•  From the depths of the forest - Benjamin Péret 
    18/Jan/1956

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    • Photos Marcel

      GAUTHEROT

      Rio de Janeiro

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    Benjamin Péret, 18/jan/1956

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      FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST

      [Google translation]

      The sky of Bahia, to the ordinary of an unsustainable turning blue steel gray on the edge of the horizon, down a gloomy drizzle, if moved into this city that left offended coconut crumble panache, simulating a hanging banner after too gay party. Until the streets of the old city, silent and empty by this sad Sunday, as one knows that day be in all latitudes, seemed to be an orgy of yesterday leaving weary limbs and skulls made into these big cauldrons where end ready to take the asphalt roads. The bus, filled initially lost at every crossroads, a passenger here, there a couple dressed up as if he had started to sow grains of life in this city look so empty that not ride the waves of shell the nearby sea.

      On a street corner reveals, the hollow of a small valley, a fragment of wet countryside, forsaken like a sheet that the sun will dry tomorrow. Yet before the turn, they crossed a neighborhood popular today, but once saw circulate carriages colonial officials quillant their residence still buried in flower gardens, for toast arm of some scented mulatto flamboyant desires. Nothing remains of these gardens; not even the most humble plant has survived basically the poor housing hugging homes of the powerful of this bygone era, which they have transmitted their early leprosy. However, crossed the valley, here are muddy plots crossed by barely traced paths but scarred deep

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      ruts, boron new home and miserable huts: the working-class suburb which everywhere girds the same penalty halo and misery and, everywhere is rejected away from the area chosen by the master as if to leave their remorse for this area.

      Still one can observe degrees in poverty as in wealth and there is no doubt that the unfortunate residents of Educandos in Manaus, for example, are down to the lowest levels to which man can be swallowed. All askew, their huts loose planks were deposited as a rain of locusts exhausted beside the igarape [Amazonian river], whose waters give off a thousand times more mosquitoes than freshness. Imagine, under the relentless sun of Ecuador, these neighborhoods (Educandos, Cachoeirinha, São Raimundo) lives where, they say, a good half of the population of Manaus, with no hope of ever leaving, otherwise for the stultifying everyday work or to the final tomb. Countless naked and barefoot children play amid swine seeking their pittance in swill flowing in the open. Everywhere doors and windows open in the shadows reveal the infamous Christian symbol whose sole purpose is here to smother at birth any revolt that poverty appears as a godsend. Not a home worthy of the name in these streets that aboutussent igarape [Amazonian river] to all except those few merchants! No sustainable building except the church, of course, why these unfortunate constantly pressured by the individual black skirt, have yet to drop a few snippets of their meager required!

      This suburb of Bahia, in exchange, has an almost European look, was tropical nature that tends to invade the spaces and, here and there, straw huts and mud huts that, if does not release more comfort to their inhabitants as shelters and pieces of sheet metal plates of "favelas" of Rio or rag in the Paris region, offer at least the advantage not to offend the eye of passing. They fit well into the landscape where they are almost as expected in a apple orchard in Normandy. Also this suburb, despite his obvious poverty, if she opposes the violent slums of Manaus. Here, nothing despair if integrated into the physical being of the inhabitants of these poor places, on their part, no revolt is conceivable. There is total forfeiture and felt in all its depth with all that it has apparently irremediable. On the contrary, in Bahia, on the faces of passers-by if they are poorly dressed, shines a childlike joy. One free man but not degraded society has, indeed, other distraction that the host abundantly watered alcohol, while the other, a descendant of slaves, if not a clear awareness of its relative elevation, has in any case fully and invented for fun games or the passionate enchantment, starting no capoeira.

      Should one seek his distant origine in games that plantation slaves were engaged before the door of a box to hide from the eyes of the master and

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      the Catholic priest African rites performed inside? We see her in any case arise slums of Rio de Janeiro during the last years of the Brazilian Empire, reaching its peak after 1890 at the beginning of the republic, while the very recent abolition of slavery was thrown on the streets of the capital a large number of blacks uprooted plantations. For fifty years, until the end of the last war, capoeira, like the African religions, was persecuted; and the official encouragement given to folklore from that date have facilitated his resurrection.

      In its present form, should we see a fight or dance? Fight it is undoubtedly because it is in this aspect that appears in the historie of Rio de Janeiro and it is for this reason that the authorities had then prohibited; but it is also a dance, because it is accompanied by the music of the berimbau, these instruments to a single string whose vibrations are tinkling bell of the grains they contain in their lower part.

      A few steps from the bus stop, perched on a ledge of the terrain rises away covered with straw under which Waldemar organizes every Sunday, assaults famous capoeira throughout the region. I had already witnessed demonstrations of capoeira were formerly in Rio de Janeiro, one of the attractions of the carnival in

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      the popular area of the Onze. I had admired the natural elegance and flexibility of wrestlers movements, in short, I thought I knew Capoeira and I went to Waldemar show in the state of mind of the person who will attend a play he knows or already reads a book whose ranking has a we witnessed real struggle assaults during which the players threw themselves to the ground so hard that the game often degenerated into a brawl calling the conclusion of a knife in some lonely dark street, Bahia, I found nothing of that violence. To use the image of the theater, it seemed to me watch the same show, but given this time by the artists while formerly the actors of a wicked province troupe made the devil had evolved before me.

      Some two hundred people, residents mostly surrounded the rectangular enclosure. This included, the length and on both sides, double insulation barrier of the playground, on the one hand the berimbau players and also a small number of privileged spectators from which Waldemar invited me soon to take place. On one of the small sides of the rectangle, a bench received future opponents.

      On a whistle master of ceremonies, musicians began a highly rhythmic air. A second whistle of two men, a mulatto with powerful muscles and a large soft black like a wicker strand came squatting against the fence, facing the berimbau players. Still, they expected the third whistle that would encourage the black to recover slowly with cat movements awakening. A cinematic slow rate, while accompanying body rhythm of the music, he began a dance that held both the pitch of the bears on the apparent weight and gait of apes in the report flexibility. The mulatto, however, had casually turned and suddenly, pivoting on one hand extended, as a spring, parallel to the ground, who ducked to black croc-en-leg and also on a hand turns, describing above the other a semicircle tangent for a moment at the head of his partner. A dazzling ballet began; but was it a ballet or a ritual? The hieratic attitude of the mulatto, beaming black bliss, inclined to think that attending the extension of a religious ceremony. I had seen these tunes collected and happy on the faces of dancers that would soon be possessed by some deity of the Yoruba, from where their ancestors had been uprooted. This way of moving when the rigidity of the soldier weapons training alternated with foliage ripple agitated by a light breeze, not me was not unknown. I had already noticed in these religious festivals; but nothing here in the audience did not remember the fervor of the faithful; only players had retained a vestige, and as a habit.

      The ballet continued without anything might be able to predict the sequence of figures. Two praying mantises spectral attitude were facing a moment. The mulatto, dodging a virtual kick, had to jump on the hands, fluttering and received

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      on the feet while touching a toe on the other shoulder crawling with fast, jerky movements lizard. We saw the result tied to each other and drawing, for the duration of a flash, a flower blooming and fading and losing its petals. Succeeded a wild scene: two beasts were watching, crawling towards each other, approaching, drew back, were measured, turned round with maddening slowness lazy and suddenly the dark of a straightened leap, flew and let fly a light kick was behind the mulatto whose parade ended in a somersault. Both now standing then turned around each other, monkeys locked in their cage, then one relaxing, one reversed its motion, plunged to the ground by giving the other a kick which ended in caresses.

      on the feet while touching a toe on the other shoulder crawling with fast, jerky movements lizard. We saw the result tied to each other and drawing, for the duration of a flash, a flower blooming and fading and losing its petals. Succeeded a wild scene: two beasts were watching, crawling towards each other, approaching, drew back, were measured, turned round with maddening slowness lazy and suddenly the dark of a straightened leap, flew and let fly a light kick was behind the mulatto whose parade ended in a somersault. Both now standing then turned around each other, monkeys locked in their cage, then one relaxing, one reversed its motion, plunged to the ground by giving the other a kick which ended in caresses.

      It goes without saying that the dancers have no awareness of the extension of their actions or those expressed attitudes. They played like young cats, but men, they can not defend themselves let show through the thousand intimate ties which enclose them in nature. In every forest lies a latent content of legends and that capoeira is now the work of men of the cities, the tradition of the African forest, revived right here is still too vivid in them so that they can already be unfaithful. From generation to generation, it has been revived for, it is true, more and smaller groups so that we can provide, despite the favor capoeira enjoys today, its final extinction in a few dozen years, probably benefiting some sports stultifying.

      I recently read that the soul Xenocrates said she was "a number that moves." A capoeira Waldemar, that soul - that of nature - is represented by the number two wavy dancing.

      Rio de Janeiro, January 18, 1956.

      Benjamin Peret.


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