Diario las Américas Newspaper, February 17, 1957, Page 22

= nage — © = ¢D gorda: © a oad GILBERTO FREYRE houses — the latter even at that time more vertical and daring than the former, for the only steeples the Portuguese ventured to build in Brazil were on churches. Teles Junior, a nineteenth-cen- tury landscape painter, delighted in portraying Recife’s waters. Act- a Reprinted from AMERICAS. monthly magazine published by the Pam American Union in English, Spanish and Portu- guese. en Stretching out adong the coast, Recife seems to hide shily from the visitor behind a curtain of cocenut trees THE TRAVELER who arrives in Recife by boat or train is not wel- comed by a city openly inviting admiration or eagerly awaiting his search for the picturesque and the colorful. No other seaport in Bra- sil is less eager to go on exhibition for the tourist. If the visitor is com- ing from Rio or Bahia — frankly scenic, photogenic cities where every day seems a holiday, where churches are fatter than ours, where houses are crowded together like people trying to squeeze into a magazine photo, where hospitality is easy and sprawling — he may at first he disappointed with Re- cife: with Recife’s almost Moor- rish modesty, its shyness in hiding itself behind the coconut trees; with its angles, its skinny churches, its narrow buildings. It is a city without noticeable protrusions or telief; it stretches out, all om one level, among the banana trees that peep from bourgeois backyards and the mango, sapoti, and jaca trees farther out. A different, and much gayer, impression is gained by the air traveler, to whom Recife seems a little Iess coy. The big patches of green and blue waters alone are a feast for the eyes. But to none does the city surrender immediately; its greatest charm, in fact, is that it plays hard to get. It is a city that prefers sentimental courtship to ready admiration. It so happens, however, that few travelers have the leisure or the inclination for such long courtships. Many leave Recife with a single, monotonous impression of light, sun-drenched streets, of modern bridges, of a predominantly dark-skinned peo- ple. For those who come into the har- bor, the first sight is net Recife Proper but Olinda, the twin city, standing high on a bluff. Olinda was the seat of the first settle- ment,- established some thirteen ears earlier than Recife. Today is practically a suburb, though retains. tive inde- pendence. It is worth a trip (by atreetear or automobile) because of its historic interest amd. the su- perb view. Revife streets vary. in appear- ance, color, and smell. Sometimes they seem to belong to different towns: There are strictly Europ- ean streets, like Avenida Rio Bran- co; others, such as Estreita do Ro- sério at night, Beco do Cirigade, Beco do Marroquim, or Rua do Fogo, give the impression of being in the Orient; still others are like Lisbon streets, with their two-story houses, their balconies. Such a street is. Larga do Resério. Then Jand there are the silent streets, the of Senegal towns, Sections with straw huts — which, incidentally, are not as unhealthy as the grim, ugly slums where the European poor pile up. Recife’s huts get sun- light and air through their straw walls. Many, like those of Estrada de Motocolombé, are built by the water, on stilts. On Recife street corners you can still see the vendors, many of them country folk who bring their corn, their woodenware, their straw hats into town for sale. There are fat Negro women in starched dresses selling rag dolls and lace; others with little charcoal braziers frying fish, making tapioca or corn pud- ding, or brewing coffee; or the men with bird cages. All products of primitive simplicity, of Indian or African origin. Early in the morning the street vendors of fish, manioc, fruit, and chicken begin te announce their wares. The old Ne- gro who sells oysters comes along with a huge basket on his head, To these men the starlit sky is full of omens. They love the moon — net like romantics but like be- Jievers. They won’t cut wood for the raft or sticks for the hut dur- ing a full moon because: the wood would rot. They won’t peint at the moon for fear the finger would grow a wart. When a boy is born, they present him to the moon. They believe in Iemanja, queen of the sea. Recife, unlike Bahia, has no signs of religious sacrifices to the sea. But some of our people still worship the sea as they do all water and the stars. Nothing could be more natural in this city that seems to have been born of the waters. The two rivers that meet here divide it into islands; and the tide comes to people’s doors to help the poor so the wom- en can do their washing and chil- dren can bathe. One still sees primitive canoes coming downriver — almost as pri- Her crown, sword, and scepter proclaims this Recifense te be the Queen of the Carnival Dance known as. Maracata yelling: “Oysters! Freshly arriv- mitive as the Indians’ four hun- ed!” The breom and duster ven- dred years ago. Also barges, some dor makes speeches in a quivering fat, huge, coming from the plan- singsong like a Neapolitan’s: tations. leaded with sugar, weed, or “Here comes the broom-vendor! pineapples; others bringing bricks The broom-vendor is going by! The from the factories. Some have sen- broom-vendor is going away!” timental names like Your Mary, One thing * tourist must see a ein I prong ph ae is a jangada, the raft so simple mother, Going q that it eam only be made by those i yong pi neligron. Se people the anthropologists call cargo ra transferred to the heads primitive. The fishermen are dar- in the middle they sometimes go as aignity, independence, or cheer- far as Fernando de Noronha z fuluess. 4 , whole nights far from the land. They say that some- Recife is a city of painters, per- ually, he reinstated the tradition of using Recife as a theme in paint- ing, which dated back to the time when the Portuguese rural settle- ment became citified under the Dutch. Another Recife oldtimer was Emilio Cardoso Ayres, per- haps the best Brazilian cartoonist, particularly skilled at combining bright tropical colors — some- thing he learned in childhood, not so much from teachers as from the city’s luminous sunlight. Acclaim- ed in Paris, he made Recife’s name known among European artists. Nowadays we have others who are better known in Rio, in Sao Paulo, and abroad: Lula Cardoso Ayres, Francisco Brennand, and Aloisio Magalhaes. Lula Cardoso Ayres is Recife’s painter par excellence, just as Mario Mota is its poet, as Mario Sette was until recently its columnist, as Anibal Fernandes is its reporter, Benicio W. Dias its photographer, José Antonio Gon- salves de Melo its historian, Abe- Jardo Rodrigues its art-collector, and Abelardo da Hora its garden sculptor (His sculptures, which look like enlarged versions of ce- tamic folk art, can be seen among the old trees of Dois Irmaos Park.) Recifes has many good pen-and- ink artists. For example, Manoel Bandeira (not to be confused with the poet of the same name, also from Recife, who spells his first pame with a u), a master of exact- ness, but not without a sense of the poetic. He also paints water- colors, in which he has faithfully depicted some of Recife’s folklore and religious scenes, particularly its processions. As a matter of fact, typical Re- cife painters seem to have in- herited from Franz Post and the Duteh im general the tradition of exact strokes and colors, although the more impressionistic among them combine it with the revela- tion or suggestion of a truth to be found only in paintings that trans- eend purely descriptive realism. Even the photographers: in Re- eife reveal this. The photographs of Benicio W. Dias seem to show something “more real than the real,” as Jean Ceeteau has said. The same is. true of some of José Marfa Carneiro de Albuquerque’s Pictures, although he is maimly a master of typography and has turn- ed out some beautiful publications on the city. Other artists who have painted or drawn Recife subjects — the bridges across the Capiberi- be; old streets; ancient houses; churehes, convents, and forts of co- lonial days — are Mario Nunes, Reinaldo, Baltasar de Camara, Ele- zier Xavier, Murilo Lagreca, Tilde Canti (whose tiles are admirable), each in his own way: a follower of Teles Junior. The State Museum, where many of Teles Junior’s imtensely regional landscapes of Pernambuco and Re- life are found, is located in an old house in the Torre district. Re- al, Historical, and Geographic In- stitute of Permambuco one finds good oil portraits of old Pernam- buco personalities and of Brazil’s imperial family. . There is hardly a new building in the capital of Pernambuco State that might be called noteworthy from the standpoint of modern architecture adapted to environ. ment. The tourist of good taste must forgive Recife for its horrors ef the new architecture, for the city was for a long time the victim of mayors, state governors, and architects who were insensitive to the complexity of city-planning problems. Perhaps the worst of all is the socalled “monster” — the Institute of Edueation formerly { +e State Normal School, an old educa- tional center that pioneered re. forms adopted ‘throughout Brazil. This does not mean the city is completely devoid of healthy and Pleasant examples of modern ar- chiteeture. Several buildings len’ a so-called functional look te Recife, But they are out of harmony with the traditions and life of the city. One possible exception is the home of Aggeu Magalhaes’ widow in San- tana, planned by her architect son and decorated by another son, a painter. Our hotels, in particular, are weak architecturally. When the French city-planner Alfred Agache eame to northern Brazil in the twenties to build a hotel for Es- tacio Coimbra, them Governor of Pernambuco, he set out with a young Recife guide to look scien- tifically for the ideal site. He end- ed by accepting a suggestion made by the guide, and today there is a hotel there, ideally situated. But its architecture is far from ideal and not at all typical. Newer ho- tels, though relatively comfortable, seem equally defective; architect- urally, they do not belong in Re- cife. The really good hotel should combine the universal and the re- gional even more than the old cathedrals, private homes, school's, factories, or government buildings. The nice old churches that lend a noble air to Recife area subject for a separate article. Recife citi- zens are not attached to their chur- ches for devation alone, but also because of nostalgia for the sound of the bells calling the faithful to Mass or announcing a fire; because during times of distress they or their relatives prayed te Our Lady, made a vow, and received the fav- or; because they got married in the church, their childrem were christened there, and their belov- ed forebears are buried there. Some erities believe that ene of the worst examples of socalled modern chureh architecture is the Church of Our Lady of Fatima, apparently built by Europeans unfamiliar with the: town. Perhaps the best blending of ar- chitecture and landscape shows. up in the eity’s.old houses. Three or four are now schools, such as the becau: the quality of its cife’s Popular Arts Museum, ably Christian Ladies’ the Regina Coe- Sesunnasiins ah sige: o8 pint bent Nab Sacaiae be nal Sent, Catia aheetearanive ot Sepiaiale Wy the vallector Abelar- Hi, the American Baptist, and the thieves raft in two. The fishermen sail by them than of musicians, sculptors, do. Rodrigues, contains ceramic figu Joaquim Nabuco Institute for So- dark and narrow, humble and : or architects. In the seventeenth rines, many of them painted, that cial Research — a splendid two- falling to pieces the stars, by the church steeples of century the Dutchman Franz Post are authentic examples of un- story house with excellent tiles, of Joaquim Cardoro's poem. Cer- Recife, by the coconut trees on the painted Recife’s water and trees, sophisticated art. Among the relics tein sections, however, remind. one beach. marble, and wood work. There. are its original Portuguese and Dutch in the Museum of the Archeologie- few remaming examples of the tall, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1987 |