Torture" would not have shamed Mark Twain. It is not so intimately Brazilian that it cannot apply, with little alteration, to wardheelers in the United States. "The Penitent Wag" is an experiment in the macabre that also serves as a piece of social criticism. "The Plantation Buyer" is just as comical in the United States of America as in the United States of Brazil.
As I write, Lobato's Sao Paulo is seething with revolt. Revolution, in ideas and in action have been the history of that region. It is not the least of Lobato's virtues that his intellectual revolt seeks practical outlet. He means his blue-prints to be, some day, inspiring temples. And he is one of the finest social architects of contemporary Brazil.[1]
Roxbury, Massachusetts, 1924.
- ↑
The translations are by a woman friend of Lobato's, resident in Brazil.
A more extended account of Senhor Lobato may be found in my Brazilian Literature, pages 277 to 291. (New York, 1922).
