CLÁSSICOS BRASILEIROS BRAZILIAN CLASSICS - Imprensa Oficial

Brazilian Classics
A selection of authors with works in public domain
70
JOAQUIM NABUCO
(1849 – 1910)
One of the most respected speakers during
the latest years of monarchy, a diplomat and a
politician of great prestige, Joaquim Nabuco
pursued, as a literary stylist, the standards of
highest elegance. Both of his two most read
books have a memorialist makeup: Um Estadista
do Império (A statesman of the Empire), a
biography of his father, and Minha Formação
(My own background), where he provides an
account of the course of his own life. However,
he made his debut with a study about Camões
and Os Lusíadas. His vast political work is also
very important, particularly stamped by the fight
for the abolition of slavery. Born in the elite of
the Empire and endowed with a solid European
education, Nabuco died in Washington as the
Brazilian ambassador, an office he had formerly
held in London. A reader of Chateaubriand
and Renan, he wrote a significant portion of
his works in French, which was his second
language. He was good friends with Machado
de Assis, José Veríssimo, Lúcio de Mendonça,
and other renowned contemporary writers,
and was a founding member of the Brazilian
Literary Academy.
Review
Main works
Excerpt
My own background
Nothing in North America gave me any hint of
a possible superiority of its institutions over the
English ones. The moral environment in politics
was doubtlessly much more vicious; the class of
men attracted to politics was inferior, that is, not
the best class in society, as it was in England; on
the contrary, those who are most principled in
the society move naturally away from politics.
The battle is not fought in the field of ideas, but
rather in that of personal reputations; private
lives are openly discussed; battles are fought with
Roentgen rays; the candidates' doors are widely
opened; their houses are openly exhibited Iike in
an auction sale. With such a regimen, subject to
slander summary executions and to Iynching on
the newspapers' gossip columns, it is natural that
all those who feel unfit for a public fighting or for
a performance in a big show will
Distinctively european
"In terms of background, disposition, sociability, he was more o European than a Brazilian. But this was not a privilege of
his. Not a few of our intellectuals share it with him. However, he was distinctively more and more of a European than any
of the others.
(José Veríssimo, História da literatura brasileira)
Limpid, clear, self-confident
"Nabuco is a Brazilian classic, and the work he bequeathed is linked to our land and people, despite the aristocratic
stratum the author never forwent. Very few times prose will have been worked on in our country in the way it was by this
man who brought to literature the tone of his class, obviously, but also his artistic capacity."
(Nélson Werneck Sodré, História da literatura brasileira)
Camões e os lusíadas (1872); Amour et Dieu (1874); O abolicionismo (1883); Balmaceda (1895); A intervenção estrangeira
durante a Revolta (1896); Um estadista do império (1897); Minha formação (1900); Escritos e discursos literários (1901);
Pensées detachées et souvenirs (1906); Obras completas (1947).