Antonio de Castro Alves

He was handsome, wealthy, and talented. He studied law in Brazil, and won literary acclaim at an early age by identifying himself with the idealistic causes of his day and he used his talent and poetic skills to further those causes. While still a student he caught the attention of Brazilian literary leaders; Jose de Alencar and Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, by a play he had produced.



He however had to abandon his studies due to poor health. He suffered a wound in a hunting accident,which worsened and eventually led to his foot being amputated. Perhaps a foreboding of early death made him write at fever pitch.



As his poetry was concerned with social ideals, it has been said that Castro Alves personified the moral conscience of his country. He was one of the founders of the poetic school known in Brazil as the escola condoreira (condor school), whose adherents were compared to the highest flying birds in South America because of their high ideals and dedication to lofty causes. His name is often associated with the Brazilian abolitionist movement, and he was sometimes referred to as the “poet of the slaves” for his attention to the issue of slavery.



His antislavery poems Vozes d’Africa (Voice of Africa, 1880) and O Navio Negreiro: Tragedia no Mar (Tragedy at Sea: The Slave Ship, 1880) had an influence in Brazil comparable with that of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the United States. It was widely read and induced many to join the antislavery movement.

 

Espumas flutuantes (1870; “Floating Foam”) contains some of his finest love lyrics. A cachoeira de Paulo Afonso (1876; “The Paulo Afonso Falls”), a fragment of Os escravos, tells the story of a slave girl who is raped by her master's son. This and Castro Alves' other abolitionist poems were collected in a posthumous book, Os escravos (1883; “The Slaves”). This is his best know collection.



After his foot was amputated he sufered from tuberculosis and died at an early age of 24. The cause he wrote so passionately about, finally triumphed some years after his death in 1871.



His early death lent a tragic appeal to his later reputation, and placed him in the forefront of Brazilian poets. Fifty editions of his works have been published.