Euclid da Cunha was a big highlight of the prose pre-modernist Brazilian, as well as journalist, military and engineer, builder of public buildings and bridges in the interior of São Paulo. Its main publication, the backlands, is considered a reference in the Brazilian literary canon, as it fictionalizes important elements of our culture, displaying the nation's distressing social problems as well as a powerful narrative of the historical conflict of Straw War.
Read too: Anguish: novel by Graciliano Ramos
Biography of Euclides da Cunha
Euclid Rodrigues da Cunha was born in Cantagalo (RJ), on January 20, 1866. Orphaned by a mother at the age of three, he spent his childhood under the tutelage of two aunts in the interior of Rio de Janeiro, and one year under the care of his grandmother, in Bahia.
At Colégio Aquino, he got in touch with the idealsrepublicans, guided by Benjamin Constant, and began to edit, with his colleagues, the periodical O Democrata, in which he published his first article, “The journey”, in 1884.
At the age of 19, he entered the Escola Politécnica Fluminense, where he was unable to support himself for a long time, due to lack of money. He then transferred to the Praia Vermelha Military School, where he remained for two years, until be arrested and expelled for rebellion: a republican, he broke his saber and refused to salute the Empire's minister of war.
He moved to São Paulo, where he started to write for the newspaper A Province of São Paulo, predecessor of the current O Estado de S. Paul. Married Anna Ribeiro, daughter of Major Solon Ribeiro. After proclaimed the republic, he was reinstated to the Army.
Graduated in Military Engineering at Escola Superior de Guerra in 1892, he worked as an engineer in the construction of the Central do Brasil railroad, but resigned from the army in 1896, mainly due to political-ideological differences. He did not like the direction the new government was taking, nor the severe punishments applied to those involved in the Armada Revolt.
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In 1897, he left for Bahia, at the invitation of the newspaper A Province of São Paulo, as a war correspondent, to cover Canudos events. He has written 22 articles — the genesis of the novel the backlands, which would be published five years later.
He held several public positions, having been invited by Itamaraty to establish the geographic limits between Brazil and Peru. It was at this time that he contracted malaria, in Manaus. The disease revived symptoms of an old tuberculosis.
Back in the interior of São Paulo, he discovered that the wife cheated on him with an Army lieutenant named Dilermando de Assis. Ailing, he brooded for a while, until, on the morning of August 15, 1909, he came out determined to kill Dilermando. They entered into a duel: Euclides fired twice at his lover, but he didn't resist: the lieutenant was a shooting champion. Euclid died from a bullet that went through his lung.
literary features
Often called scientific baroque, due to the opulence of the images and the accentuated use of oppositions and contrasts, the text by Euclides da Cunha is a real word engineering. His training in the exact sciences contributed to the construction of phrasal using technical terms — the better the more precise the word.
Dense and winding sentences make up its style — the more complex the subject, the more complex the language used by the author.
pioneer in approach between literature and history, one can see the influence of the theoretical currents of the positivism and of determinism in his writings. He is also a great researcher, and his writing method consists of long observation and pure research.
See too: Naturalism – the typically positivist and determinist literary school
the backlands
First published in 1902, the backlands is the object of analysis in several areas of knowledge.. Besides the literature, professionals from anthropology, story, social sciences and geography they are dedicated to researching the work, thanks to their unique contribution to the first pillars of reflection on Brazilian sociocultural peculiarities.
This classic of national literature has as its starting point the articles written by Euclides da Cunha, for the newspaper A Provincia de São Paulo, on the Canudos War, which took place in the backlands of Bahia. The work, however, goes far beyond reporting the conflict: the author develops a panorama that captures one of the several modernization processes in Brazil, and highlights how they took place in such a way undemocratic, presenting a large compilation of the social contradictions, poverty and misery that plagued the region Northeast.
It was mainly this scarcity of resources that led the messianic figure of Antônio Conselheiro to gather more than 30,000 people dissatisfied with the course of the republican government, which imposed an abusive increase in taxes and harmed the most poor. The result of the clash was a bloody massacre of civilians.
the backlands é divided into three parts: the first, “The land”, is composed of essential aspects of the country's topography, and written with the scientific rigor of a geographer and, at the same time, emphasizing the metaphorical role of this arid nature - beyond a scenario of conflict, this sertão contains analogies in the work poetic. The second, “The man”, outlines the racial profile of the northeastern and echoes a good part of the racial theories of the time, which considered miscegenation as harmful to the development of a people. The third, “A Luta”, narrates the fights between the members of the Army and the rebels led by Antônio Conselheiro.
This division is part of a proposal related to positivist and determinist ideologies of the nineteenth century—man is a product of his environment. Thus, to understand the conflict, the author follows the reasoning that history is determined by the factors of environment, race and moment. The arid environment is responsible for originating the sertanejo, a strong man, generated by the hostilities presented by the surrounding nature.
The language of the work is one of its highlights: polyphonic, it mixes Brazilianisms, popular expressions, archaisms typical of the sertanejo language, indigenous words, terms from the pamphlet press and political-military ideas.
the backlands it had immediate literary success: it sold out the first edition, of two thousand copies, and earned the author the appointment to the Brazilian Academy of Letters.
by Luiza Brandino
Literature teacher
