by Jorge Amado
I have always spoken of collected material and many of the bosses of the Brazilian novel have criticized those words harshly. But in this series of mine of novels of Bahia, I have only given myself the freedom to invent, to imagine plots. I have refused to imagine either the customs of my State, or the feelings of its men, or the way in which they react to determined facts. All this, this going out to see how Bahians really live, I call “collecting material.” I am certain that I was not doing the work of a reporter, but that of a novelist, just as I am certain that, even if my novels relate facts, feelings, and landscapes of Bahia, they have a broad universal and human meaning precisely due to the social character they possess, a universal and human meaning, doubtless many times greater than those of novels written in reaction to new Brazilian novelists and which are distinguished by their not accepting any local or social character in their pages, novels that basically do not go beyond intellectual masturbation, a sort of continuation of the physical masturbation that their authors practice every day.
Therefore, I will not admit any kind of comparison between my novels and others that have been written about Bahia already. It is not a question of literary pride. It is only the certainty that no one until today has dared look face to face with so much love at Bahian humanity and its problems. No one knows better than I, who wrote them, what the weaknesses and defects of my novels are. But, by the same token, no one can measure the sacrifice they cost me, the honesty that went into their making, the disinterest and pure love that made the novelist return to his people.
I know full well that this series of novels has nothing of genius or the miraculous about it. The work of a young man, it could not help but be full of defects. I do know, however, that there exists in it a feeling that has almost always been forgotten in Brazilian works of art: an absolute solidarity with and a great love for the humanity that lives in these books.
The novelist who set out to start this work at the age of 18 and who today, at the age of 24, sees it concluded, wishes to make it quite clear here that he wrote it with the greatest satisfaction. He knows quite well that writing in Brazil is still a sacrifice, that making literature in this country, with few sales, is heroic. But this novelist has had support from the public that few Brazilian writers have had, and he knows that there are many people in the country who have understood him and look upon him with sympathy and love. Free of any and all links of friendship with literary groups and forces in the country, this novelist went out to seek support from the public, who came to understand that they had a friend in him, someone who wished to speak with a frank and loyal voice. Furthermore, this novelist is happy to know that he made the suffering and life of the Bahian people known to millions of people in Brazil and abroad, making many hearts beat in solidarity with the drama of their brethren in Bahia.
This series of six novels of Bahia is only based on the love a young man felt for the suffering, the joy, the life of the people of his land. They were books written, if not with talent and literary capacity, at least with a desire for absolute understanding.
I dedicate these “Novels of Bahia” to João Amado de Faria, my father, as a token of love and great recognition. He was one of those men from Sergipe who came as boys to build a country in Bahia, a clearer of backlands, builder of roads, raiser of towns, and to him for his 40 years of daily work on the land of Bahia, for the strength of heroism and poetry in his life, to him, builder of the country of Bahia, this remembrance from his Bahian son.
JORGE AMADO
Mexico City, June 1937