CLÁSSICOS BRASILEIROS BRAZILIAN CLASSICS - Imprensa Oficial

Brazilian Classics
A selection of authors with works in public domain
104
SÍLVIO ROMERO
(1851 – 1914)
The adjectives usually associated to Silvio
Romero's works are always intensifiers:
magnificent, monumental, giant, imposing,
encyclopedic, etc. It happens that the profuse
character of his intellectual work was at a time
his highest virtue and his worst sin: concerned,
for instance, with defending the Province against
the Portuguese domination, he even attacked
Machado de Assis and Castro Alves, but praised
Tobias Barreto, supporting that Tobias Barreto
was the greatest Brazilian poet and thinker. His
History of the Brazilian literature, of utmost
importance, was the first literature systemization
effort in Brazil. All that was said about the author
holds true in relation to this work: although
erring in being too profuse, he was nevertheless
a true encyclopedia in which our culture is
concerned. But his performance would not be
restricted to literature. He also wrote about
politics, folklore, philosophy, law, and ethnology,
always imprinting on such areas the force of his
passion and the vastness of his knowledge, as
well as his temperament.
Review
Main works
Excerpt
History of Brazilian literature
There is a wall which represents the many
millennia of struggles during which time
humanity acquired all the qualities that are
today mankind markers. Climates become mere
backdrops whilst the ethnic, physiologic and
moral agents come to the foreground. In the
case of our history, the constant factor, over the
four centuries alreody gone by, has always been
the Portuguese. In the transition to Brazilian,
an ethnological element, hybridization, will
account for the phenomenon. Climate is in the
background.
Climate, assumed in its most generic meaning, I
insist, was a brave agent in the formation of races
and autochthonous civilizations.
During the specifically historical times, climate
action still had a role; but no longer significant or,
at least, not as much as the people hybridization
phenomenon.
For thousands of years, climate was able to shape
the prehistoric races and outline present day's
people. But it had such a slow action that it can
hardly be noticed in modern civilizations.
A nationallst criticlsm
"História da Literatura Brasileira (History of Brazilian Literature), by Sílvio Romero, is one of those books that protect the
people against aggression and against discouragement, like fortresses and, at the same time, temples, standing up against
those who disbelieve the national values of culture and attack such values for considering them ruinous or bad."
(Gilberto Freyre, O Cruzeiro)
Literature's giant
"Sílvio's contribution to the literary nationalism is, thus, all the most relevant. The ideas he espoused, determinism and
socialism, helped him develop the nationalist legacy, by disengaging it from the romanticism vague idealistic notions,
and consolidating himself by acquiring more solid doctrinaire foundations. His position brings to a successful conclusion
the transition from romanticism and indianism to an Americanism or Brazilianism, where the Brazilian regions contribute
according to their own peculiar character."
(Afrânio Coutinho, "A Tradição Afortunada")
História da literatura brasileira (1888); Ensaios de sociologia e literatura (1901); Martins Pena (1901); Pinheiro Chagas
(1904); Evolução da literatura brasileira (1905); Outros estudos de literatura contemporânea (1905); O alemanismo no sul
do Brasil (1906); Compêndio de história da literatura brasileira (1906); Discurso (1907); Zeverissimações ineptas da crítica
(1909); Da crítica e sua exata definição (1909); Provocações e debates (1910); Quadro sintético da evolução de gêneros
na literatura brasileira (1911); Minhas contradições (1914).