Бразилия ақыны және құлдарға қарсы күрескер Кастро Алвес

Brazilian poet and playwright
the Brazilian municipality

Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves (14 March 1847 – 6 July 1871) was a Brazilian poet and playwright famous for his abolitionist and republican poems. One of the most famous poets of the Condorist movement, he wrote classics such as Espumas Flutuantes and Hinos do Equador, which elevated him to the position of greatest among his contemporaries, as well as verses from poems such as "Os Escravos" and "A Cachoeira de Paulo Afonso", in addition to the play Gonzaga, which earned him epithets such as "O Poeta dos Escravos" (The Poet of the Slaves) and "republican poet" by Machado de Assis, or descriptions of being "a national poet, if not more, nationalist, social, human and humanitarian poet", in the words of Joaquim Nabuco, of being "the greatest Brazilian poet, lyric and epic", in the words of Afrânio Peixoto, or even of being the "walking apostle of Condorism" and "a volcanic talent, the most enraptured of all Brazilian poets", in the words of José Marques da Cruz. He was part of the romantic movement, being part of what scholars call the "third romantic generation" in Brazil. Alves began his major production at the age of sixteen, beginning his verses for "Os Escravos" at seventeen (1865), with wide dissemination in the country, where they were published in newspapers and recited, helping to form the generation that would come to achieve the abolition of slavery in the country. Alongside Luís Gama, Nabuco, Ruy Barbosa and José do Patrocínio, he stood out in the abolitionist campaign, "in particular, the figure of the great poet from Bahia Castro Alves". José de Alencar said of him, when he was still alive, that "the powerful feeling of nationality throbs in his work, that soul that makes great poets, like great citizens". His greatest influences were the romantic writers Victor Hugo, Lord Byron, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset and Heinrich Heine. Historian Armando Souto Maior said that the poet, "as Soares Amora points out 'on the one hand marks the arrival point of romantic poetry, on the other hand he already announces, in some poetic processes, in certain images, in political and social ideas, Realism'. Nevertheless, Alves must be considered the greatest Brazilian romantic poet; his social poetry against slavery galvanized the sensibilities of the time". Manuel Bandeira said that "the only and authentic condor in these bombastic Andes of Brazilian poetry was Castro Alves, a truly sublime child, whose glory is invigorated today by the social intention he put into his work". In the words of Archimimo Ornelas, "we have Castro Alves, the revolutionary; Castro Alves, the abolitionist; Castro Alves, the republican; Castro Alves, the artist; Castro Alves, the landscaper of American nature; Castro Alves, the poet of youth; Castro Alves, universal poet; Castro Alves, the seer; Castro Alves, the national poet par excellence; finally, in all human manifestations we can find that revolutionary force that was Castro Alves" and, above all, "Castro Alves as the man who loved and was loved".

The son of physician Antônio José Alves and Clélia Brasília da Silva Castro, Antônio Frederico de Castro Alves was born in the Cabaceiras farm, at ten o'clock in the morning, on Sunday, 14 March 1847. The poet had the family nickname of "Cecéu". He spent his early childhood in Bahia's hinterlands, which made him "keep an indelible impression" for the rest of his life, in the words of Afrânio Peixoto. He was cared for by the maid Leopoldina, who told him the stories and legends of the sertão, and her son Gregório would become Alves' page. He attended primary school in São Félix. Together with his older brother, he had his initial classes with a teacher and healer named José Peixoto da Silva, and Aristides Mílton remembers that he was a colleague of both in the city of Cachoeira in the class of the schoolmaster Antônio Frederico Loup. He kept his first childhood love, Leonídia Fraga, from the period, in the words of Archimimo Ornelas: "he had met her as a child, in Curralinho, when they both played in the meadows". Ornelas attributes the poet's verses to this memory: "When childhood flowed happily, aimlessly ( ) In my childhood yours was reflected / I kissed your soft, tiny hands. / You had a flutter of divine wings / You were — the Angel of Faith! ”; he would meet her again twice. In 1854, when the family moved to the province's capital, they initially went to live in a sobrado where Júlia Fetal, a victim of a crime of passion, had lived. Fetal was murdered by her fiancé in 1848 at the age of twenty. The boy Antônio Frederico had heard there stories of the ghosts that lived in the residence. Adelaide, who would become the poet's favorite sister, was born there. The residence was at Rua do Rosário, No. 1, but in the following year they moved again to Rua do Paço, No. 47. Castro Alves studied at Colégio Sebrão at this time. He remained at this school for two years. In 1858, along with his brothers, Alves went to the Ginásio Baiano, owned by the famous educator Abílio César Borges, the Baron of Macaúbas. There, he found a fertile cultural environment, in Peixoto's record: " a literary atmosphere, produced by the 'oiteiros', or soirées, then in fashion, art parties, music, poetry, recitation of verses and speeches, which would seduce him" and that this made him reveal his talent very early: "our poet revealed himself, perhaps before the age of thirteen, at that age for sure, from which the first preserved compositions date". In fact, the years 1859 to 1861 are the dates of his first verses. Desembargador Souza Pitanga, in a lecture given in Rio de Janeiro in 1918, remembering his colleague Plínio de Lima, recorded the atmosphere at Ginásio Baiano: " this gentle and hospitable manor of beautiful letters, where a cheerful and vivacious legion of aspirants to future was going to receive the eucharistic bread of knowledge from the lips of a plethora of teaching priests". There, according to him, was "a shady grove of leafy mango trees, where cicadas sang in chorus" and "the late Director Dr. Abílio César Borges, dominating with his erect bearing and noble manners, a legion of minors who were made up of young men of 18 years old to even 7 years old children". Pitanga recalled that, among the professors, Ernesto Carneiro Ribeiro, Eduardo Frederico Alexander and Antônio Damásio stood out; among the contemporary students were Aristides Milton, Antônio Alves de Carvalhal, Odorico Mendes, Ruy Barbosa and the three Castro Alves brothers. The death of Castro Alves' mother in 1859 was the beginning of the family's losses. Clélia Brasília was "victimized by lung weakness" and did not resist. Taken by violent commotion and revealing the beginning of emotional problems, his brother José Antônio then threatened to commit suicide, trying to throw himself out of a window. In 1861, while still a student at Colégio Baiano, he published verses in several newspapers in honor of the "master of the heart", Antônio de Macedo Costa, who had died. The "poetic tribute" was composed of eight sextiles with seven syllables.

On 25 January 1862, shortly after his father's marriage to Maria Ramos Guimarães, and at only fourteen years old, Castro Alves moved to the city of Recife with his older brother, in order to enroll in a preparatory course attached to the Faculty of Law of that capital, with the intention of joining it. He soon joined the social activities of the academic youth, as Afrânio Peixoto said: "Then the hectic and loose life of the academy, where talented young men struggled to appear, the generous nature of Castro Alves, who from an early age aspired to the glory that the great social causes give, made him a tribune and a poet who did not shy away from public sessions at the Faculty, in student societies, in theatre audiences, incited from the outset by the applause and ovations he had begun to receive, and went on in a crescendo of apotheosis". As soon as he arrived in Recife, he lived with his brother in the Convent of São Francisco and from there they moved to a dormitory on Rua do Hospício, where his future brother in law and his great friend Augusto Álvares Guimarães, would later also live. Xavier Marques remembers the two brothers, then: José Antônio reading Álvares de Azevedo to the madmen in the asylum and he, Castro Alves, "playing billiards, drawing and writing verses". Luís Cornélio dos Santos, another great friend who would accompany him until his death, reported that they then went to live in a remote neighborhood of Recife, on the banks of the Capibaribe, where he often followed him on walks in which he read poems from a notebook that, later, got lost. Santos recorded about that period: "This boy's soul was of an unsurpassable purity; his intelligence had flashes that dazzled like lightning — Hugo as a child must have been like that" and about the lost notebook: "That little book was lost; not one of those stanzas figure today in the rich treasure of poems he bequeathed us". About this period, Antônio Loureiro de Souza recorded: "He lives, and well lived, his time, agitated between love and poetry – the reason for his existence". In Recife, he became very close to his fellow countryman Plínio de Lima: "They wrote the same newspapers together and had the same literary orientation against the current led by Tobias Barreto". Afrânio Peixoto described his appearance: "At the time he was a handsome young man, with a slender build, pale complexion, large lively eyes, black and thick hair, a powerful and harmonious voice, irreproachably dressed in black, gifts and manners that impressed the crowd, imposing himself to the admiration of men and to women, inspiring the most tender feelings". In May 1863, he gave an example of his precocity by publishing in Recife A Canção do Africano (in the first issue of the newspaper Primavera). Afrânio Peixoto said that in Recife, or perhaps before, he found his "vocation as an abolitionist" and concluded: "If 'there were no precursors', no one would be more precocious either": he was only sixteen years old. But in March he had taken the college entrance exam, failing in geometry: "he had always been interested in mathematics", in the words of Afrânio Peixoto, who, however, justified this failure with the fact that the Chambers closed at the time, thus making it impossible for him to receive the notice to carry out a conditional enrollment, as a listener. Not everything was lost from this period: the poems Pesadelo, Meu segredo and Cansaço were preserved, in addition to A Canção do Africano. The Portuguese actress Eugênia Infante da Câmara had come to Brazil in 1858, starting a tour of the country with the Companhia Dramática Furtado Coelho, traveling from south to north. She was not considered a pretty woman, but she was endowed with "an extraordinary grace, intelligent, educated, nimbly nervous and vibrant, full of seductions and singular whims". The poet was just over fifteen years old when he saw her for the first time, presenting the play "Dalila" at the São João Theatre in Salvador, and then he fell in love with her. He would see her again in Recife years later as the main actress of the company. Afrânio Peixoto suggested that the beginning of the passion that would have so much influence in his life possibly dates from this time. On 9 February 1864, his brother José Antônio, who had gone mad months before, committed suicide. Faced with so many adversities, and due to lung problems, Castro Alves returned to Bahia. Thus he had several absences from college, whose enrollment he had finally managed to get, and failed his first year; suffering from tuberculosis would give him the verses entitled Mocidade e Morte (whose original title would be O Tísico), where he wrote:

text="I feel in me the bubbling of the genius / I see beyond a radiant future" but "I have now for future — the earth / For glory — nothing, for love — the grave "

He only returned to Recife on 18 March 1865, accompanied by Fagundes Varella; on 10 August, he recited O Sábio at the Faculty of Law and enlisted on the 19th of that month in the Academic Battalion of Volunteers for the Paraguayan War, for a brief stop before heading to São Paulo. In Rio, carrying a recommendation letter from Fernandes da Cunha, Alves introduced himself to the renowned writer José de Alencar, to whom he read the sketches of "A Cascata de Paulo Afonso" (provisional title of the poem). This meeting resulted in the article "Um Poeta" by Alencar, published on 22 February in the newspaper Correio Mercantil. Alencar also presented Castro Alves to Machado de Assis with a letter of recommendation in which he indicated the "Poet of Slaves" with the following words: "Be the Virgil of young Dante, lead him along the pathless paths where one goes to disappointment, indifference and finally glory, which are the three maximum circles of the divine comedy of talent". During Castro Alves' stay in Rio de Janeiro, the Empire of Brazil achieved a victory in the Paraguayan War with the successful Passage of Humaitá. A large crowd rushed to the streets, celebrating the achievement, and Castro Alves went out onto the balcony of the Diário do Rio de Janeiro newspaper (at Rua do Ouvidor, No. 97), where he recited "one of his rare warrior poems, verses of circumstance, applauded by the crowd, praised by the press" in Peixoto's words, but that Alves himself would later write in the manuscript in which he recorded the poem: "do not publish it" (a recommendation not followed by the editors of his work). It was also in one of the halls of this newspaper that he had scenes from Gonzaga, his play, presented to a small audience of intellectuals, which the newspaper would later announce had been "laureated by Mr. Castro Alves". Such successes filled him with pride, despite pretending to be humble; in March he went with Eugênia to the capital of São Paulo, where he gained admiration from the youth, and the jealousy of figures such as Joaquim Nabuco. In São Paulo, Castro Alves participated in the América Lodge of Freemasonry, of which Ruy Barbosa was an active member, who, in it, issued a decree forcing its members to immediately release the slaves that belonged to them. The São Paulo lodge was already a prominent institution on the political scene, and the participation of young students from the Faculty of Law of São Paulo followed their participation in the "Ateneu", its student body, in which Alves had been a member of the "literature commission", of which Joaquim Nabuco was also a member. In academic times Ruy Barbosa and Castro Alves were also part of the Bucha Paulista, a secret legal society originally created based on the German Burschenschaft, intended to support students in precarious situations but which, in São Paulo, gained a social nature that transcended the academic environment and came to rise to power in the country through mutual support, to the point that three of the five participants in the commission that prepared the draft of Brazil's 1891 Constitution were members of the Bucha. In São Paulo, Alves also attended the third year of college where, although without great dedication to study, he managed to pass. The situation with Eugênia continued in the midst of crises marked by fights, separations and reconciliations; she continued to perform with her play Gonzaga. The success that the city had offered him, according to Archimimo Ornelas, made him "neglect Eugênia" and she, "to take revenge, would look for other lovers", which Alves pretended to ignore because Eugênia still was constant to him. In October she still acted in the play and there was a "truce" which, however, gave way to new and strong fights due to the rumors about her unfaithful conduct, culminating in the definitive separation: "the final episode was one of unexpected violence. The actress pointed to the door "

Faced with the emotional exhaustion caused by the constant call to public presentations and the passionate drama with Eugênia, the poet became the victim of "profound depression" and sought moments of solitude. "I didn't read, I didn't write; I walked around, smoked, went hunting, without even firing a shot", said Afrânio Peixoto. On 1 November 1868, according to Peixoto, recalling the worsening of Castro Alves' tuberculosis: "he had gone to spend a day on the outskirts of Brás, and in the afternoon of that day he had taken his shotgun and gone out into the countryside. When crossing a ditch, with the jump, the gun turned downwards fired and the lead load hit Alves' left foot. He was able to drag himself to the house of his friend and correspondent, the doctor from Bahia, Lopes dos Anjos, [who] then took him to the town house, on Rua do Imperador, next to the current No. 33. In addition to this doctor and friend, the surgeon Cândido Borges Monteiro, the Baron of Itaúna and president of the province, also helped him. But the wound worsened, with no hope of cure, and the old pulmonary ailments woke up, impressive". During that period, his friend Luís Cornélio, who lived in the Court, called him there, where the medical resources were better. On 19 March 1869, he finally embarked in Santos, accompanied by a friend. To those who he had not been able to say goodbye in person, he did so through a note published in the newspaper Ypiranga that had previously announced his departure and, on the 30th, he published a moving letter of thanks to his friends in the city of São Paulo in the Correio Paulistano. Castro Alves arrived in Rio de Janeiro on 21 March; there he underwent an amputation, in which surgeons and professors from the Faculty of Medicine of Rio de Janeiro, Andrade Pertence and Mateus de Andrade, acted: they cut off his lower left limb without any anesthesia. The pulmonary situation, aggravated by several haemoptysis, made the use of chloroform (then the only anesthetic means) impossible: he had only a handkerchief to bite on in order to mitigate the pain. Peixoto narrated that he said, disguising the pain with humor: "Cut it, cut it, doctor I will be left with less matter than the rest of humanity". The surgery, performed in the first days of June, was reported by the São Paulo newspaper Ypiranga on 21 July; the long convalescence began in which the poet, now wearing a wooden prosthesis, imagined reaching a "new spring". During the period when he stayed with Luís Cornélio and his wife, his house became the "Petit Salon", frequented by young artists and intellectuals, and he had brief passions like those of Cândida and Laura, who he recalled in the poem "Os Anjos da Meia Noite" (The Midnight Angels). But he was still moved by the love he ended with Eugênia Câmara and, on 17 November, he wrote the verses of "Adeus" to the actress: "Goodbye! Forever goodbye! The voice of the winds / Calls me beating against the rocks, / I'm leaving soon the ocean / Will throw millions of waves between us "; She wrote a reply to this poem, published in 1910 by Xavier Marques: "Goodbye, brother of this soul, I say goodbye to you! / But let me avoid that never! — / May heaven be compassionate to my prayers / And one day yours and my woes will cease!" and "Yes, God illuminated your forehead / With a divine ray of genius! And glory! / Live, dream, sing, this horizon! / Brazil wants your name in its history" and concludes "Goodbye! If one day fate / Makes us meet / As a sister or as a lover / Always! Always! You will find me". After staying with his family, together with friends, Castro Alves embarked for Bahia on 25 November 1869; when sailing the Guanabara Bay, he had the idea for the title of the book he planned to publish there: Espumas Flutuantes (Floating Foams).

Castro Alves' arrival in Salvador, in an account transcribed by Archimimo Ornelas, translated his physical and moral decay: "It was a moving scene when he entered his father's house, being received by his stepmother and the young sisters who adored him. He left strong, erect, full of confidence and audacity, he returned bloodless, crippled, sick in the chest, with a soul saturated with bitterness". Surrounded by family love and friends, he found the Jewish women who had inspired him one day, and Esther was now engaged. He pretended to be devastated by this and, through the window of the house, when he saw them pass, he pretended to stab himself in the chest with a paper dagger, to which they, finding it funny, made a sign to him not to lose hope. On 29 January, he left for Bahia's hinterlands one last time, on a boat trip that "split the waves of the Paraguaçu in search of the deep solitude of the deserts, to feed, like Saul, the despair of my spirit, and revive this blood exhausted and impoverished by sadness and suffering", as he recorded in a letter to Luiz Cornélio; He then left, together with his brother in law Augusto, for Curralinho, where, according to Archimimo Ornelas, he found himself influenced by the death of Allan Kardec, which occurred at the end of the previous year and which had had great repercussions in those days, and produced verses in which he questioned life after death. Fernando Correia da Silva recorded that, "on the Santa Isabel do Orobó farm, Castro Alves reunited with Leonídia Fraga, his boyhood fiancée and today the graceful maiden who had always waited for him. Rekindle the first passion? Why, if death is around?" The burial took place the day after the death (7 July) and he was buried in tomb 527. In 1874, the remains were transferred to the mausoleum at block 1, belonging to his stepmother, Maria Ramos Guimarães, who had purchased it for her husband's tomb. His sister Adelaide, who died in Rio de Janeiro on 22 September 1940, was the "faithful caretaker of the poet's memory, preserving his originals, informing about his life", recorded Afrânio Peixoto, concluding that "the fame of Castro Alves owes her a lot". In 1971, the centenary of the writer's death took place. Despite the opposition of a grandnephew of the poet who advocated the construction of a pantheon for him, the then mayor of Salvador Antônio Carlos Magalhães decided to simply transfer his remains to the monument at Praça Castro Alves. This actually took place, without any special ceremony, on 6 July of that year. After the consecration received in the then imperial capital at the age of only twenty one, and those that followed in "less than eight years, silly years, that between adolescence and youth, 'Castro Alves left a work without equal in our literatures'", according to Afrânio Peixoto, who compared him to his contemporaries who would later stand out, such as Ruy Barbosa, Joaquim Nabuco, Rodrigues Alves or Afonso Pena: had they died, like him, at the age of twenty four, "not even the memory of the names would have remained with them and during that time the other gained lasting fame".

For the American researcher of the work of Castro Alves, Jon M. Tolman, his "biography serves not to define poetry, nor as a key to its understanding, but only as a kind of historical fitting, where we can glimpse with more authenticity the tactic poet's creativity". In this sense, a historical and cultural panorama serves "to make certain themes, attitudes and even the technique of his poetry more understandable". The system of slavery prevailed in Brazil during the reign of emperor Pedro II, concentrating in the Northeast, in 1867, 47% of the captive population in the country (774 thousand people), while the cultivation of coffee in São Paulo led the number of slaves to double in the decade from 1864 to 1874 and made the abolitionist issue gain the same relevance there as in cities where the presence of blacks was large, such as Salvador and the capital of the Empire, Rio de Janeiro. Since 1850, the slave trade from Africa had been prohibited by the Eusébio de Queirós Law, with the episode of the "Pontinha Landing" on Itaparica Island taking place in Bahia on 29 October 1851 — the last documented attempt to circumvent the prohibition of slave trafficking, in a demonstration of resistance in the province by traders and slave owners. There were then only two law schools in the country, both founded in 1828: one in Recife and the other in São Paulo; in both, the liberal and civic vision was instilled in the thinking elite of the country, in addition to the conception of national unity — which did not, in fact, occur in the provinces. In these academies, teachers and students were influenced by European authors such as Ernest Renan, who preached the end of Catholic influence in public life, Hippolyte Taine and Auguste Comte, with positivism, who brought, in the words of Sílvio Romero, a "bunch of new ideas " to which were added evolutionism, the change of law and politics, realism and naturalism, expanding in them the will to reform the country. In Europe several revolutions occurred. In France, the Revolutions of 1830 took place, which in 1847 (Castro Alves' birth year) led to the deposition of the king and the holding of the first elections on the continent with direct, secret and universal suffrage for men. Italy and Germany lived through the struggles for their unification, reflecting nationalist ideas; in that first country, the guerrilla leader Giuseppe Garibaldi had played an important role, who, in addition to having already fought in Brazil, was married to the Brazilian Anita. Among the main Brazilian facts of Castro Alves' time there is the so called Religious Issue, which involved Freemasonry; contemporaries and friends of Castro Alves were Freemasons, such as Luís Gama and Ruy Barbosa, among others. Castro Alves was also a Freemason, and together with the former two he collaborated in the newspaper Radical Paulistano and in abolitionist campaigns. After the emancipation of the Spanish colonies in the Americas, several nations experienced internal and external conflicts until they established themselves. The Paraguayan War was the biggedt conflict in South America, uniting Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay in the Triple Alliance against the Paraguayan dictator Solano López, who invaded the territory of the current Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul in 1864, providing in the following years battles that became epics such as the naval battle of Riachuelo and the passage of Humaitá (the latter worthy of an improvisation by the poet, in Rio de Janeiro); other conflicts marked the period in South America, such as the Platine War, in 1852, involving Brazil, and also the Spanish–South American War between Spain and Peru, whose independence Spain did not recognize until 1864, which also involved Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador and only concluded with the intervention of the United States. Despite the various conflicts, ideals of Pan Americanism had been latent since the beginning of the 19th century, of which José Bonifácio had been a defender in Brazil, in the sense of uniting the new nations to sustain their independence. The Paraguayan War, which would last until 1870, had an ambiguous result according to Joaquim Nabuco: the victory on the one hand marked the peak of the monarchy in Brazil, but also began its decline. In the words of authors Carlos Emílio Faraco and Francisco Marto de Moura in their analysis of O Navio Negreiro, the poetry of Castro Alves "reflects the historical moment of the time: the decline of the monarchy, the abolitionist struggle and the republican campaign".

Romanticism was an aesthetic movement that opposed the Classicism that preceded it. While the latter favored the nobility, the former portrayed the bourgeoisie: its authors were young people from the middle or popular class, as well as the characters they portrayed. The romantic authors, therefore, had subjectivism and freedom of creation as characteristics (marked by the primacy of feelings, historicism, pessimism and even a distancing from reality and worship of nature). This aesthetic movement derived from the rise of the post French Revolution bourgeoisie in Europe: in England there was an exaltation of medieval times and Shakespeare's writings. In Germany, social conflicts were reflected in the works of Goethe and Schiller, where pessimism, emotion, melancholy and appreciation of death emerged as a counterpoint to social transformations. Several European authors influenced Castro Alves: Lord Byron, Lamartine, Musset, Heinrich Heine and even Shakespeare who, translated into French, "became a true romantic obsession" in the words of Lêdo Ivo. But his greatest influence was Victor Hugo himself: according to Castro Alves, Victor Hugo was "his great master", "to whom he united an undisguised elective affinity, whether of a lyrical nature, whether of a political and tribunic nature", assimilating many things from him, "fishing in the immense Hugoan ocean a considerable number of visions, themes and images", in such a way that "he imitated and paraphrased him with the most blatant ease". In Portugal, exponents of this movement, in literature, were the authors Almeida Garrett, Alexandre Herculano, Júlio Dinis and, in the end, Camilo Castelo Branco. Initiated in 1825, romanticism lasted four decades there, which scholars divide into three moments: the first generation (from 1825 to 1840); the second (from 1840 to 1860) and, finally, the third from 1860, which is formed by authors already in a transition to realism. In Brazil, the movement coincided with the need to affirm nationality, with the country's independence in 1822. As in Portugal, literati divided Romanticism into three generations: the first, marked by nationalism and patriotism (which included Gonçalves Dias and Gonçalves de Magalhães); the second, marked by the influence of Lord Byron and with themes centered on love, death, doubt, irony and sarcasm and, in some, Satanism (whose exponents were Casimiro de Abreu, Álvares de Azevedo, Junqueira Freire and Fagundes Varela); and finally the third, which consisted of the so called condorists and abolitionists, of which the greatest exponent was Castro Alves.

Castro Alves' poetic work is divided, in didactic works, into two groups: social poetry and lyrical loving poetry. For Faraco and Moura, contrary to the other romantic poets who explained their lack of adaptation to the outside world as the result of their internal conflicts, Castro Alves justified this problem with the maladjustment of man to his environment and in the "eternal struggle between oppressors and oppressed"; the poet's production has, in addition to the lyrical and amorous production, the "poetry of a social character"; even in the case of the lyrical verses, Castro Alves is distinguished by having "a more realistic and sensual vision of love and women", as these, although still ideally beautiful and perfect, are concrete, materialized people. Samira Campedelli analyzed his work along the same lines: "besides a certain 'Byronian morbidity' and contrasting with it, Castro Alves' poetry presents two other aspects: sensual amorous lyricism and epic condorism"; in the first case, the inflamed lyricism derives from the real female figure, close and conquered, while in the second he innovates by bringing a "loud, open, frank" tone when he defends the slaves and portrays their misery in a "hyperbolic and eloquent way", with "violent strokes" and thus breaking with the "I" centered vision of his predecessors.

Professor of Brazilian Literature at the University of New Mexico Jon M. Tolman, in an analysis of the poet's work, pondered: "Among many other Brazilian authors conveniently boxed in by critics, we can highlight Castro Alves". Marques da Cruz, in his História da Literatura, records: "Many of his verses suffer (says Carlos de Laet) from the emphasis peculiar to the so called Condor school, which, starting from Hugo's imitation, decayed into pure Gongorism". Fausto Cunha pointed out what would be, for him, major defects in Castro Alves' production: a limited poet without a clear evolution, either in technique or in his theme; his entire production was made according to the current standards of romanticism, a "poet who has only one string on the lyre" and even that string was borrowed. In his analysis, "it was from 1868 onwards that his poetic personality asserted itself with autonomy and began, in turn, to influence his contemporaries. when the reason touched him more closely. The breakup with Eugênia Câmara and the last love of Agnese Trinci Murri plunged him back into the ocean of ultra romantic commonplaces, almost all of which have now been surpassed by their own collection". Cunha continued, to conclude in a negative way: "In many respects, Castro Alves' poetic trajectory is disconcerting and seems to support the thesis — certainly an extremist one — that the poet was an 'accomplished'. Within a narrow limit, it is possible to allude to a certain progressive exhaustion of his lyric after 1869 ( ) If the work of Castro Alves' adolescence is dotted with pastichos, his coming of age will suffer from completely unnecessary interferences ( ) The impression he leaves us, in the final phase, is not quite that of a 'satisfied', of a 'fulfilled' man: it is of an annihilated one with the peculiar bursts of optimism and energy". Contradicting Fausto Cunha's position, Jon M. Tolman said that the analysis of the poet's work suffers from the insertion of old productions among recent ones, as occurs in anthologies, noting that his final production has few admirers in Brazil; Tolman considered that "poetry written after returning to Bahia presents marked integral characteristics" and that the analysis made of his mature verses mix with others from earlier periods; about negative criticism such as that of Cunha, the American author concluded: "One of the disadvantages of literary acclaim is the weight of the critic's judgment, which often interferes with fair appreciation". When talking about Victor Hugo's influence on Castro's work, Lêdo Ivo compared him to Rimbaud, who also imitated the French writer and who had written about the sea without ever having seen it, so too "Castro Alves celebrated the Paulo Afonso Falls without having to go there; and his vision is more convincing and realistic than that of the visitors". The same author, speaking of the influence of the romantic authors who inspired the poet (already mentioned Hugo, Byron, Lamartine, Musset, Heine and even Espronceda), "many of them he translated, parodied, imitated and plundered, transfused into these parodies, imitations and plunders the vigor of a new language and scorched with fervor" in such a way that "one of the most original poets of our language, and one of the most jealous of the outbursts of his inflamed self, will also be one of the most fond of imitation and paraphrase", but he does it "with so much skill and happiness " that nothing disqualifies him and makes his verses remain "readable" despite the outbursts, thanks to the rigor with which he worked the Portuguese language. A master's student at the Federal University of Uberlândia, making a comparison between the vision of black people by Castro Alves and Luís Gama, noted that Alves speaks of black people in the third person, while Gama speaks in the first person, concluding that "Luís Gama helped to create the Afro Brazilian identity in order to promote changes in the discursive structures of the time, Castro Alves represented the black subject as a passive and resigned human being".

On 6 July 1881, ten years after the poet's death, the so called Largo do Teatro, one of the main squares in Salvador, was renamed in his honor; in 1919 a statue was commissioned from the Italian sculptor Pasquale de Chirico; the monument was installed in the place where the "Fountain of Columbus" used to be and inaugurated on 6 July 1923; the statue, measuring 2.9 meters, is positioned on a pedestal (which gives it a total height of 11 meters) on the front of which is a sculpture of a couple of slaves, symbolizing their abolitionist struggle: Castro Alves Square is one of Salvador's symbols. In reference to the square, Caetano Veloso paraphrased the verse by Castro Alves "The square is for the people, like the sky is for the condor" from O Povo ao Poder, paying him the tribute "Castro Alves Square belongs to the people / Like the sky belongs to the airplane". In 1895, the municipality of Curralinho was emancipated from Cachoeira; years later, the name of the city was changed to Castro Alves, in honor of the poet (sources differ as to whether it was by State Law No. 360 of 25 July 1900, or Law No. 790 of 25 June 1910). The "TCA", as it is known, has been part of Brazil's national heritage since 2013, listed by IPHAN. On 8 March 1971, the then governor of the state of Bahia Luís Viana Filho, as part of the homage to the poet on the centenary of his death, inaugurated the Castro Alves Historical Park in the city of Cabaceiras do Paraguaçu, in the former headquarters of the Cabaceiras Farm. The park museum with a total area of 52 thousand square meters located in the center of the city. According to the writer Edivaldo Boaventura, the space aimed to recall the poet's "birthplace and childhood scenarios". Since 1977, the day of the poet's birth was considered, unofficially, as National Poetry Day and it was celebrated that way until, in 2015, senator Alvaro Dias proposed another date, this time honoring Carlos Drummond de Andrade; after this law was passed, his birthday ceased to be officially the date of poetry in Brazil. In 2019, the third edition of the Pelourinho International Literary Festival (Flipelô) honored the poet.

In addition to the statue of De Chirico in Salvador, other monuments honor the poet in Brazil. On Passeio Público in Rio de Janeiro there is a bronze bust of the poet, the work of sculptor Eduardo de Sá, inaugurated in 1917 and the main differentiator being the pedestal in marble of different colors. In its first issue, without identifying the author, an article in the Rio de Janeiro magazine Bahia Illustrada criticized this work: "the bust of Castro Alves, found in Passeio Público, looks just as much like him as any of his ignored companions of the bohemia and student life of his time", and that the statue bears "no identity with his face", concluding that it is only known to be about the poet because it bears his name written in bronze. In 1947, in Recife, a bust was inaugurated in honor of the poet's centenary, a work carried out by the sculptor Celso Antônio de Menezes, located in Adolfo Cirne square, in front of the same Faculty of Law where Castro Alves once studied. In 1948, the Brazilian sculptor Humberto Cozzo went to Italy where, in Florence, he created the statue of the "Poet of Liberty", financed by the Ação Cultural Castro Alves. The sculptor, already established in the country, had won a competition to choose the statue, with the prize being a trip to Europe lasting a year, leaving in August of that year. The contest ended in 1947, the year of the poet's centenary, and the meeting to choose the winner (in which Mateus Fernandes, Celita Vacani, Francisco Andrade, Almir Pinto, Honório Peçanha and Modestino Kanto also competed) was documented on film. Cozzo would become one of the masters of the sculptor Mário Cravo, who, on his mother's side, was the poet's cousin. Other sculptures honor the poet in various parts of the country. In the city of Jacobina, Praça da Matriz has a monument to the poet, restored in 2016.

The Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) named in his honor, at the suggestion of founding member Valentim Magalhães, its chair number seven, which has Castro Alves as its patron. His chair was the target of the first major internal dispute within the academy, in 1905; that year Euclides da Cunha was elected to occupy the vacancy left by the founder of Chair 7, Valentim Magalhães, and it was up to literary critic Sílvio Romero to deliver the speech welcoming the new member of the Brazilian sylogee. Romero, from Sergipe like Tobias Barreto, was critical of Castro Alves' work because of the student disputes in Recife (due to parochialism and partiality, in the words of Afrânio Peixoto). In his speech, which the protocol called for to be complimentary, he turned to the controversial nature of his writings, offending even the President of the Republic, Afonso Pena, present there — in addition to harsh criticism of Castro Alves (patron), Valentim (founder) and Cunha (to take office). Once the academy's own headquarters were built, the "Salão dos Românticos" was installed there, where there are busts of the main authors of Brazilian romanticism, among them Castro Alves; it is in this place that deceased scholars are buried.

1947 was the centenary year of the poet's birth, and several events in his memory took place, especially in Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, then the Federal District. In the previous year, the federal government held a contest for the postal stamp design commemorating the centenary, which the designer Alberto Lima won. The Ministry of Education and Health awarded medals bearing the poet's effigy on the front, and on the back the verses of his authorship: "Green and gold banner of my land, / That the Brazilian breeze kisses and sways, / Banner that in the sunlight represents / The divine promises of hope ", a work by engraver L. Campos. The Ministry also held, in Rio de Janeiro, an Exhibition Commemorative of the Centenary of Castro Alves, directed by Augusto Meyer and started on 14 March. In the same year, the city of Rio de Janeiro instituted an essay contest in several categories, such as the best biography of the poet or a novel set at some point in his life. In Salvador, there was a large program of events, which took place from 5 to 15 March 1947, which included lectures, a literary contest by the Academy of Letters of Bahia and a meeting of Academies of Letters, a biobibliographic exhibition by the Instituto Geográfica e Histórico da Bahia and finally closed with a gala ball at the Clube Bahiano de Tênis. The ABL representative at the event was Pedro Calmon from Bahia. The Brazilian Academy, in turn, held conferences on the writer, held by some of its members such as Clementino Fraga and Pedro Calmon, a campaign for the construction of a monument to the poet, and a biobibliographic exhibition in the halls of the Petit Trianon, its headquarters.

Castro Alves' influence was felt during his lifetime, as the literary historian José Marques da Cruz pointed out: "His poetry O Navio Negreiro was memorized by many, having contributed to the abolition of slavery, intensely, as it was recited in all theaters and halls ( ) He was an abolitionist (before there was the abolitionist party) and republican". In 1882, a parody of O Navio Negreiro was published in Rio de Janeiro, with the title A Canoa do Martinho, part of Political Satires and anonymously authored (it kept the signature of "Musset", one of the writers of predilection of Castro Alves). In his epic work of 1950, Canto Geral, the Chilean writer Pablo Neruda inserted Castro Alves among the liberators of America, in the poem "Castro Alves do Brasil" (IV Canto, poem 29), where he stated that Castro Alves was the "poet of our America" for having given the slaves a voice where " in doors hitherto closed ( ) fighting, freedom would enter" and, finally, ended with the verses: "leave me, poet of our America, / to crown your head with the laurels of the people. / Your voice joined the eternal and loud voice of men. / You sang well. You sang as one should sing". Jorge Amado reflected the poet not only in his work The ABC of Castro Alves, but also in his only play O Amor do Soldado. In this 1947 work, the poet is the protagonist in his love for Eugênia Câmara, starting in 1866 the narrative that, in its nineteen scenes, presents several of the historical characters such as Joaquim Nabuco, Ruy Barbosa, Tobias Barreto, Antônio Borges da Fonseca and Fagundes Varela, in addition to Amado himself, who appears in interventions to explain the historical context; in this work Amado sought to show the relevance of Castro Alves' production in the social struggles of his time: abolition and republicanism. His popular acceptance made him one of the best known poets in the country, lending his name to public places, educational and cultural establishments, associations and even companies; it also appeared in cigarette and match brands; artists such as Benedito Irivaldo de Souza, known as Vado, performed more than five thousand theatrical presentations of O Navio Negreiro in São Paulo, which he took to schools and theaters in that state. Not only elite readers and artists appreciated Castro Alves, as he is a constant in the work of popular authors such as Rogaciano Leite, Bule Bule or Rodolfo Coelho Cavalcante, who said he is "the greatest poet in the world of all times", in addition to a vast range of cordel literature dealing with the poet; historian and cordelist Franklin Maxado demonstrated that Alves had used Repente in his disputes with Tobias Barreto – and that the poet's influence on popular art was also reciprocal.

Castro Alves was portrayed as a character in movies, played by Paulo Maurício in the 1949 Luso Brazilian fiction film Vendaval Maravilhoso (aka "Castro Alves — Um Vendaval Maravilhoso"), with singer Amália Rodrigues playing actress Eugênia Câmara; the work was restored in 2003 by Cinemateca Portuguesa; as informed in the film itself, the work was inspired "in the life of Castro Alves — O Poeta dos Escravos. This film is not a biography, only the authors studied the great biographers of the poet: Afrânio Peixoto, Pedro Calmon, Jorge Amado and Lopes Rodrigues". Director Leitão de Barros also wrote a book that tells the story of the film, entitled "How I saw Castro Alves and Eugênia Câmara in the wonderful whirlwind of their lives" about that "eloquent young man from Muritiba" and his Portuguese lover. In 1999 the poet was portrayed by actor Bruno Garcia in the film Castro Alves Retrato Falado do Poeta, where he is portrayed in his fights for the Republic and for abolition, "in addition to showing his passionate and even womanizing side".