CLÁSSICOS BRASILEIROS BRAZILIAN CLASSICS - Imprensa Oficial

Brazilian Classics
A selection of authors with works in public domain
84
MANUEL ANTÔNIO DE ALMEIDA
(1831 – 1861)
Amid the mass of similar books produced at a
given time, there sooner or later appear a few
nonconformist works that outstand because
of their distinctive quality. Springing up on
the periphery of what is regarded as the most
preponderant, these texts are heading for a
future time that, recognizing their value, starts
to harbor the innovations so established. That
is precisely the case of Memórias de um sargento
de milícias (Memoirs of a militia sergeant). This
novel, by reading against romanticism, starts
the Brazilian urban literature by introducing a
picaresque adventure that took place in the early
19th century in Rio de Janeiro. Manuel Antônio
de Almeida takes advantage of everything that is
popular. His characters are beggars, blind men,
soldiers, barbers, godmothers, shamans, bailiffs
... all drawn directly from the typical vivacity of
the average society of the time. Simultaneously,
linguistic elements are used to match the
specimens inhabiting the story, making use of
an entire set of Brazilianisms, idioms, popular
sayings, catch phrases, etc., besides a wide
repertoire of songs, dances, and habits peculiar
to the local people on the eve of Independence.
Review
Main works
Memórias de um sargento de milícias (1855); Dois amores (1861).
Excerpt
Memoirs of a militia sergeant
In the vicinities of Cidade Nova's marsh lands,
adjacent to a puddle, there used to stand a
thatched house of the ugliest appearance, whose
dirty façade and muddy front indicated thot
inside it cleanliness was not to be expected. The
house consisted of a small living-room and a
bedroom; the furniture comprised two or three
wooden seats, a few mats lying in a comer of the
room, and a huge multipurpose wooden chest;
it served as a dining table, bed, wardrobe, ond
shelf. The house, almost always unoccupied,
was locked most of the time, which gave it on
atmosphere of mystery. This ominous home was
inhabited by a character marked off by the most
detestable mold; he was on old mestizo, with
o wretched and filthy face, and covered with
rags. However, for the reader's astonishment, it
is to be said that that man's occupation was to
provide fortune!
Original and extraordinary
"In 1852, pressed by his work as journalist in search of stories, forced by the demands of a periodic publication, however
nimbly mastering those conditions, Manuel Antônio de Almeida began publishing his Memórias de um sargento de milicias
on Correio Mercantil in the format of a weekly serial. This serial would later constitute one of the most interesting novels,
one of the most original and extraordinary productions of the American fiction."
(Mário de Andrade, "Memórias de um sargento de milícias")
Ahead of his time
"It is original, differently from any of the other books concurrently published or even shortly later, because it had been
worked out and executed without any imitation or influence from any of the school or literary current that had driven
our literature; [ ... ]. In the middle of the Romanticism wave, here Manuel de Almeida's novel, although overexcessively
idealistic, romantic, and also excessively sentimental, is perlectly realist, even naturalistic, preceding for a long time the
appearance, even in Europe, of those literary doctrines that received such names."
(José Veríssimo, História da literatura brasileira)