PART II
REPRESENTATIVE PERSONALITIES
I
CASTRO ALVES
During the last half of the month of February, 1868, two admirable letters were exchanged by a pair of notable men, in which both discerned the budding fame of a twenty-year-old poet. The two notables were José de Alencar, chief novelist of the “Indianist” school, and Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, not yet at the height of his career. The poet was Castro Alves. His real “discoverer” was the first of these two authors, who sent him from Tijuca to Machado de Assis at Rio de Janeiro. In his letter of the 18th of February, José de Alencar wrote (I quote only salient passages):
“Yesterday I received a visit from a poet.
“Rio de Janeiro does not yet know him; in a very short while all Brazil will know him. It is understood, of course, that I speak of that Brazil which feels; with the heart and not with the rest.
“Sr. Castro Alves is a guest of this great city, for but a few days. He is going to São Paulo to finish the course that he began at Olinda.
“He was born in Bahia, the region of so many excellent talents; the Brazilian Athens that does not weary of producing statesmen, orators, poets and warriors.