Intellectuals, literature and the press in the post-coup period

: Culture and the arts in Brazil were impacted directly by the military coup from 1964 onwards. In spite of repression and censorship, the activity of intellectuals and artists in the pre-1964 period was not interrupted nor became stagnant, but gained even greater force due to the presence of control and restrictions by the institutions of repression over against the freedom of creation and thought. As in many sectors of cultural production, literature vigorously combated the arbitrariness of the regime and implemented “projects of resistance” on the basis of key elements of representation. This occurred, for instance, through the writing and circulation of works such as Pessach: a travessia , by journalist Carlos Heitor Cony, and Quarup , by journalist Antonio Callado. The two novels enabled a broad debate on the narrative form and the scope of involvement in the literature of the 1960s, such as the confrontation between Paulo Francis and Ferreira Gullar in the pages of Revista Civilização Brasileira , which is the focus of this article.

Intellectuals, literature and the press in the post-coup period The military dictatorship in Brazil (1964Brazil ( -1985) ) was and is relevantly important in academic and scientific studies in the field of social sciences.This is particularly true today with the so-called National Truth Commission (Comissão Nacional da Verdade -CNV), which aims at bringing the issue of repression (censorship, torture and disappearance of "enemies of the State") into discussion again, as the topic gains in importance and presents new approaches as a result of the gradual opening of the records of the period of the dictatorship.Likewise, it shows the need of Brazilian society to revisit the recent past and retrace the paths, the opposition forces, the models of resistance and the players who were present to a greater or lesser degree in the struggle to redemocratize the country.
As regards the cultural production of that period, there were many initiatives of resistance and of articulation of the so-called "cultural hegemony of the left" (Schwarz, 1978, p. 61-92).An example of this were the publishers located mainly in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which created editorial lines dealing with the rise of a public debate on the directions that were being taken by national life.Among those publishers, Civilização Brasileira, in its most intense production cycle (from 1965 to 1968), underwent a number of conflicts that had to do with the process of welcoming the intellectuals who had been dispersed both by the post 1964 military repression and by the shock wave of revisions among the left throughout the 1960s2 .And within this process of welcoming them back, other issues emerged as central in the configuration of the debates among the different cultural formations of the left and also enabled the dissemination of a set of topics regarding these formations in the market environment (Czajka, 2010, p. 95-117).In other words, the representation and visibility of the "groups" of intellectuals -here represented in the complexity and heterogeneity of their opinions, convictions and projects by the concept of cultural formation -were connected to an ambivalent character 3 .In order to realize a collective project and overcome the individuality inherent in their work, the intellectuals had to propose -and there were many attempts -forms of articulation that, in turn, were consolidated in the sphere of culture at the time when the latter was taking on industrial and market-oriented traits in the mid-1960s (Ortiz, 1988, p. 113-181).
In other words, engagement, cultural resistance, cultural terrorism, cultural hegemony of the left, among other related categories, emerged in the public space of debates insofar as they gradually became visible to a public that attended to this vocabulary rehearsed among the cultural formations, especially those of the left.And in the case of a publisher or a cultural journal -as was the Revista Civilização Brasileira and many others that appeared and strengthened a language of resistance based on the intense circulation of material (product) for political and ideological instruction (Czajka, 2010, p. 95-117) -, the commercial aspect is even more visible.Civilização Brasileira, more than simply a publishing house for resistance or opposition, was a company that became similar to others working in this field, except that it dedicated itself to preserving an identity that, among other factors, was commercial.When he appropriated the symbols of resistance, Ênio Silveira (editor and owner of this publishing house) bet on transforming them also into an identity that could be recognized on the shelves of the book trade.
Obviously there is no demerit in the activity of a publisher or a publishing house when they sponsor a vocabulary and ideology of the left through the medium of books as a form of merchandise.One should also note that, besides the titles that made the publishing house famous for its cultural resistance to the military regime, it edited and published other strictly commercial works in parallel, in response to the demands of an entertainment market which did not necessarily require the reader's political involvement.
Thus, it is counterproductive to consider the cultural resistances invented in the course of the cultural productions and, specifically, in the emerging editorial market beginning in the 1960s outside of the context of circulation of these ideas of resistance, namely, the market.It can be found that the process of building a consumer market for culture, in turn, also reduced these distances between the intellectuals themselves and their publics.Civilização Brasileira and publishers in general represented, in the history of intellectual life in Brazil in the second half of the 20 th century, a kind of synthesis-institution, since on the one hand they are based on the level of technical evolution of the cultural production sector and on the other they reflect the conditions of the culture-consuming public, possibly more clearly than the institutions that are in some way connected to the State (Vieira, 1998, p. 128).
Ênio Silveira, who had a solid training acquired in the editorial branch, was not only a skilled bookseller, but also a skillful manager of his business.From the time he decided to invest in the business, he did so aggressively, both in terms of the product and of production.In other words, he worked with market assumptions, with cost analysis, return on production besides a significant investment in publicity.In brief, Civilização Brasileira became a benchmark in the publishing market also due to the ways in which it took part in the process of emergence of the cultural industry in Brazil, and this participation was characterized by the vision of a daring editor who knew how to invest and deal with the range of options that were then available to publish and sale the works (in Hallewell, 1985, p. 431-514).As Luiz Renato Vieira writes, by creating a space to disseminate works and authors, Editora Civilização Brasileira participates actively in the disputes of the intellectual field.Working in a semantic field that was already established in general, the publishing house, particularly in its initiatives such as the RCB [Revista Civilização Brasileira], contributes to legitimizing authors and works that fit its political perspective (Vieira, 1998, p. 149).This is in accordance with the assumption that the articulation of intellectuals in the sphere of culture was favored by the disputes among them, rendered visible by the publications coordinated by Ênio Silveira and circulated by Civilização Brasileira.The editor himself always underscored this major role of the publishing house in providing the public with translations of foreign literature and presenting new Brazilian authors who could contribute in some way to the Brazilian cultural scene.
The construction of the individual visibility of an intellectual, particularly as regards the aspect of editorial production, necessarily involved the insertion of their work into the process of circulation of goods in the consumer space, which was characterized in the "bookshelves full of Marxism", as Roberto Schwarz (1978, p. 61-92) put it.This process in turn also implied constructing a focus on the relevance of these works and themes, and not on others -a construction that was also the responsibility of the publicity instruments which highlighted certain works and authors to the detriment of others.
It is, thus, this conjunction of factors inherent in the production of books and cultural journals that, for instance, allows me to understand the case of Carlos Heitor Cony (already discussed previously) and Antonio Callado and the publication of their respective works in 1967: Pessach, a travessia and Quarup.The two works are significant, as already detailed by Renato Franco (1998), above all in the way both of them conceived and narrated the crises of the novel-form and the identities of their protagonists: Paulo Simões, in the novel Pessach: a travessia, and Father Nando, in the novel Quarup.In the case of Father Nando, after a number of preparatory rituals and initiation, the character is led to construct the figure of Levindo, a guerrilla fighter who, together with Manoel Tropeiro, leaves for the backlands of Brazil intending to promote a popular revolution -a clear reference to the intentions of Francisco Julião's Peasant Leagues in the countryside of Pernambuco.
In the case of Paulo Simões, he was in the opposite position of Father Nando.While the latter lives the story almost exclusively in the rural universe, Simões is the typical representation of the urban petit-bourgeois intellectual writer; concerned only with his position in the literary group, he keeps thinking about his individual dilemmas, which are only solved when he, like Father Nando, decides to become involved in the revolutionary action of taking up arms against the dictatorship.As Franco describes it, these two novels appear to have a close affinity with the cultural and political atmosphere of the period and in this way with non-literary works, such as Glauber Rocha's film Terra em Transe, also from 1967.What they have in common, besides the issue of involvement and the narration of the origin of the armed struggle, is a certain way of seeing cultural life as no longer likely because of both the modernization of cultural production itself and the repressive impositions adopted by the military.Involvement in these cases is to a certain degree ambiguous: on the one hand it expresses the birth, in the field of art and culture, of a virile feeling of opposition to the dictatorship and, in this way, the hope of helping to decimate it; on the other, it expresses the mistrust of cultural producers regarding the modernization of their activities and, therefore, of their viability in the future, which led to exchanging culture for political activity (Franco, 1998, p. 56).
The launch of the two novels also received great attention in the Revista Civilização Brasileira.In the first semester of 1967, soon after the swearing in of Marshal Costa e Silva, who replaced Castelo Branco as President of the Republic, issue nr.13 of the RCB (published in May of that year) had an article by Paulo Francis in which he analyzed Pessach: a travessia, by Cony.Francis, recalling the literary and ideological career of the novelist, emphasized that "the Brazilian intellectual became somewhat important after April 1, 1964 ....He was one of the rare elite forces who did not give in to militarism" (Francis, 1967, Intellectuals, literature and the press in the post-coup period p. 182), and, in this case, Cony was one of these intellectuals who from early on had his literary image associated with the resistance against the military coup, since, as Francis goes on to say, "it was during this period that Cony entered the arena with the strength of a Miura bull".
Paulo Francis was also known for the polemicizing way in which he interpreted the actions of the left of those days.A friend of Ênio Silveira, Francis' position was one of identification with the Trotskyists, who, in turn, had political and ideological differences with the PCB [Brazilian Communist Party] (Francis, 1967, p. 180-181).
In Francis' view, there are other implications regarding the plot and the central character describing "the personality of the left-wing intellectual" that show the impasses and dilemmas experienced by this intellectual.

Francis continues:
Faced with the revolutionary solution that is proposed to him ... the protagonist expresses a skeptical boredom, based not only on reasons of temperament, but also on disbelief in the feasibility of the action schemes among the local left.The protagonist of Pessach: a travessia enters the guerrilla.At no time does he give up his critical doubt regarding the movement leaders or about the result of the movement.But he gains new life, individually ...He is not an ideologue, who can believe in Canaans.For him it is sufficient to have a feeling of rebellion.He spoke in general terms, which Cony converts into a personal choice, without illusions about any kind of Messianism.The novel is supported by this paradox.... The author used the ethos of the left as a metaphor of underdevelopment, of our cultural dissatisfaction, which extends to the individuality of each person (Francis, 1967, p. 180-181).
Paulo Francis' reading of Pessach: a travessia is interesting to observe from the perspective of the intellectual conflicts that existed between the cultural formations of the left.Although Francis was not a militant, his intervention reveals symptomatically the way in which the tensions and disputes that were part of the sphere of influence of intellectuals of that time evolved.And, in the case of Cony, the weight of individuality is still more evident, since he projects himself (represents himself ) into the descriptions of his character Paulo Simões -traces of a writing that acclaims itself and its author in the claim to independence, to the autonomy of the individual vis-à-vis the ideologies that are at stake within the political groups.
Antipodal to this perspective, also highlighted on the pages of Revista Civilização Brasileira, was the publication of an article by Ferreira Gullar under the title of Quarup ou ensaio da deseducação para brasileiro virar gente.Although Callado's perspective or the reading of Gullar expressed in this article evoke the "concrete facts", through the weight of their realism -which in some way is also claimed for the novel of Cony by Francis -there is a dispute between representations in the sense of revealing the conditions and problems faced by the intellectuals who were directly or indirectly engaged and committed to changes of the Brazilian reality in the 1960s.It is for this purpose that Gullar argued in his article that Quarup was "such a significant work that approaching it as a style or genre is to only lightly touch its surface" (Gullar, 1967, p. 251).
Gullar's review of Quarup, differently from the positions taken by Francis on referring to Pessach: a travessia, attempts to give a voice to the survey Callado develops in his novel about the faces of political engagement, in a process that Gullar himself called in his article de-alienation of man or "reintegration of the Brazilian intellectual" in the search for a centrality.In fact this is the primary thesis sustained by Gullar in discussing Callado's novel: in Father Nando one finds the trajectory of intellectuals seeking centrality -lost due to political disputes or military repression -needed to form a project of identity for the Brazilian nation.According to Gullar, it may be discussed whether the only path to the reintegration of Brazilian intellectuals is that finally taken by Father Nando and even whether the best way of fighting oppression is the one he joins.The essential aspect is the claim, implicit in the novel, that one must "dis-educate oneself ", get rid of the idealistic views that are foreign to national reality, in order to be able to find oneself.The characters in this book are people, with their dreams, their frustrations, their need for personal fulfillment.But, within the world defined by the novel, fulfillment leads to the collective.This is not about effacing oneself in the mass, but understanding that our destiny is linked to it, to finding a "center" (Gullar, 1967, p. 256).
Another point to be observed in this passage of Gullar's article is the way he sees the "need for personal fulfillment", i.e. the individuality of the person who turns to the collective search for transformations.This problem, so dear to artists and intellectuals immersed in the contradictions inherent in their commercial insertion in a market of cultural goods, above all through the aspect of involvement and construction of an imaginary of resistance fostered by the consumption of left-wing ideas, also appears in the analysis of Callado's novel by Gullar.However, this dilemma is solved insofar as these problems are seen as moments of a transition that points to a new configuration of national reality.Since the novel, according to Gullar, evokes the abandonment of illusions and appeals to the proposition of realism and the concreteness of facts (concreteness different from that claimed by Francis), this same concreteness will give the directions and meaning to obtain or at least outline the centrality claimed by Callado.According to Gullar,

Quarup is a realist novel. It is certainly a new realism that results from Callado's intention to trace a panel of national reality from the "center" of the country rather than from its industrialized periphery. It is a realist novel because the action of the characters is developed within an objective social and historical framework and is modified by concrete factors. It is not, however, a realism that only verifies life as it is, but, as Checov wanted, asks about life as it should be. And it asks within the specific framework of Brazil's cultural reality.
That is why this is, certainly, a Brazilian novel, an autonomous creation of our culture -a legitimate fruit of the secular anthropophagic process of our formation (Gullar, 1967, p. 257-258).
The two readings, considered in the specific context in which they were forged and confronted, at the same time reveal the particularity of this juncture of debates on the prospects of national reality and the gestation of new views that would provide guidance to the next generations of authors, critics and intellectuals.These "essays" promoted in a publication like Revista Civilização Brasileira in a way also helped consolidate a public that was encountering new cultural problems, as the military regime hardened the repression and the cultural industry sophisticated and diversified the circulation of its products.
The inclusion of new topics, the emergence of new clashes and the public visibility of the intellectual disputes increasingly intensified and left the isolation of the groups and cultural formations that generated them.This means, for instance, in the words of Luiz Renato Vieira, that the Brazilian artist, writer and intellectual from different fields have in the public in general a broad space for acclaim which is not incompatible with their claims to connection to the "higher" forms of culture, as long as they can convert them into an object for consumption that can be digested by the less intellectualized social strata.Anyhow, this development of a new language appropriate to the emerging means presents itself as an imperative of the very process of the already mentioned growth of a cultural mass market (Vieira, 1998, p. 137).
In this sense, it is important to observe that the ambivalence already mentioned previously as an assumption to understand this same insertion of intellectuals into the market is present in the works produced by them, in their memoirs, testimonies, autobiographical records, etc.And this ambivalence is represented not only by the impressions of each of the intellectuals at the time of that insertion, but also by the way in which these memories and impressions constituted an ethos of a period and a weltanschauung of those experiences -factors which were, for instance, essential to form the market of publications in the 1970s on the memory of the ex-militants (in Silva, 2006).
This memory in a way constituted many narratives about other important events, as in the case of the student movement.Among them, a fact marked the arduous process of student resistance which had been slowly organizing since the advent of the military coup in 1964.The death of the student Edson Luis, on March 28, 1968, during an invasion of the Calabouço student restaurant (Rio de Janeiro) by the police led to strong resistance to the military regime by the students.The student rebellions were also analyzed in Revista Civilização Brasileira, which in its issue nr.19-20 published an ensemble of articles on the demonstrations in Brazil and abroad.
In this issue, which circulated between May and August 1968, i.e. after the revolutionary events in Paris, 24 Intellectuals, literature and the press in the post-coup period articles were published, 12 of which contained an analysis of the students rebellions.However, shortly before this, in September 1967, Leandro Konder had published an article on the subject of intellectuals and youth that made an anticipatory assessment of the events which would be confirmed a few months later.The article, under the title A rebeldia, os intelectuais e a juventude, published in issue nr.15 of Revista Civilização Brasileira, began with a direct finding, even if this was obvious to that generation: Nowadays it is generally acknowledged that the significant artistic production of our century was done in opposition to society.... The apologists for the status quo are increasingly rare and unimportant.Malaise and the spirit of denial are general.And, more than at any other time ..., culture is currently under the sign of rebellion (Konder, 1967, p. 135).
Striking in Konder's article is the way in which he tried to account for the political dimensions of rebelliousness and revolutionary action.He takes into account the phenomenon of the participation of students in the political debate and the role of intellectuals in supplying the instruments needed for this struggle, so that young people could perform conscious resistance through their action, and not simply stagnate permanently in the stage of rebellion, which, according to Konder, was in no way politically legitimate.As he himself claims continuing his argumentation, rebelliousness "as a human individual affirmation, as a claim to individual responsibility, is a reaction against any human collective" (Konder, 1967, p. 136).
It is clear that Konder's intention was to stimulate the debate on the issue of collectivity, which at the same time raised the idea of a project and even centrality, already discussed, for instance, by Ferreira Gullar in a previously published article about Quarup, by Antonio Callado.His line of argumentation went in this direction also as a means of arguing that behavior that was only rebellious faced problems inherent in the broader social process.According to Konder, rebellious behavior either "goes deeper in a coherent manner (becomes revolutionary) or else loses its character, is diluted, becomes neutralized and is practically reduced to innocuousness".And about this need to articulate individualities in favor of a collective action of political organization, the author writes that when, however, the denial of constituted society goes deeper, when the rebel (perceiving the limitations of their individual action as an isolated individual) articulates with a social movement that is capable of, in practice, promoting the re-structuring of the prevailing order, the beneficiaries of this order mobilize their agents to fight them and possibly even put them in jail or do away with them (Konder, 1967, p. 137).
It is at this point that Konder discusses the social function of intellectuals -a concern that afflicted not only the author but the whole ensemble of left-wing intellectuals who were in a complex process of organizing the cultural formations of opposition and their insertion into a public space or into the market.In this case Konder was not concerned about this insertion, but rather with the way intellectuals were supposed to contribute to the guidance (as agents of a revolutionary avant-garde) of those who, in the second half of the 1960s, were promoting significant changes in the political and cultural structures of Brazilian society, namely the students. 4Konder went on to say that, in the consideration of the social evolution and human problems in general as cultural facts, i.e. in the consideration of the historical issues in their theoretically more elaborate aspect, the intellectuals have a social function that, under the conditions of modern life, is in principle as necessary as the work of the industrial proletariat (Konder, 1967, p. 139).
Based on the finding that the intellectuals do not have one single view of the world consolidated in a doctrinal manner (as an element of self-representation), they had the capacity to grasp coherently other views of the world that defined both the urban bourgeoisie and the proletariat, and even rural societies.By performing this exercise, according to Konder, the intellectuals might recognize the social contradictions that made up these views and propose orientations to solve various impasses resulting from these contradictions.If this exercise were not performed, the intellectuals would be simply fated to the rebellious behavior that only denies reality, because, by showing just lack of conformity, they are not able to suggest possibilities to overcome this romantic state.
It is precisely in presenting these arguments, in the discussion proposed in his article, that Konder cites another intellectual with whom he was always clashing in a close relationship: Paulo Francis.Further, Konder considered Francis' position above all based on the latter's reading of the novel Pessach: a travessia, by Carlos Heitor

Rodrigo Czajka
Cony -which in a way also became the object of analysis and critique by Konder in his article.Referring to Paulo Francis, he writes that "even in the more combative forms that can be taken on by rebelliousness -and apart from the subjective honorability of the rebellious intellectual -not rarely quite problematic elements of revolutionary efficacy survive in his positions" (Konder, 1967, p. 140).
It is known that Leandro Konder and Paulo Francis were always involved in ideological disagreements with each other.They were friends, but they kept up an intellectual dispute that, as Konder himself recalls, dated back to the newspaper called Reunião in 19655 .He described Francis as "a combative political writer of articles who has resolutely advocated progressive positions .... His pen has produced magnificent tirades against the dictatorship of Marshal Castelo Branco....However, sometimes the critic proposes unacceptable formulations" (ibid.).Further on, Konder reaches the central issue at stake when he discusses the relationship between rebelliousness, intellectuality and youth.Although he takes Carlos Heitor Cony himself as an object of analysis, Konder's intention is to take a position against the excessively enthusiastic reading of Pessach: a travessia made by Francis in the article published in Revista Civilização Brasileira, issue nr.13.He writes: Another example is the novelist Carlos Heitor Cony.When on April 1 st 1964 ..., the audacious articles published by Cony gave his name a historical dimension, they made him a symbol of lack of conformism of the intellectuals, the students, the workers, the Brazilian people in general.Until that time, Cony had been averse to political activity: he had published several bitter novels against the idiocy-causing structure of the bourgeois family, unmasking the hypocrisy and prejudices, but he had abstained from giving a sociopolitical character to his rejection of existing institutions.The struggle against the dictatorship of Castelo Branco changed Cony's life.After having engaged in the political struggle as a journalist, he decided to engage himself also as a novelist, and published the novel Pessach, a travessia (Konder, 1967, p. 140-141).
The way Konder describes Cony's affirmation process is obviously related to the political and ideological affirmation of the author of Pessach, a travessia within the sphere of the intellectual struggles in the 1960s (Napolitano, 2011).However, this affirmation, more than simply political and ideological -since Cony himself always said that he did not wish to maintain a party affiliation or become involved in political militancy -is of a nature involving marketing and advertising, because the works became part of a cycle of consumption which fed a demand for this type of attitude (that of the author involved in or concerned with the "national reality").In other words, the problem raised by Cony's works through the positions he took had to do with the way he managed to make use of -or how the editorial market, in turn, managed to capitalize on -the emergence of a vocabulary based on which the author acquired editorial, not ideological or political fame, since it was his public that made of him an author of resistance.
Despite the harsh words Konder addressed to Francis, and consequently to Cony, he ends the article showing that ... novelist Carlos Heitor Cony and critic Paulo Francis are fighters of the Brazilian culture, rebels worthy of our great sympathy and utmost respect.... My admiration and personal esteem for these intellectuals is by no means incompatible with my criticism of them; on the contrary, they require that I do so.... The important thing is that we hold a dialogue, that we try to enlighten each other.Under the conditions in which we live and work, within a society divided into classes and, moreover, exploited by imperialism, we intellectuals are caught in the web of all kinds of ideological mystifications.... We are obliged, because of the critical and self-critical deepening of our lack of conformity, to slowly achieve an understanding that is truly adequate to the needs of the historical process.... It is our job, as intellectuals, to try and communicate to the young [the students], as clearly as possible, the view of the world that can provide them with the most consequent revolutionary behavior (Konder, 1967, p. 144).
The issue of the students was present on the agenda for discussion by these intellectuals until December 1968, when the enactment of AI-5 led to new disarticulations of the left and of the oppositions.If before this there were already huge difficulties because of repression, after December 1968 the articulations aiming at opposing the military regime would be even further compromised.Not to mention that individual guarantees were suspended and many had to escape Brazil and seek political asylum in other countries.In the case of the publishing house Civilização Brasileira and, more specifically, Ênio Silveira, he remained in the country throughout the dictatorship.He was arrested at the end of 1968 and released only in January 1969.But the publishing house continued its activities under Ênio's management and, insofar as Intellectuals, literature and the press in the post-coup period possible, always tried to give a voice to an opposition that was already being made since before the coup in 1964.
In this sense, the publishing house was a great laboratory for new forms of opposition that would be transmuted throughout the 1970s.The incitation of the debates on the pages of Revista Civilização Brasileira, the publication of its innovative titles and its staunch editorial line promoted a great articulation of authors, critics, poets, film-makers, novelists, etc. throughout the 1960s.Its participation in the cultural and political scenario of the time occurred precisely because it promoted contact between different political and ideological tendencies and, in a way, implemented the purposes of a non-sectarian ecumenical forum for debates.
militants in the 1960s.And a point observed and highlighted by Francis regarding Pessach, a travessia was the way in which the individuality of the protagonist (Paulo Simões) determines how the plot is conducted.According to Francis, drawing in this way the profile of the left-wing intellectual who lived under a military dictatorship was a perspicacious move by Cony.