CLÁSSICOS BRASILEIROS BRAZILIAN CLASSICS - Imprensa Oficial

Brazilian Classics
A selection of authors with works in public domain
50
FAGUNDES VARELA
(1841 – 1875)
By questioning the decadent values of the
bourgeois life, and by transforming his own
life into a work of art, Fagundes Varela was an
exemplary romantic. Everything in his life was
unruly: women, fights, sprees, debts, vagrancy,
explicit hostilities against any people in the
streets, heroic rescue of people in a shipwreck,
etc. If the death of two of his children and of one
of his wives is placed on top of that, one can have
a pictorial representation of the calamity in his
existence; not to say that his own death resulted
from alcoholism. Abhorring the hypocrisy of
the urban life. and purging the pains that life
had inflicted on him, Varela would endlessly
ramble through the wilderness of untamed
nature, where he would be able to reconcile with
the original happiness of the cosmos. Having
written Evangelho na selva (Gospel in the jungle),
where he strove for his literary immortality, he is
regarded as the last great romantic, providing a
poetry that is up to his life.
Review
Main works
Excerpt
Anchieta or the Gospel in the jungle
— How limpid is the sky! How rulgurating it is,
Under the gilding sparkle or the summer sun,
The vast sea in the distance! How sparkling
The dew pearls seem to be as they hang
From the green leaves or the lush myrtles!-
Exclaims the venerable Missionary.
— Oh! Don't cry, siblings, 'cause I feel in my soul
the divine peace that precedes the dawning
Of true life! Sublime dawning,
Celestial dawning of eternal beams
Covering the fields, the grasslands, and the
forests
With ineffable wealth and glory!...
The Genius of Nature, I can see you!
You think, and your thinking sustains the orbs,
Steers the winds, counterpoises the seas,
Encourages the suffering mankind
And subjects matter to the intelligence
Of the happy Levites serving you!
An intense poetry of the cosmos
"As libertarian as O.H. Lawrence, drinking and devastating taboos like a beatnik, he never adapted to the rules of the
game. He combated society with scathing determination and sarcasm. He played the part of the mestizo romanticism's
ultrasinger, having found objective reasons to debase himself and grieve. His work is, at the same time, impregnated with
voices that are heard in the space. Not only speaking trees and rivers, but also spirits proclaiming in the atmosphere, with a
crystalline certainty, that there is a 'Iight of the lights'. On aimlessly wandering in the exuberance of the tropical sceneries,
this lunatic and outlaw, as he described himself, ended up contacting an extraordinary harmony. From the earthly poetry,
he was uplifted from himself - 'We are the eternal circulating fluid' – to an intensive participation in the cosmos poetry."
(Leonardo Fróes, "Um outro Varela")
Noturnos (1861); O estandarte auriverde (1863); Vozes da América (1864); Contos e fantasias (1865); Contos meridionais
(1869); Contos do ermo e da cidade (1869); Anchieta ou o Evangelho na selva (1875); Contos religiosos (1878); Diário de
Lázaro (1880); Poesias completas (1956).