Álvares de Azevedo
Encyclopedia
Manuel Antônio Álvares de Azevedo (September 12, 1831 — April 25, 1852) was a Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His work, characterized by heavy dualism and morbidity, gave him the epithet
Epithet
An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...

 of "the Brazilian Lord Byron".

He is the patron of the second chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
Academia Brasileira de Letras
Academia Brasileira de Letras is a Brazilian literary non-profit society established at the end of the 19th century by a group of 40 writers and poets inspired by the Académie Française. The first president, Machado de Assis, declared its foundation on December 15, 1896, with the statutes being...

, and of the ninth chair of the Paulista Academy of Letters.

Biography

Azevedo was born into a wealthy family in São Paulo City
São Paulo
São Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and South America, and the world's seventh largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second-most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among...

, on September 12, 1831. Son of Law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 student Inácio Manuel Álvares de Azevedo and Maria Luísa Azevedo (née Mota), a popular belief says that he was born in the library of the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo
Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo
Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo is an institution of higher education and research in the field of Law located in São Paulo, Brazil...

, but he was actually born on the farmhouse of his maternal grandfather, Severo Mota. He also had a younger brother, called Inácio Manuel just like his father, but he would die in 1835, what would scar him for life.

In 1833, Álvares moved alongside his family to the city of Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

, and in 1840 he entered the Colégio Stoll in the bairro
Bairro
Bairro is a Portuguese word and refers to a community or region within a city or municipality. Bairros exist in the majority of large cities in the world. Related words in English include neighborhood, district, borough or subdivision...

of Botafogo
Botafogo
Botafogo is a beachfront neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is a mostly middle class and small commerce community, and is located between the hills of Mundo Novo, Dona Marta and São João .- History :Botafogo was named after João Pereira de Sousa Botafogo, who was responsible for the...

, being an excellent student. In 1844, he temporarily returns to São Paulo alongside his uncle, returning to Rio in the following year, where he ingressed the Colégio Pedro II
Colégio Pedro II (Rio de Janeiro)
Colégio Pedro II is a Federal Public School named after Pedro II of Brazil. It was founded on December 2 1837, and made official by Imperial decree on December 20 of the same year. It was named after the Emperor, since it was founded on his birthday....

.

Having graduated in 1846 of the Colégio Pedro II, he entered the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo
Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo
Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo is an institution of higher education and research in the field of Law located in São Paulo, Brazil...

 in the following year, where he befriended the also poets José Bonifácio the Young
José Bonifácio the Young
José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, nicknamed The Young , was a French-born Brazilian poet, teacher and senator...

 (the step-grandson of José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva), Aureliano Lessa
Aureliano Lessa
Aureliano José Lessa was a Brazilian poet, adept of the "Ultra-Romanticism" movement. Born in Minas Gerais in 1828, he moved to São Paulo in 1847 to study Law, but received his bacharel degree at the Faculdade de Direito de Olinda, in Pernambuco, in the year of 1851...

 and Bernardo Guimarães
Bernardo Guimarães
Bernardo Joaquim da Silva Guimarães was a Brazilian poet and novelist. He is the author of the famous romances A Escrava Isaura and O Seminarista. He also introduced to the Brazilian poetry the "verso bestialógico" , poems whose verses are very nonsensical, although very metrical...

. Along with those, he founded the mythical club "Sociedade Epicureia" ("Epicurean
Epicurus
Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism.Only a few fragments and letters remain of Epicurus's 300 written works...

 Society"), a club that promoted Epicureanism
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...

 and Bohemianism
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

 as lifestyles, and he also planned a work in partnership with Lessa and Guimarães, the poetry book As Três Liras (in The Three Lyres) — however, the project did not come to fruition. The only remaining part of the project today is the book Lira dos Vinte Anos
Lira dos Vinte Anos
Lira dos Vinte Anos is a poetry anthology written by Brazilian Romantic author Álvares de Azevedo. Originally part of a project that would be written in partnership with Aureliano Lessa and Bernardo Guimarães called As Três Liras , it was published in 1853...

.

Because of his fragile health and due to the murky weather of São Paulo, Azevedo caught tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

. Having quit his Law course and moving to his grandfather's farm in Rio in order to mitigate his disease, there he fell from a horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 and contracted a gastric inflammation that made him die on April 25, 1852. He was buried one day later at the Cemitério São João Batista
Cemitério São João Batista
Cemitério São João Batista is a private cemetery in the neighborhood of Botafogo, Rio de Janeiro owned and operated by the Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Rio de Janeiro a charitable organization with a Catholic identity founded by the Portuguese]] in Rio during the colonial era...

.

Works

Due to his premature death, all of Álvares' works were published posthumously.
  • Lira dos Vinte Anos
    Lira dos Vinte Anos
    Lira dos Vinte Anos is a poetry anthology written by Brazilian Romantic author Álvares de Azevedo. Originally part of a project that would be written in partnership with Aureliano Lessa and Bernardo Guimarães called As Três Liras , it was published in 1853...

    (1853 — poetry anthology
    Anthology
    An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

    )
  • Macário
    Macario
    Macario is a 1960 Mexican drama film directed by Roberto Gavaldón and starring Ignacio López Tarso.It was the first Mexican film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film in a Foreign Language. It was also entered into the 1960 Cannes Film Festival...

    (1855 — theatre play
    Play (theatre)
    A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

    )
  • Noite na Taverna
    Noite na Taverna
    Noite na Taverna is a short story book written by Brazilian Ultra-Romantic author Álvares de Azevedo under the pen name Job Stern...

    (1855 — short story
    Short story
    A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

     book, under pen name Job Stern)
  • O Conde Lopo (1886 — an epic poem
    Epic poetry
    An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

     that remains only in fragments today)


Álvares also wrote many letters and essays, and translated into Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....

 Lord Byron's poem "Parisina
Parisina
Parisina is a poem written by Byron. It was published on 13 February 1816 and probably written between 1812 and 1815.It is based on a story related by Edward Gibbon in his Miscellaneous Works about Niccolò III d'Este, one of the dukes of Ferrara who lived in the fifteenth century...

" and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

's Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

s fifth act.

External links

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