Superb Sentences: Aluísio Azevedo

A series of beautiful phrases, sentences, and excerpts from Brazilian literature leading up to Brazil’s National Day of the Book on October 29.

From his seminal naturalist (i.e., extreme realist) novel “O Cortiço” (“The Slum”), published in 1890: “Naquela mulata estava o grande mistério, a síntese das impressões que ele recebeu chegando aqui: ela era a luz ardente do meio-dia; ela era o calor vermelho das sestas da fazenda; era o aroma quente dos trevos e das baunilhas, que o atordoara nas matas brasileiras; era a palmeira virginal e esquiva que se não torce a nenhuma outra planta; era o veneno e era o açúcar gostoso; era o sapoti mais doce que o mel e era a castanha do caju, que abre feridas com o seu azeite de fogo; ela era a cobra verde e traiçoeira, a lagarta viscosa, a muriçoca doida, que esvoaçava havia muito tempo em torno do corpo dele, assanhando-lhe os desejos, acordando-lhe as fibras embambecidas pela saudade da terra, picando-lhe as artérias, para lhe cuspir dentro do sangue uma centelha daquele amor setentrional, uma nota daquela música feita de gemidos de prazer, uma larva daquela nuvem de cantáridas que zumbiam em torno da Rita Baiana e espalhavam-se pelo ar numa fosforescência afrodisíaca.”

Within her brown skin was the great mystery, the synthesis of the feelings he had when arriving here: she was the scorching sun of midday; she was the red heat of naps on the farm; she was the hot scent of clover and vanilla that had stunned him in the Brazilian forests; she was the virgin and elusive palm tree that doesn’t bend for any other plant; she was venom and she was delicious sugar; she was the sapoti, a fruit sweeter than honey and she was the cashew nut that opens wounds with its fiery oil; she was the green and treacherous snake, the sticky lizard, the crazy mosquito that had been flying for so long around his body, messing up his desires, awakening in him the limp fibers of nostalgia for his land, stinging his arteries, to spit into his blood a scintilla of that northern love, a note of that song created from moans of pleasure, a larva of that cloud of Spanish flies that buzzed around Rita Baiana and spread out through the air in aphrodisiacal phosphorescence.