The Theme in the Work
The narrator of The Slum recounts people and places with the vocabulary of the milieu, the climate and instinct, and the book makes this its way of narrating. The tenement springs from the soaked earth like larvae in dung (chapter I), Miranda sees it as a forest beneath his windows (chapter II), the morning is fermentation and animal joy of existing (chapter III), and the quarry is a giant against which men rebel (chapter IV). The same voice explains Jerônimo: the sun, coffee and music reform him (chapter IX), and his turn toward Rita Baiana comes from the impositions of the milieu (chapter XV).
Civilization enters as the work of the owner. João Romão learns to dress well and to dance (chapter XIII), rebuilds the tenement with verandas, latrines, taps and lamps (chapter XX), and makes it require a letter of surety (chapter XXII).
Music enters this same opposition. Jerônimo plays the village fados at night, and the exile's soul returns to childhood (chapter V); at the pagode, the Bahian chorado silences the songs of those from across the sea and drags him into the dance without his knowing what he feels (chapter VII). And, when the fire breaks out at number 88, the tenement sets aside the fight between the two factions and reunites as one to save what little it has (chapter XVII).
The narrative mode places the environment before each person, and the scenes lay bare what each one adds on their own: Romão measures the tenement in braças of land (chapter I), Jerônimo pays the companions of the ambush (chapter XV). The civilization at the end does not appear as the opposite of the tenement's nature: the machine that never stops (chapter XX) keeps running with lamps, and the chain goes on in Piedade's daughter (chapter XXII). The text shows both movements in the same tenement and does not choose between them.
Where It Appears
- Chapter I: The tenement springs from a hot swamp and seethes like spontaneous generation; Romão's plan is measured in braças of land.
- Chapter II: Miranda sees the tenement as a relentless forest beneath his windows, and the desire in the townhouse is narrated with images of beasts and a serpent.
- Chapter III: The tenement wakes like a seething organism, in the image of creeping plants whose feet sink into the nourishing black mud of life.
- Chapter IV: The narrator makes the quarry a combat of men against a giant of stone, and Jerônimo sees it as a methodological error.
- Chapter V: Jerônimo plays fados at night, and his exile's soul flies to the villages of childhood.
- Chapter VI: The young Pombinha, scribe to everyone, keeps the passions and resentments of the tenement like the evaporation of a swamp on a hot day.
- Chapter VII: The chorado stirs the blood of the circle, and Jerônimo is dragged into the dance without being able to grasp what he feels.
- Chapter VIII: Jerônimo's desire comes from contact, before the will; Piedade senses danger by scent, not by reason.
- Chapter IX: Jerônimo becomes Brazilian, without the sun, the coffee, the food and the music meeting any resistance.
- Chapter XI: Pombinha wakes in the grass with her first blood of puberty, which the narrator receives as nature smiling.
- Chapter XV: The narrator explains Jerônimo's turn through the milieu: the wife wearies, the mulata attracts.
- Chapter XVI: Piedade rebels against the procuring nature that stole her man.
- Chapter XVII: When the fire breaks out at number 88, the tenement sets aside its fight and reforms as a single party to save what little it has.
- Chapter XX: The rebuilt tenement gains verandas, latrines, taps and lamps, and the narrator describes it as a machine that never stops.
- Chapter XXII: The São Romão grows aristocratic, and the narrator closes Pombinha's fate by opening that of Piedade's daughter.
Passages
The tenement is born from the milieu, and before people.
E naquela terra encharcada e fumegante, naquela umidade quente e lodosa, começou a minhocar, a esfervilhar, a crescer, um mundo, uma coisa viva, uma geração, que parecia brotar espontânea, ali mesmo, daquele lameiro, e multiplicar-se como larvas no esterco, And in that soaked, steaming land, in that warm, muddy damp, a world began to wriggle, to seethe, to grow, a living thing, a generation that seemed to sprout spontaneously right there from that swamp and multiply like larvae in dung
The morning is health and the joy of living.
Sentia-se naquela fermentação sanguínea, naquela gula viçosa de plantas rasteiras que mergulham os pés vigorosos na lama preta e nutriente da vida, o prazer animal de existir, a triunfante satisfação de respirar sobre a terra, In that blood-warm fermentation, in that lush appetite of creeping plants that plunge their vigorous feet into the black, nourishing mud of life, one felt the animal joy of existing, the triumphant satisfaction of breathing over the earth
The quarry seen as a battle.
pareciam um punhado de demônios revoltados na sua impotência contra o impassível gigante que os contemplava com desprezo, they looked like a handful of demons raging in their impotence against the impassive giant that gazed down on them with contempt
What Pombinha gathers from the neighbors does not dissolve.
a pobre rapariga ia acumulando no seu coração de donzela toda a súmula daquelas paixões e daqueles ressentimentos, às vezes mais fétidos do que a evaporação de um lameiro em dias de grande calor, the poor girl was storing up in her maiden's heart the whole essence of those passions and those resentments, at times more fetid than the evaporation of a swamp on very hot days
The chorado silences the fado.
E à viva crepitação da música baiana calaram-se as melancólicas toadas dos de além-mar, And to the lively crackle of Bahian music the melancholy songs of those from across the sea fell silent
Jerônimo's change, told as the work of the milieu.
pouco a pouco, se foram reformando todos os seus hábitos singelos de aldeão português: e Jerônimo abrasileirou-se, little by little, all his simple habits as a Portuguese villager were reformed: and Jerônimo became Brazilian
The wife wearies, the mulata attracts.
cedendo às imposições mesológicas, enfarava a esposa, sua congênere, e queria a mulata, yielding to the pressures of the milieu, he grew weary of his wife, his counterpart, and wanted the mulata
Piedade turns her revolt against the land.
Parecia rebelar-se contra aquela natureza alcoviteira, que lhe roubara o seu homem para dá-lo a outra, porque a outra era gente do seu peito e ela não., She seemed to rebel against that procuring nature, which had stolen her man to give him to another, because the other was someone close to him and she was not
The machine that does not choose whom it swallows.
A feroz engrenagem daquela máquina terrível, que nunca parava, ia já lançando os dentes a uma nova camada social que, pouco a pouco, se deixaria arrastar inteira lá para dentro., The fierce gears of that terrible machine, which never stopped, were already sinking their teeth into a new social stratum that, little by little, would be dragged in whole
The chain goes on.
A cadeia continuava e continuaria interminavelmente; o cortiço estava preparando uma nova prostituta naquela pobre menina desamparada, que se fazia mulher ao lado de uma infeliz mãe ébria., The chain went on and would go on endlessly; the tenement was readying a new prostitute in that poor, helpless girl, who was becoming a woman beside an unfortunate drunken mother