Literary Mutualism
IN THE MID-NINETEENTH century, plays were such popular reading material that the publication of comedies, dramas, farces, and librettos made many publishers rich, as the successful careers of the brothers Michel and Calman Lévy in France exemplify. Michel Lévy had a background in theater and was well aware that the audience was eager to read the latest hits presented on Parisian stages.1 A similar phenomenon was also occurring in Brazil, which was attested by the deputy for São Paulo when he submitted a bill to the Chamber of Deputies aimed at protecting the rights of the authors of those works: “The theater, Mr. President, [is] generally viewed as the literary genre that the public most enjoys.”2 Its popularity could also be gauged by the contents of publisher Paula Brito’s catalogs.
According to the list of books for sale that was published in A marmota after the bookshop reopened on Praça da Constituição,3 the reading public of Rio de Janeiro had a marked preference for plays and opera librettos. Martins Pena’s comedies sold for 600 réis, and he was undoubtedly a bestselling author. The location of Paula Brito’s shop was also a factor—it was just a few steps away from the São Pedro Theater, whose director was the actor and Petalogical Society member João Caetano dos Santos. The foot traffic in the shop could be tremendous on show days. According to Jean-Yves Mollier, in his analysis of the situation in France, “The opening of a comedy, of a drama, was never planned without the sale of the printed text that same evening, in a room in the theater or somewhere in the vicinity.”4 Paula Brito was also well aware of what was going in Rio’s other theaters. A good example in this regard is the story of the publication of Joaquim Manuel de Macedo’s play Luxo e vaidade (Luxury and vanity), in 1860. Staged for the first time on September 23 at the Ginásio Dramático Theater by the newly founded National Theater Company, the play was considered the “rebirth of the Ginásio,” the home of the “school of realism” in Rio de Janeiro, which had been struggling since the middle of 1858. In the weeks following the opening of the play, Paula Brito worked hard to gather subscriptions for the publication of Luxo e vaidade while publicizing the growing box-office and critical success it gained with each performance.5
A total of eight hundred subscriptions were raised, and the “List of Subscribers” and “Supplementary List of Subscribers” published as an appendix to that volume demonstrate that the play was a huge success. The lists also indicate that this sales method also included wholesalers, as other booksellers and traders subscribed for considerable numbers of copies. Antonio José Gonçalves Guimarães, a bookseller-printer located at Rua do Sabão, subscribed for fifty copies, the same number shown for Henrique Laemmert, the owner of the Livraria Universal (Universal Bookstore). Domingos José Gonçalves Brandão, in turn, subscribed for one hundred copies, while José Martins Alves, an agent of the Correio mercantil in Bahia, subscribed for forty, certainly with a view to selling them in that province.6
Similarly, Paula Brito also purchased the rights to plays originally published in Lisbon. As soon as his bookstore reopened in 1857, the publisher became a representative of Teatro Moderno (Modern Theater), a “collection of dramatic works performed to public acclaim in national theaters” in Portugal.7
Paula Brito was aware of the keen interest in reading plays in Rio de Janeiro and other provinces. Thus, in October 1860, it was none other than Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, the author of Luxo e vaidade and other plays and novels published by Paula Brito, who first mentioned the publisher’s new venture in a column published in Jornal do commercio.8 According to Macedo, Paula Brito intended to “revive” an idea set out in 1856 in the articles of association of the Dous de Dezembro literary publishing house. The aim of the new plan, which Macedo called an “Auxiliary Fund for Literature” was to publish plays “until its funds reach an amount that permits operations of broader scope.” Naturally interested in financing the project, Rio de Janeiro’s theater impresarios and companies mobilized to help Paula Brito. Macedo wrote that the National Theater Society and the director of the São Pedro Theater immediately offered to hold benefits to raise funds for the project. All told—according to the columnist’s estimate—their efforts produced the tidy sum of 3 million réis. Macedo also observed that the project would create a system of awards to provide incentives for Brazilian playwrights. Finally, he explained that, this time, Paula Brito was not alone, because he had entrusted the drafting of the articles of association to the Petalogical Society. “Who would have thought that the famous Petalogical Society would be involved in work that belies its name! The society of fabrications coming up with truths!”9
When quoting Macedo’s article in A marmota, Paula Brito commented that he had been mulling over the idea for over a decade. Indeed, the first articles of association of the failed Dous de Dezembro company expressed the publisher’s desire to aid the advancement of literature throughout the Empire. Despite being deferred several times, the plan finally had a chance of becoming a reality. Perhaps that is why, this time, Paula Brito called on the Petalogical Society to help him, justifying this decision on two grounds:
1. To give the Petalogical Society, which I have created, a means of entertainment and recreation in reading and judging dramatic plays, thus wishing for a group of young men, many of whom are skilled and well-educated, from the best classes in society, to do more than they have done in the past, belying its name with its efforts on behalf of dramatic and musical works.
2. Realizing the benefit that I requested and the other, which was liberally offered to me, through a commission or commissions, of which I will be part, ensuring that everything is so well and clearly carried out that the public is not unaware of the least thing about it.10
While the first paragraph makes it clear that the Petalogical Society was directly involved in drafting the Fund’s articles of association, the second says little about the “benefit” that would finance the project. Paula Brito must have expected some government funding. However, the unofficial nature of the Petalogical Society presented an obstacle, as Law no. 1083 of August 22, 1860, had recently been enacted to regulate all associations active in the Empire, irrespective of their nature. For a society to operate officially, its articles of association had to be approved by the State Council. Therefore, the association that met informally at Paula Brito’s bookshop and took part in Rio de Janeiro’s Carnivals and civic festivities would have to be regulated. When he presented the readers of A marmota with the articles of association of the Auxiliary Fund for Dramatic and Musical Works (not the Auxiliary Fund for Literature, as Macedo had called it), Paula Brito explained that there were complications regarding the Petalogical Society that prevented it from running the project. Nevertheless, to streamline the process of establishing the Fund, the publisher stated that he had submitted the articles of association to the Imperial Secretary of State for Business and was awaiting the decision of the State Council.11
The document’s nineteen articles regulated the operations of the Auxiliary Fund, stating that its main objective was to raise and manage funds that would be used to reward and finance the production of Brazilian works:
Art. 1. A prize is hereby created, which for now will be from 200 to 600 [thousand réis], to be bestowed on the best dramatic or musical work, according to its merit.
Art. 2. The awarded works will remain the property of the Society, but their authors will be entitled to 10 percent of any net benefit that may be derived from them, whether [from] renting, selling or printing them.12
The Auxiliary Fund sought to focus on the dual use of a dramatic play—that is, staged performances and publication in book form. Other organizations whose articles of association were analyzed by the State Council during the same period also proposed financing publications. The Gabinete Português de Leitura (Portuguese Reading Library) of Maranhão, for example, stated among its objectives: “When the interests of Association so permit, collecting worthy works in the Portuguese language, reprinting rare books and publishing interesting manuscripts in the same language.”13 In its turn, the Grêmio Literário Português (Portuguese Literary Guild) of Rio de Janeiro intended to “advance the development of letters as much as possible through publications produced by the institution,” particularly memoirs, biographies, poetry, and “small articles in prose” collected annually in a French in-quarto volume of up to three hundred pages. However, the guild’s articles of association did not allow the funds to be used to finance the publication of political tracts, “novels in general,” “light comedies,” and translations.14
In the end, by seeking to finance the staging and publication of plays, the Auxiliary Fund was proposing a kind of literary mutualism. As historians have pointed out, the purpose of mutual aid societies was to defend the interests of workers, mainly through material aid, the promotion of better working conditions, and the education of their associates.15 If they could not make a living from their writings, authors who failed to obtain a position in the civil service would certainly have struggled in the nineteenth century. From the humble role of clerk, as was the case with Teixeira e Souza, to the highest diplomatic posts, as was the case with Gonçalves de Magalhães, joining the ranks of the imperial bureaucracy was a matter of survival for the vast majority of Brazil’s poets, playwrights, and novelists.16 Thus, while far from solving the problem, the Auxiliary Fund for Dramatic and Musical Works was an alternative form of remuneration for writers, in this case playwrights who penned dramas and comedies. Even if they surrendered ownership of their work to the Fund, the selected authors could make a few thousand réis from the products of their quills. In fact, by all accounts, everyone stood to gain, because the publisher certainly had his eye on a highly lucrative market.
Unfortunately, in early February 1861, the State Council rejected the Fund’s articles of association. The counselors who examined the documents—the Viscount of Sapucaí, the Marquess of Olinda, and José Antônio Pimenta Bueno—concluded that the entity was not an association: “This Session does not see any association whose articles are to be examined, whether or not to be approved; it sees an individual organizing a regulation for its intended purpose, not to govern an association.” If by chance there was a company behind the Fund and it was “legitimately constituted,” its articles of association would have to be redrafted. Otherwise Paula Brito should “request its incorporation in accordance with the Laws and Decrees governing the matter.”17 A few days later, the Diário do Rio de Janeiro reported that the “company in favor of literature” conceived by Paula Brito had not been approved “because it is incorporated into the Petalogical Society.”18
Paula Brito died a few months later. Due to lack of time or lack of enthusiasm, he set aside the task of reorganizing the Petalogical Society in accordance with the laws governing associations. In any case, his failed attempt to create the Auxiliary Fund for Dramatic and Musical Works demonstrates the publisher’s interest in promoting Brazilian literature and its authors while trying to make a small profit. The way relations between the publisher and the authors took place in practice, going beyond the unrealized projects, is the subject of the following chapter.