Leide Daiane de Almeida
Oliveira
Mestranda em
inglês: Estudos Linguísticos e Literários (UFSC)
ABSTRACT: This essay aims
to analyze and compare the trajectory of two great Canadian writers: Elizabeth
Bishop and PK Page. Both had the opportunity to live in Brazil and relate their
experiences through their respective literary productions. The corpus of this
essay consists of poems written by Bishop while living in Brazil, some describe
the exuberant nature found in this country and others point to social
inequalities; and the diary of PK Page, in which her strongest impressions on
Brazil were registered.
KEYWORDS: Elizabeth Bishop, PK Page, poetry.
RESUMO:
Este ensaio tem por objetivo analisar e comparar a trajetória de duas grandes
escritoras canadenses: Elizabeth Bishop e P.K. Page. Ambas tiveram a
oportunidade de morar no Brasil e relatar suas experiências através de suas
respectivas produções literárias. O corpus deste ensaio é composto por poemas
escrito por Bishop quando morava no Brasil, alguns descrevem a natureza
exuberante encontrada neste país e outros apontam para as desigualdades sociais;
e o diário de P.K Page, no qual suas mais fortes impressiones sobre o Brasil
foram registradas.
PALAVRAS CHAVES: Elizabeth
Bishop, P.K. Page, poesia.
It seems inevitable to get some familiarization with
the work of Elizabeth Bishop and P.K Page without being tempted by the desire
of comparison. For many reasons such desire is comprehensible: they were both Canadian
writers, they were born in the same decade, and each one stayed during a long
period in Brazil. Along their stay in Brazil some changes have taken place in
their literary production. In Bishop’s poetry it can be perceived a kind of
movement in relation to theme, once the first material for her poetry was
mostly related to nature and its dazzling beauty. What seems to happen to her
poetry, as she starts having experiences in Brazil is a more profound engagement
with some social problems. P.K. Page, on the other hand, did not write poetry
in Brazil, nevertheless, she wrote a journal about her experiences in the
tropical country. It is interesting to perceive her fascination regarding
nature and how she perceives the social life of this country. By means of this
brief introduction commonalities between both poets’ trajectories can be
perceived. Thus, the aim of this writing is to compare both writers’
trajectories focusing mainly on the period they lived in Brazil.
A Brief Analysis of Bishop’s Trajectory
Elizabeth Bishop was born in Massachusetts in 1911.
She had a hard childhood. She lost her father when she was eleven months old
and after such loss her mother suffered of a sort of mental illness and had to
be isolated and treated in an asylum. After these events her grandparents took
her to Nova Scotia and years later her paternal family won her custody and she
returned to Massachusetts. She did not feel happy there, so she was sent to
live with her mother’s sister. Just with this little portrait of her childhood it
is possible to imagine how tough this period might have been for her. During
her adulthood she was able to travel and live in many different places, including
Brazil. When she decided to take a trip to South America she had the intention
to stay just a couple of months in Brazil. However, she ended up living fifteen
years in this country. It is precisely her literary production in Brazil that
will be the basis for comparison with the trajectory of P.K Page’s production
also in Brazil.
Bishop’s first poem about Brazil is “Arrival at
Santos”. In this poem written in 1952, the reader is able to perceive her first
impression about the country. The poem is quite descriptive in relation to the
landscape but in a tone that demonstrates a little frustration, it seems that
she expected more of such country; perhaps her expectation was based on what
she had read about Brazil. She starts the poem like this: “Here is a coast;
here is a harbor/ here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery.”
Besides being descriptive, the repetition of the word “here” appears to convey
the sense of disappointment with the landscape. In the sequence of the poem she
reports some more details of her first day in Brazil and then she finishes it
with these two last sentences: “We leave Santos at once/we are driving to the
interior”. After such first impression, in the subsequent poems she seems touched
by the beauty of nature in Brazil.
Bishop writes a couple of poems that demonstrates her
delight at seeing so much natural beauty. Among those poems “January 1, 1502”
and “Questions of Travel” deserve special highlight. In “January 1, 1502”,
Bishop manages to rebuild what was seen by the Portuguese when they first
arrived in Brazil: “Januaries, Nature greets our eyes/exactly as she must have
greeted theirs”. Bishop envisions how nature
must have been seen by the colonizer because she shares with the latter the
fact of being a foreigner. In this poem she attempts to represent nature in a
very colorful and vibrant way by using different combinations of colors: “blue,
blue-green, and olive”, “in silver-gray relief”, “purple, yellow, two yellows,
pink”, “rust red and greenish white”. This enchantment with nature can also be
seen in “Questions of Travel”.
In “Question of Travel”, which is also to some extent related
to nature, Bishop starts by pointing out what she has concluded based on
observations: “There are too many waterfalls here/ the crowded streams hurry
too rapidly down to the sea”, then she dedicates the rest of the long stanza to
talk about such subject. In the second stanza, however, she brings an entirely
different subject; she inquiries about the validity of traveling. She makes use
of several questions such as: “Should we have stayed at home and thought of
here?”, “Where should we be today?”, “Oh, must we dream our dreams and have
them, too?” In the following stanza she worships nature as a way to justify the
importance of traveling and getting in touch with the diversity and exuberance
of nature: “But surely it would have been a pity/ not to have seen the trees along
this road/really exaggerated in their beauty/not to have seen them gesturing/like
noble pantomimists, robed in pink”. And by using many other beautiful images
extracted from nature, she justifies the importance of traveling.
After some acquaintance with the social reality of
Brazil, Bishop cannot avoid talking about it. Thus, there is a change in the subject
of her poetry about Brazil. It seems a sort of movement from the beauty of
nature to the ugliness of social inequality. Among the poems that tackle such
subject, “the Burglar of Babylon” and “Pink Dog” deserve special consideration
because they go straight to the point regarding social issues. In “The Burglar of
Babylon” she shows a cruel portrait of the poor people who live in the slums: “On
the fair green hills of Rio/There grows a fearful stain:/The poor who come to
Rio/And can't go home again”. Bishop became aware of a sad reality of Brazil in
relation to migration. She probably heard about the number of people that, in
an attempt to get away from a variety of problem in other regions of Brazil,
migrated to cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. “The Burglar of Babylon” is a long poem that
depicts the saga of Micuçu, a burglar that tries to escape from the persecution
of the police. In this poem, Bishop contrasts the reality of the poor and the
rich people. The latter seem not to be affected by the tragic reality; they
seem amused with the persecution: “Rich people in apartments/Watched through
binoculars/As long as the daylight lasted/And all night, under the stars.”
In “Pink Dog” Bishop talks about a dog she sees on the
streets in Rio de Janeiro. She uses the image of the dog as a metaphor to
introduce her criticism towards some social problems. After describing the
bright day and talking about the dog, she brings a strong stanza to the poem: “Didn't
you know? It's been in all the papers/to solve this problem, how they deal with
beggars? /they take and throw them in the tidal rivers”. In this stanza Bishop
brings a devastating image of social inequality in Brazil, the poor people,
especially the beggars who, in most of the cases live on the streets, are
treated like garbage. They were discarded as soon as some authorities get tired
of seeing them. The way Bishop continues the poem shows that she seems
bewildered by the manner in which certain things happened in Brazil. Maybe she
was not able to understand how such things were possible and yet, people were
ready to party. The change in the subject of her poetry after staying some time
in Brazil demonstrates that she was an engaged poet and that much of her
trajectory as a writer was forged when she was living in Brazil.
Considerations on P. K. Page’s trajectory
P. K. page was born in England but she moved to Canada
when she was very young. Her parents moved a few times but that fact did not
seem to disturb her. Apparently she had a happy childhood, with a lot of
encouragement from her parents in relation to the importance of literature and
arts as a whole. Along her carrier she has written a lot. Page has a prolific
work with more than thirty books published about a variety of genres: poetry,
fiction, essays, child’s book, among others. She was also a script writer and a
visual artist. Her work as a visual artist is part of the permanent collection
of the National Gallery of Canada.
In 1956 P. K. Page moved to Brazil with her husband
who was an ambassador at the time. During the two years she stayed in the country,
she did not write poetry. Nevertheless, she wrote a diary in which she was able
to depict her impressions about Brazil. Page, as well as Bishop, also wrote
about the enchantment of nature. On February 18th she wrote:
In the garden one tree has four great sprays of tree
orchids growing from it —white with purple centres. Another, a yellow orchid
with a rust centre; still another, an indescribable flower of bright cerise
with cerulean blue tips on its large heather-shaped flowers. I wish I knew how to
describe the vegetation, or indeed, how to paint it. It is so excessive. Every
tree puts forth some flower in clumps or sprays or showers of yellow, purple,
pink, white or red — and almost every trunk bears orchids. Nature doesn't seem
to know how to control itself! (PAGE, 1987, p.42)
She seems
overwhelmed by so many colors and shapes that she says she wishes she could be
able to represent that in the most accurate manner. It was the exuberance of nature in Brazil that
inspired her to make her career take off as a visual artist. Maybe she thought
that words were not enough to describe such beauty. Nature seems to greet Page’s
eyes, exactly as she must have greeted Bishop’s. Nature is present throughout
the journal, even when she is talking about other subjects; there is always a
note or a detail about nature that Page thought it was important to mention.
Here is another example of her determination to describe the beauty of nature.
Trees: in the garden there are varieties of what the
Australians would call Rain Trees — with composite finely fretted leaves and
clusters of flowers — pink, red, white or yellow. There are numerous palms —
one with a pointed blade-like leaf and a massive tower of white blossoms; one
like a feather duster which throws its old leaves down — feathers shed from a
giant bird ((PAGE, 1987, p. 45).
Page also tacked
subjects that involved social issues. Perhaps not as an intentional way of
denouncing them by that time, but at least she gave her impression on a variety
of matters. Her foreign eyes were able to see and report what, at times, she
considered peculiar. On March 6th, she writes about Carnival in her
Brazilian Journal. The way she starts talking about it makes it less appealing: “All of Rio is sleeping off the orgy of Carnaval.
Nothing now but hangovers, fatigue and hospitals and prisons bulging” (44). The
outcome of the party seems to call her attention more than the party itself.
She also discusses about the differences between the ways the rich and the poor
people enjoy that party. “For the rich there were a series of balls, all fancy
dress — a ball a night, we are told” (44).She also adds that: “Many thousands
of cruzeiros are spent on costumes and the dancing goes on all night” (44). It
is hard not to perceive a certain irony when she remarks the amount of money that
the rich people spend in such party. She also talks about the poor people: “For
the poor in the favelas this is the event of their year. Months in advance they
join 'samba schools' and practise night after night” (44). Page was aware of
many details related to the organization of that popular party and in her
journal she describes what she sees during the days of the party.
In another date
of the journal, in April 1st she writes about some assumptions she
had about the Brazilian people. She writes: “In a country which, to us, seems
to place small value on life, there is a difference of only one letter between
to live — morrar, and to die — morrer. So far I have been unable to find any
expression for how funny — perhaps because the Brazilian finds everything funny”
(47). When she says that Brazilian people seem to place small value on life,
she probably drew that conclusion from a series of observations. A hypothesis
that can be raised is that she must have read about many crimes for “trivial”
reasons as well as heard about others nearer to her. When she says that Brazilian
people find everything funny, it is probably due to the cheerfulness that is
very characteristic of Brazil. It is interesting to perceive how a culture can
be seen through the eyes of a foreigner. By the foreigner’s gaze, sociocultural
issues, that may be taken for granted by native’s eyes, can become evident,
enabling the building of more criticism about those issues.
Among the
variety of things she reports in her journal the next one is curious and
amusing. It is possible to perceive that by that time, the stereotype of the
“malandro” had already been constructed.
I am reading Yeats's letters. He complains that George
Eliot had morals but no religion and that if she only had had a bit more
religion she would have had less morality. He writes too of his dislike of
reasonable people whose brains suck all the blood from their hearts. And how he
disliked moralists with neither spirit nor imagination enough for a good lie.
How he would have loved Brazilians and how, indeed, do I! (PAGE, 1987, p.51)
In this excerpt,
besides one more assumption about the Brazilian people, she also shows her
affection. P. K. Page was touched by the cheerfulness and by the “Brazilian
way” to face and see life. Of course she was also critic in relation to a
number of things. The reports about violence that she constantly heard and the
issues related to social inequalities were probably a sort of cultural shock
she had to learn how to deal with and about which she constantly referred in
her journal.
Final
Remarks
After a brief
description of both Elisabeth Bishop and P.K. Page’s trajectory, it was
possible to notice some similarities with regard to the way they saw Brazil.
Both wrote a lot about the enchantments of nature and both seemed, to some
extent, affected by the social problems in Brazil. Bishop dedicated many of her
poems to discuss such issues. P. K. Page also wrote about such matters,
nevertheless, she tended to see many things in Brazil as exotic; consequently, regarding
some topics P.K. Page was mainly in the position of an observer.
Cynthia Messenger
in her article about Bishop and Page comes out with a good conclusion in
relation to the inevitable desire to compare both poets. She says that even if
they are very different poets “(Page's "ceruleans" are fundamentally
incompatible with Bishop's "two yellows"), they surely have this much
in common: Brazil confronted them with the inadequacies of language, requiring
them both to respond by re-visioning their art” (Messenger, p.115). The changes
that took place in their art during the period they stayed in Brazil, resulted
in their legacy, a sort of gift to Brazil for its hospitality.
References
ALMEIDA, Sandra Regina Goulart. The
Politics and Poetics of Travel: The
Brazil of Elizabeth Bishop and P. K. Page. Ilha do Desterro 40 (2009):105-116.
BISHOP, Elizabeth. Poems. Classic poetry series. PoemHanter.com. 2004.
MESSENGER, Cynthia.
But How Do You Write A Chagall?'
Ekphrasis and the Brazilian Poetry of P.K. Page and Elizabeth Bishop.
[s.a.]
PAGE, P. K. Brazilian
Journal. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987.
