When Carnival was banned – 02/07/2024 – Sérgio Rodrigues

Etymology is such a fascinating field of study – and so slippery – that it shouldn’t surprise anyone to discover that the word carnival has its origins deeply linked to the idea of… abstinence, interdiction.

Surprising, of course. Abstinence and interdiction? How can this be possible if we are talking about a party based on permissiveness, on indulgence in everything that the Puritans call – often with obvious envy and spite – sins of the flesh? In fact, carnival is about meat, right?

Yes, the word meat is part of carnival. But it’s important to explain this properly. First of all, we are not talking about naked or semi-naked flesh, with confetti stuck to sweaty skin, that parades down the avenue or jumps on street blocks. This is the meat of animals, the one that is eaten in the literal sense.

This is where the prohibition comes in: according to almost all etymologists, the Latin expression that gave rise to the word carnival, after a table with the Italian “carnevale”, is “carnem levadae”, which means to suspend, to abstain from the consumption of meat.

As there are always those who cross samba, it is worth noting that the biggest challenge to this explanation was one day presented by the thesis that links carnival to the Latin “carrus navalis”, that is, naval car, precursor of the samba school floats. The story once enjoyed popularity, but today it has no credibility with any serious scholar that I know.

Back to “carnem levare”: initially, the expression only referred to the eve of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a period in which, according to a Catholic tradition that has practically fallen into disuse, even the most carnivorous people should become vegetarians as a matter of faith. It was the day to say goodbye to meat.

And so we begin to understand how what named the suspension of a pleasure ended up naming what Rimbaud would call “unruliness of all the senses”. Nothing more human than dedicating the day before the beginning of the meat fast to a festival of chuletas, breasts and succulent loins, right? Today, the sin of gluttony; tomorrow, virtue!

As you can see, it was not so unusual after all that a summary veto of pleasure was at the origin of the name of a party dedicated to pleasure: as our era of extreme polarization has proven once again, the connection between an idea and the idea is always strong. diametrically opposite. Just invert your sign.

Inversion – and subversion – was from the beginning the soul of Momo’s business, the king of Carnival, a proper name derived from a common noun that, in turn, had been born from another proper name. Masks behind masks.

When it arrived in Portuguese in the 15th century, the word momo named a theatrical genre popular in medieval Europe, a slapstick comedy dedicated to ridiculing power and everything sacred.

By extension, the comedians – all masked – who performed momos began to be called momos too. King Momo was, therefore, just the most senior in the class, the leader of the buffoons.

It turns out that, according to the most accepted thesis, that medieval momo also had deep roots, which take us even further into the past. The word would be descended, through the Latin Momus, from the Greek Mómos, “god, son of the night, personification of slander”.

With meat or without meat, with devotion or disbelief towards Momo, the column wishes everyone a good Carnival.

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