Fromthemostbeautifultothetoothlessmouth:GuanabaraBayundertheeyesoftheworld

Image description: This is a black-and-white photograph of Guanabara Bay, featuring Pão de Açúcar Mountain and other mountain peaks in the background. On the left side, isolated islands can be seen on the horizon. In the foreground, there is dense vegetation with trees and shrubs, including palm trees. On the right, a single palm tree stands out. The sky is clear and cloudless.

Surrounded by its rocks and islands, with geological formations thousands of years old, full of coves and mangroves back when its waters were crystal clear, with the Atlantic Forest spreading green across every corner and vast terrestrial and marine wildlife, Guanabara Bay has always been an object of wonder for those who saw it for the first time.

Still in 1585, José de Anchieta called Guanabara Bay “most beautiful and ample” and, by comparison, deemed it “the most graceful and pleasant bay in all of Brazil”. The Calvinist Jean de Léry, thirty years before Anchieta, described Guanabara Bay as a space difficult to navigate, despite its beauty. Impressed by the majesty of Pão de Açúcar, described as “a rock in the shape of a pyramid” that “from afar seems artificial”, he worried about the proximity of the fins of the “horrible whales” that frightened him during voyages through the region.

Already in the 19th century, Maria Graham was one more who called it incomparable in beauty, snubbing “Naples, the Firth of Forth, the port of Bombay, and Trincomalee.” Stefan Zweig, seeing it for the first time in 1940, used superlative expressions such as “gigantic blossoming shell,” “an event without equal,” and the mouth of a city that “opens its soft, feminine arms.”

Image description: This is an old photograph of a coastal landscape. On the left side, there is a large, steep rock. In the background, there are several islands and mountains. In the center, a man is sitting on a large rock, wearing a hat and a white shirt. In front of him, there is calm water. On the right, there is dense vegetation. The sky is clear and cloudless.

It was, however, the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss who gave the bay its most famous definition. Unlike his French compatriots and other Europeans, Lévi-Strauss saw in the fame that precedes the place something that does not quite live up to it. In his view, formed during his 1934 trip to Brazil and recorded in the pages of Tristes tropiques, Rio was not exactly what one would expect:

Depois disso, sinto-me tanto mais embaraçado para falar do Rio de Janeiro, que me desagrada, a despeito da sua beleza tantas vezes celebrada. Como direi? Parece-me que a paisagem do Rio não está na escala das suas próprias dimensões. O Pão de Açúcar, o Corcovado, todos esses pontos tão louvados parecem ao viajante que penetra na baía como tocos de dentes perdidos nos quatro cantos de uma boca banguela. Quase constantemente submergidos na bruma pegajosa dos trópicos, esses acidentes geográficos não chegam a mobiliar um horizonte largo demais para se contentar com eles. Se se quiser abarcar um espetáculo, é necessário tomar a baía ao contrário e contemplai-a das alturas. Do lado do mar e por uma ilusão inversa a de Nova Iorque, é a natureza que aqui se reveste da forma de um prédio em construção

Lévi-Strauss's "toothless mouth" is undoubtedly an idea that seems unlikely to other authors, but if we consider the viewpoint he proposes – from the mountains toward the sea – as the most privileged for seeing a "spectacle," it is confirmed that, wherever one stands, the landscape of a city between the sea and the mountains seduced even the most critical of its observers.

Image description: This is an old photograph of Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro. On the left side, we see a mountain shaped like a sugarloaf, while on the right there is another, smaller rock formation. In the center, a sailing ship navigates over the calm sea. In front, in the foreground, stands a fortress with several buildings and walls. In the background, there are more mountains and a distant city. The image is in black and white.