Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves (14 March 1847 – 6 July 1871) was a Brazilian poet and playwright famous for his abolitionist and republican poems. One of the most famous poets of the Condorist movement, he wrote classics such as Espumas Flutuantes and Hinos do Equador, which elevated him to the position of greatest among his contemporaries, as well as verses from poems such as "Os Escravos" and "A Cachoeira de Paulo Afonso", in addition to the play Gonzaga, which earned him epithets such as "O Poeta dos Escravos" (The Poet of the Slaves) and "republican poet" by Machado de Assis, or descriptions of being "a national poet, if not more, nationalist, social, human and humanitarian poet", in the words of Joaquim Nabuco, of being "the greatest Brazilian poet, lyric and epic", in the words of Afrânio Peixoto, or even of being the "walking apostle of Condorism" and "a volcanic talent, the most enraptured of all Brazilian poets", in the words of José Marques da Cruz. He was part of the romantic movement, being part of what scholars call the "third romantic generation" in Brazil.
Alves began his major production at the age of sixteen, beginning his verses for "Os Escravos" at seventeen (1865), with wide dissemination in the country, where they were published in newspapers and recited, helping to form the generation that would come to achieve the abolition of slavery in the country. Alongside Luís Gama, Nabuco, Ruy Barbosa and José do Patrocínio, he stood out in the abolitionist campaign, "in particular, the figure of the great poet from Bahia Castro Alves". José de Alencar said of him, when he was still alive, that "the powerful feeling of nationality throbs in his work, that soul that makes great poets, like great citizens". His greatest influences were the romantic writers Victor Hugo, Lord Byron, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset and Heinrich Heine.
Historian Armando Souto Maior said that the poet, "as Soares Amora points out 'on the one hand marks the arrival point of romantic poetry, on the other hand he already announces, in some poetic processes, in certain images, in political and social ideas, Realism'. Nevertheless, Alves must be considered the greatest Brazilian romantic poet; his social poetry against slavery galvanized the sensibilities of the time". Manuel Bandeira said that "the only and authentic condor in these bombastic Andes of Brazilian poetry was Castro Alves, a truly sublime child, whose glory is invigorated today by the social intention he put into his work".
In the words of Archimimo Ornelas, "we have Castro Alves, the revolutionary; Castro Alves, the abolitionist; Castro Alves, the republican; Castro Alves, the artist; Castro Alves, the landscaper of American nature; Castro Alves, the poet of youth; Castro Alves, universal poet; Castro Alves, the seer; Castro Alves, the national poet par excellence; finally, in all human manifestations we can find that revolutionary force that was Castro Alves" and, above all, "Castro Alves as the man who loved and was loved".
Early life
The son of physician Antônio José Alves and Clélia Brasília da Silva Castro, Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves was born in the Cabaceiras farm, at ten o'clock in the morning, on Sunday, 14 March 1847. The poet had the family nickname of "Cecéu". He spent his early childhood in Bahia's hinterlands, which made him "keep an indelible impression" for the rest of his life, in the words of Afrânio Peixoto.
He was cared for by the maid Leopoldina, who told him the stories and legends of the sertão, and her son Gregório would become Alves's page. He attended primary school in São Félix. Together with his older brother, he had his initial classes with a teacher and healer named José Peixoto da Silva, and Aristides Mílton remembers that he was a colleague of both in the city of Cachoeira in the class of the schoolmaster Antônio Frederico Loup.
He kept his first childhood love, Leonídia Fraga, from the period, in the words of Archimimo Ornelas: "he had met her as a child, in Curralinho, when they both played in the meadows". Ornelas attributes the poet's verses to this memory: "When childhood flowed happily, aimlessly (...) In my childhood yours was reflected / I kissed your soft, tiny hands. / You had a flutter of divine wings... / You were—the Angel of Faith! ..."; he would meet her again twice.
In 1854, when the family moved to the province's capital, they initially went to live in a sobrado where Júlia Fetal, a victim of a crime of passion, had lived. Fetal was murdered by her fiancé in 1848 at the age of twenty. The boy Antônio Frederico had heard there stories of the ghosts that lived in the residence. Adelaide, who would become the poet's favorite sister, was born there. The residence was at Rua do Rosário, No. 1, but in the following year they moved again to Rua do Paço, No. 47. Castro Alves studied at Colégio Sebrão at this time. He remained at this school for two years.
In 1858, along with his brothers, Alves went to the Ginásio Baiano, owned by the famous educator Abílio César Borges, the Baron of Macaúbas. There, he found a fertile cultural environment, in Peixoto's record: "...a literary atmosphere, produced by the 'oiteiros', or soirées, then in fashion, art parties, music, poetry, recitation of verses and speeches, which would seduce him" and that this made him reveal his talent very early: "our poet revealed himself, perhaps before the age of thirteen, at that age for sure, from which the first preserved compositions date". In fact, the years 1859 to 1861 are the dates of his first verses.
Desembargador Souza Pitanga, in a lecture given in Rio de Janeiro in 1918, remembering his colleague Plínio de Lima, recorded the atmosphere at Ginásio Baiano: "...this gentle and hospitable manor of beautiful letters, where a cheerful and vivacious legion of aspirants to future was going to receive the eucharistic bread of knowledge from the lips of a plethora of teaching priests". There, according to him, was "a shady grove of leafy mango trees, where cicadas sang in chorus" and "the late Director Dr. Abílio César Borges, dominating with his erect bearing and noble manners, a legion of minors who were made up of young men of 18 years old to even 7 years old children". Pitanga recalled that, among the professors, Ernesto Carneiro Ribeiro, Eduardo Frederico Alexander and Antônio Damásio stood out; among the contemporary students were Aristides Milton, Antônio Alves de Carvalhal, Odorico Mendes, Ruy Barbosa and the three Castro Alves brothers.
The death of Castro Alves's mother in 1859 was the beginning of the family's losses. Clélia Brasília was "victimized by lung weakness" and did not resist. Taken by violent commotion and revealing the beginning of emotional problems, his brother José Antônio then threatened to commit suicide, trying to throw himself out of a window.
In 1861, while still a student at Colégio Baiano, he published verses in several newspapers in honor of the "master of the heart", Antônio de Macedo Costa, who had died. The "poetic tribute" was composed of eight sextiles with seven syllables.
Life in Recife
On 25 January 1862, shortly after his father's marriage to Maria Ramos Guimarães, and at only fourteen years old, Castro Alves moved to the city of Recife with his older brother, in order to enroll in a preparatory course attached to the Faculty of Law of that capital, with the intention of joining it. He soon joined the social activities of the academic youth, as Afrânio Peixoto said: "Then the hectic and loose life of the academy, where talented young men struggled to appear, the generous nature of Castro Alves, who from an early age aspired to the glory that the great social causes give, made him a tribune and a poet who did not shy away from public sessions at the Faculty, in student societies, in theatre audiences, incited from the outset by the applause and ovations he had begun to receive, and went on in a crescendo of apotheosis".
As soon as he arrived in Recife, he lived with his brother in the Convent of São Francisco and from there they moved to a dormitory on Rua do Hospício, where his future brother-in-law and his great friend Augusto Álvares Guimarães, would later also live. Xavier Marques remembers the two brothers, then: José Antônio reading Álvares de Azevedo to the madmen in the asylum and he, Castro Alves, "playing billiards, drawing and writing verses". Luís Cornélio dos Santos, another great friend who would accompany him until his death, reported that they then went to live in a remote neighborhood of Recife, on the banks of the Capibaribe, where he often followed him on walks in which he read poems from a notebook that, later, got lost. Santos recorded about that period: "This boy's soul was of an unsurpassable purity; his intelligence had flashes that dazzled like lightning—Hugo as a child must have been like that" and about the lost notebook: "That little book was lost; not one of those stanzas figure today in the rich treasure of poems he bequeathed us".
About this period, Antônio Loureiro de Souza recorded: "He lives, and well lived, his time, agitated between love and poetry – the reason for his existence". In Recife, he became very close to his fellow countryman Plínio de Lima: "They wrote the same newspapers together and had the same literary orientation against the current led by Tobias Barreto". Afrânio Peixoto described his appearance: "At the time he was a handsome young man, with a slender build, pale complexion, large lively eyes, black and thick hair, a powerful and harmonious voice, irreproachably dressed in black, gifts and manners that impressed the crowd, imposing himself to the admiration of men and to women, inspiring the most tender feelings".
In May 1863, he gave an example of his precocity by publishing in Recife A Canção do Africano (in the first issue of the newspaper Primavera). Afrânio Peixoto said that in Recife, or perhaps before, he found his "vocation as an abolitionist" and concluded: "If 'there were no precursors', no one would be more precocious either": he was only sixteen years old. But in March he had taken the college entrance exam, failing in geometry: "he had always been interested in mathematics", in the words of Afrânio Peixoto, who, however, justified this failure with the fact that the Chambers closed at the time, thus making it impossible for him to receive the notice to carry out a conditional enrollment, as a listener. Not everything was lost from this period: the poems Pesadelo, Meu segredo and Cansaço were preserved, in addition to A Canção do Africano.
The Portuguese actress Eugênia Infante da Câmara had come to Brazil in 1858, starting a tour of the country with the Companhia Dramática Furtado Coelho, traveling from south to north. She was not considered a pretty woman, but she was endowed with "an extraordinary grace, intelligent, educated, nimbly nervous and vibrant, full of seductions and singular whims". The poet was just over fifteen years old when he saw her for the first time, presenting the play "Dalila" at the São João Theatre in Salvador, and then he fell in love with her. He would see her again in Recife years later as the main actress of the company. Afrânio Peixoto suggested that the beginning of the passion that would have so much influence in his life possibly dates from this time.
On 9 February 1864, his brother José Antônio, who had gone mad months before, committed suicide. Faced with so many adversities, and due to lung problems, Castro Alves returned to Bahia. Thus he had several absences from college, whose enrollment he had finally managed to get, and failed his first year; suffering from tuberculosis would give him the verses entitled Mocidade e Morte (whose original title would be O Tísico), where he wrote: