"Questions of Travel" by Elizabeth Bishop

This volume is separated into two parts: "Brazil" and "Elsewhere." In this post I'll go over only "Brazil."

As the name suggests, this part depicts life in the raw Brazilian environment as well as personal stories of some of its inhabitants. The first poem, "Arrival at Santos,” documents what seem to be the initial impressions of a traveler in Brazil. What struck me first while reading the poem was the negative and unappreciative diction in depicting the Brazilian surroundings.

“Arrival at Santos” Stanzas one and two:

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;

here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:

impractically shaped and—who knows?—self-pitying mountains,

sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,

some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,

and some tall, uncertain palms.

This entire poem describes to the reader the disappointment and, at times, ignorance of this newcomer to Brazil. In the very next stanza, Bishop uses a rhetorical question to explicitly state the tourist’s dissatisfaction:

Stanza 3, 3^rd line:

Oh, tourist,

is this how this country is going to answer you

and your immodest demands for a different world,

and a better life, and complete comprehension

of both at last, and immediately,

after eighteen days of suspension?

On several occasions we discover the tourist’s ignorance of Brazilian life (I added the bold):

The tender is coming,

A strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.

So that’s the flag. I never saw it before.

I somehow never thought of there being a flag,

And later:

The customs officials will speak English, we hope,

and leave us our bourbon and cigarettes.

Ports are necessities, like postage stamps, or soap,

The speaker’s only concern, as evidenced in the preceding quote, is whether he will be allowed to keep his bourbon and cigarettes when leaving Santos. This poem, as well as many others in this volume, is written in 4 line stanzas with abcb rhyme scheme. I don’t necessarily think that this rhyme scheme directly relates to the content in many of the poems, but it does serve a very important purpose in that it allows Bishop to use rhyme-less free verse poems to send a clearer message. Basically, exploiting the abcb scheme in most of the poems highlights the poems that do not involve that pattern of rhymes. For example, the poem “Brazil, January 1, 1502” is written in free verse with long lines and stanzas.

After noticing that, I began to think about why Bishop would write this particular poem in free verse. Well, the entire poem is depicting the conquistadors’ invasion of Brazil. The poem begins with vivid imagery:

Januaries, Nature greets our eyes

Exactly as she must have greeted theirs:

every square inch filling in with foliage—

big leaves, little leaves, and giant leaves,

blue, blue-green, and olive,

with occasional lighter veins and edges,

or a satin underleaf turned over;

monster ferns

in silver-gray relief,

and flowers, too, like giant water lilies

up in the air—up, rather, in the leaves—

purple, yellow, two yellows, pink,

rust red and greenish white;

solid but airy; fresh as if just finished

and taken off the frame.

The “theirs” in the second line refers to the conquerors. The second stanza continues with the Nature imagery but in the third stanza the tone and content change dramatically:

Still in the foreground there is Sin:

five sooty dragons near some massy rocks.

The rocks are worked with lichens, gray moonbursts

splattered and overlapping,

threatened from underneath by moss

in lovely hell-green flames,

attacked above

by scaling-ladder vines, oblique and neat,

"one leaf yes and one leaf no” (in Portuguese).

The lizards scarcely breathe; all eyes

Are on the smaller, female one, back-to,

Her wicked tail straight up and over,

Red as a red-hot wire.

Now Bishop uses words like “Sin,” “sooty,” “splattered,” “hell-green,” “wicked” and “red-hot.” I usually abhor symbolism, but I think that these “wicked” and sinful lizards represent the conquistadors themselves. Bishop says that these dragons are in the foreground, as if they haven’t entered the picture (Brazilian environment and population) yet. In the next stanza, Bishop develops the theme by directly referencing the conquistadors.

Just so the Christians, hard as nails, tiny as nails, and glinting,

in creaking armor, came and found it all,

not unfamiliar:

no lovers’ walks, no bowers,

no cherries to be picked, no lute music,

but corresponding, nevertheless,

to and old dream of wealth and luxury

already out of style when they left home—

wealth, plus a brand-new pleasure.

This “brand-new pleasure” leads us into the last stanza where Bishop depicts their evil deeds:

Directly after Mass, humming perhaps

L’Homme armé or some such tune,

they ripped away into the hanging fabric,

each out to catch an Indian for himself,--

those maddening little women who kept calling,

calling to each other…

I love how Bishop juxtaposes piety and evil by saying that the Portuguese proceed to rape the women after Mass.

That’s all I’ll write for now, more posts to come!