Álvares de Azevedo (Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo) was born on September 12, 1831, in the city of São Paulo. While still in his childhood, he moved with his family to Rio de Janeiro. He later returned to his hometown to study law. However, due to tuberculosis, he did not finish the course and returned to Rio de Janeiro, where he died on April 25, 1852.
Belongs to second generation of romanticism Brazilian, produced texts characterized by a melancholy tone, loving suffering, pessimism, escape from reality and morbidity. His best known works are the book of poetry twenties lyre, the play Macarius and the novel night in the tavern.
Read too: Romanticism - artistic movement that appeared in several partsof the world
Biography of Álvares de Azevedo
Álvares de Azevedo (Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo) born on September 12, 1831, in Sao Paulo city. However, the family soon moved to Rio de Janeiro, where the poet lived until 1848, when he began studying at the Faculty of Law in São Paulo and gave himself up to the romantic bohemian life.
In this city, possibly, was part of the Epicurean Society, which promoted orgiastic meetings, inspired by the libertarian ideals of Lord Byron (1788-1824). However, such a society is still surrounded by mysteries and legends. If some scholars affirm the author's participation, others deny it.
In 1859, the writer Couto de Magalhães (1837-1898) even suggested that “Álvares de Azevedo, in his night in the tavern, described, in part, one of these scenes"|1| held at these meetings. So, probably, Álvares de Azevedo was one of the members of this society, along with his two friends, that is, the romantic writers Bernardo Guimaraes (1825-1884) and Aureliano Lessa (1828-1861).
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However, in 1851, Álvares de Azevedo could not continue in São Paulo and finish college, because had tuberculosis. To further complicate his situation, he had a horse accident in 1852 and had to undergo surgery, but he did not recover from it, and died on April 25 of the same year.
It is not clear, therefore, whether his death was caused by tuberculosis or for the complications of surgery. Furthermore, the fact that the poet spoke so much about death in his verses created an aura of mystery around its end, heightened by his poem If I died tomorrow! it was written days before the writer died.
So the poet, who only lived 20 years, had his works published posthumously. The little that is known about his life is due to the letters he left, as well as references to him in texts of writers who knew him, or even assumptions made based on the analysis of his works literary.
Read too:Fagundes Varela – another representative of the second generation of romanticism
Characteristics of Álvares de Azevedo's work
Álvares de Azevedo was the main name of ultra-romanticism or second generation romantic. The works of ultra-romantic poets present a subjective language, in addition to sentimental exaggeration. Therefore, the writer's verses reveal the anguish of existing, sometimes caused by loving suffering.
Faced with the unbearable reality, the me lyric flees from it, which can occur through love, dream or death. So, the morbid tone of some of the author's works is due to the romantic fascination with mystery, but also to a desire of the lyrical self to escape the suffering of existence.
If the realist writer opts for the present reality, the romantic prefers idealize the past and, in this way, he resorts to nostalgia. Furthermore, it idealizes love, the beloved woman and life. Therefore, faced with the imperfections of reality, the poet often seeks social isolation, in addition to surrender to pessimism.
Works by Álvares de Azevedo
![Cover of the book “Macário”, by Álvares de Azevedo, published by the publisher L&PM.[1]](/f/b6625fb11f7c53f75dbb440f18669dfd.jpg)
The works of writer Álvares de Azevedo were published after his death, they are:
twenties lyre
the friar's poem
Macarius
night in the tavern
Count Lopo
The Book of Fra Gondicarius
Ironic, poisonous and sarcastic poems
Poems by Álvares de Azevedo
At the poem "If I died tomorrow!", from the book Ironic, poisonous and sarcastic poems, the lyrical self thinks about what it would be like if he “died tomorrow”. If that happened, her eyes would be closed by her “sad sister” and her mother would miss her death. Furthermore, he would neither love nor experience future glory. However, despite being deprived of glory and love, his death would also bring something positive, as he would no longer feel the "pain of the life that devours":
If I died tomorrow, I would at least come
Close my eyes my sad sister;
My homesick mother would die
If I died tomorrow!
How much glory I sense in my future!
What a dawn to come and what a morning!
I had lost crying those wreaths
If I died tomorrow!
What a sun! what a blue sky! what sweet n’dark
Wake up the wildest nature!
Love hadn't hit me so much in the chest,
If I died tomorrow!
But this pain of life that devours
The yearning for glory, the aching eagerness...
The chest pain had at least muted,
If I died tomorrow!
Already "Sonnet”, poem published in the book twenties lyre, talk about love and death. In it, the lyrical self refers to a pale woman, who, ideally, is compared to an angel. This woman sleeps "by the light of the dark lamp" on "the reclining bed of flowers," and from the description she even looks dead.
However, he claims that she slept among “the clouds of love” and was “an angel among clouds”, which suggests the idealization of love and woman and, therefore, the real inexistence of both, since they are between clouds, without any concreteness. At the same time, the woman seems alive, as, erotically, the lyrical self speaks of her “thumping breast...” and of her naked forms sliding into bed.
In the end, the idea that the beloved exists only in the imagination of the lyrical self is strengthened when he turns to this woman (real or the result of his fantasy) and tells her that, for her, he cried during the nights and that, for her, he will die, smiling, “in dreams”:
Pale, in the light of the dim lamp,
On the reclining bed of flowers,
Like the moon embalmed by night,
Among the clouds of love she slept!
She was the virgin of the sea! in the cold scum
By the tide of rocked waters...
— It was an angel among clouds of dawn
That in dreams she bathed and forgot!
She was more beautiful! the breast throbbing...
Black eyes, eyelids opening...
Naked forms on the bed slipping...
Don't laugh at me, my beautiful angel!
For you - the nights I watched crying
For you — in dreams I will die smiling!
See too:5 poems by Alphonsus de Guimaraens
Phrases by Álvares de Azevedo
Next, we are going to read some sentences by Álvares de Azevedo, taken from his work Macarius:
"Who doesn't understand you doesn't love you!"
"I love women and I hate romanticism."
"This world is monotonous to make you die of sleep."
"My chest has been beating in these twenty years as many times as another man's in forty."
"It is in the mire of the ocean that pearls are found."
"There are flowers without perfume, and perfume without flowers."
"I think an empty glass is worth little, but I wouldn't drink the best wine from an earthen cup."
"The greatest disgrace in this world is to be Faust without Mephistopheles..."
"The sweetest intoxication is that which results from the mixing of wines."
Note
|1| Quoted by Jefferson Donizeti de Oliveira, in his dissertation a whisper in the darkness.
Image credit
[1] LP&M Editors (reproduction)
by Warley Souza
Literature teacher
