Afonso Henriques da Costa Guimarães was born on July 24, 1870, in Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais.
He attends the Escola de Minas de Ouro Preto when he loses his fiancée Constança, on December 28, 1888, the daughter of the novelist Bernardo Guimarães, the writer of Escrava Isaura.
Shortly thereafter, he moved to São Paulo, where he attended the Largo São Francisco Law School, which he graduated in 1894. Soon after graduating, the author exercises his profession in the position of promoter in Minas Gerais. During this period he had already contributed to the newspapers Diário Mercantil, Comércio de São Paulo, Correio Paulistano, O Estado de S. Paulo and A Gazeta.
He marries Zenaide de Oliveira in 1897 and in 1906 becomes a judge in the city of Mariana, still in Minas, a place he never left and raised 14 children!
Alphonsus Guimaraens is considered the mystic author of Symbolism, due to the evidence of a triangle in his work: mysticism, love and death.
His first book published in 1899 is in the form of poems, called Dona Mística. That same year, it was also the publication of Setenário das Pains of Our Lady and Burning Chamber. Some time later, in 1902, he writes and publishes Kyriale under the consecrated pseudonym Alphonsus Guimaraens.
The author's life guides his work through the milestones of the bride's death and devotion to Mary, wrapped in an atmosphere of exacerbated mysticism, in which death is seen as the means of approaching love (Constanta) and Mary (figure religious).
The author died on July 15, 1921, known as “O solitaire de Mariana”, for having lived isolated from the events.
See an excerpt from the famous poem “Ismália”, a character with a tragic end:
When Ismalia went crazy,
She stood in the tower dreaming...
She saw a moon in the sky,
She saw another moon at sea.
In the dream she got lost in,
She was all bathed in moonlight...
She wanted to go up to heaven,
She wanted to go down to the sea...
And, in her madness,
In the tower she began to sing...
It was close to heaven,
It was far from the sea...
And like an angel hung
The wings to fly...
I wanted the moon in the sky,
I wanted the moon from the sea...
the wings that God gave you
They roared from pair to pair...
Her soul rose to heaven,
Her body went down to the sea...
Works: Poetry: Septenary of the Sorrows of Our Lady (1899); Burning Chamber (1889); Mystic Mistress (1889); Kyriale (1902).
Prose: Beggars (1920)
By Sabrina Vilarinho
Graduated in Letters
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/alphonsus-guimaraens.htm
