Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage

in Raízes do Brasil
Alfredo Cesar Melo

The essay Raízes do Brasil [Roots of Brazil] (1936), the best-known and most
discussed work of the historian and essayist Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, is
regarded by many critics as a bitter criticism of the patterns of sociability
produced by the Portuguese legacy in Brazil. The lack of a distinction
between public and private; the weakness of the public sector; an exaggerated
individualism; and a disrespect for any kind of formality: these — the book is
said to have argued — represent a barrier to the formation of a modern society,
one in which democracy is a consolidated practice, instead of being just a
regrettable error.
It may be said that this interpretation of the essay was crystalized by Antonio
Candido, in his famous preface to the 1969 edition of Raízes do Brasil, and later
echoed by other critics of varying ideological shades. Candido’s preface plays a
central role in the destiny of such criticism, since it was at once recognized as
the most important study of Sérgio Buarque’s output.1 Candido takes it as given
that Buarque launches his criticism of cordialidade [cordiality]2 from a Liberal-
Democratic stance, suggesting that his analysis is centred on the following
narrative: from its point of departure as an archaic and property-owning society,
Brazil would turn gradually, with the advent of industrialization and an inflow of
migrants, into a more modern and Liberal society. According to Candido:
Em plena voga das componentes lusas avaliadas sentimentalmente, [Sérgio
Buarque] percebeu o sentido moderno da evolução brasileira, mostrando que
ela se processaria conforme uma perda crescente de características ibéricas,
em benefício dos rumos abertos pela civilização urbana e cosmopolita,

1
Francisco Iglesias, ‘Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, historiador’, in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda:
3º Colóquio UERJ (Rio de Janeiro: Imago Editora, 1992), p. 23; Walnice Galvão, ‘Presença da
literatura na obra de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’, in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda: Perspectivas,
ed. by Pedro Meira Monteiro and João Kennedy Eugênio (Campinas: Editora Unicamp, 2008),
p. 124.
2
Sérgio Buarque uses this apparently familiar term in a very unusual way, since he draws
on the etymology of the word (‘cordial’ comes from the Latin cor, cordis, the heart) to indicate
that the ‘cordial’ man is one who acts from the heart (whether with kindness or violence),
without the barrier of a normative public space to contain the emotional volubility of his
action. In this article I aim to demonstrate that within the internal framework of Buarque’s
essay the concept of cordiality undergoes great semantic instability. On the history of this term
see also note 46.
Portuguese Studies vol. 27 no. 1 (2011), 78–95
© Modern Humanities Research Association 2011
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 79
expressa pelo Brasil do imigrante, que há três quartos de século vem
modificando as linhas tradicionais.3
[At the height of the fashion for the Lusitanian elements, evaluated
sentimentally, [Sérgio Buarque] grasped the modern direction of Brazilian
evolution, showing that it would develop with a progressive loss of Iberian
characteristics, in favour of paths open to an urban, cosmopolitan civilization,
expressed by the Brazil of immigration which for three-quarters of a century
has been modifying the traditional forms.]
In recent years some scholars have been questioning the representation of Sérgio
Buarque as a radical Liberal and Democrat who details the transition from an
Iberian past to a cosmopolitan modernity, centred on an immigrant São Paulo.
A careful reading of the different tones in Buarque’s essay would certainly
contradict the image of its author as a radical democrat. In this article, though, I
am more interested in bringing out the dissonance of voices and tones in Raízes
do Brasil than in systematically deconstructing the sanctified representation of
its author.4
It cannot be denied that criticism of cordiality — one of the strongest ‘Iberian
characteristics’ of the country, according to Candido — is one of the main
threads running through Raízes do Brasil. The complexity of the essay lies,
however, in the author’s uncertainty as to the ideological stance from which to
launch his criticism. One may, in the end, criticize the ethos of cordiality either
from the right or the left: either from a fascist viewpoint or from a socialist
or liberal one. There is a subtle tension in Buarque’s essay in his search for an
ideological foundation from which to make his criticism of Brazilian reality; a
tension which relates to the very ideological conflicts of the anxious years of the
1930s in Brazil, arising from the crisis of Liberalism and the rise of Fascism and
Socialism as models of social organization.
However, it would be reductionist to attribute the search for a more solid

3
Antonio Candido, ‘O significado de Raízes do Brasil’, in Raízes do Brasil, by Sérgio Buarque
de Holanda (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006), p. 249.
4
Throughout Raízes do Brasil, Sérgio Buarque shows himself to be a critic of Liberalism and
its ‘mythology’. In one particular passage, he criticizes the panacea of literacy as the cure for
all of Brazil’s evils. In the 1936 edition he declares that Liberalism ‘revelou-se entre nós antes
de tudo um destruidor de formas preexistentes do que um criador de novas’ [has shown itself
here to be above all a destroyer of pre-existing formations rather than a creator of new ones]
(p. 160). For the Sérgio Buarque of 1936, ‘o grande pecado do século passado foi justamente o
ter feito preceder o mundo das formas vivas do mundo das fórmulas e dos conceitos. Nesse
pecado é que se apoiam todas as revoluções modernas, quando pretendem fundar os seus
motivos em concepções abstratas como os famosos Direitos Humanos’ [the great sin of the
past century was precisely to have made the world of formulae and concepts take precedence
over the world of living formations. All modern revolutions base themselves on this sin, when
they try to base their aims on abstract conceptions such as the famous Human Rights] (p. 141).
See Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio, 1936).
I do not believe that Buarque is diminished by not being a radical democrat. It simply that it
is not a correct characterization.
80 Alfredo Cesar Melo
foundation for his criticism only to the ideological convulsions of the period.
It is possible to identify, in the internal architecture of the essay itself, where
the tension and the indecision as to the point of view to be adopted to critique
Brazilian social relations arise. It forms a second thread in Raízes do Brasil,
and has to do with the criticism of Bovarism amongst Brazilian intellectuals.5
Raízes do Brasil focuses much of its analysis on the history of the mentalities of
the educated Brazilian, claiming that Bovarism, so generally prevalent amongst
the social elite, positivists and legislators, was leading to a flight from Brazilian
reality and a ‘crença mágica no poder das idéias’ [magical belief in the power of
ideas].6 According to Sérgio Buarque, ‘[m]odelamos a norma de nossa conduta
entre os povos pela que seguem ou parecem seguir os países mais cultos, e então
nos envaidecemos da ótima companhia’ [we model the standard for our conduct
amongst the nations according to what is followed, or seems to be followed, by
the most cultured countries, and then we pride ourselves on keeping the best
company].7 By importing theories and laws from other countries, which had
different social make-ups, the Brazilians were eschewing their own mission to
understand the specificity of their own country.
The critique of Brazilian Bovarism was perhaps the greatest legacy of
Modernism as incorporated into Sérgio Buarque’s work. If the Modern Art Week
of 1922 aimed to achieve, according to Alfredo Bosi, ‘a abolição da República
Velha das Letras’ [the abolition of the Old Republic of Letters],8 Brazilian
Modernism, in its most active periods, was a movement against the Brazilian
Belle Époque and its chattering rhetoric. In the view of the Modernists, the
educated Brazilians of the Old Republic lived in a European hothouse, isolated
from the ways of expression and the culture of the people. It was against this
state of affairs that Mário de Andrade wrote the chapter ‘Carta pras Icamiabas’
[Letter to the Icamiabas] in his novel Macunaíma, in which he parodied the
pedantic style of the Brazilian elite; that Gilberto Freyre called into question the
flowery oratory of Rui Barbosa, employing ‘ciência e literatura moderna contra
juridicismo parnasiano’ [science and modern literature against Parnassian
legalism];9 and that Oswald de Andrade, by way of the poetic primitivism of his
Pau-Brasil, valued unfussy ways of communication, against the bureaucratic style

5
The term ‘Bovarism’, derived from Flaubert’s character, is used to indicate a tendency to
form an inflated and erroneous view of one’s social position, leading to ill-advised behaviour
and undesired consequences.
6
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil: edição comemorativa 70 anos (São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 2006), p. 195. From this point onwards, all quotations from Raízes do
Brasil will be taken from this edition.
7
Ibid, p. 195.
8
Alfredo Bosi, Céu, inferno: ensaios de crítica literária e ideológica (São Paulo: Editora 34,
2004), p. 210.
9
José Guilherme Merquior, As idéias e as formas (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1981), p.
271.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 81
10
(gabinetismo) of Brazilian culture. Sérgio Buarque’s criticism of the artificiality
of an alienated Brazilian elite, living by European codes of values and aspirations,
disconnected from the real needs of the nation, can only be properly understood
when one takes into account this wider Modernist frame of reference. I should
note by way of warning, however, that although he shares his point of departure
with intellectuals such as Gilberto Freyre or Oswald de Andrade in his criticism
of the Byzantine alienation of the Brazilian Belle Époque that is not to say that
their arguments converge in one point of arrival — as we shall see further on.
In the most complete study to date to characterize him ideologically, João
Kennedy Eugênio draws attention to elements of the Monarchist, the Modernist
and the Romantic in the young Sérgio Buarque. According to Eugênio, these
three vectors in Buarque’s thinking were linked together by an organicist tenor
in the young historian’s arguments. There would thus be a search for a horizon of
authenticity, which is necessarily linked to a critique of the imitation of foreign
cultures on the part of Brazilians.11 In this article, I shall analyse how Buarque,
using his rich historical imagination, finds in a certain Portuguese tradition —
that of the sixteenth century — the principal bearings for an organicist approach.
I do not mean by this that this valorization of Portuguese thought from the Age
of Discoveries represents any kind of ‘solution’ or programmatic conclusion to
Raízes do Brasil. What I shall demonstrate below is that praise for the Lusitanian
tradition is one of the ideological vectors of the essay, and should be considered
in combination with other tones of Buarque’s essay.

Ideological Indecision
The tension in Raízes do Brasil lies in the collision between the two lines of
argument already sketched out: how to critique Brazilian cordiality without
adopting a Bovarist ideological perspective. To critique the rural heritage in
Brazil through a Liberal, Fascist or Socialist optic would be one way to ‘ensaiar a
organização de nossa desordem segundo esquemas sábios e de virtude provada’
[endeavour to organize our disorder according to wise schemes of proven
virtue],12 which would, nevertheless, be out of step with ‘nosso próprio ritmo
espontâneo’ [our own spontaneous rhythm].13
In the course of the book Buarque attempts to show that Liberalism was a
regrettable error in Brazil, never going beyond a collision between personalities.
A similar judgement can be extended to a hypothetical founding of Fascism and
Socialism in the country. Buarque imagines how an ‘mussolinismo indígena’
[indigenous Mussolinism] or a socialist regime would look in Brazil. While
he would characterize Integralism as an accommodative doctrine, in harmony
10
Oswald de Andrade, Pau-Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 1970), p. 6.
11
João Kennedy Eugênio, ‘Um horizonte de autenticidade’, p. 430.
12
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 208.
13
Ibid, p. 208.
82 Alfredo Cesar Melo
with the patriarchal tradition of Brazilian politics, and hence inoffensive to the
powerful, Communism in the tropical world would ‘atrai[r] entre nós precisa­
mente aqueles que parecem menos aptos a realizar os princípios da Terceira
Internacional’ [attract precisely those among us who seem least suited to
achieving the principles of the Third International],14 since Brazilian Com­
munists would be seduced more by the ‘mentalidade anarquista’ [anarchist
mentality] than by the ‘disciplina rígida que Moscou reclama de seus partidários’
[rigid discipline that Moscow demands of its supporters].15
Liberalism, Fascism and Socialism would thus be taken as abstract ideological
formulations, incapable of coming to terms with ‘nosso mundo de essências mais
íntimas’ [the reality of our innermost essences],16 and so create only regrettable
errors. In point of fact, these ‘innermost essences’ make their appearance in
each of these ideological projects, whether in the individualism of Brazilian
Liberalism, in the anarchy of native Communism, or in the accommodative
spirit of local Fascism. These ideologies become distorted on Brazilian soil. Even
though such ‘wise schemes of proven virtue’ represent a major flight from reality,
the manifestations of Brazilian cordiality — which are at the centre of that reality
— emerge to show that, independently of ideologies, the ethos of cordiality,
as a constituent of what is taken to be the innermost essence of Brazilian life,
‘permanecerá sempre intato, irredutível e desdenhoso das invenções humanas’
[will always remain intact, irreducible and scornful of human inventions].17
It can be seen that the issue raised by Raízes do Brasil, even if taking quite a
different position, operates on the same terrain of debate as the Anthropophagy
of Oswald de Andrade and the concept of Brazilian plasticity, praised by
Gilberto Freyre in his book Casa-grande e senzala. Both Oswald and Freyre
distinguish, in the ‘corruption’ of European ideologies, a sign of emancipation,
since the deviation from the European norm implies an appropriation and
resignification of those same ideas. Oswald’s Anthropophagy swallows up alien
culture, digesting and retaining what is necessary to it.18 For its part, Portuguese
plasticity, celebrated by Freyre, de-ossifies rigid Germanic institutions, thus
softening social ideologies and practices.19 Their distance from Buarque’s
approach is evident. One does not find in Raízes do Brasil any celebration of
these ‘apropriações e ressignificações’ [appropriations and resignifications]
of European thought. What we do find in Sérgio Buarque’s first book is a
permanent dissatisfaction with a culture that has refused to create its own values
and decided to adopt ideological fantasies produced in other social contexts.

14
Ibid, p. 207.
15
Ibid, p. 207.
16
Ibid, p. 208.
17
Ibid, p. 209.
18
Oswald de Andrade,Autopia antropofágica (Porto Alegre: Editora Globo, 1994), p. 50.
19
Gilberto Freyre, Casa-grande & senzala: formação da família brasileira sob o regime de
economia patriarcal (Paris: Coleção Archivos/Alca XX, 2002), p. 35.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 83
When we think of the most contradictory and ambivalent texts in the canon
of Brazilian essays, the names of Euclides da Cunha and Gilberto Freyre come
immediately to mind. We remember the former, the ‘celto-tapuia’, oscillating
between a romanticization and a devaluing of the backwoods people, resorting
both to the scientific terminology of racial sociology and the poetic language of
the Greek and Roman tradition to come to grips with the object of his analysis. We
recall also the author of Casa-grande e senzala, and the endless tension between
the anthropologist follower of Franz Boas, critic of the systematic violence of
slavery, and the documenter of his social class, with his Proustian paeans to
the life the plantation owners. We can appreciate, in Os Sertões and in Casa-
grande, harrowing works, pushing the boundaries of their ideological aporias.
None of these judgements is customarily extended to the discreet, sober and
elegant prose of Sérgio Buarque. Nothing prevents us from noting, though, that
below the surface of a refined text, without great fluctuations in style, there are
lines of argument in permanent tension. Let us lay out the contradiction in
Raízes do Brasil once more: if a critique of cordiality should prove necessary, how
can one carry out that critique without resorting to off-the-peg ideologies —
which would mean falling into an intellectual Bovarism, as deserving of criticism
as cordiality itself? Because to adopt such ideologies to critique cordiality would
mean eliminating it by a simple intellectual and voluntaristic act, without the
organic mediation that would make that change necessary and in accordance
with the social situation in Brazil. The organicism in Buarque’s thought would,
in principle, prevent him from adopting those ideologies. However, the author
of Raízes do Brasil was not always able to avoid the Bovarism that he criticized
so much.

Archaeology of Absence, or Unavoidable Bovarism

It should be noted that this sort of ideological indecision was shot through with
inconsistencies and contradictions. For example, in declaring that the Brazilian
had little liking for religious rites, Sérgio Buarque comments: ‘Essa aversão ao
ritualismo conjuga-se mal — como é fácil de imaginar — com um sentimento
religioso verdadeiramente profundo e consciente’ [This aversion to rituals can
hardly be reconciled — as one can easily see — with a truly deep and sensitive
religious sentiment].20 His remark presupposes that the religiosity of the
Brazilian is shallow, to his detriment in comparison to some truly deep religious
sentiment that exists somewhere else. Sérgio Buarque draws on European
travellers, such as Auguste de Saint-Hilaire, to demonstrate the superficiality of
the Brazilian religious sentiment. It can be seen that the opposition established
of true vs. false, profound vs. superficial, has as its referent the opposition
Europe vs. Brazil. Buarque appears to be operating an ‘arqueologia da ausência’
[archaeology of absence] to criticize Brazilian society. According to João Cesar
20
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 164.
84 Alfredo Cesar Melo
de Castro Rocha, the archaeology of absence ‘consiste numa avaliação de
produções culturais que se baseia na identificação da ausência deste ou daquele
elemento, ao invés da análise dos fatores que efetivamente definem o produto
cultural estudado’ [consists of an evaluation of cultural productions based on
identifying an absence of this or that element, rather than on an analysis of
the factors that in practice define the cultural product under examination].21
The informality of Brazilian Catholicism is analysed by Sérgio Buarque by
what it is not — a deep feeling of religiosity — instead of being analysed by its
effective elements.
This same archaeology of absence seems to be employed in the analysis that
Buarque makes of the fetish for the law in Brazilian social life, a fetish said to
be indissociable from the Bovarism of the nation’s intellectuals and politicians.
There was, it was said, a belief that if the Brazilians were to apply similar laws
to those of the developed world, their society, once governed by those norms,
would necessarily match the rhythm of progress inspired by the legislation. To
demonstrate the weakness of this wishful thinking, Buarque draws a contrast
with English society:
No que nos distinguimos dos ingleses, por exemplo, que não tendo uma
constituição escrita, regendo-se por um sistema de leis confuso e anacrônico,
revelam, contudo, uma capacidade de disciplina espontânea sem rival em
nenhum outro povo.22
[We distinguish ourselves in this from the English, for example, who, while
having no written constitution and governing themselves by a confused
and anachronistic system of laws, nevertheless demonstrate a capacity for
spontaneous discipline unmatched by any other people.]
The comparison is clear: despite their artificial laws, the Brazilians have no
intern­alized norms of conduct. The English, for their part, base themselves on
an archaic legal system, but incorporate a discipline as second nature. In another
passage, the author of Raízes do Brasil develops even further his hypothesis that
Brazilian disorder (informality, excessive spontaneity, aversion to formality,
cordiality) functions as an impediment to ‘a consolidação e estabilização de um
conjunto social e nacional’ [the consolidation and stabilization of social and
national coherence]:
Com a simples cordialidade não se criam os bons princípios. É necessário
algum elemento normativo sólido, inato na alma do povo, ou mesmo
implantado pela tirania, para que possa haver cristalização social. A tese de
que os expedientes tirânicos nada realizam de duradouro é apenas uma das
muitas ilusões da mitologia liberal, que a história está longe de confirmar.23

21
João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Literatura e cordialidade: o público e o privado na cultura
brasileira (Rio de Janeiro: EdUERJ, 1997), p. 79.
22
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 197.
23
Ibid, p. 205.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 85
[Sound principles are not created from cordiality alone. There needs to be
some solid normative element, innate in the soul of the people, or even imposed
by way of tyranny, so that there can be social crystallization. The thesis that
tyrannical expedients never produce anything lasting is just one of the many
illusions of liberal mythology, one far from confirmed by history.]
Let us forget for a moment the incoherence between the image of the radical
democrat and the defence, in this passage, of some virtues in tyranny. Let us
simply analyse the internal logic of the argument: according to Buarque, there
needs to exist some solid normative element in a culture for there to be social
crystallization. Such an element may be innate, or it may be imposed by tyranny.
Since the first case is inapplicable to the Brazilian situation, the disorder in the
country being so great, there remains the second possibility: imposition by
tyranny. What I want to highlight in this passage is the belief that a tyrant and
his regime could forge the character of a nation, as the result of an act of political
will. As we shall see later, this belief seems to go against everything that Buarque
had written on Brazilian culture.
For the reader familiar with the tradition of Brazilian social and cultural
thought, this search for the crystallization of an ethos and for social stability
seems to echo the discourse of Mário de Andrade in his denunciation of the
lack of a national character and his appeal to the young poet Carlos Drummond
de Andrade, and so many other intellectuals, to join him in helping to create
a soul for Brazil, since up to that moment it had not had one.24 Mário de
Andrade believed that engagement and will were the fundamental elements for
the construction of a national culture. The irony behind the similarity of these
discourses is that Sérgio Buarque had written an article, in 1926, entitled ‘O
lado oposto e outros lados’ [The Opposite Side and Other Sides], in which he
criticized the constructivist tendency displayed by Mário de Andrade and other
Modernists in wanting to forge a national culture in a voluntarist manner. The
young Sérgio Buarque declared that the art of national expression would be born
more from the indifference than the will of intellectuals, that is, Brazilian art
would emerge spontaneously. Furthermore, in his article Brazilian spontaneity
is defended, against the spirit of construction:
E insistem sobretudo nessa panacéia abominável da construção. Porque
para eles, por enquanto, nós nos agitamos no caos e nos comprazemos na
desordem. Desordem do quê? É indispensável essa pergunta, porquanto a
ordem perturbadora entre nós não é decerto, não pode ser a nossa ordem; há
de ser uma coisa fictícia, e estranha a nós, uma lei morta, que importamos,
senão do outro mundo, pelo menos do Velho Mundo [...] O erro deles está
nisso de quererem escamotear a nossa liberdade que é, por enquanto pelo

24
Mário de Andrade, Lição do amigo: cartas de Mário de Andrade a Carlos Drummond de
Andrade (Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio Editora, 1982), p. 25.
86 Alfredo Cesar Melo
menos, o que temos de mais considerável, em proveito de uma detestável
abstração inteiramente inoportuna e vazia de sentido.25
[And they insist above all on this abominable panacea of construction.
Because for them, meanwhile, we are wallowing in chaos and we delight
in disorder. Disorder of what? This question is indispensable, because the
disturbing order amongst us is certainly not, cannot be our order; it must
be something fictitious, and alien to us, a dead letter that we have imported,
if not from the other world, at least from the Old World. [...] Their error is
in their wishing to purloin our freedom which is, for the time being at least,
the most significant thing we have, for the sake of a detestable abstraction,
entirely inappropriate and without any meaning.]
If in his 1926 article Sérgio values ‘disorder’ as a sign of freedom — the most
significant thing that the Brazilians have — in his classic essay of 1936 there is
an obvious change of tone. A certain impatience on the part of Buarque with
the theme of cordiality (and similar terms like ‘disorder’ and ‘emotional life’) is
noticeable right through Raízes do Brasil. In some passages of his later essay, such
as the one analysed earlier, there is a desire similar to Mário de Andrade’s — even
if without his note of urgency and militancy — with the aim of overcoming the
chaotic state of Brazilian social relations and consolidating a more cohesive and
organized social structure. In doing so the ‘constructivist’ Sérgio Buarque has to
evoke other social practices so that Brazil can, in some way, see herself reflected
in them, as with the case of the English and their ‘spontaneous discipline’, or
of the normative element injected by tyranny. And in resorting to these ‘wise
schemes of proven virtue’ Sérgio Buarque, like a good educated Brazilian, may
be said to be falling into the Bovarism that he so harshly criticized.
At the end of Raízes do Brasil the impasse is not resolved. The contradiction
continues without any synthesis. Jacques Leenhardt declares that there is a
continuing sense of the author’s irritation and impotence in the face of the
problems he raises throughout the text, because he cannot resolve them
satisfactorily.26 As Pedro Meira Monteiro points out, Buarque’s essay has no
programmatic conclusion.27 Apparently there are no propositions that respond
adequately to that world in crisis.

25
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, O Espírito e a letra: estudos de crítica literária, 1920–1947 (São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996), p. 226.
26
Jacques Leenhardt, ‘Frente ao presente do passado: as raízes portuguesas do Brasil’, in
Um historiador nas fronteiras: o Brasil de Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, ed. by Sandra Jatahy
Pesavento (Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG, 2005), p. 83.
27
Pedro Meira Monteiro. ‘Uma tragédia familiar’, in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda: perspectivas,
ed. by Pedro Meira Monteiro and João Kennedy Eugênio (Campinas: Editora Unicamp, 2008),
p. 307.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 87

A Particular Portuguese Tradition

It is important to emphasize that the lack of a conclusion is characteristic of
the essay. Commenting on the genre, Leopoldo Waizbort declares that for the
readers of essays
não interessam tanto as conclusões a que um ensaio poderia levar ou que ele
poderia trazer, mas sim o processo, o desenrolar do pensamento, o espírito
que trabalha, em movimento, aventureiro.28
[it is not so much the conclusions that an essay can lead to or that it might
produce that are of concern, but rather the process, the exposition of the
thinking, the lively spirit that works boldly.]
Taking this into account, it is perhaps possible to understand some of the
suggestions for the path that should, in Sérgio Buarque’s view, be taken by
Brazil, which are not to be found in the famous chapter ‘Nossa Revolução’
[Our Revolution] — that is, at the end of the book — but in the middle. In fact,
one of the passages that most reveals Sérgio Buarque’s historical imagination
is to be found in the chapter ‘O semeador e o ladrilhador’ [The Sower and
the Bricklayer], above all in his admiration for a particular tradition from the
Portuguese sixteenth century. It is important to remember that the chapter did
not appear as such in the first edition of Raízes do Brasil and the long reflection
on Lusitanian realism only appeared in the second edition, of 1948. It is, then,
a reflection written not in the heat of the moment, during the ideological
disputes of the 1930s, but twelve years after the first edition. The revision of this
chapter, specifically, of Raízes do Brasil plays a central role in Sérgio Buarque’s
intellectual project, since it can be considered an embryonic reflection of his
masterpiece, Visão do paraíso, produced in 1958 as part of his application for
the chair of History of Brazilian Civilization at the University of São Paulo, and
published for the first time in 1959. According to Ronaldo Vainfas, his emphasis
on the imaginary and the discursive tendencies of historical agents makes both
Raízes do Brasil and Visão do paraíso forerunners in the history of mentalities
in Brazil.29 It is indicative that the point of intersection between these two most
significant works by Sérgio Buarque should be the realism of the Portuguese,
which indicates once again the importance of this theme in the organization of
his essay.
In the fourth chapter of Raízes do Brasil, Sérgio Buarque makes a distinction
between Spanish and Portuguese colonization. While the former may be defined
as the result of an ‘ato definido da vontade humana’ [definite act of human

28
Waizbort, As aventuras de Georg Simmel (São Paulo: Editora 34, 2000), p. 35.
Leopoldo
29
Ronaldo Vainfas, ‘História das mentalidades e história cultural’, in Domínios da história:
ensaios de teoria e metodolgia, ed. by Ciro Flamarion Cardoso (Rio de Janeiro: Campus,
1997).
88 Alfredo Cesar Melo
30
will], domesticating the harshness of the land and levelling the irregularities
of the landscape, the latter would be marked by a rather relaxed attitude and a
moulding to the territory to be occupied. While the Spaniard imposed himself
on the contours of the land, the Portuguese adapted himself to them. This
difference could be attributed to their very different mentalities: while the
Spaniard was caught up in the haze of his own imagination, the Portuguese
adapted himself to ‘vida como ela era’ [life as it was]. This Lusitanian realism is
openly praised in Raízes do Brasil, because it is seen as a realism
que renuncia a transfigurar a realidade por meio de imaginações delirantes
ou códigos e regras formais [...] Que aceita a vida, em suma, como a vida é,
sem cerimônias, sem ilusões, sem impaciências, sem malícia e, muitas vezes,
sem alegria.31
[that refrains from tranforming reality by way of delerious imaginings or
formal codes and rules [...] that, in short, accepts life as life is, without
ceremony, without illusions, without impatience, without malice, and, very
often, without joy.]
For Sérgio Buarque, the peak of Portuguese achievement was not the result
of heroic and impetuous actions, as is already suggested by the yearning tone
of ‘retrospecção melancólica de glórias extintas’ [melancholy retrospection
at extinct glories] in Camões’ Lusíadas.32 On the contrary, the Portuguese
expansion took place under the aegis of such values as experience, and an
attachment to routine. According to Buarque’s argument, the Portuguese
navigators differed noticeably from the ‘arroubo delirante de um Colombo’
[delirious rapture of the likes of Columbus].33 Vasco da Gama, imbued with
‘um bom senso atento a minudências e uma razão cautelosa e pedestre’ [good
sense, attentive to detail, and a cautious and pedestrian judgement],34 achieved
his journey over seas already known, and when he needed to cross the Indian
Ocean, he did so with the help of experienced pilots. The wisdom of these
Lusitanians lay in the adoption of an incremental logic, that is, every advance
was made by small increments, always based on solid prior knowledge.35 To use

30
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 98.
31
Ibid, p. 116.
32
Ibid, p. 120.
33
Ibid, p. 116.
34
Ibid.
35
In Visão do paraíso [Vision of Paradise] Sérgio Buarque opens his reflection on the
Portuguese edenic imaginary, contrasting it with the Spanish. According to Buarque, ‘[a]
parte que cabe aos portugueses nas origens da geografia fantástica do Renascimento acha-
se, realmente, em nítida desproporção com a multíplice atividade de seus navegadores’ [the
share that falls to the Portuguese in the origins of the fantastic geography of the Renaissance
is found, really, to be in clear disproportion to the manifold activities of her navigators].
See Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, Visão do paraíso: os motivos edênicos no descobrimento e
colonização do Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 2000) p. 7. Buarque attributes the tiny
number of myths regarding the lands discovered in Lusitanian America to the ‘realismo
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 89
a metaphor dear to Sérgio Buarque, it may be said that the Portuguese advanced
using their own entrails as fuel.
The origins of these Lusitanian values can be traced back to the Middle Ages,
to one of the first kings of the Avis dynasty, the philosopher-king Dom Duarte.
Sérgio Buarque makes use of quotations from the Leal conselheiro to extract from
his work a philosophy that excels in realism, moderation, prudence, and good
sense developed from experience. However, those values became progressively
diluted with the acceleration of Portuguese expansion: Portugal had become the
victim of its own success.
To demonstrate the dissipation of those original values, Sérgio Buarque
turns to another work of Portuguese literature, the Soldado prático, by Diogo
do Couto. For Buarque, if the reader was interested in understanding what had
happened during the Portuguese sixteenth century, then reading the Soldado
prático was even more important than Os Lusíadas. According to him, Camões’
epic contained a ‘grande idealização poética’ [grand poetic idealization],36 while
it is Diogo do Couto who dramatizes the social changes that led to the downfall
of those values based on Portuguese realism. At the height of Portuguese India,
Couto complains about the ‘maldição portuguesa’ [Portuguese curse] by which
‘homem que não é fidalgo não é chamado para nada: tendo exemplos em todas
as outras nações, em que se tem mais respeito à idade e experiência de guerra
do que ao sangue e nobreza’ [a man who is not a nobleman is taken for nothing;
while there are cases in every other country, where there is more regard for age
and experience in war than for blood and nobility].37
With the rise of the merchant class, those who arrived at the top of the social
pyramid aspired to the standing of nobleman. As a consequence of the fluidity of
classes typical of a country that had never experienced feudalism the social strata
had not crystallized into defined ethical standards. This lack of rigidity in the
social stratification meant that everyone emulated the nobility. As soon as they
arrived at the top of society, the ‘novos nobres’ [new nobility], like any arriviste
class, made an exaggerated show of the habits and actions that would distinguish
them socially. With this exaggeration, ‘a invenção e a imitação tomaram o lugar
da tradição como princípio norteador’ [invention and imitation took the place

comumente desencantado, voltado sobretudo para o particular e o concreto’ [frequently

disenchanted realism, directed above all at the particular and the concrete] of the Portuguese
(ibid, p. 5). Even when the Portuguese subscribe to the mythical visions of Eldorado and the
Amazons, they do so from a practical and utilitarian perspective. According to the author of
Visão do paraíso, ‘ainda quando inclinado a admitir as mais excitantes maravilhas da Criação,
por onde sempre se declaram, enfim, a glória e a onipotência divinas, não as procuravam
expressamente, salvo quando servissem para contentar seu apetite de bens materiais’ [even
when they were inclined to acknowledge the most amazing marvels of Creation — by which,
after all, divine glory and omnipotence declared themselves — they would not expressly seek
them out, except when they could serve to satisfy their appetite for material goods] (ibid, p. 123).
36
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 120.
37
Diogo do Couto, O soldado prático (Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa Editora, 1954), p. 92.
90 Alfredo Cesar Melo
of tradition as the guiding principle].38 In this way the Portuguese started to
imagine that they were different to what they were. This was the seed of the
Bovarism that was afflicting Brazil.
It is perhaps important to emphasize that Bovarism is an Iberian legacy in
Brazil, and not merely Portuguese. In diluting that tradition based on experience
and routine, the Portuguese came to resemble the Spanish, since they too
shared in the same ‘imaginative’ mentality. Their cities were, in the end, ‘mental
products’, and social life in Spanish America was regulated by a myriad of rules
dreamed up through the imagination of some few bureaucrats. The Bovarist
mentality therefore forms a part of the Iberian heritage assimilated by Brazil.
One must distinguish, within the framework of metaphors established in
Raízes do Brasil, terms such as ‘Iberian heritage’ and ‘Lusitanian root’. The root
that we are referring to is underground, out of our sight. This root created the
conditions for our existence in Brazil, but it does not flourish as an active social
force at the present time. The Iberian heritage — associated with hereditary
property and intellectual Bovarism — is the legacy of the Iberian cultures that
came down to Brazilians of the time of Raízes do Brasil and which, to a certain
extent, shapes Brazilian social relations. That heritage is the visible and tangible
part of its cultural structure. Sérgio Buarque seems to be suggesting in Raízes do
Brasil, in a quite indirect way, that it is necessary to counterpose the wisdom of
that root to the excesses and problems of the Iberian heritage. In other words, for
Sérgio Buarque it was necessary to juxtapose a more organicist idea of national
development — derived from Lusitanian realism — to the artificial implantation
of practices and a vision of the world coming from outside — off-shoots of that
habit of ‘imaginar-se diferente de si’ [imagining oneself to be different to what
one is], so dear to the Iberians.
The harm caused by Bovarism lies in the flight from reality, by way of the
adoption of concepts that are inadequate for an understanding of reality. There
can be no better remedy than the worldview proposed by Portuguese realism:
to accept life as it is, with neither joy nor despair. And with that step taken, to
make changes based on solid experience. One possible objection to this vision
— i.e. that Portuguese realism could serve as a remedy to problems linked to
the Iberian heritage — might be that, in resorting to habits and actions from
the Lusitanian tradition, the Brazilian might be turning his hand to schemes
created for other contexts, and in this way was renewing yet again the Bovarism
so characteristic of the Brazilian social fabric. For Sérgio Buarque, that objection
made no sense, since Brazilians and Portuguese are peoples of an ‘alma comum’
[common soul]:
[É] em vão que temos procurado importar dos sistemas de outros povos
modernos, ou criar por conta própria, um sucedâneo adequado, capaz de
superar os efeitos de nosso natural inquieto e desordenado. A experiência
e a tradição ensinam que toda cultura só absorve, assimila e elabora em
38
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 119.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 91
geral traços de outras culturas, quando estes encontram uma possibilidade
de ajuste aos seus quadros de vida. Neste particular cumpre lembrar o que
se deu com as culturas européias transplantadas ao Novo Mundo. Nem o
contato e a mistura com raças indígenas ou adventícias fizeram-nos tão
diferentes dos nossos avós de além-mar como às vezes gostaríamos de sê-lo.
No caso brasileiro, a verdade, por menos sedutora que possa parecer a alguns
dos nossos patriotas, é que ainda nos associa à península Ibérica, a Portugal
especialmente, uma tradição longa e viva, bastante viva para nutrir, até hoje,
uma alma comum, a despeito de tudo quanto nos separa. Podemos dizer
que de lá nos veio a forma atual de nossa cultura; o resto foi matéria que se
sujeitou mal ou bem a essa forma.39
[It is in vain that we have tried to draw on systems from other modern
peoples, or create by ourselves an adequate substitute, capable of overcoming
the effects of our restless and disorderly nature. Experience and tradition
teach us that any culture will generally only absorb, assimilate and develop
aspects of other cultures when the latter finds the possibility of adapting
to their way of life. In this respect we should remember what happened to
those European cultures transported to the New World. Contact and mixing
with the indigenous or incoming races did not make us so different from
our forebears overseas as sometimes we would like to be. The truth, in the
Brazilian case, however unattractive it may appear to some of our patriots,
is that we are still associated with the Iberian Peninsula, and especially
with Portugal, by a long and living tradition, sufficiently living to maintain
a common soul, despite everything that separates us. We may say that the
present shape of our culture came from there; the rest was material that
adapted, for better or worse, to that shape.]
Brazil, he is saying, thus forms part of a transoceanic Lusitanian network, with a
long and living tradition uniting the peoples separated by the Atlantic.40 Reading
the passage above, the difference between the young Sérgio Buarque of 1926,
author of the article ‘The Opposite Side and Other Sides’, and the essayist of
1936, becomes very clear. The former saw in the absence of tradition the liberty
characteristic of young countries, concluding that ‘aqui há muita gente que
parece lamentar não sermos precisamente um país velho e cheio de heranças
onde se pudesse criar uma arte sujeita a regras e a idéais prefixados’ (1996:
227) [there are many of us here who seem to lament that we are not precisely
a country that is old and full of heritage from which to create an art subject to
rules and predetermined ideas]. The latter now aims to place Brazil within the
context of Lusitanian civilization. According to Sérgio Buarque, because they
share the same soul — a word related to ‘spirit’, to be found in the grammar of
José Enrique Rodó and José Vasconcelos — Brazilians and Portuguese have a
39
Buarquede Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 30, my emphasis.
40
According to Pedro Meira Monteiro: ‘The merit of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s work is
that it pointed out, over a decade after the juvenile and exuberant fantasy of the Modernist
feast in Brazil, that whether Brazilians like it or not, Portuguese history does have something
to do with them’. ‘The Other Roots: Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and the Portuguese’, ellipsis, 6
(2008), 73–81 (p. 75).
92 Alfredo Cesar Melo
common tradition. Drawing on a Lusitanian tradition to instil a way of behaving
would not be inauthentic or foreign to Brazilians. It would not upset Buarque’s
search for a horizon of authenticity, to use João Kennedy Eugênio’s expression.
It should be emphasized that Sérgio Buarque is not proposing an unrestrained
exaltation of the colonizing Portuguese and his culture, and even less can he
be said to be cultivating tradition for tradition’s sake. According to Silviano
Santiago, Sérgio Buarque is constructing an alternative genealogy of the
Portuguese imaginary, by counterposing Dom Duarte and Diogo do Couto to
Luís de Camões: the tradition of experience and routine against the tradition of
adventure and the rhetoric of epic.41 What we can glimpse from this hermeneutic
process is that for Buarque there is not one Portuguese tradition, but Portuguese
traditions. A knowledge of history is required in order to know which tradition
is most suited for appropriation by the Brazilians. Quite distinct from the
Lusotropicalist discourse — which looks for unchanging aspects of Portuguese
activity in the tropics over the years — Sérgio Buarque is concerned with the
historical specificity of particular practices and mentalities, without attributing
to them the same timeless qualities.
Adopting an approach closer to the Lusitanian tradition of caution and
experience would lead the Brazilians to pay attention to their specific problems,
instead of deluding themselves by an adherence to legal fetishes or ready-made
models. For Buarque, Brazil would have to change, and resolve its problems
organically. In his essay ‘Corpo e alma do Brasil’ [Body and Soul of Brazil],
written in 1935, Sérgio Buarque declares, in a passage in which he displays his
monarchist sympathies, that the Republic in Brazil ‘representava a idéia de que
um país não pode nascer das suas próprias entranhas: deve formar-se de fora
pra dentro, deve merecer que os outros lhe dêem sua sanção e seu aplauso’
[represented the idea that a country could not be born out of its own entrails: it
should form itself from the outside in, it should be deserving of others giving it
their sanction and applause].42 By analysing his criticism of the Republic, it is
possible to identify what Sérgio is proposing: contrary to what the Republican
elite thought, Brazil should be ‘born from its own entrails’, from the inside out,
evolving and growing in an organic way, at its own pace, one step at a time, like
the Portuguese of the Age of Discoveries.
At the beginning of the article we referred to the tension in Raízes do Brasil,
between the critique of cordiality and the uncertainty regarding the ideological
position from which to launch such a critique. How would Buarque’s view of
cordiality look, taking the tradition of Portuguese realism as the framework for
his evaluation?

41
Silviano Santiago, As raízes e o labirinto da América Latina (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2006),
p. 115.
42
‘Corpo e alma do Brasil: ensaio de psicologia social’, in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda:
perspectivas, ed. by Pedro Meira Monteiro and João Kennedy Eugênio (Campinas: Editora
Unicamp, 2008), p. 600.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 93
We have also discussed how Buarque’s approach to cordiality oscillates
throughout his intellectual life, now, in 1926, regarding Brazilian disorder as ‘our
liberty’, now evaluating cordiality with a certain impatience, when he judges it
insufficient to consolidate the character of a people. With time that judgement
is increasingly made without ‘joy’ and without ‘impatience’, that is, without
either celebratory optimism or critical haste. Buarque thus draws closer to the
tradition of Lusitanian realism, which accepts life as it is, ‘without ceremony,
without illusions, without impatience, without malice and, very often, without
joy’.43 Let us look, for example, at a passage later rewritten by Sérgio Buarque in
early editions of Raízes do Brasil. Here we cite a passage from the essay ‘Corpo e
alma do Brasil’, written in 1935 and later added to his classic essay of 1936. It is a
fundamental passage, since in it Buarque lays bare the deficiencies of Bovarism:
Como Plotino de Alexandria, que sentia vergonha do próprio corpo,
procuramos esquecer tudo quanto fizesse pensar em nossa riqueza emocional,
a única realidade criadora que ainda nos restava, para nos submetermos à
palavra escrita, à gramática, à retórica e ao Direito abstrato.44
[Like Plotinus of Alexandria, who felt ashamed of his own body, we try to
forget everything that makes us think about our emotional wealth, the only
creative reality that remains to us, in order to submit ourselves to the written
world, to grammar, to rhetoric and to abstract Law.]
‘Our emotional wealth’ forms part of the discursive territory of cordiality, and
is referred to in the text as the ‘only creative reality’ still remaining in Brazil.
The agreement with the 1926 text is evident, since both Brazilian disorder and
emotional wealth — two correlatives of cordiality — are seen in a quite positive
way in the two texts. Let us look at the difference in relation to the definitive
edition of Raízes do Brasil:
Como Plotino de Alexandria, que tinha vergonha do próprio corpo,
acabaríamos assim, por esquecer os fatos prosaicos que fazem a verdadeira
trama da existência diária, para nos dedicarmos a motivos mais nobilitantes:
à palavra escrita, à retórica, à gramática, ao direito formal.45
[Like Plotinus of Alexandria, who was ashamed of his own body, we would
thus end up by forgetting the prosaic facts that make up the true fabric of daily
existence, to dedicate ourselves to more ennobling impulses: to the written
word, to rhetoric, to grammar, to formal law.]
Clearly he uses more sober language to describe the reality forgotten by the
Bovarism of the Brazilian intellectuals. It no longer consists of a ‘creative
reality’ but of the ‘prosaic facts’ that form the fabric of everyday life. The tone
is unequivocally more pedestrian — certainly without either joy or impatience.

43
de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 116.
Buarque
44
Buarque
de Holanda, ‘Corpo e alma do Brasil’, p. 590, my emphasis.
45
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 179, my emphasis.
94 Alfredo Cesar Melo
This is another judgement by Sérgio Buarque of cordiality, which certainly
makes it one of the most unstable terms in Brazilian social thought.46

Conclusion
As we can see, Buarque’s view of cordiality changes substantially over the course
of Raízes do Brasil, whether in the textual space of its definitive edition, or in
the diachronic arrangement of the different editions of the book. Cordiality is
treated at one moment as the liberty that remains to the Brazilians, at another
as insufficient to form a character, and at yet another is analysed — without
the framework of Portuguese realism, which would make a middle term — as
an inescapable element of the fabric of Brazilian existence. Nor can it be said
that there is any consensus over the future of cordiality. Just in one chapter, ‘A
nossa revolução’, the theme of cordiality receives different treatments, since at
one point it is interpreted as an Iberian inheritance that will be annulled by the
irreversible modernization and urbanization of Brazil; at another point, right
at the end, Buarque declares that a world of intimate essentials — associated
in this paragraph with Brazilian disorder — ‘will always remain intact’.47 Does
cordiality represent, in the end, freedom or imprisonment? Will it remain intact,
or will it be extinguished? Or should it be accepted, without pride and without
shame, as part of the Brazilian social makeup?
As can be seen, Sérgio Buarque’s essay is much more unstable ideologically
than much of its critical history suggests, and is much more complex than a
simple critique of cordiality and Brazilian property ownership. I believe that
the term ‘ensaio’ [essay] is particularly appropriate for understanding Sérgio
Buarque’s ideological positions. Now the author of Raízes do Brasil essays a
eulogy to cordiality, now he essays a critique of Bovarism, now he practises
Bovarism, now he criticizes cordiality, now he accepts cordiality uncomplainingly
along with the parameters of Lusitanian realism. Buarque is constantly essaying
ideological positions, at times in a contradictory manner. To pay due attention
to the undecidability of the genre of essays ought to be a fundamental task for
the history of ideas in Brazil. Very often this discipline relies on paraphrases of
the contents of books which are as correct as they are partial, that is, paraphrases
of a line of argument in a book which are taken to be a summary of the book
46
João Cezar de Castro Rocha analyses the great misunderstanding around the concept of
‘homem cordial’ [cordial man], described in the fifth chapter of Buarque’s Raízes do Brasil.
Castro Rocha points to a ‘mestiçagem hermeneûtica’ [hermeneutic miscegenation]: when
the category of ‘cordial man’ is discussed in the public sphere in Brazil, the authorship of
the concept is generally attributed to Sérgio Buarque, while its content is associated with the
representation of cordiality woven by Gilberto Freyre in Sobrados e mucambos, which has to
do with its everyday meaning of kindness, sympathy, gentle behaviour and easy friendship.
This is very different from the definition suggested by Sérgio Buarque. See João Cezar de
Castro Rocha, O exílio do homem cordial (Rio de Janeiro: Museu da República, 2005).
47
Buarque de Holanda, Raízes do Brasil, p. 208.
 Lusitanian Roots and Iberian Heritage 95
as a whole, and not, as they should be, a voice within an essay as plurivocal
as Buarque’s. Formal analysis and ideological criticism should always advance
together in studying Brazilian social thought and its history.
University of Chicago
Translated from Portuguese by Richard Correll