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PARTISAN REVIEW
enemies. Even so ambitious and high-minded a president as Juscelino Ku–
bitschek, who initiated the large-scale industrialization of Brazil when he
took office in 1953, nearly wrecked the already shaky economy by push–
ing through that grandiose monument to his ego, the new inland capi–
tal, Brasilia.
Even more than the political chaos and corruption and the general
dilapidation of the country, what never ceased to shock Elizabeth was
the contrast between the grandiose opulence of the white- rich life and
the ignorance and destitution of the black poor who in Rio were con–
centrated mainly in the
Jave/as
(shantytowns), without water or electricity,
that stood alongside the gleaming luxury of new apartment houses for
the well-to-do. When Lota hired a new servant couple in 1960, Eliz–
abeth described them with wonder and dismay:
It is hard to realize the depths of ignorance and profundities of stu–
pidities that exist in the interior, and not so far in, of this country.
[The new couple] had never heard of the USA or England - or a king
or queen , or Recife or Bahia - and they will eat almost nothing but
cornmeal, beef and black beans, because they' re AFRAID to. On the
other hand, they both know how to handle guns.
In the finest of her poems about Brazil, "Manuelzinho," she bal–
anced with great subtlety the annoyance it was impossible not to feel
toward illiterate blacks like the couple and the gardener of the poem,
and the forgiveness it was equally hard not to extend. In the many-lay–
ered poem about Manuelzinho, "the world's worst gardener since
Cain," Elizabeth captured the voice and temperament of Lota de
Macedo Soares with uncanny perfection: crackling with irritation and
anger, affectionate, wheedling, bullying, at once amused and charmed
and furious when her impossible gardener comes to settle:
what we call our "accounts,"
with two old copybooks"
one with flowers on the cover,
the other with a camel.
Immediate confusion.
You've left out the decimal points.
Your columns stagger,
honeycombed with zeros.
You whisper conspiratorially;
the numbers mount to millions.
Account books? They are Dream Books.
