Produced by poets who were almost always self-taught and of humble origins, the leaflets initially had an audience of listeners, more so than readers. \u201cIn the beginning of the twentieth century, especially in the countryside, the people would listen to collective readings of cordel leaflets while they embroidered, threshed corn or beans, or rested after work,\u201d notes Marques. Circulating in the routine of the workers in the northeastern inland region, the narratives talked in various ways about the circumstances and context of the people\u2014often giving shape, as the researcher argues, to an awareness of the injustices, to the desire to take revenge against abuse of power, and to critiques of reality.<\/p>\n
One of the examples studied by Marques is the myth of Cocanha, an imaginary country whose image has circulated in European pop culture since the eighteenth century, with one of its best-known representations in a work by Belgian painter Pieter Bruegel (1525\u20131569). In Brazil, this land of abundance gave rise to S\u00e3o Saru\u00ea, where everything is \u201cgood and easy.\u201d As poet Manoel Camila sings about the Saints in the leaflet Viagem a S\u00e3o Saru\u00ea<\/em> (Trip to S\u00e3o Saru\u00ea), in 1947, there \u201cyou don\u2019t need to buy anything\/ there is no hunger or disease\/ people live to enjoy\/ there is everything and nothing is for want\/ without the need to work.\u201d Noting the contrast between the country depicted in the narrative and the reality of those who heard it, Marques confirms: \u201cThe northeastern community lives with the twists and turns of the recurring droughts, the hostility of the climate, the lack of food. This narrative, of French origin, takes on a new role when it speaks directly about the reality of the northeastern community. It revives itself.\u201d<\/p>\n The relationships of this literature with the context are also a key focus for historian Paulo Teixeira Iumatti, vice director between 2014 and 2018 of the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (IEB-USP), which provided guidance around this type of cordel for the publication of Vozes negras na cantoria: Cantadores afrodescendentes e as disputas em torno do g\u00eanero do Marco<\/em> (187\u20131930)<\/em> (Black voices in singing: Singers of African-American heritage and the disputes around the Marco genre [1870\u20131930]; Almedina, in preprint). It is about leaflets in which the author imagines building a castle for himself or another type of fortification\u2014an environment that he governs like a king and which serves as a metaphor for its own poetic construction\u2014offered as a type of challenge for other poets. And what happens, for example, in A fortaleza que levantei dentro de uma lagoa <\/em>(The fortress I built within a lake; 1953), by Joaquim Francisco Santana (1877\u20131917), according to one of the last verses: \u201cI already heard a poet say to me\/ that he would build a wall just like mine\/ if this audacity exists, it is very far away\/ I believe that it has already died\/ as my wall is already built\/ whoever copies it has not yet been born.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMarco is the transposition of the challenge of going from the guitar to the written record,\u201d explains Iumatti, emphasizing the link between this poetry and the kind of singing in which two composers compete with rigid rules in terms of metrics and rhyme. According to the researcher, this genre is a strange poetic form for the northeastern context, whose key characteristics have a connection with slavery, and especially the idea that, deep within his strength, the poet has absolute dominion over people and things. Studying poems written soon after the Abolition of African Americans, such as Joaquim Francisco Santana (1877\u20131917), the professor of IEB argues that the hyperbolic language of Marco, of praise for the poet for his own work, served as a symbolic struggle in a context in which it was necessary \u201cto keep spirits up in the face of exclusion and racism.\u201d \u201cThe black singers of whom I have record\u2014they are few but significant\u2014used Marco as a tool to fight and as an instrument to affirm themselves in a context of exclusion,\u201d says Iumatti.<\/p>\n Literary production<\/strong> The fact that it is a type of literature that originated in poor contexts and with little contact with the culture of the literate was often the source of stigmas. \u201cCordel literature was not often recognized by the official literature realm, even though many poets and writers admired it,\u201d confirms Iumatti, who rejects the \u201cpopular\u201d label for this production. \u201cCordel literature always played the mediator between universes: one more literate and the other of the oral culture, like a poem that came to people who never even knew how to read,\u201d he explains. According to Iumatti, as the cordel writers seek legitimacy, they tend to identify less with pop culture, which comes to be seen as a repertoire for inspiration, study, and creation, and not as an exclusive milieu where leaflets are produced and circulated.<\/p>\n The ABLC, which was founded in 1988, contributes to this trajectory. \u201cThe creation [of ABCL] is a response to the Brazilian Language Academy\u2019s lack of acceptance of the cordel,\u201d says Melo, referring to the two applications of the cordel writer Raimundo Santa Helena (1926), which were rejected by the immortals in 1983 and 1986. The institutionalization of the cordel even brought new parameters for poem composition, which have changed over time, as explained by cordel writer Gon\u00e7alo Ferreira da Silva, president of the institution. There are three esthetic criteria: metrics, rhyme, and recitation, that is, the poets should rigorously obey the conventional quantities of syllables per verse, rhyming the entire poem, and building coherent narratives, with a beginning, middle, and end. \u201cCordel literature is meant to be read, sung, or declaimed, so it should have a rigorous resonance,\u201d says Silva. He also notes the importance of language correction: \u201cIt is not acceptable that today we write and speak incorrectly. You would write incorrectly if you did not know how to write correctly. The ABLC respects tradition and safeguards in its archive the matuta<\/em> language\u2014when contractions such as \u2018pruqu\u00ea<\/em>,\u2019 \u2018prumodi<\/em>,\u2019 and \u2018pruvia<\/em>\u2019 were used. But we store it as museum material, and not as material to be used now.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/088-091_Cordel_275-1-1400px.jpg\")
Augusto Zambonato<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe great struggle fought by the poets throughout the twentieth century was for recognition of the cordel as literature,\u201d informs historian Rosilene Alves de Melo, professor at the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG) in Para\u00edba and consultant to IPHAN. She says that, while it has always had public recognition, this literature has spent decades at the fringe, accumulating stories about the persecutions of poets and publishers, seizure and burning of leaflets, and arrests\u2014such as that of Jos\u00e9 Bernardo da Silva (1901\u20131971) in Limoeiro (PE) in 1934. \u201cThe cordel is a genre that has been able to build itself up at a high cost, with much sacrifice and little money. Most poets died in misery, forgotten, impoverished, but they never gave up,\u201d notes Melo.<\/p>\n