Page:Brazilian short stories.djvu/9

 INTRODUCTION

Monteiro Lobato represents the most recent phase of the Brazilian reaction against Gallic literary influence. Though not pretending primarily to be a writer, he yet has inaugurated what amounts to almost to a new period of the national letters. At the bottom of his nationalism, however, is the one valid foundation of art: sincerity. If occasionally he overdoes his protest against the French, he may well be forgiven because of its sound basis; it is part of his own personality to see things in the primary colors, to play the national zealot not in any chauvinistic sense; he is no blind follower of the administrative powers, no nationalist in the ugly sense of cheap partisan drum-beating, but in the sense that true nationalism is the logical development of the fatherland's potentialities. A personally in- dependent fellow, then, who would achieve for his nation that same independence.

The beginning of the World War found Monteiro Lobato established upon a fazenda, far from the thoughts and centers of literature. It was by accident that he discovered his gifts as a writer. The story is told that one day, rendered indignant by the custom of clearing stubble fields by fire, and thus endangering the bordering inhabitants, he sent a letter of protest to a large daily in Sao Paulo. It seems that the letter was too important, too well-