Getulino’s First Burlesque Ballads by Luiz Gama

in progress

Luíz Gonzaga Pinto da Gama (1830-1882), known commonly as Luiz Gama, is a towering figure in Afro-Brazilian history and a pioneer of its national literature. Sold into slavery as a child, Gama would go on to achieve success as an abolitionist lawyer and literary satirist. His major work of poetry, Primeiras Trovas Burlescas de Getulino (Getulino’s First Burlesque Ballads), first appeared in 1859 and has remained in print ever since. Gama also published essays under his own name and various pseudonyms, in addition to founding periodicals like Diabo Coxo (Crippled Devil) and O Cobrião (The Nuisance). An advocate for the enslaved and ruthless lampooner of Brazilian society, Gama has assumed a legendary status in Afro-Brazilian culture: his visage adorns a large painted street mural in Rio de Janeiro; the University of São Paulo Law School has named a classroom after him; and his life was recently dramatized in a major motion picture, Doutor Gama (2021), directed by Jeferson De. Over the last year, the Projeto Luiz Gama has republished his complete works across 11 volumes, a clear indication of continued interest in Gama’s writing.

Getulino’s First Burlesque Ballads will be the first and only complete volume of Gama’s poetry to appear in English. Indeed, despite his undisputed position at the center of Afro-Brazilian literary history, only a small handful of Gama’s poems have appeared in English, almost entirely in out-of-date anthologies. A bilingual facing-page translation, along with a scholarly introduction and full critical apparatus, will further enable readers to appreciate the poet’s singular style and biting wordplay. Making Gama’s verse available to English-language readers would indeed fulfill his own hopes, as described self-mockingly in “Lá vai verso!” (“So Long, Poetry!”):

I wish to carve in columns clear
the gravity of crap,
and bring my crocks of shit to distant
regions of the map!