novel.

In the first Bahian cycle of novels, Amado groped for his original artistic path - a bold combination of folklore and everyday life, the use of folklore to reveal the spiritual forces of the modern Brazilian. However, this path turned out to be not simple and not direct for the writer.

In 1937, after the establishment of a reactionary dictatorship in Brazil, Amado, an active participant in the revolutionary movement, was forced to emigrate. In 1942 he returned to his homeland, but already in 1947 he emigrated again and until 1952 he lived first in France, then in Czechoslovakia. During the years of emigration, Amado became an international public figure representing democratic Brazil. It is quite understandable and natural that the writer, whose homeland was going through painful social upheavals, had a need to comprehend the historical process. And in exile, Amado did not forget his beloved Bahia - he wrote a nostalgic book “Bahia of All Saints. Guide to the streets and secrets of the city of San Salvador. But his main business during these years was the work on epic canvases, in which the fate of a vast region can be traced for half a century (“Endless Lands”, 1942; “City of Ilyeus”, 1944), the fate of an entire class - the peasantry (“Red Shoots”, 1946 ) and, finally, the fate of the entire nation (Freedom Underground, 1952). For the first two books, Amado used the memories of early childhood: after all, he was born and raised on a cocoa plantation near the town of Ilheus in the state of Bahia, and as a child he witnessed clashes between planters, revenge, violence, robbery (one day Amado's father was wounded in front of his son), and in the evenings relatives, laborers, servants told legends about bloodthirsty planters, cruel but fair robbers - cangaceiro, desperate mercenaries - jagunso. All this was included in the dilogy about the land of cocoa. In Red Shoots, the writer relies on folklore symbolism: the book is divided into three parts of a story about the fate of three brothers (an age-old motif of a fairy tale, including a Brazilian one), embodying three variants of a peasant revolt.

In exile, Amado became close friends with writers from different countries, entered European literary life, and in the works of these years, the influence of the multifaceted epic novel, well developed in European literature, is tangible. In the Freedom Underground, traces of folklore poetics are already completely disappearing. Amadou later said that this novel of his was written under the great influence of Aragon's epic The Communists. The Brazilian writer did not change his pictorial skill here either, but on the whole he failed to find an organic (as organic as in his early folklore novels) artistic system for the gigantic new life material. After all, he tried to cover the whole of Brazil with its tops and bottoms, political, social and psychological conflicts in one of the most critical moments of its recent history. In the novel, these collisions turned out to be rectified and schematized. Numerous plot lines of the novel are built according to the same scheme: representatives of different classes (peasant, loader, ballerina, architect, officer, etc.), experiencing dramatic situations and finding support from the communists in difficult times, recognize the truth of communist ideas. The national specificity of life here turns into something external, decorative, unimportant, into a brightly painted backdrop and backstage, against which the action is played out.

Amadou in 1955-1956 experienced a deep creative crisis. He stopped work on the trilogy, the first part of which was to be the Freedom Underground. Several years of silence passed: the writer thought deeply about his intention to go from now on not in breadth - into the breadth of space and history, but in depth - into the depths of the human community. And he returned to Bahia.

He returned to Bahia and literally. Since 1963 he has been living in Bahia permanently, here is his home, his friends. He knows everyone in Bahia: capoeira masters, Bahian sweets sellers, fishermen, boatmen, old priests and priestesses of Macumba. And they know and love Seu Jorge, they come to him for advice and help.

But even earlier, a new Bahian cycle began in Amadou’s work: in 1958, the novel Gabriela, Cinnamon and Clove was published, in 1961 the short story The Unusual Death of Kinkas Sgin Voda and the novel Old Sailors, or the Pure Truth about the Dubious Adventures of a Far Sea Captain voyages of Vasco Moscoso de Aragán, united under the title of Old Sailors. This was followed by a collection of short stories and short stories "Shepherds of the Night" (1964), the novels "Dona Flor and her two husbands" (1966), "The Miracle Shop" (1969), "Teresa Batista, tired of fighting" (1972), "Tieta from Agreste , or The Return of the Prodigal Daughter (1976).

As a matter of fact, the designation "new Bahian cycle" is somewhat arbitrary. Not always the action takes place on the streets and beaches of Bahia. The heroes of "Gabriela ..." live in the very town of Ilheus, the center of the cocoa zone, "the land of golden fruits", whose name was already in the title of one of Amadou's novels; Teresa Batista and Tieta from Agreste wander through different cities and lands, Tieta even gets to Sao Paulo. But wherever the events in these books take place, the story about them is united by a common outlook on life, a common human climate. And continuity is always preserved in relation to the first cycle of novels about Bahia. The life of the people of Bahia served as a model for the artistic world of Amado. The experience of everyday communication with fishermen, sailors, loaders, workers, market traders suggested to Amad the very idea of ​​the duality of life and human behavior. After all, the poor people of Bahia truly live a dual life: tired of poverty, humiliated and exhausted by hard everyday life, they become strong and free creators during a holiday, carnival, dance. Here they dictate laws: those who yesterday pushed them around admire and imitate their fun on the day of the holiday.

Amadou's new books are realistic in the most direct, literal sense of the word - extremely life-like. Amadou knows how to write everyday life in rapture, with some greed for material details, he knows how to achieve the effect of presence (Ilya Ehrenburg spoke about this in the preface to one of Amadou's novels). But no matter how real, unconditionally reliable, all the details of the story, we still feel that we are in a special world, where everything is noticeably shifted and condensed. Something has to happen, to break out of the everyday shell that has been hiding him until then. Just like during the carnival, when the most ordinary people live an unusual life for several days, they discover incredible strength, temperament, and energy that do not dry out during these days. And after all, here, in Bahia, and throughout Brazil, the carnival is not the result of scientific research or artistic restoration. It takes place every year at its own time.

So it is in Amadou’s books: ordinary life goes on, funny or pitiful figures swarm (remember, for example, sea captain Vasco Moscoso de Aragán and other characters in the book “Old Sailors“!) - there is plenty of satire in Amadou’s books, sometimes good-natured, sometimes not at all good-natured . The selfishness and meanness of the authorities, the greed and cowardice of the philistines, the mental and spiritual routine, the pretensions and prejudices of pseudo-scientists and pseudo-democrats - all this is presented in grotesque sharpness. But the matter is not limited to satirical ridicule. The time is coming - and the carnival explosion cancels the routine. It can be absolutely fantastic: the god Ogun appears at the christening of the son of a poor black man, the dead man is resurrected to see his friends. And sometimes there are not fantastic, but also incredible events Cook Gabriela, whom her master married, thus making her a rich and respected lady in the city, defiantly cheats on him and willingly returns to her former beggarly position. All the inhabitants of the slums of Mata Gato enter into battle with the police and city authorities. A cosmic disaster sweeps over the harbor of Belen do Gran Para, destroying all ships except the steamer Ita, moored at all anchors by the unlucky captain Vasco. One way or another, in a fairy-tale or in a real, in a mass or in an individual psychological situation, a fight takes place. Clash between two forces. Between self-interest and selflessness, duplicity and sincerity, mannerisms and simplicity, friendship and selfishness. Between popular ideas about life and the actual life of bourgeois society. And thus - between the national environment and the non-national spiritual stereotype developed by modern capitalist society and spreading everywhere, including in Brazil.

To embody this collision, to characterize the antagonists participating in it, the writer developed an original and organic poetic system. In all of Amadou's books, starting with Gabriela..., two camps collide, two currents. This is somewhat reminiscent of the two-dimensional nature of The Dead Sea, but the relationship between everyday life and poetry is much more complicated here. The poetic plan of the narrative is no longer completely transferred to the sphere of legend, it seems to be overgrown with the "meat" of reality, the thin threads of poetry are stretched into everyday life, noting in it what is in contact with the deep movement of the people's consciousness.

In the works "Old Sailors" or especially "Don Flor" everyday life and fantasy collide in an irreconcilable battle. They are hostile through and through, opposite, and only humor can create a precarious balance between them. Thus, humor makes possible the "happy ending" in Don Flor.

In the works of Amadou, the supernatural is associated with the beliefs of the Brazilian Negroes, with their rituals that have survived to this day, especially in Bahia - cults. Of course, the Negro cult attracts the artist not because of its dense beliefs. Thanks to the zeal of candomblé, ancient folk art has been preserved and is being preserved. Candomblé is a real celebration of folklore: a sophisticated atabake drumming sounds (then such a fraction called “boosanova” is beaten out on all stages of the world), ancient cantigas are sung, young priestesses of iavo spin in a round dance, and old priestesses prepare spicy and spicy dishes for the audience, masterpieces of Bahian folk cuisine, which is also an art. Candomblé gathers the poor, helps them to unite, feel together with their kindred in spirit, with friends, helps in difficult conditions to maintain the collectivity of life and the collectivity of artistic creativity.

Candomblé deifies the dance: God here expresses his mercy only by granting his chosen one the freedom and beauty of movements; a daring dance is a sign of the presence of the Deity, the goodwill of the Deity. And this attitude to dance as a beautiful and happy gift colors everyday life in Amadou's books. Dance becomes a means of characterization and evaluation, dance expresses love and joy, relief and satisfaction - all the feelings of a person.

Food plays the same role in Amadou's story. Dishes that can only be cooked in Bahia are involved in all the twists and turns of the plot, in all the decisive events in the life of the heroes of Amado. The adventures of the revived corpse of Kinkas Sink Water unfold while friends are dragging him to the port so that, even dead, he would taste the delicious moqueca prepared by Manuel.

Finally, detailed recipes for Bahian dishes are included in the book about Don Flor - on an equal footing with the experiences of the unfortunate widow, because each dish, the secret of which Don Flor, the head of the Taste and Art culinary school, teaches her students, recalls sweet and bitter moments, experienced with a deceased husband.

Bahian cuisine is one of the important components of Afro-Brazilian folk culture. Brazilian historians and ethnographers have carefully studied Afro-Brazilian culinary arts as a manifestation of racial mixing. The well-known ethnographer Gilberto Freire pointed out that Negro dishes, introduced by slave cooks into the diet of white colonialists, helped the Portuguese adapt to the conditions of the tropics. The Bahian cuisine thus participated in the process of the formation of the Brazilian nation. Jorge Amado draws attention to another, spiritual aspect of the problem - to the attitude of the people's consciousness to the enjoyment of food. The popular consciousness is not only not ashamed of this pleasure, but, on the contrary, deifies it, including it in the ritual. Food is sacred, it enters the holiday along with music, song, outlandish dance movements.

Just as openly and frankly, sensual pleasure reigns in the artistic world of Amadou. Sometimes critics are confused by the serene sensuality that is poured into the behavior of the characters, in the details of the female portrait, in the speech of the narrator. In Amadou's novels and short stories there is no deliberate "revealing of secrets" to which everyone familiar with Western literature is accustomed. Sexual pleasure for the heroes of Amadou is as natural and necessary as the pleasure from food, from physical movement.

The highest, sweetest and most painful point of dona Flor's memories of her first love is an evening in a restaurant, when Reveler pulls her, embarrassed and shy, to dance and both dance so rapturously that they outshine everyone, and couple after couple stop, giving way to them .. .

Dance expresses love and joy, relief and satisfaction of all human feelings.

This connection of bodily pleasures penetrates down to the cells of representation. Dance, food, love merge into a single image of cheerful free flesh.

In the books of Jorge Amado, the element of the people, whose attributes are free joyful flesh and free flight of fantasy, faces in an irreconcilable battle with the bourgeois environment and the bourgeois world outlook. This clash is brought to an open and programmatic opposition in the novel Miracle Shop. It seems that Amadou wrote this book because he decided to explain himself to the end, frankly. There is no fantasy here, no duality of motivations, everything is absolutely real, and for greater certainty, the real names of Amadou's contemporaries and compatriots are mentioned. Of course, Pedro Archenjo, the protagonist of The Miracle Shop, is a fictitious figure, and the whole story of the belated recognition of his ethnographic works is fictitious. The touches of authenticity, chronicleness are needed only to emphasize the real importance of the dispute that Pedro Archenjo is leading.

Pedro Archanjo is the double of the author. Certainly not biographically. Arshanzho's life is dated to the first decades of our century: in the early 40s, he dies as a poor old man on a Bahian street. He is the double of the author in the most important thing - in relation to life, in his position in life. A scientist by vocation and talent, Archenjo makes his very life an argument in a scientific dispute. And this dispute naturally grows out of his life, becomes the defense of everything dear, infinitely dear to Master Pedro. So it is with Jorge Amado himself: his books grow out of his life, from his endless love for his fellow countrymen, for their ancient art, for their naive and wise life, in which the writer participates as an equal, as a respected master (like Pedro Archenjo, Amado elected "both" - the elder of one of the Bahian temples and sits during the festivities in an honorary chair next to the main priestess). Books grow out of attachment, but turn into a conviction, into a position in the very dispute that Pedro Archenjot leads in the novel, but in reality, the writer Jorge Amado has been waging for many decades.

Pedro Archanjo affirms one idea: the Brazilian people have created and are constantly creating an original culture. It's time to stop talking about lack of independence, more or less successful imitation of "white civilization." Negroes, Indians and whites (at first the Portuguese, and then immigrants from many countries of the Old World) brought their traditions to the common crucible of the new nation. Melted in this crucible, they gave rise to a new, vibrant and extraordinary culture. But Pedro Archenjo's thesis is not only anthropological, but also social. The ideal of Pedro Archenjo, the ideal that he upholds both with his research and with his life, without fear of humiliation, poverty, threats, is a democratic ideal in the full sense of the word. National and class in his understanding do not contradict each other: it is the workers of Brazil who preserve and develop the national culture, it is in the life of the poor that the best qualities of the national character are formed and manifested.

Jorge Amado does not at all belong to those who are inclined to idealize the life of the people and see in it something self-sufficient: they say, the people live by their eternal values ​​and they do not need anything else. Amado and his hero know that the people still need a lot, that the way of life of the people must change and will definitely change. This applies primarily to social conditions, but also to consciousness: beliefs, concepts, relationships. In one of the scenes of the novel, Pedro Archenjo explains to his colleague, Professor Fraga, how he, Archenjo, a convinced materialist, can be interested in candomblé and the dance of blacks who believe that orisha deities have inhabited them. Fraga is also a materialist scientist, but of a positivist persuasion, limiting himself to a narrowly understood scientific sphere, not thinking about the dialectical complexity of social development. And Archanjo explains: for centuries, under the whip of a slave owner, under police bullets, the dance of orisha gods has been preserved in order to become the property of art in the future , from the theater stage to delight people with the miracle of beauty. Helping the people to preserve their art, love of life does not mean wanting to perpetuate the current life of the people, but, on the contrary, "helping change society, contributing to the transformation of the world."

In the manners and habits of Pedro Archenjo and his friends, as well as in the manners and habits of the heroes of other works of Amado, much seems to us doubtful. But the fact is that between the characters and the reader there is always an author-narrator, not a faceless narrator, but a person who is able to evaluate the depicted life. The speech of the narrator is filled with humor, good-natured irony. Irony becomes a prevention of too direct, primitively literal understanding of the story. Do not be afraid to laugh at the excesses, eccentricities, weaknesses of the heroes, but pay tribute to their sincerity and honesty, generosity and disinterestedness, their natural kindness, the author tells us in the most ironic intonation of speech.

Amadou's tale-like manner developed gradually. In "Gabriel ..." the narrator still seems to break out of his voice, then moving on to a faceless narration, then igniting with emotionality. But over the years came a virtuoso mastery of all registers of artistic speech. “Maybe it’s just a love of the art of storytelling?” - the writer says slyly in the fairy tale for adults "The Love Story of the Striped Cat and the Senorita Swallows." This fairy tale, which Amado composed, postponing and returning, for several years, captivates with its omnipotent, truly magical speech. No intricate plot, no bright fantasy, no unexpected denouement, and the reader smiles, then sad. Surprise, fantasy, intricacy and simplicity - all this is only in the manner of telling (and, consequently, in the manner of seeing the world), turning ordinary things from one side to the other, forcing the reader to guess behind the humorous buffoonery the sadness of inevitable aging.

The tale way of narration is genetically connected with oral literature, with folklore. In Brazil, lubok books are still common and sold at any provincial fair. At the same fairs, blind storytellers gather around them, telling legendary and semi-legendary stories about famous robbers, cruel planters, rebellious slaves. The floridity of the titles of Amado's latest works, which imitate the titles of popular print stories, seems to refer us to the origins, reminiscent of kinship with the folklore story. However, Amadou does not at all imitate the artless folklore tale. Sometimes to readers and critics such a relaxed manner of narration, a cheerfully flowing story, seems to be a concession to entertainment, as if the stigma of "entertainment literature." I think this is a shortsighted view. The playful frivolity of Amadou the narrator has not only its own system, but also its own great artistic goal. And the word "game" is used here for good reason. The playful beginning in Amado's books is really very strong: the characters play, the narrator plays with those whom he tells about, and with us, the readers, teasing us with the fake seriousness of the face. But after all, the game has its own spiritual content, and it does not come down to entertainment and recreation at all. The meaning, the spiritual goal of the game is the core of Amadou's mature creativity.

Our introduction began with a story about Bahia. Remaining in love with the portrait painter of his native corner of the earth, Amado managed to look at him both from the inside and from the outside, from the thousand-year tradition of folk art, from the preoccupied with the complex social and intellectual problems of our time. Did he feel the breath of a utopian folk dream in the Bahian life, an indestructible age-old ideal beginning, or did he introduce the reflections and aspirations of a modern artist into the image of this life and thereby give it universality? It is hardly possible to unambiguously answer this question. What happens to Bahia and the Bahian carnival crowd in Jorge Amado's books is one of the usual miracles in an art shop.

The element of the people in Amadou's books is both utopically ideal and, at the same time, nationally specific. Amado endlessly loves his countrymen, admires their originality - and wants to infect us all with this love. But he is also looking for new means of revealing this originality that affect today's reader, because he is sure of its significance for modern man. Amadou wants to see those properties of the national character that need to be preserved, shaping our ideas about a truly human society. Explained historically, the national identity of the Brazilian people is like a theme in the common symphony of humanity, where it is important not to lose a single note. Embodied in plastic and unusually attractive art, Brazilian originality significantly complements the spiritual life of the 20th century. Art becomes a wise reminder of what boundless wealth lies beyond the boundaries of inharmonious social everyday life.