Augusto de Carvalho Rodrigues dos Anjos (April 20, 1884 – November 12, 1914) was a Brazilian poet and professor. His poems speak mostly of sickness and death, and are considered the forerunners of

Modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

in Brazil. He is the patron of the first chair of the Paraiban Academy of Letters.

Biography

Augusto dos Anjos was born in 1884, in an '' engenho'' named Pau d'Arco, at the city of

Cruz do Espírito Santo Cruz do Espírito Santo is a municipality in the state of Paraíba in the Northeast Region of Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and L ...

, in the Brazilian state of Paraíba. (Nowadays, the ''engenho'' is located in Sapé, also in Paraíba.) He was initially homeschooled by his father, until he was admitted at the Lyceu Paraibano, where he would become a teacher in 1908. Augusto wrote poems since he was 7 years old. In 1903 he was admitted at

Law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...

course at the Faculdade de Direito do Recife, graduating in 1907. In 1910 he married Ester Fialho. Starting a career as a

magistrate The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judic ...

, he moved to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

, where he served as teacher for many educational institutions and started to publish his poems in

periodicals A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also exampl ...

and newspapers. In 1912 he published his first and only poetry book, ''Eu'' (in en, Me), that received mixed reviews by the time it was published. (Órris Soares, lifelong friend of Augusto dos Anjos, would republish ''Eu'' in 1919, adding then-unpublished poems to it and re-releasing it under the title ''Eu e Outras Poesias'', and since then the book has received better reviews.) As he was serving as a headmaster at a school in the city of

Leopoldina, Minas Gerais Leopoldina is a municipality in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. , it has a population of 52,640. It is situated in the southeastern Zona da Mata mesoregion of the state. The municipality contains the Lapinha Biological Reserve, a strict ...

, he died on November 12, 1914, a victim of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

Work

Augusto dos Anjos published only one book during his lifetime, named ''Eu''. The themes of its poems, that are impregnated with a heavily

scatological In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces. Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases s ...

medical, scientific and philosophical vocabulary, are mostly sickness, death, heavy morbidity and pessimism. Literary critics are not sure to which literary movement Augusto dos Anjos belong: some say he was a Symbolist and some say he was a Parnassian, although Ferreira Gullar classifies him as being a Pre-Modernist.

Trivia

* A recurring character in most of his poems is a

tamarind Tamarind (''Tamarindus indica'') is a leguminous tree bearing edible fruit that is probably indigenous to tropical Africa. The genus ''Tamarindus'' is monotypic, meaning that it contains only this species. It belongs to the family Fabaceae ...

tree, that exists to this day at the remains of the ''engenho'' Pau d'Arco. * According to Órris Soares, Augusto dos Anjos used to make his poems in his head, walking around, gesticulating and saying its verses out loud, before putting them into paper. * Eudes Barros told that, while living with his sister in Rio de Janeiro, he used to make up poems by sitting in his house's yard and screaming the verses, a habit that made his sister think he was mentally ill. * It is believed that he had

asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, co ...

.Asthma among the famous. Brazilian literary figures. Augusto dos Anjos (1884-1914)
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References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Anjos, Augusto Dos 1884 births 1914 deaths Brazilian male poets People from Paraíba Deaths from pneumonia in Minas Gerais 20th-century Brazilian poets 20th-century Brazilian male writers