Volume 11

Alfredo Bosi

Alfredo Bosi (1936-2021) who passed away during the Corona virus pandemic, needs no introduction in Brazil, where he has been known as one of the most important literary critics and intellectuals. However, differently from Antonio Candido, another great Brazilian critic, Alfredo Bosi’s work has never had the penetration in the United States it deserved. For this reason, his grateful students, Hélio de Seixas Guimarães and myself, decided to offer the readers of the Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies, a sample in translations of some of his illuminating work. Not an easy task, since it is difficult to reproduce in English Bosi’s elegant and concise prose, the rigor with which he used language and his inimitable style.

My personal homage to him will be humble, to reflect and honor Bosi’s personal modesty and kindness. How else can we remember a master of language who could capture a packed room of eager students, all silently engrossed, quietly listening to and enraptured by Bosi’s words? In his generosity, he seemed to be speaking to each one of us. Only those who approached him after class, or in one of his ever crowded, public lectures, would notice, with astonishment, that the page was blank. There was nothing written there!

The words flowed from him reminding me of how a medieval architect would sketch a Gothic cathedral out of a blank page. And his words were architecture; word after word, he would build before us an edifice of fluid and elegant lines. The public would leave his lectures with the impression they knew as much as the lecturer. Such clarity and purpose, such crystal-clear explanations, and our imagination would fly from Gramsci back to a colonial writer, from Leopardi to hermeneutics, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Machado de Assis and so much beyond. Naturally, this illusion of knowledge melted as soon as Bosi finished his talk, but not the instilled desire to learn more, to become like him.

As an undergraduate, I would wait for one of my brothers to pick me up after class. He would be coming from the Music Department at the same University of São Paulo. in a quiet spot beside the Amphitheater; usually late. Alfredo Bosi would also come to the same place to wait for his wife, Ecléa Bosi a professor too. It was often the two of us waiting alone in that spot. We would invariably greet each other, despite my shyness. I would observe him coming and panic, thinking of what I could say to him, or ask. Perhaps the recommendation of some book? Sometimes I would just like to disappear, aware of my green knowledge and little experience.

In one of those days, I saw him arriving. He was always carrying books. As he approached the place I was waiting for my brother, Bosi was deeply in thought and did not notice me. He proceeded instead, to turn in circles, two or three times, on the grass, fully engrossed by some persistent thought, it seemed. Once out of that labyrinth, perhaps the doubt solved, he started walking straight to the place he used to wait for his wife, unaware of what he had just done.

I wondered what could have caused such peripatetic circularity, after all, it was I who should be meditating in circles over that grass, since he had had me in class, with his reading and analysis of the poetry of the 16th century Jesuit, José de Anchieta, one of the earliest poets in Brazil. I detested him, seeing in his poetry a naif religiosity, tinged with my suspicion of his theatrical tricks, aimed at the conversion of the Tupi and Guarani who inhabited the plateau where the Jesuits founded their mission in 1554, and which became São Paulo city. I could see no reason to find anything remotely interesting in that poetry. Bosi made me rethink. There was something illuminating in Bosi’s reading of the poems, something I had to grant existed, despite everything else.

As the days of waiting to be picked up went by, we would often talk about our common Italian heritage. Shyly I tried to avoid talking of literature, but Italian literature was, after all, a common passion. Not that he would ever criticize me for some eccentric view but I strongly felt then, that he was far more interested in the person who was talking to him. He was deeply interested in the personhood of each student he interacted with. A devoted catholic, which in Brazil is not contradictory with being an admirer and a scholar of Gramsci like he was, as well as an active supporter of the theology of liberation, a widespread Catholic view in Brazil, Bosi practiced a committed Agapé towards everybody he came into contact

I noticed in one of those waiting days, while we talked, that he was wearing socks of different colors: one brown, to go with his brown suit – he was always wearing brown suits, and in winter some brown tweed jacket – the other one was dark, perhaps navy or black. As usual, he was utterly unaware of it.

His fine humor, delivered with a smile, had a tinge of the ironic, but was never caustic. Later, when I taught at the French Department at the University of São Paulo, I, now at Graduate school, was talking to some of my previous undergraduate colleagues who were still trying to finish their courses The generosity of a public, pay-free institution is such, that undergraduates can take many years to complete their credits. Bosi approached us and greeted them with the quip: “ah, you belong to the archeological layers of this University!”

Another aspect of his personality was revealed to me when I had the rare occasion to see him in a faculty general meeting. Our departments were separate, so we never met. But in those rare meetings, usually to decide about some arbitrary measure coming from the administration, his interventions were polite, clear and frank, and often in opposition to the general group think in such political occasions. This was another invaluable lesson I had from him. It reinforced in me the value of defending one’s own positions, one’s own ethical compass regardless of any received opinion.

Now, as I recall these moments, all I have learnt from him comes to me in a rush. I can’t properly find words.

It was always more than “Literature” or “History” or “Philosophy”. It went above and beyond. It was the man himself and the way he lived his life that I also learnt from him.

With all the sadness surrounding the manner of his death, and the void he left in us all, I feel deep gratitude for all he taught me and all he represented to me. Last time I saw him in São Paulo, he was fragile, suffering from a deep depression after the death of his beloved wife. He spoke to a huge room full of people, as usual, and asked Hélio to draw on the blackboard the hermeneutic circle. I was glad I was there to tell him how much I owed him, how much I wanted to thank him for everything I had learnt from him, and to promise him I would go on passing what I had learnt from him to the next generation, if they are willing to listen.

That was Alfredo Bosi for me.

Élide Valarini Oliver

Guest Editors

Hélio de Seixas Guimarães

Professor

Universidade de São Paulo

hsg@usp.br

Pedro Meira Monteiro

Professor

Princeton University

pmeira@princeton.edu

Editor

Élide Valarini Oliver
Professor of Brazilian and Comparative Literature
Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies
UC Santa Barbara
elideoliver@spanport.ucsb.edu