It is well known: every great writer is a special world, a special universe. But the created world always exists in tense relationships with the real world, and these relationships can be very different. To say their own word about life, some artists need to construct a fictional world with a special geography and a special history - be it the city of Glupov by Saltykov-Shchedrin, the Yoknapatawpha district of William Faulkner, or the mythological Middle Earth of the wonderful English prose writer J.R.R. Tolkien. In Latin American literature, this path was taken by Juan Carlos Onetti, known to our readers, who invented a special city for his novels - Santa Maria.

There is, however, another type of writers - writers whose universe we call “Balzac’s Paris”, “Dostoevsky’s Petersburg”, “Dickensian London”. The creative destiny of these artists is inextricably linked with the capture of a certain historically authentic “chronotope”, the absorption of its unique currents, and the elevation of documentary everyday life to the rank of myth. The choice of the first or second of the two paths is an intimate question of the writer’s creativity. What is important for the reader is the artistic result. And if we talk about Latin American culture of the 20th century, then here is perhaps the most brilliant example of the second path, the path of translating geographical reality into great literature - the work of Jorge Amado.

Jorge Amado was lucky to be born in the vicinity of Bahia, one of the most colorful and amazing cities in the world. And Bahia was lucky that on an August day in 1912, into the family of the owner of a small cocoa plantation south of the city, someone was born who in the future was destined to give the picturesque and echoing world around him a second life - a life in art, making it a property of world culture. An artist was born not of local significance, not just in love with his native corner of the earth, but an artist who saw in the local, regional the national, in the people of Bahia - the embodiment of the Brazilian folk character.

Bahia (the full name given to the city by the Portuguese colonialists was Sao Salvador da Bahia) lies in the northeast of Brazil, on the shore of a cozy bay. The city stretches along the beaches of the bay, climbing up the slopes of the hills. Everything here is brought together: ancient mansions and churches built in the 17th-18th centuries in a magnificent Baroque style, skyscrapers of modern banks and offices, black huts... As in any tropical seaside city, life takes place mainly on the street, always filled with a motley crowd : here they trade, put on shows, eat, fight, barker, bet... However, this is not yet the amazingness of Bahia. To appreciate it, you need to look into the past.

Bahia was one of the first centers of Portuguese colonization of Brazil. A plantation economy developed around the city (sugar cane and tobacco were grown, then cotton and cocoa), based on slave labor. Caravans of ships with black slaves from Africa sailed to Bahia, since the country's aborigines - the Indians - could not be turned into slaves. The Portuguese colonists took black and Indian women as concubines, sometimes marrying them, and gradually the overwhelming majority of the population of Bahia and the entire northeast of Brazil became mulattoes and mestizo, descendants of three mixed races. As a result of ethnic mixing, a completely new folk culture was formed. For centuries, blacks preserved African pagan cults and held on to them the more stubbornly, the more they were persecuted by white lords and Catholic missionaries. This was a form of protest against slavery. Negro beliefs merged with the similar pagan beliefs of the Indians, who were also persecuted and oppressed. When blacks and Indians were forcibly converted to Catholicism, they adapted the new religion to their pagan cults. Catholic saints were identified with idols, with “orishas.” Thus, the holy trinity of Christians turned into the mighty orisha Oshal, who can appear either in the form of the young man Oshodian or the elder Osholufan. St. George slaying the dragon seemed quite appropriate for Oshossee's god of the hunt. But white people, faced with the alien and dangerous nature of the tropics, easily adopted Negro and Indian beliefs. Moreover, the influence of the Negro and Indian worldview strengthened and preserved the pagan, pre-Christian elements in the Iberian folklore brought by the Portuguese.

In the folk art that flourished in Bahia and spread from here throughout Brazil, researchers distinguish the original Negro, Indian or Iberian elements, but all this is fused into a new, original whole - Brazilian. A wild, multi-day holiday - carnival - was born from the combination of a traditional festival of a European medieval city and a pagan holiday in honor of the onset of autumn. The wrestling practiced by black slaves from Angola for the amusement of white lords was overgrown with music and songs and turned into capoeira - a unique wrestling-dance, where each lunge is accompanied by complex acrobatic movements.

Through persistent and desperate struggle, Brazilian blacks achieved the abolition of slavery (in 1888), and much later, recognition of the right to preserve their tribal cults. The priests were forced to put up with the fact that the holidays of Catholic saints are accompanied by pagan processions and dances, that, having begun in the morning in the church, the holiday ends at night with a general dance in zeal - candomblé (or macumba). In addition, these customs became the property of the entire motley population of Bahia, lost their cult character, and turned into everyday rituals, beloved for their mass character and fun. The amazingness and uniqueness of Bahia lies precisely in the fact that in a big city of the mid-20th century, folk art is not reduced to the role of handicrafts and amateur activities, but lives a natural, full-blooded life, uniting the masses of citizens into a folk collective.

The Bahian calendar is rich in holidays - and each has its own songs, its own dances, its own rituals. The holiday is in full swing in the streets, squares, beaches, no one organizes it, people flock on their own and unite in a coordinated rhythm. The creators of the holiday are the poor people of Bahia. Residents of wealthy neighborhoods remain curious spectators. However, they are often carried away by the imperious rhythm of general fun. The Bahians know how to turn even hard work into a holiday. Lovers come from all over the city to watch fishing: fifty to sixty fishermen pull out a giant net, their bodies move to the beat of a song sung by all the residents of the fishing village - women, children, old people - to the accompaniment of drums and rattles.

“You shouldn’t think that life is easy for people in Bahia. On the contrary, it is a poor city in an underdeveloped, almost impoverished state, although it has enormous natural wealth. There are far fewer opportunities for the people here than, for example, in Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo. The difference lies in the people's civilization, the people's culture, which makes life less cruel and harsh, more humane ... "- writes Jorge Amado in the book "Bahia, the good land of Bahia." * Yes, the art that creates the people and with which they fill their everyday life, helps to endure poverty and social injustice, inspires cheerfulness and hope. (* Jorge Amado. Bahia, boa terra Bahia. Rio de Janeiro, 1967, p. 60.)

Since childhood, Jorge Amado has become familiar with both the cruel severity of folk life and folk art, which enlightens this severity. “The years of adolescence spent on the streets of Bahia, in the port, in markets and fairs, at a folk festival or at a capoeira competition, at magical candomble or on the porch of hundred-year-old churches - this is my best university. Here I was given the bread of poetry, here I learned the pain and joy of my people,” says Amadou in a speech given in 1961 at the entrance to the Brazilian Academy of Letters.* Amadou wandered the streets of Bahia, having escaped from classes, during his years studying at the Jesuit college. And at the age of fourteen he ran away from his mentors and wandered until his father found him across the steppes of the state of Bahia. Another course at the university of popular life... (* Jorge Amado, povo e terra. Sao Paulo, 1972, p. 8.)

Amadou's literary activity began with the novel "Carnival Country" in 1931. This was followed by “Cocoa” (1933) and “Sweat” (1934) - an unvarnished, dryly protocol description of the work and life of farm laborers on a cocoa plantation and proletarians from the outskirts of Bahia. The young writer was deeply influenced by world revolutionary literature of the 20s. In Portuguese and Spanish, he read Sholokhov's "Quiet Don" and Fadeev's "Destruction", Gladkov's "Cement", Serafimovich's "Iron Stream", Libedinsky's "Week", books by Michael Gold, Upton Sinclair. Influenced by the then widespread theory, Amadou perceived revolutionary literature as “literature of fact.” In the preface to “Cocoa,” the writer, formulating the task of such a “maximally honest,” documented depiction of social processes, asks: “Wouldn’t this be a proletarian novel?”

“Cocoa” and “Sweat” found a warm response among participants in the revolutionary movement in Brazil. But Amadou was not satisfied with his first books. He wanted the theme of the formation of class consciousness to be fused with purely national forms of life and thinking. Everything that he heard and saw during his adolescence and youthful wanderings around the city - songs, legends, stories - all of this was torn onto paper. So Amadou wrote his first series of novels about Bahia: “Jubiaba” (1935), “Dead Sea” (1936), “Captains of the Sand” (1937).

In The Dead Sea, Amadou found the poetic key to the narrative he needed: every situation, every action of the characters has, as it were, two possible interpretations, two meanings: ordinary and fabulous, real and legendary. In reality, the heroes of the novel live a miserable life in a fishing village, die at sea, leaving widows and orphans. In the legendary plan, they communicate with the gods and the sailor does not return from the voyage because he becomes the lover of the goddess of the sea Iemanja. The folklore myth that Amadou used in the book is extremely common in Bahia. And to this day, on February 2, on the day of the sea goddess Iansan (or Iemanji), residents go to the beaches, throw flowers on the waves, women throw modest gifts into the water - combs, beads, rings, in order to appease the formidable goddess, to beg her to return her husband or groom unharmed.

The theme of the formation of the class consciousness of the Brazilian worker is also in this novel, but it is hidden in the story of the legendary life of the daredevil Guma and makes itself felt only in echoes: either by mention of a strike in the port, or by the vague dreams of the teacher Dona Dulce about social justice. And only at the end of the book, the combination of two motivations - everyday and poetic - highlights the true outcome of the story.

Many times in the Dead Sea the fate of sailors' widows is spoken of: in stories remembered throughout the port, in songs, in the thoughts of Guma, in the prayers of Libya. And then the premonitions came true - Livia was left alone with the child in her arms. But she did not end up in eternal bondage to the manufacturer or brothel owner. Libya found her own path, independent and difficult. She was the first of the port women to go out to sea on the “Winged” next to Guma’s male comrades.

But there is another, song-fairy tale reason for Libya’s decision. According to the deep faith of all the people of the port, a sailor who died in a storm, saving his comrades, becomes Yemanji's lover. It is she who, jealous of her chosen one, unleashes a storm and takes her beloved to the distant lands of Ayok, where he will belong only to her. And Livia believes that in the sea, having taken the place of Guma at the helm of his boat, she will snatch her husband from the hands of the goddess, she will again experience the joy of love. And when her boat rushes past the sailors, Livia herself seems to them Iemanzha, the mistress of the sea.

The miracle that sailors wait for in songs and legends is a struggle. And every bold step that frees you from fear and humiliation brings a miracle closer. Miracles will be performed by strong, free, beautiful people. Guma could become such a person. Libya becomes such a person. People are like gods - this is how one can designate the idea of ​​that poetic transformation of reality into a legend that takes place in a novel.

This transformation clearly appears in the language of the novel. Heroes don’t think like that at all, they say. In the dialogues of the characters, Amadou reproduces colloquial turns and grammatical irregularities that are characteristic of common colloquial speech. In the indirect transmission of the thoughts of the heroes, in their internal monologue, all irregularities disappear, linguistic features characteristic of folklore appear: repetitions of words and whole phrases, leitmotif phrases, quotes from folk songs sound. Next to the dialogue, the language of internal monologues seems elevated, close to a prose poem. The language failure demonstrates the gap between the everyday life of the heroes with the ignorance, poverty, and rudeness imposed on them - and the high poetic structure of their feelings, their spiritual capabilities.

"The Dead Sea", like the rest of the novels of the first Bahian cycle, especially "Jubiaba", introduced a new note into Brazilian literature. Interest in folklore has spread among the Brazilian intelligentsia since the 20s. Magazines and poetry groups arose (“Pau-Brazil”, “Yellow-Green”, “Revista de Anthropophagia”), promoting Indian, and less often Negro folklore as an original element of national culture. Vivid works were created (Raoul Bopp's poem "The Serpent of Norato", Mario de Andrade's novel "Macunaima") based on Indian myths and legends. However, folklore remained for these writers a special, enchanting, but closed world, disconnected from modernity with its social conflicts. Therefore, in their books there is a hint of admiration for an exotic, decorative spectacle.

There was another approach to folklore. Realist writers of the 30s, and especially Jose Lins do Rego, in five novels of the “Sugar Cane Cycle”, spoke about many beliefs of Brazilian blacks, described their holidays, macumba rituals. For Lins before Rego, the beliefs and customs of blacks are one of the aspects of social reality (along with labor, relations between masters and farmhands, etc.) that he observes and explores.

Amadou does not observe his heroes, does not maintain the distance that exists between the object of study and the researcher. The legend, born of the people's imagination, opens up as a reality that exists right now. Amado the narrator appears as a commentator on the folk legend, who knows all the authentic details. Folklore is not depicted - folklore penetrates into every cell of the narrative, determines the plot, composition, psychology of the characters. The characters’ feelings are intensified, enlarged, as in a folk song. Amadou talks about his characters, as a song or a fairy tale tells, which always unequivocally evaluates people. In The Dead Sea, Rosa Palmeyrao embodies maternal, sacrificial love, Esmeralda - low, treacherous passion, Livia - that only love that is stronger than death. The heroes of the novel, like the anonymous authors of songs and legends, know only light or dark, pure or low, friendship or betrayal. And so directly, so sincerely, the narrator shares the worldview of the characters that the fabulous atmosphere of the novel seems real, that the reader is ready to believe in the existence of Iemanji and the distant land of the sailors of Ayok. The scene with the candle is remarkable in this sense: the friends of the deceased Guma are looking for his body and for this they light a burning candle on the water - according to legend, the candle will stop over the drowned man. A doctor, an educated person who does not believe in sea signs, is also floating in the boat. But Guma's friends dive so relentlessly, selflessly in the most dangerous places, only the candle slows down a little, that the doctor begins to tensely follow its movement. And the reader follows the stops of the candle and waits for the body of Guma to appear in the hands of his comrades. Fascinating is the faith of the heroes of the novel in a fairy tale - the best hypostasis of their life, their natures, their relationships.

“Captains of the Sand” (1937) marked a new stage in Amadou’s artistic search. It would seem that, in comparison with the “Dead Sea,” folklore motifs here recede somewhat into the background, disappearing into the subtext. But the closeness and merciless truthfulness with which the fate of a group of Bahian street children is examined in the novel is reminiscent of the sociological protocol of Amadou’s first books - “Cocoa” and “Sweat”. The lives of these poor teenagers appear before us in every detail, sometimes funny, sometimes grossly repulsive. Amadou clearly identifies the racial and social characteristics of each group member. He strives for extreme accuracy in conveying the characters' speech, without fear of shocking the reader. And yet, this element of hard documentaryism is firmly fused in the novel with another element - folklore and poetry. There is always poetry in the wretched lives of Amadou's characters. “The captains of the sand,” “dressed in rags, dirty, hungry, aggressive, spouting obscenities and hunting for cigarette butts, were the real masters of the city: they knew it to the end, they loved it to the end, they were its poets” - this is the author’s commentary, playing an important role in the artistic whole of the novel.

In the first Bahian cycle of novels, Amadou found his own original artistic path - a bold combination of folklore and everyday life, the use of folklore to reveal the spiritual powers of the modern Brazilian. However, this path turned out to be neither simple nor direct for the writer.

In 1937, after the establishment of a reactionary dictatorship in Brazil, Amado, an active participant in the revolutionary movement, was forced to emigrate. In 1942 he returned to his homeland, but already in 1947 he emigrated again and until 1952 he lived first in France, then in Czechoslovakia. During the years of emigration, Amado became an international public figure representing democratic Brazil. It is quite understandable and natural that the writer, whose homeland was experiencing painful social upheavals, had a need to understand the historical process. And while in exile, Amadou did not forget his beloved Bahia - he wrote a nostalgic book “Bahia of All Saints. A guide to the streets and secrets of the city of San Salvador." But his main work during these years was work on epic canvases, which traced the fate of a vast region for half a century (“Endless Lands”, 1942; “City of Ilheus”, 1944), the fate of an entire class - the peasantry (“Red Shoots”, 1946 ) and, finally, the fate of the entire nation (“Freedom Underground”, 1952). For the first two books, Amadou used the memories of his early childhood: after all, he was born and raised on a cocoa plantation near the town of Ilheusa in the state of Bahia and as a child witnessed clashes between planters, revenge, violence, robbery (once Amadou’s father was wounded in front of his son), and in the evenings Relatives, farm laborers, and servants told legends about bloodthirsty planters, cruel but fair robbers - cangaceiros, desperate mercenaries - jagunso. All this was included in the duology about the land of cocoa. In “Red Shoots,” the writer relies on folklore symbolism: the book is divided into three parts, a story about the fate of three brothers (an eternal motif of fairy tales, including the Brazilian one), embodying three versions of a peasant rebellion.

In emigration, Amadou became close to writers from different countries, entered European literary life, and in the works of these years, the influence of the form of a multifaceted epic novel, well developed in European literature, is noticeable. In “Freedom Underground,” traces of folk poetics completely disappear. Amadou subsequently said that this novel of his was written under the enormous influence of Aragon’s epic “The Communists.” The Brazilian writer here, too, did not change his pictorial skill, but on the whole he was unable to find an organic (as organic as in his early folklore novels) artistic system for the gigantic new vital material. After all, he tried to cover all of Brazil with its tops and bottoms, political, social and psychological conflicts at one of the most acute moments in its recent history. In the novel, these collisions were straightened out and schematized. Numerous plot lines of the novel are built according to the same scheme: representatives of different classes (peasant, loader, ballerina, architect, officer, etc.), experiencing dramatic situations and finding support from the communists in difficult times, recognize the truth of communist ideas. The national specificity of life here turns into something external, decorative, insignificant, into a brightly painted backdrop and scenes against which the action takes place.

Amadou experienced a deep creative crisis in 1955-1956. He stopped working on the trilogy, the first part of which was supposed to be Freedom Underground. Several years of silence passed: the writer deeply thought about his intention to go from now on not in breadth - into the breadth of space and history, but in depth - into the depths of the human community. And he returned to Bahia.

He returned to Bahia in the literal sense of the word. Since 1963 he has lived in Bahia permanently, this is his home, his friends. He knows everyone in Bahia: the masters of capoeira, the women selling Bahian sweets, the fishermen, the boatmen, the old priests and priestesses of Macumba. And they know and love Seu Jorge, they come to him for advice and help.

But even earlier, a new Bahian cycle began in Amadou’s work: in 1958, the novel “Gabriela, Cinnamon and Cloves” was published, in 1961, the short story “The Extraordinary Death of Kinkasa Perish the Water” and the novel “Old Sailors, or the True Truth about the Questionable Adventures of a Distant Captain voyages of Vasco Moscoso de Aragan”, united under the general name “Old Sailors”. This was followed by a collection of stories and short stories “Shepherds of the Night” (1964), novels “Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands” (1966), “The Shop of Miracles” (1969), “Teresa Batista, Tired of War” (1972), “Tieta of Agreste , or The Return of the Prodigal Daughter" (1976).

As a matter of fact, the designation “new Bahian cycle” is partly arbitrary. The action doesn't always take place on the streets and beaches of Bahia. The heroes of “Gabriela...” live in the same town of Ilheus, the center of the cocoa zone, the “land of golden fruits,” whose name was already in the title of one of Amadou’s novels; Teresa Batista and Tieta from Agreste travel to different cities and lands, Tieta even reaches Sao Paulo. But wherever the events take place in these books, the story about them is united by a common view of life, a common human climate. And there is always continuity with the first cycle of novels about Bahia. The life of the Bahian people served as a model for Amadou’s artistic world. The experience of everyday communication with fishermen, sailors, loaders, workers, and market traders suggested to Amad the very idea of ​​the duality of life and human behavior. After all, the poor people of Bahia truly live a dual life: tired of poverty, humiliated and exhausted by hard everyday life, they become strong and free creators during the holiday, carnival, and dance. Here they dictate the laws: those who pushed them around yesterday, on the day of the holiday, admire and imitate their fun.

Amadou's new books are realistic in the most literal sense of the word - extremely life-like. Amadou knows how to write everyday life rapturously, with some kind of greed for material details, knows how to achieve the effect of presence (Ilya Ehrenburg spoke about this in the preface to one of Amadou’s novels). But no matter how real and unconditionally reliable all the details of the story are, we still feel that we are in a special world, where everything is noticeably shifted and condensed. Something must happen, something must break out from the everyday shell that has hidden it until now. Just like during a carnival, when for several days the most ordinary people live an extraordinary life, revealing incredible strength, temperament, and energy that does not dry out during these days. And here, in Bahia, and throughout Brazil, the carnival is not the result of scientific research or artistic restoration. It takes place every year on its own time.

It’s the same in Amadou’s books: ordinary life goes on, funny or pitiful figures are swarming around (let’s remember sea captain Vasco Moscoso de Aragan and other characters in the book “The Old Sailors”) - there is plenty of satire in Amadou’s books, sometimes good-natured, sometimes not at all good-natured . The selfishness and baseness of the authorities, the greed and cowardice of the philistines, the spiritual and mental routine, the claims and prejudices of pseudo-scientists and pseudo-democrats - all this is presented in grotesque sharpness. But the matter is not limited to satirical ridicule. The deadline approaches and a carnival explosion cancels the ordinary. It can be completely fantastic: the god Ogun appears at the christening of the son of a poor black man, a dead man rises to see his friends. And sometimes not fantastic, but also incredible events occur. The cook Gabriela, whom her master married, thereby making her a rich and respected lady in the city, demonstratively cheats on him and willingly returns to her former beggarly position. All residents of the Mata Gato slum engage in battle with the police and city authorities. A natural disaster of cosmic proportions sweeps over the harbor of Belem do Gran Para, destroying all ships except the steamer Ita, moored at full anchor by the hapless captain Vasco. One way or another, in a fairy tale or in a real one, in a mass or in an individual psychological situation, a fight occurs. A clash between two forces. Between selfishness and selflessness, double-mindedness and sincerity, mannerism and simplicity, friendship and selfishness. Between popular ideas about life and the actual life of bourgeois society. And thus - between the national environment and the non-national spiritual stereotype developed by modern capitalist society and spreading everywhere, including in Brazil.

To embody this clash, to characterize the antagonists participating in it, the writer developed an original and organic poetic system. In all of Amadou’s books, starting with “Gabriela...”, two camps, two streams collide. This is partly reminiscent of the two-plane nature of The Dead Sea, but the relationship between everyday life and poetry here is much more complex. The poetic plan of the narrative is no longer entirely transferred to the sphere of legend, it seems to be overgrown with the “meat” of reality, thin threads of poetry stretch into everyday life, noting in it what comes into contact with the deep movement of the people’s consciousness.

In the works “The Old Sailors” or especially “Done Flor”, everyday life and fantasy collide in an irreconcilable battle. They are completely hostile, opposite, and only humor can create a precarious balance between them. Thus, humor makes possible the “happy ending” in Dona Flor.

In Amado's works, the supernatural is associated with the beliefs of Brazilian blacks, with the rituals of their cults that have survived to this day, especially in Bahia. Of course, the black cult attracts the artist not because of its deep-rooted beliefs. Thanks to the efforts of Candomblé, ancient folk art has been preserved and is being preserved. Candomblé is a real festival of folklore: the sophisticated beat of atabaque drums sounds (later such a beat called “boosanova” is beaten on all stages of the world), ancient cantigas are sung, young priestesses of Iavo dance in a round dance, and old priestesses prepare spicy and spicy dishes for those gathered, masterpieces of Baiyan folk cooking, which is also art. Candomble gathers the poor, helps them unite, feel together with their relatives in spirit, with friends, helps them maintain the collectivity of everyday life and the collectivity of artistic creativity in difficult conditions.

Candomblé deifies dance: God here expresses his mercy only by granting his chosen one freedom and beauty of movements; a daring dance is a sign of the presence of the Divine, the favor of the Divine. And this attitude towards dance as a beautiful and happy gift colors everyday life in Amadou’s books. Dance becomes a means of characterization and evaluation; dance expresses love and joy, relief and satisfaction - all human feelings.

Food plays a similar role in Amadou’s narrative. Dishes that can only be cooked in Bahia are involved in all the twists and turns of the plot, in all the decisive events in the lives of Amadou’s heroes. The adventures of the revived corpse of Quincas Perish the Water unfold as his friends drag him to the port so that, even though he is dead, he can taste the delicious moqueca prepared by Manuel.

Finally, the book about Dona Flor includes detailed recipes for Bahian dishes - on an equal footing with the experiences of the unfortunate widow, because each dish, the secret of which Dona Flor, the head of the culinary school “Taste and Art”, teaches her students, recalls sweet and bitter moments, experiences with her late husband.

Bahian cuisine is one of the important components of Afro-Brazilian folk culture. Brazilian historians and ethnographers have carefully studied Afro-Brazilian cooking as an area of ​​racial mixing. The famous ethnographer Gilberto Freire pointed out that black dishes introduced by slave cooks into the diet of white colonialists helped the Portuguese adapt to tropical conditions. Bahian cuisine thus participated in the formation of the Brazilian nation. Jorge Amado draws attention to another, spiritual aspect of the problem - the attitude of the people's consciousness to the enjoyment of food. The popular consciousness is not only not ashamed of this pleasure, but, on the contrary, deifies it, including it in ritual. Food is sacred, it is included in the holiday along with music, song, and strange dance movements.

Sensual pleasure also openly and frankly reigns in Amadou’s artistic world. Sometimes critics are confused by the serene sensuality that is diffused in the behavior of the characters, in the details of the female portrait, in the speech of the narrator. In Amadou's novels and short stories there is no deliberate “exposure of secrets”, to which everyone familiar with Western literature is accustomed. Sexual pleasure for Amadou’s heroes is as natural and necessary as the pleasure from food or physical movement.

The highest, sweetest and most painful point of Dona Flor's memories of her first love is the evening in the restaurant when the Reveler drags her, embarrassed and shy, out to dance and both dance so enthusiastically that they outshine everyone, and couple after couple stop, giving them a place... .

Dance expresses love and joy, relief and satisfaction, all human feelings.

This connection of bodily pleasures penetrates right down to the very cells of representation. Dance, food, love merge into a single image of cheerful, free flesh.

In the books of Jorge Amadou, the popular element, the attributes of which are free, joyful flesh and the free flight of fantasy, collides in an irreconcilable battle with the bourgeois environment and the bourgeois worldview. This clash is brought to an open and programmatic opposition in the novel “The Shop of Miracles.” It seems that Amadou wrote this book because he decided to explain himself to the end, frankly. There is no fantasy here, no duality of motivations, everything is absolutely real, and for added authenticity the real names of Amadou’s contemporaries and compatriots are mentioned. Of course, Pedro Archango, the protagonist of “The Shop of Miracles,” is a fictitious figure, and the whole story of the belated recognition of his ethnographic works is fictitious. Touches of authenticity and chronicity are needed only to emphasize the real importance of the dispute being waged by Pedro Archango.

Pedro Archango is the author's double. Of course, not in biographical terms. Archanzho's life dates back to the first decades of our century: in the early 40s, he died as a poor old man on a Baiyan street. He is the author's double in the most important way - in attitude to life, in life position. A scientist by vocation and talent, Archangeau makes his very life an argument in a scientific dispute. And this dispute naturally grows out of his life, becomes the defense of everything dear to him, infinitely dear to Master Pedro. So with Jorge Amadou himself: his books grow out of his life, out of his endless love for his fellow countrymen, for their ancient art, for their naive and wise way of life, in which the writer participates as an equal, as a respected master (like Pedro Archangeau, Amadou elected "oba" - the elder of one of the Bahian temples and sits during the festivities in an honorary chair next to the main priestess). Books grow out of affection and turn into conviction, into a position in the very debate that is being waged in the novel by Pedro Arcangio, but in reality the writer Jorge Amado has been waging for many decades.

Pedro Archango affirms one idea: the Brazilian people have created and are constantly creating a unique culture. It’s time to stop talking about lack of independence and more or less successful imitation of “white civilization.” Blacks, Indians and whites (first the Portuguese, and then immigrants from many countries of the Old World) brought their traditions into the common crucible of the new nation. Having melted in this crucible, they gave rise to a new, vibrant and extraordinary culture. But Pedro Archangeau's thesis is not only anthropological, but also social. The ideal of Pedro Archangeau, the ideal that he defends both with his research and with his life, without fear of humiliation, poverty, or threats, is a democratic ideal in the full sense of the word. National and class in his understanding do not contradict each other: it is the workers of Brazil who preserve and develop the national culture, and it is in the everyday life of the poor that the best qualities of the national character are formed and manifested.

Jorge Amado is by no means one of those who are inclined to idealize the people’s life and see in it something self-sufficient: they say, the people live by their eternal values ​​and they don’t need anything else. Amadou and his hero know that the people still need a lot, that the people’s way of life must change and will definitely change. This applies primarily to social conditions, but also to consciousness: beliefs, concepts, relationships. In one of the scenes of the novel, Pedro Archango explains to his colleague, Professor Fraga, how he, Archango, a convinced materialist, can be interested in candomblé and the dance of blacks who believe that orisha deities have inhabited them. Fraga is also a materialist scientist, but of a positivist kind, limiting himself to a narrowly understood scientific sphere, not thinking about the dialectical complexity of social development. And Archangeau explains: for centuries, under the whip of the slave owner, under police bullets, the dance of the orisha gods was preserved, in order to become the property of art in the future , from the theater stage to delight people with the miracle of beauty. Helping a people preserve their art and love of life does not mean wanting to perpetuate the people’s current way of life, but, on the contrary, “helping change society, helping transform the world.”

In the morals and habits of Pedro Archango and his friends, as well as the morals and habits of the heroes of other works by Amadou, much seems doubtful to us. But the fact is that between the characters and the reader there is always an author-narrator, not a faceless narrator, but a person capable of evaluating the life depicted. The narrator's speech is full of humor and good-natured irony. Irony becomes a preventive measure against a too direct, primitively literal understanding of the story. Don’t be afraid to laugh at the excesses, eccentricities, and weaknesses of the heroes, but pay tribute to their sincerity and honesty, generosity and selflessness, their natural kindness, the author tells us with the most ironic intonation of speech.

Amadou's storytelling style gradually developed. In “Gabriel...” the narrator still seems to lose his voice, now moving to a faceless narration, now ignited with emotion. But over the years, masterful mastery of all registers of artistic speech came. “Maybe it’s just a love for the art of storytelling?” - the writer says slyly in the fairy tale for adults “The Love Story of the Tabby Cat and Senorita Swallow.” This fairy tale, which Amadou composed, putting it aside and returning for several years, captivates with its omnipotent, truly magical speech. There is no intricate plot, no bright fantasy, no unexpected ending, and the reader either smiles or is sad. Surprise, fantasy, intricacy and simplicity - all this is only in the manner of telling (but, consequently, in the manner of seeing the world), turning everyday things first one way or the other, forcing the reader to guess behind the humorous buffoonery the sadness of inevitable aging.

The tale way of narration is genetically connected with oral literature, with folklore. In Brazil, lubok books are still common and sold at any provincial fair. At the same fairs, blind storytellers gather around them, telling legendary and semi-legendary stories about famous robbers, cruel planters, rebellious slaves. The ornateness of the titles of Amado's latest works, imitating the titles of popular print stories, seems to refer us to the origins, reminds us of our kinship with the folklore story. However, Amadou does not at all imitate the artless folk tale. Sometimes to readers and critics such a relaxed style of narration, a cheerfully flowing story, seem to be a concession to entertainment, as if the stigma of “entertaining literature.” I think this is a myopic view. The playful frivolity of Amadou the narrator has not only its own system, but also its own great artistic goal. And the word “game” was used here for a reason. The playful element in Amadou’s books is indeed very strong: the characters play, the narrator plays with those he is talking about, and with us, the readers, teasing us with a feigned seriousness on his face. But the game has its own spiritual content, and it does not at all come down to entertainment and relaxation. The meaning, the spiritual purpose of the game, is the core of Amadou’s mature creativity.

Our introduction began with a story about Bahia. Remaining a passionate portraitist of his native corner of the earth, Amadou was able to look at it both from the inside and from the outside, from the thousand-year tradition of folk art, from a modernity preoccupied with complex social and intellectual problems. Did he feel in the Bahian life the breath of a utopian folk dream, an ineradicable age-old ideal principle, or did he introduce the thoughts and aspirations of a modern artist into the image of this life and thereby give it universality? It is hardly possible to answer this question unambiguously. What happens to Bahia and the Bahian carnival crowd in Jorge Amado's books is one of the usual wonders in the art shop.

The popular element in Amadou’s books is both utopian ideal and at the same time nationally specific. Amadou endlessly loves his fellow countrymen, admires their uniqueness - and wants to infect us all with this love. But he is also looking for new means to reveal this originality that influence today’s reader, because he is confident in its significance for modern man. Amadou wants to see those qualities of national character that need to be preserved, shaping our ideas about a truly humane society. Explained historically, the national identity of the Brazilian people is like a theme in the general symphony of humanity, where it is important not to lose a single note. Embodied in plastic and unusually attractive art, Brazilian originality significantly complements the spiritual life of the 20th century. Art becomes a wise reminder of the boundless wealth that lies beyond the inharmonious social everyday life.