Author of “Gabriela, Cravo e Canela”, “Tieta do Agreste” and “Capitàes da Areia”, Jorge Amado has established himself as one of the greatest and most popular writers in the country. Of him, Otto Lara Rezende said: “It is the firm certainty of Brazil’s existence.”
In 1944, the author from Bahian state reflected on the power of words on a planet in conflict—World War II was raging. “How can we talk about the free beauty of fields and cities, when the wild beasts of the world still destroy fields and cities?” he wrote in a text published in Folha da Manhá.
In the early 1960s, the newspaper merged with Folha da Manhá and Folha da Tard to create Folha de S. Paulo.
Amado wrote: “There was a day when I spoke of love and found the sweetest words, the most detailed expressions. Today only hatred can make love the last thing in the world.”
Read the full text below, part of Section 105 Columns of Great Influence, which recalls the records that made history in Bound. This initiative comes within the framework of the celebrations of the 105th anniversary of the founding of the newspaper in February 2026.
Neither Roses nor Carnations (07/16/1944)
Sentences lose their meaning, words lose their usual meaning, how can we say about the trees and the flowers, your eyes and the sea, the boats and the pier, the butterflies on the trees, when children are coldly murdered by the Nazis? How can we talk about the free beauty of fields and cities, when the wild beasts of the world are still destroying fields and cities?
Have you ever seen a wheat blonde swaying in the wind? It is one of the most beautiful things in the world, but the Hitlers and their evil dogs have destroyed the wheat fields and people are dying of hunger. How then can we speak of beauty, this simple and pure beauty of flour and bread, of spring water, of the blue sky, of your face in the afternoon? I can’t talk about these everyday things, these everyday joys.
Because it endangers all of it: the fields of wheat, the bread, the flour, the water, the sky, the sea, and your face. Against everything that represents the everyday beauty of man has risen Nazi fascism, a medieval monster of vile vision and insatiable murderous appetite. Others talk, if they want, about trees in the wild evenings, about roses of all colors, about simple flowers, and about the most beautiful and saddest verses. Others speak great words of love to their beloved, others speak of twilights and starry nights. I have no words, I have no sentences, I see the trees and the birds and the noon, I see your eyes, I see the twilight bordering the city.
But above all these paintings float the corpses of children killed by the Nazis, the cries of elderly people tortured in concentration camps mix with the sounds of birds, and the dawn of bullet-ridden hostages mixes with the twilight. And when the landscape resembles the countryside, what I see are the wheat fields destroyed in the wake of Hitler’s monsters, the wheat fields that once fed the free population. Above all beauty looms the shadow of slavery. It’s like an unexpected cloud in a clear blue sky. So how do you find innocent words, sweet affectionate words, and soft and sad verses? I have lost the meaning of these words, these phrases, they seem like betrayal at this moment.
But I know all the words of hate, the deepest and most deadly hate. They kill children and this is their way of playing the most innocent games. They insult the beauty of women in dirty beds, and this is their most romantic way of loving. They torture men in concentration camps, and that’s the simplest way to build the world.
They invaded homelands and enslaved peoples, and this is the ideal they carry in their clay hearts. How then can you keep your eyes closed to all this and speak, in the usual words, in yesterday’s phrases, of the landscape and the birds, of the noon and your eyes? It is impossible because monsters are loose and voracious in the world, their mouths dripping with blood, their eyes yellow, and the ambition to enslave. Brown monsters, black monsters, and green monsters.
But I know all the hateful words and those, yes, have meaning now. There was a day when I talked about love and found the sweetest words and most accurate expressions for him. Today only hatred can make love the last in the world. Only a hatred of fascism, a deadly hatred, a merciless hatred, a hatred that comes from the heart and takes us all, controls all our words, prevents us from seeing any sight – of the dusk in the eyes of a lover – without seeing the danger that surrounds them.
The afternoons will never be sweet and the dawns will never be so hopeful. Books will never say beautiful things, never will a love verse be written. Above all the beauties of the world, above the flour and bread, above the pure water of the fountain, above the sea, above your eyes too, is the shame that Nazi fascism would fall upon, if it could control the world. There will be no trace of beauty, even if it is slight. Tomorrow I will know sweet words and affectionate phrases again.
Today I only know words of hate, words of death. You will not find a carnation, nor a rose, a flower in my literature. But you will find a dagger or a gun, you will find a weapon against the enemies of beauty, against those who love darkness and misery, mud and sewers, against those remnants of rot that dreamed of crushing poetry, love and freedom!
About The Author
