O Ateneu is a work by the writer Raul Pompeia (1863-1895) which was published in serials in 1888.
She is part of the realist movement in Brazil, being one of the most important of the period.
Characters of the work
- Sergio: protagonist and narrator of the story.
- Mr. Aristarchus: educator and strict principal of the school.
- Mrs Emma: director's wife.
- rebellion: very hardworking student at school.
- snacks: Sérgio's colleague and high school student.
- franc: Sergio's mischievous colleague and high school student.
- Barreto: a blessed colleague of Sérgio and a student at the school.
- Egbert: Sergio's true friend.
- america: new student at the school and possible responsible for the fire.
- Angela: beautiful Spanish employee at the school.
- Bento Alves: school librarian and friend of Sérgio.
Work summary the athenaeum
Sérgio is the protagonist of the story. The work narrates his trajectory (about 2 years old) since he was enrolled in the boarding school called Ateneu, when he was 11 years old.
The story, which takes place in the 19th century in Brazil, takes place in Rio de Janeiro, more precisely in the neighborhood of Rio Comprido.
The novel begins with Sergio's visit to the school. In his father's words: “You will find the world, my father told me, at the door of the Athenaeum. Courage for the fight.”
Along with his father, he first meets the director's wife, Dona Ema.
At this point he already notices the type of education at the school, so the lady asks him to cut his hair.
Under the pressure of the new environment, the moment Sérgio is introduced to the class, he faints.
There, he learns from an early age through a rigid discipline, aimed at the development of moral education.
Over time, he gets to know the place and his colleagues better. First, he became friends with the good student Sanches.
However, a fight between them caused them to split up. From that moment on, Sérgio, who was studying with Sanches, started to get low grades.
Sérgio meets Franco, another student at the school. This one was always getting into trouble and, as a result of one of his actions, the two are called by the mischievous boys director.
While Franco was throwing shards of glass into the pool, Sergio turns away from him, but ends up taking the blame too.
Later, he begins to approach student Barreto. This one had great faith, which ends up influencing Sérgio.
Under the influence of his colleague, he begins to fast and pray, but even so his grades remain low.
Therefore, he rebels against God and begins to distance himself from all his colleagues. He later becomes close to Egbert, a good student at the high school and his true friend.
Their friendship was based on sincerity and mutual understanding. Near the end of the novel, Sérgio reveals his platonic love for Ema, the wife of the school principal.
The story ends with a fire at the school and the escape of Ema, the principal's wife. This event ended the history of the Athenaeum.
He can check out the work in full by downloading the PDF here: the athenaeum.
Characteristics of the work
The Athenaeum is divided into 12 chapters and has the subtitle “Chronicle of homesickness”. The work is full of physical and psychological descriptions, just like the place where the story takes place and the characters that involve the plot.
The language is dense, elaborate and full of descriptions as well as figures of speech (metaphors, hyperbole, comparison). The main space is the college, although there are some passages outside of it.
Sérgio is the narrator who, as an adult, reveals his experiences when he was an intern at Ateneu College.
Therefore, the work has a narrator-character who is the protagonist of the story. Therefore, the narration is done in the first person.
Although it presents characteristics of realism (objective language and detailed descriptions), there are aspects of naturalistic aesthetics.
Some of the naturalistic characteristics present in the work are: animal aspects of the characters and determinism.
The plot was inspired by the writer's own story Raul Pompeia who went to boarding school.
Thus, the work is considered an autobiographical novel which reveals the moralism and corrupt environment in which he himself lived.
In such a way, the writer criticizes several aspects of society, allied to the moralism and perversion of the teaching institutions of the 19th century in the country.
Read too:
- Realistic Prose
- Naturalist Prose
- The Language of Naturalism
- realism and naturalism
- Realism in Brazil
Excerpts from the work
To learn more about the language and style used by Raul Pompéia, see below some excerpts from the work:
"Afterwards, I experienced the truth of this warning, which stripped me, in a gesture, of the illusions of an exotically educated child in the hothouse of affection that is the regime of domestic love; different from what is found outside, so different, that the poem of maternal care seems to be a sentimental device, with the unique advantage of to make the creature more sensitive to the rough impression of the first teaching, sudden tempering of vitality in the influence of a new climate strict. We remember, however, with hypocritical nostalgia, the happy times; as if the same uncertainty of today, in another aspect, had not followed us in the past, and the string of disappointments that outrage us had not come from afar.
Euphemism, the happy times, just euphemism, like the others that feed us, the longing for the days that were better. Well considering, the current is the same on all dates. Having compensated for the changing desires, the changing aspirations, perpetually encouraged by the same ardor, on the same fantastic basis of hopes, the present is one. Under the changing color of the hours, a little more gold in the morning, a little more purple at dusk - the landscape is the same on either side, bordering the road of life.
I was eleven years old."
"Twice I had gone to visit the Athenaeum before my installation.
Athenaeum was the great school at the time. Famed for a well-nourished system, maintained by a director who from time to time reformed the establishment, deftly painting it with novelty, like the merchants who sell off to start over with articles of last shipment; the Ateneu had long consolidated credence in the parents' preference, without taking into account the sympathy of the kids, surrounding the flashy bass drum of the advertisements with acclamations.
Dr. Aristarco Argolo de Ramos, from the well-known family of the Viscount of Ramos, from the North, filled the Empire with his reputation as a pedagogue. There were propaganda bulletins throughout the provinces, conferences in various parts of the city, on demand, on demand, filling the press in the villages, coffins, above all, of books elementary school, hastily manufactured with the breathless and breathless competition of prudently anonymous teachers, coffins and more coffins of cartoned volumes in Leipzig, flooding the schools public everywhere with its invasion of blue, pink, and yellow covers, in which the name of Aristarchus, whole and sonorous, offered itself to the venerable amazement of the hungry for the alphabet of the ends of the motherland. The places that did not look for them were a beautiful day surprised by the flood, free, spontaneous, irresistible! And there was nothing but accepting the flour of that brand for the bread of the spirit. And they fattened the letters, by force, of that bread. A benefactor. No wonder that on gala days, intimate or national, college parties or crown receptions, the broad chest of the great educator to disappear under constellations of stone, opulent the nobility of all honorifics trinkets."