Note 6 — Chapter V · CRITICAL REACTION (1870-1900)

Estudos 2a serie, P. 283. The book was published in Portugal, in 1872, and was “read and admired here in 1872. The Miniaturas, the poems of which bear dates from 1867, to 1870, mention the poet as a Brazilian, native of Rio de Janeiro. He was, in fact, such by birth, by intention, and, what is of more importance, by intuition and sentiment, genuinely Brazilian. We ought, then, to count this, his first book, despite the fact that it was conceived and generated abroad, in the roster of our Parnassianism, and perhaps as one of its principal factors.” See, however, Afranio Peixoto’s splendid two-volume edition of the Obras Completas de Castro Alves, Rio de Janeiro, 1921, for a refutation of this opinion. (Page 15.) According to Alberto de Oliveira there are decided Parnassian leanings in Castro Alves’s Espumas Fluctuantes, 1870, in the sonnets called Os anjos da meia noite (Midnight Angels.)