Figurations of the Negra in Gonçalves Crespo and Caetano da Costa Alegre

Robert Patrick Newcomb

Abstract

This paper analyzes two poems, by Gonçalves Crespo and Caetano da Costa Alegre, both entitled “A negra,” and dating from 1882 and 1884. My comparison focuses on the writers’ revindications of the figure of the negra. Drawing on Alfredo Bosi’s understanding of historically-situated, “resistant” literary texts, I argue that the poems show their writers grappling with—and partially subverting—poetic conventions that were hostile to the affirmation of the beauty and dignity of African and Afro-diasporic women, particularly in comparison to the figure of the loira, a commonplace of nineteenth-century Portuguese poetry. The poems pushed the boundaries of what could be said concerning race and beauty in late-nineteenth-century Portuguese verse, while respecting certain conventions so as to be formally and conceptually “legible.” I contend that we should understand these poems in terms of Bosi’s ideology/ counter-ideology dyad, as exercises in ideological and poetic negotiation rather than examples of uncritical conformity, or of a radicalism that, per Bosi, would have been unavailable to these writers.

Resumo

Neste trabalho são analisados dois poemas, de Gonçalves Crespo (1882) e Caetano da Costa Alegre (1884), os dois intitulados “A negra” e tendo como tema comum a reivindicação da mulher negra. Basando-me teoricamente da expo-sição de Alfredo Bosi do texto literário, historicamente contextualizado, como “resistente,” observo que os poetas resistem—e subvertem parcialmente—convenções poéticas que negam a beleza e a dignidade da mulher africana ou afro-diaspórica, comparada particularmente com a figura da loira, lugar- comum da poesia portuguesa do século XIX. Os poemas chegam aos limites de o que podia ser expressado sobre a raça e a beleza na poesia portuguesa do fim do século XIX, mas também respeitam certas convenções para garantir que sejam formalmente e conceptualmente “legíveis.” Assim os dois poemas devem ser entendidos, a meu ver, nem como exemplos de um conformismo acrítico, nem de um radicalismo que, para Bosi, seria anacrônico, senão à luz da oposição bosiana entre a ideologia e a contra-ideologia, e como exercícios de negociação ideológica e poética.

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