Bruno Tolentino
Encyclopedia
Bruno Lúcio de Carvalho Tolentino (12 November 1940 - 27 June 2007) was a Brazil
ian poet and intellectual, known for his militant opposition towards Brazilian modernism
, his advocacy of traditional forms and subjects in poetry, his loathing of popular culture
and concrete poetry
, his self-parading as a "member of the Brazilian patriciate" and as one of the most important and influential intellectuals of his generation.
, Tolentino moved to Europe when he was 24 - something he later claimed to have done on the invitation of the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti
- at the advent of the Military Regime
in Brazil. This European stay would last some thirty years. Amongst what he claimed to be his many important relationships in the European cultural scene was the English poet W. H. Auden
- although Auden, in the 1960s,had long left England and was living in the USA. Tolentino was co-editor of the magazine Oxford Poetry Now, whose title was inspired by W. H. Auden
's entirely distinct 1920s magazine Oxford Poetry
. All four issues of Oxford Poetry Now had James Lindesay as chief-editor. Tolentino contributed to all four issues, and supported the magazine financially.
By his own account, while in England
, Bruno Tolentino lectured in literature at the universities of Bristol, Essex
and Oxford, until his conviction for drug smuggling in 1987. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison, but, in the event, served only thirteen months, which he spent at Dartmoor
. During this time he organized language and literature classes for the prisoners entitled "Seminars of Drama and Literature".
While in Europe, he published two books: Le Vrai Le Vain in 1971 and About the Hunt in 1978. Though published in France by La Part du Feu, an offprint of the magazine Actuels, Le Vrai Le Vain is absent from the Bibliothèque nationale de France
integrated catalogue (as of 30th June, 2010) and perhaps the only library catalogue in which it appears is that of the Albert Sloman Library of the University of Essex. This is a bilingual volume with Portuguese on the left-hand page and French on the right-hand page. Similarly, although published in England, About the Hunt failed to receive a copyright and the work is absent from the British Library
integrated catalogue as of June 17. 2010, although it is present in the Oxford OLIS online catalogue. According to Tolentino's later accounts, both books were acclaimed by European critics, including Ungaretti and Auden, as well as Yves Bonnefoy
, Saint-John Perse
and Jean Starobinski
.
's daughter, as well as René Char
's and Rainer Maria Rilke
's granddaughters, as well as about his being acquainted during his childhood with the most pre-eminent contemporary Brazilian men of letters in his family's salon. According to an obituary written by literary scholar Chris Miller, Tolentino was a character "stranger than fiction", and his claims about literary friendships were at least partially true (e.g. his friendship to Yves Bonnefroy); however, according to the same scholar, Tolentino's exaggerations made it very difficult to tell truth from fiction.
In an scathing account published in a history of Brazilian literature shortly before Tolentino's death, his fellow-poet Alexei Bueno charged Toelntino with having faked his entire biography from the earliest date, beginning with "his manor house and his English private female tutors": according to Bueno, Tolentino had been born "amid the most banal middle-class milieu from the neighbourhood of Tijuca
, as the child of a military man, and had spent his teens in small appartments in the same neighbourhood and in Niterói
". According also to Bueno, during 1957, when still in Brazil, Tolentino had been involved in a case of plagiarism
, having published a book of poetry whose title and poems were taken from others. His later self-attributed resounding intellectual feats abroad, as well as his alleged connections with European literary figures, were, according to the same Bueno, simply a hoax, as "in order to have lived all happenings he publicly boasted of, [Tolentino] should have lived nearly three hundred years". Bueno, however, eventually downplayed what he saw as his mythomania by comparing him to the eminent filmmaker Mário Peixoto
- who had put in circulation a bogus complimentary article on his work by Eisenstein - as well as acknowledging Tolentino's talent as a satirical poet.
Others critics have expressed similar doubts about the reality of Tolentino's biographical claims, such as being advised to write in English by Samuel Beckett
, given the quality of his writing in Portuguese. Some, such as the poet and critic Ivan Junqueira, do not consider the issues mentioned above as real cases of plagiarism and hoaxing in
Tolentino's career, highlighting instead his mastery of the art of pastiching
the classics.
in 1993, Tolentino published a series of books, collecting material produced over many years, which he considered to be the culmination of his poetic work. They are As Horas de Katharina (1971–1993), whose subject matter was loosely inspired on the life and message of Anne Catherine Emmerich
, O Mundo Com Idéia (1959–1999), and A Imitação do Amanhecer (1979–2004), all winners of the Jabuti Prize for Brazilian literature. O Mundo Como Idéia is regarded as his most important literary work, developing the core of his ideas about literature. This work also won him the Senador José Ermínio de Moraes Prize, the first occasion on which this prize was awarded to a poet.
In his late phase, Tolentino adopted an activist stance in defense of traditional meters and subjects, and it was as such that he clashed with the concrete
poet Augusto de Campos
. In an article published in 3 September 1994 issue of Folha de S. Paulo
, he criticised what he considered to be Campos' poor translation of the poem Praise for an Urn by Hart Crane
, describing Campos as "prepotent and vain", "a delirious authoritarian", and a "vetuste poetic inspector". Campos issued a rejoinder published in O Estado de São Paulo, describing Tolentino as an "upstart", and his alternative translation of Crane's poem as "limping on every feet and stuffed with poor rhyming, flaccid and adipose". This opinion was shared by Alexei Bueno, who, although just as opposed to non-traditional poetic forms as Tolentino, nevertheless considered that
Nevertheless, Tolentino continued in his activism in defence of what he saw as high culture. Shortly after the quarrel with Augusto de Campos, in an interview to Veja
magazine, he criticised Campos' friend, the composer Caetano Veloso
, considering the teaching of his work in schools as a sign of the destruction of Brazilian culture.
Tolentino's last works include A Balada do Cárcere, published in 1996, a literary account of his experiences in Dartmoor prison.; the preceding year, he had published Os Deuses de Hoje, inspired by an experience in prison during the military dictatorship, although it is widely agreed that he left Brazil in or before 1964. Late in his life, he also came to be regarded as a cult figure by a circle of right wing admirers, mostly for his passéist stance in both poetry and politics, expressed in a rejection of the present for the sake of an ultramontane
Catholicism.
and had already overcome a cancer
in the early 2000s, died aged 66, from multiple organ failure at the Emílio Ribas Hospital in São Paulo
on the 27th of June, 2007.
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian poet and intellectual, known for his militant opposition towards Brazilian modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, his advocacy of traditional forms and subjects in poetry, his loathing of popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
and concrete poetry
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
, his self-parading as a "member of the Brazilian patriciate" and as one of the most important and influential intellectuals of his generation.
Work in Europe
Born in Rio de JaneiroRio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, Tolentino moved to Europe when he was 24 - something he later claimed to have done on the invitation of the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti
Giuseppe Ungaretti was an Italian modernist poet, journalist, essayist, critic and academic. A leading representative of the experimental trend known as Ermetismo , he was one of the most prominent contributors to 20th century Italian literature. Influenced by symbolism, he was briefly aligned...
- at the advent of the Military Regime
Military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....
in Brazil. This European stay would last some thirty years. Amongst what he claimed to be his many important relationships in the European cultural scene was the English poet W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
- although Auden, in the 1960s,had long left England and was living in the USA. Tolentino was co-editor of the magazine Oxford Poetry Now, whose title was inspired by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
's entirely distinct 1920s magazine Oxford Poetry
Oxford Poetry
Oxford Poetry is a literary magazine based in Oxford, England. It is currently edited by Hamid Khanbhai and Thomas A Richards.Founded in 1910 by Basil Blackwell, its editors have included Dorothy L...
. All four issues of Oxford Poetry Now had James Lindesay as chief-editor. Tolentino contributed to all four issues, and supported the magazine financially.
By his own account, while in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Bruno Tolentino lectured in literature at the universities of Bristol, Essex
University of Essex
The University of Essex is a British campus university whose original and largest campus is near the town of Colchester, England. Established in 1963 and receiving its Royal Charter in 1965...
and Oxford, until his conviction for drug smuggling in 1987. He was sentenced to eleven years in prison, but, in the event, served only thirteen months, which he spent at Dartmoor
Dartmoor (HM Prison)
HM Prison Dartmoor is a Category C men's prison, located in Princetown, high on Dartmoor in the English county of Devon. Its high granite walls dominate this area of the moor...
. During this time he organized language and literature classes for the prisoners entitled "Seminars of Drama and Literature".
While in Europe, he published two books: Le Vrai Le Vain in 1971 and About the Hunt in 1978. Though published in France by La Part du Feu, an offprint of the magazine Actuels, Le Vrai Le Vain is absent from the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
integrated catalogue (as of 30th June, 2010) and perhaps the only library catalogue in which it appears is that of the Albert Sloman Library of the University of Essex. This is a bilingual volume with Portuguese on the left-hand page and French on the right-hand page. Similarly, although published in England, About the Hunt failed to receive a copyright and the work is absent from the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
integrated catalogue as of June 17. 2010, although it is present in the Oxford OLIS online catalogue. According to Tolentino's later accounts, both books were acclaimed by European critics, including Ungaretti and Auden, as well as Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....
, Saint-John Perse
Saint-John Perse
Saint-John Perse was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.-Biography:Alexis Leger was...
and Jean Starobinski
Jean Starobinski
Jean Starobinski is a Swiss literary critic.-Biography:Jean Starobinski studied classical literature, and then medicine at the University of Geneva, and graduated from that school with a doctorate in letters and in medicine...
.
Controversies
Tolentino was an expert at self-mythologizing. Late in life multiple stories (of uncertain origin) about his life abounded, as claims that he had married Bertrand RussellBertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
's daughter, as well as René Char
René Char
René Char was a 20th century French poet.-Biography:Char was born in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Vaucluse department of France, the youngest of four children of Emile Char and Marie-Therese Rouget, where his father was mayor and managing director of the Vaucluse plasterworks...
's and Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke , better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most significant poets in the German language...
's granddaughters, as well as about his being acquainted during his childhood with the most pre-eminent contemporary Brazilian men of letters in his family's salon. According to an obituary written by literary scholar Chris Miller, Tolentino was a character "stranger than fiction", and his claims about literary friendships were at least partially true (e.g. his friendship to Yves Bonnefroy); however, according to the same scholar, Tolentino's exaggerations made it very difficult to tell truth from fiction.
In an scathing account published in a history of Brazilian literature shortly before Tolentino's death, his fellow-poet Alexei Bueno charged Toelntino with having faked his entire biography from the earliest date, beginning with "his manor house and his English private female tutors": according to Bueno, Tolentino had been born "amid the most banal middle-class milieu from the neighbourhood of Tijuca
Tijuca
Tijuca is a neighbourhood of the Northern Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It comprises the region of Saens Peña and Afonso Pena squares. According to the 2000 Census, the district has close to 150,000 inhabitants...
, as the child of a military man, and had spent his teens in small appartments in the same neighbourhood and in Niterói
Niterói
Niterói is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeast region of Brazil. It has an estimated population of 487,327 inhabitants and an area of ², being the sixth most populous city in the state and the highest Human Development Index. Integrates the Metropolitan Region of Rio de...
". According also to Bueno, during 1957, when still in Brazil, Tolentino had been involved in a case of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
, having published a book of poetry whose title and poems were taken from others. His later self-attributed resounding intellectual feats abroad, as well as his alleged connections with European literary figures, were, according to the same Bueno, simply a hoax, as "in order to have lived all happenings he publicly boasted of, [Tolentino] should have lived nearly three hundred years". Bueno, however, eventually downplayed what he saw as his mythomania by comparing him to the eminent filmmaker Mário Peixoto
Mario Peixoto
Mário Rodrigues Breves Peixoto was mainly known for his first and only film Limite, a silent experimental film filmed in 1930 and premiered in Rio de Janeiro on 17 May 1931. Peixoto wrote, directed and took up a minor role in the film...
- who had put in circulation a bogus complimentary article on his work by Eisenstein - as well as acknowledging Tolentino's talent as a satirical poet.
Others critics have expressed similar doubts about the reality of Tolentino's biographical claims, such as being advised to write in English by Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, given the quality of his writing in Portuguese. Some, such as the poet and critic Ivan Junqueira, do not consider the issues mentioned above as real cases of plagiarism and hoaxing in
Tolentino's career, highlighting instead his mastery of the art of pastiching
Pastiche
A pastiche is a literary or other artistic genre or technique that is a "hodge-podge" or imitation. The word is also a linguistic term used to describe an early stage in the development of a pidgin language.-Hodge-podge:...
the classics.
Return to Brazil
After returning to BrazilBrazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in 1993, Tolentino published a series of books, collecting material produced over many years, which he considered to be the culmination of his poetic work. They are As Horas de Katharina (1971–1993), whose subject matter was loosely inspired on the life and message of Anne Catherine Emmerich
Anne Catherine Emmerich
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich was a Roman Catholic Augustinian nun, stigmatic, mystic, visionary and ecstatic....
, O Mundo Com Idéia (1959–1999), and A Imitação do Amanhecer (1979–2004), all winners of the Jabuti Prize for Brazilian literature. O Mundo Como Idéia is regarded as his most important literary work, developing the core of his ideas about literature. This work also won him the Senador José Ermínio de Moraes Prize, the first occasion on which this prize was awarded to a poet.
In his late phase, Tolentino adopted an activist stance in defense of traditional meters and subjects, and it was as such that he clashed with the concrete
Concrete poetry
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on....
poet Augusto de Campos
Augusto de Campos
Augusto de Campos is a Brazilian writer who was a founder of the Concrete poetry movement in Brazil. He is also a translator, music critic and visual artist....
. In an article published in 3 September 1994 issue of Folha de S. Paulo
Folha de S. Paulo
Folha de S. Paulo, known simply as Folha , is a Brazilian daily newspaper founded and continuously published in São Paulo since 19 February 1921. Owned by the Frias de Oliveira family since 1962, it has Brazil's largest circulation since 1986. Alongside O Globo and O Estado de S...
, he criticised what he considered to be Campos' poor translation of the poem Praise for an Urn by Hart Crane
Hart Crane
-Career:Throughout the early 1920s, small but well-respected literary magazines published some of Crane’s lyrics, gaining him, among the avant-garde, a respect that White Buildings , his first volume, ratified and strengthened...
, describing Campos as "prepotent and vain", "a delirious authoritarian", and a "vetuste poetic inspector". Campos issued a rejoinder published in O Estado de São Paulo, describing Tolentino as an "upstart", and his alternative translation of Crane's poem as "limping on every feet and stuffed with poor rhyming, flaccid and adipose". This opinion was shared by Alexei Bueno, who, although just as opposed to non-traditional poetic forms as Tolentino, nevertheless considered that
- "All of Tolentino's poetry is [...] ruled by an addiction to enjambement, therefore he has written poems almost wholly without end-stoppingEnd-stoppingAn end-stopped line is a feature in poetry in which the syntactic unit corresponds in length to the line. Its opposite is enjambment, where the sense runs on into the next line. According to A. C...
. This kind of enjambement-powered barrel-organ, monotone to the extreme, cuts through all of his work [...] Occasionally, amid this boring and obsessive graphomany - a kind of funfair music - there are some great lyrical moments, which, however, are not enough to rescue the general emptiness of the whole.".
Nevertheless, Tolentino continued in his activism in defence of what he saw as high culture. Shortly after the quarrel with Augusto de Campos, in an interview to Veja
Veja
Veja may refer to:*Veja Diena, a Latvian festival*Veja , a Brazilian weekly newsmagazine*Veja, a village in Stăniţa Commune, Neamţ County, Romania*Veja Sneakers, a brand of fair trade sneakers...
magazine, he criticised Campos' friend, the composer Caetano Veloso
Caetano Veloso
Caetano Emanuel Viana Teles Veloso , better known as Caetano Veloso, is a Brazilian composer, singer, guitarist, writer, and political activist. Veloso first became known for his participation in the Brazilian musical movement Tropicalismo which encompassed theatre, poetry and music in the 1960s,...
, considering the teaching of his work in schools as a sign of the destruction of Brazilian culture.
Tolentino's last works include A Balada do Cárcere, published in 1996, a literary account of his experiences in Dartmoor prison.; the preceding year, he had published Os Deuses de Hoje, inspired by an experience in prison during the military dictatorship, although it is widely agreed that he left Brazil in or before 1964. Late in his life, he also came to be regarded as a cult figure by a circle of right wing admirers, mostly for his passéist stance in both poetry and politics, expressed in a rejection of the present for the sake of an ultramontane
Ultramontanism
Ultramontanism is a religious philosophy within the Roman Catholic community that places strong emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the Pope...
Catholicism.
Death
Bruno, who was a victim of AIDSAIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
and had already overcome a cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
in the early 2000s, died aged 66, from multiple organ failure at the Emílio Ribas Hospital in São Paulo
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...
on the 27th of June, 2007.