The Carnival of the Animals on 2 April at the home of Pauline Viardot with an audience including Franz Liszt, a friend of the composer, who had expressed a wish to hear the work. There were other private performances, typically for the French mid-Lent festival of , but Saint-Saëns was adamant that the work would not be published in his lifetime, seeing it as detracting from his "serious" composer image. He relented only for the famous cello solo "The Swan", which forms the penultimate movement of the work, and which was published in 1887 in an arrangement by the composer for cello and solo piano
The Country of Carnival edition was published in a print run of a thousand copies. It was enthusiastically received by, among others, Rachel de Queiroz. The two met and it was she who introduced him to the Communist Youth. Whilst in Salvador, Bahia during 1927-31, Amado had been a member of the Academia dos Rebeldes (Academy of Rebels), a literary group formed around the journalist and poet Pinheiro Viegas, who Amado credited with having a significant influence on "The Country of Carnival". Considered subversive, "The Country of Carnival" was one of the books of Amado and others that were burned in a public square