Francisco das Chagas Batista was not a singer, but one of the best-known popular poets. His extensive production provided a vast material for folk singing. [...]
(Luís da Câmara Cascudo, Vaqueiros e cantadores, 1984. p. 325).
Better known as Chagas Batista, the popular poet, writer, and editor, Francisco das Chagas Batista, was born on May 5, 1882, at the Riacho Verde farm, Serra da Borborema, a town in Teixeira, Paraíba (Brazil), son of Luís de França Batista Ferreira and Cosma Felismina Batista.
He carried out his first studies in his hometown. Later, he continued studying in night classes in Campina Grande, PB, to where he transferred with his mother and brother in 1900, after the death of his father.
He worked carrying water and wood during the day, but then he found a job as a laborer on the railway of Alagoa Grande.
In 1902, he published his first cordel booklet under the title Saudades do sertão (Missing the sertão), which he sold in street markets of the region. He later provided, in the municipality of Areia, the impression of other cordel stories, selling them until he reached João Pessoa (called Paraíba at the time). In the state capital, he published a new print run of Saudade do sertão, which was highly praised by local newspapers, such as O Comércio (The Commerce) and A União (The Union). His work was also praised by the newspapers A República (The Republic), from Natal, RN, and O Ateneu Campinense (The Athenaeum from Campinas), published in Campina Grande, Paraíba. He also sold cordel booklets in Recife and Olinda, Pernambuco.
In 1909, Chagas Batista married Hugolina Nunes da Costa (1888-1965), who was his cousin and the daughter of the well-known singer Ugolino Nunes da Costa. He had eleven children with Hugolina.
He lived in Guarabira, PB, for some time, and was permanently transferred in 1911 to João Pessoa (still called Paraíba), where he began to sell books. Two years later, in 1913, he founded his Livraria Popular Editora (Editora Popular Book Store), at Rua da República, n. 65 (later n. 584). Besides parodies, he published novels, short stories, poetry, and cordel booklets. He printed the works of many popular poets of the time.
Besides being a regular reader of newspapers from Pernambuco and Paraíba, Chagas Batista also read magazines from the Southeast of Brazil, such as the ones from Rio de Janeiro: O Malho (The Mace), A Careta (The Grimace), Revista da Semana (Magazine of the Week), and Cosmos and from São Paulo: Revista do Brasil (Brazil’s Magazine). Many of his cordel booklets were made from reading newspapers.
He organized the books A lira do poeta (The poet’s lyre), published in 1910 by Imprensa Industrial (Industrial Press), containing recitative Modinhas and sonnets (132 pages) and Poesias escolhidas (Chosen poems) (Livraria Popular Editora, 1918), parodying poems by Castro Alves, Olavo Bilac, Guerra Junqueiro, Humberto de Campos, Augusto dos Anjos, Tobias Barreto, Auta de Souza, among many others. According to him, his selection was based on poets who best interpreted the human feeling instead of literary schools.
The amount of cordel booklets Chagas Batista produced is unknown. According to Ruth Terra (1983), at least 45 are unquestionably his. Fourteen of them deal with the cangaceiro Antonio Silvino and five about Lampião. He also wrote eight novels: O amor de Celina (Celina’s love), later titled Casamento e mortalha (Wedding and shroud); História da Imperatriz Porcina (Empress Porcina’s story), versified from the book of Balthazar Dias; O triunfo do amor (The triumph of love), inspired by the novel Quo Vadis? (Where are you going?); História da escrava Isaura (Slave Isaura’s story), inspired by Bernardo Guimarães’ book; and História de Esmeraldina (Esmeraldina’s story), based on the ninth story of the second day of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
The following booklets are also his: Saudades do sertão (1902); A vida de Antônio Silvino (1904, reissued in 1905, 1906, and 1907); A morte de Cocada e a prisão de suas orelhas (1908); A maldição da nova seita (1908); Resposta ao poldro do meu colega (in response to a poem by Leandro Gomes de Barros, 1909); A descrição do Amazonas; História de Guiomar; História de Maria Rita; Torpedeamento dos vapores “Paraná”, “Tijuca” e “Lapa” (1917); A história completa de Antônio Silvino: sua vida de crimes e seu julgamento (1919); O marco de Lampião; Conselhos do Padre Cícero a Lampião; Os decretos de Lampião (como ele foi cercado pela Polícia paraibana em Tenório, onde morreu Levino Ferreira, seu irmão); A morte do Inspetor de Santa Inês; O valente Vilela; Os revoltosos no Nordeste; A hecatombe de Piancó e a morte do Padre Aristides; Novos crimes de Lampião; O mundo às avessas; O povo na Cruz; A caravana democrática em ação; and História do capitão Lampião (desde o seu primeiro crime até a sua ida a Juazeiro – “contendo a luta do serrote Preto, o fechamento do corpo de Lampião por um feiticeiro, o pacto de Lampião com o Diabo e a Luta com o tigre”) (1920-1928).
In 1929, a year before his death, he published the book Cantadores e poetas populares (Singers and popular poets), a work on popular verse literature, in which he gathered biographical data and poetry from eighteen popular poets he met and/or lived with—including Leandro Gomes de Barros, Silvino Pirauá de Lima, and João Melchíades Ferreira. In the book’s preface, he states that:
[...] I received most of the originals from the hands of the authors themselves, my contemporaries. The older works, however, I collected from old books of old amateurs of the popular verse, contemporaries of old singers, and who lived in the sertões in the second half of the 19th century. [...] I publish their poetry as I found them in the hands of their authors, letting others study and criticize them, giving to each of these verses their folk classification. [..] In the future, those who want to study the psychology of these uneducated poets will find reports to develop their work in the simple notes that are printed here, which, even if they have no literary value, at least express the truth.
Francisco das Chagas Batista died in João Pessoa on January 26, 1930.
Recife, November 1, 2012
sources consulted
BATISTA, F. Chagas. Cantadores e poetas populares. 2.ed. - João Pessoa: UFPB, Ed. Universitária, 1997. (Biblioteca paraibana, 210).
BATISTA, Sebastião Nunes. Chagas Batista. Recife: Fundaj, Inpso, Coordenadoria de Folclore, 1982. (Folclore, n. 122).
CASCUDO, Luís da Câmara. Vaqueiros e cantadores. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia; São Paulo: Ed. da USP, 1984.
GRILLO, Maria Ângela de Faria. A arte do povo: histórias na literatura de cordel (1900-1940). 2005. 255f. Tese (Doutorado) - Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, 2005.
SILVA, José Fernando Souza e. Francisco das Chagas Batista: biografia. Disponível em: <http://www.casaruibarbosa.gov.br/cordel/
FranciscoChagas/franciscoChagas_biografia.html>. Acesso em: 26 out. 2012.
TERRA, Ruth Brito Lêmos. Memória de lutas: literatura de folhetos do Nordeste, 1893-1930. São Paulo: Global, 1983. 190 p. (Teses,13).
how to quote this text
GASPAR, Lúcia. Chagas Batista. In: Pesquisa Escolar. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, 2012. Available at:https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/artigo/chagas-batista/. Access on: mês dia ano. (Ex.: Aug. 6, 2021.)