Historians have stressed the serious, geopolitical consequences of the breaking-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. However it has still not been revealed what the consequences were in the realm of mentalities and customs. It was like a breath of life that suddenly diminished in Europe. The atmosphere of stability and security, as Stefan Zweig87 recalls, that had been the basic characteristic of the Belle Epoque, quickly disappeared. A wind of uncertainty and anxiety assailed the old continent. Up to 1914 Europe had had undisputed superiority. After the war it “doubts itself, the legitimacy of its dominion, the superiority of its civilisation and its future”.88 Works with titles that would once have been inconceivable, such as The Decline of Europe by the geographer Albert Demangeon and The Decline of the West by the German writer Oswald Spengler, become veritable best-sellers.
The “American myth” begins to establish itself in the world.89 “While Europe seemed to sink into chaos, the zenith of ‘wilsonian’ splendour dawned over America. The United States had attained its apogee.”90 America represented a new way of life that had its shining and artificial model in Hollywood, the Californian city, home of the new cinema empire. In the Twenties, “les années folles” or “Roaring Twenties”, Europe underwent social transformations which profoundly altered the habits and customs of its inhabitants. Americanisation was imposed above all by the cinema91 which became the most popular pastime after the sports of the masses, such as football and boxing spread by the press and by the radio.
The new style of life, the antithesis of the spirit of the Belle Epoque, did not only affect the upper classes, but also extended to the middle classes and to a large degree to the working classes. Its symbol was the emancipation of women, who in many countries, such as France and Italy, still did not vote. It offered a “modern” and aggressive image of themselves that was very different from the traditional female model. It was a new type of woman who cut her hair “à la garçonne”, who shortened her skirts and sleeves, who drove and went to the beach, while the male type was a practical and dynamic man, who pursued success in the wake of the American self-made man. The myth of money relentlessly forced itself into society together with an unbridled search for pleasure. Life underwent a strong process of democratization in every aspect: social relationships, fashion, language.
Even in Brazil, in the Twenties, a change in taste began to be felt. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira was to recall:
“This decade was for us a ‘life of idleness’, of fabulous expenditures, of high coffee bean prices, of constant trips to Europe, of orgies and of the carefree life. (…) The mental stagnation of the Brazilian was total. The famous jazz band, the shimmy, cinema, and sports monopolised every spirit.”92
He was to define “Americanism” as
“a subconscious state of spirit, at times becoming conscious, that makes the life of pleasure the supreme value of man and attempts to see the universe and organize existence in an inherently delightful way”.93
In the Centre of São Paulo, the upper halls of the Mappin stores displayed English furniture, more modern and “hygienic” than its French counterpart. Football begins to find favour among the young people, while a new hedonistic view of life finds its symbol in Rio, the city of beaches and of the Carnival. The Week of Modern Art that was held in São Paulo in 1922, under the patronage of the Paulista social elite,94 already foreshadows the revolution in architecture whose symbol will be Oscar Niemeyer, the Communist architect who was to design Brasília. That same year sees the construction in São Paulo of the “Martinelli skyscraper”, the tallest in South America; the Russian architect Gregori Warchavchik begins that “international style” which would upset the typical characteristics of the Brazilian urban centres,95 while Le Corbusier became the model of Latin America’s new architects. The radical transformation of the city, in less than twenty years, reflected the similarly profound transformation in customs and ideas.96 The Corrêa de Oliveira family, however, in which, under the influence of his mother, the young Plinio was being formed, was a little patch of the Ancien Régime that survived and opposed the floodtide of modernity.
Notes:
87. “When I attempt to find a simple formula for the period in which I grew up, prior to the First World War, I hope that I convey its
fullness by calling it the Golden Age of Security. (…) No one thought of wars, of revolutions, of revolts. Everything radical, all violence seemed impossible in an age of reason”. S. Zweig, The world of yesterday, (London, Cassell, 1987), pp. 13-14.
88. René Rémond, Introduction à l’histoire de notre temps, (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1974), III: Le XX siècle de 1914 à nos jours, p. 52. Cf. also Carlo Curcio, Europa, storia di un’idea, 2 vols., (Florence, Vallecchi, 1958), vol. II, pp. 789-880; Jean Guiffan, Histoire de l’Europe au XX siècle, 1918-1945, Brussels, Editions Complexe, 1995.
89. Cf. Appendix I of the second part of P. Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII, The United States: An Aristocratic Nation Within a Democratic State, pp. 135-330. Cf. also A. FREDERICK MARK, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1963; Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968. In the second half of the twentieth century, while the Revolution advanced, the United States exercised a role similar to that of Europe in the previous century. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, one of his disciples recalls, “compared this role to that of Austria in the nineteenth century”. Just as the Hapsburg empire represented the principal target of international liberalism of the time, the American empire ended up by being the “black beast” of the international progressivism, who saw it as a symbol of conservatism and anti-communism. In this new contest, he “began to support the anticommunist attitudes of the United States, as well as the pressure that certain groups, from within the country, exerted by urging the Government to maintain a firm policy against Sino-Soviet expansionism. In no way did this attitude imply an acceptance of the American way of life or of the liberalizing influence of Americanism. It was merely an objective recognition that, for the present, the United States was a power without which one cannot even think of stopping the political and military advance of international communism.” (Julio Loredo, Letter to the author).
90. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “A dynamite de Christo”, O Legionário, no. 321, 5 November 1938.
91. In the twenties its heroes were Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, Rodolfo Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford.
92. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, A dynamite de Christo.
93. P. Corrêa de Oliveira, “O coração do sabio está onde há tristeza”, Catolicismo, no. 85, January 1958, p. 2.
94. José de Azeredo Santos, “Semana de arte moderna: precursora dos ‘hippies’ “, Catolicismo, 256, April 1972, p. 7.
95. In 1925 Warchavchik published in the Correio da Manhã of Rio the article “Acerca da Arquitetura moderna” in which he presented Le Corbusier to the Brazilian public. It was he who built the first “modernist house” of Brazil, on Santa Cruz Street in São Paulo.
96. The town planning of São Paulo altered under the mayorship of Fabio Prado (1935-8), but especially when the urbanist Francisco Prestes Maia (1896-1965) was elected mayor of São Paulo from 1938 to 1945, and again from 1961 to 1965. His urbanist philosophy is expounded in works such as São Paulo, metrópole do século XX (1942) e O plano urbanístico da cidade de São Paulo (1945).