CLÁSSICOS BRASILEIROS BRAZILIAN CLASSICS - Imprensa Oficial

Brazilian Classics
A selection of authors with works in public domain
112
VISCONDE DE TAUNAY
(1843 – 1899)
A Rio de Janeiro native, Alfredo d'Escragnolle
Taunay was born into a family of artists,
originally members of an important group of
Frenchmen who came to Brazil in the second
decade of the 19 th century in order to put their
knowledge and artistic abilities in service of
the Portuguese royal family. Taunay left behind
his career as a military engineer to dedicate
himself to politics, journalism and to literature.
The Brazilian emperor, D. Pedro II, entitled
him Viscount in 1889; during this same year he
abandoned politics, as the imperial family was
overthrown. His literary production is usually
considered representative of the transition from
Romanticism to Realism, somewhere in between
a romantic idealism and a realistic vision of
nature. His novel Inocência [Innocence] values
the countryside`s way of life and the peculiarities
of life away from the urban centers. It is his best
known work, being constantly re-edited. It was
translated to English in 1945.
Review
Main works
Excerpt
Innocence
The legitimate backlander, explorer of deserts,
doesn’t have, in general, a family. In his youth,
his only goal is to pioneer lands, tread on fields
where no man has treaded, wade through
unknown rivers, unravel headwaters and rip
through woods, untouched by any previous
explorer. The more he travels, the more his pride
grows; and his biggest satisfaction in life is to
list the currents he transposed, the streams he
baptized, the mountains he ranged over and the
wetlands he quickly cut through or had to circle
in a rare test of patience.
The traveling writer
“The totality of Taunay’s assemble of writings lies neither on the literary field, nor on the artistic one; rather, on the border
of both. To put it differently, in his work there is a conjunction of national interests in which the registration of historical
facts, in the case of the retreat from Laguna episode, represents the basis for a number of other descriptions. Elaborated
a posteriori, they would yield different accounts, both historical and fictional. On a certain sense, the traveling writer
fertilizes images that contribute to re-thinking Mato Grosso’s social formation, the origins and the contemporaneous
presence of events, which made up the Latin-American scenario, from those most distant zones, consolidated in people’s
general image of things as peripherical.”
(Olga Maria Castrillon-Mendes, Taunay viajante e a construção da imagética de Mato Grosso)
Romanticism and Realism
“Innocence is a backlandish version of Romeo and Juliet. As the book flows, the typical 19th century rural mato-grossense
speech develops with its dialogues. This speech, alongside the detailed descriptions and the pictoric trace, in spite of its
Romantic insertion, lends the text a realism that prevents it from falling into an excessive sentimentalism. There is a world
of barbarian habits, with dismal effects.”
(Carlos Nejar, História da literatura brasileira)
Cenas de viagem: exploração entre os rios Taquary e Aquidauana no distrito de Miranda (1868); A campanha da cordilheira
(1869); Mocidade de Trajano (1871); La retraite de Laguna (1871); Inocência (1872); Lágrimas do coração (1873); A
retirada de Laguna (1874); Ouro sobre azul (1875); Céus e terras do Brasil, evocações (1882); Amélia Smith (1886); No
declínio (1889); O encilhamento (1894); Reminiscências (1908, póstumo).