Novel
Macunaíma
Mário de Andrade · 1928
Opening lines
No fundo do mato-virgem nasceu Macunaíma, herói da nossa gente. Era preto retinto e filho do medo da noite.
Deep in the virgin forest Macunaíma was born, hero of our people. He was jet black and the son of the fear of the night.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from literaturabrasileira.ufsc.br
Synopsis
“In the depths of the virgin forest Macunaíma was born, hero of our people.” As a child, he has only one phrase on his lips: “Ah! what laziness!” Changing shape at will, he becomes an adult to seduce the partner of his brother Jiguê, then falls in love with Ci, the Mother of the forest, who leaves him an amulet, the muiraquitã. He loses it, and it falls into the hands of the giant Piaimã, who lives as a wealthy bourgeois in São Paulo under the name of Venceslau Pietro Pietra: Macunaíma sets out to take it back with his brothers.
Context
The novel appeared in 1928, six years after the event that had launched modernism in São Paulo. Its folklore draws on the Pemon tales collected by the ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg, from whom the author borrowed the name and traits of his hero. The language moves constantly between the spoken and the written, mixes Indian terms, regionalisms and wordplay, and one chapter parodies, as a letter to the Icamiabas, the letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha. Joaquim Pedro de Andrade adapted it for the cinema in 1969. Jacques Thiériot translated it into French in 1979; E. A. Goodland in 1984, then Katrina Dodson in 2023, into English.
Who it is for
A short, discontinuous novel, its language mixed from all the speech of the country; the French translation preserves the play.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's masterpiece and as one of the founding texts of Brazilian modernism.
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