Tomás António Gonzaga

Tomás Antônio Gonzaga ( born August 11, 1744 Porto, Portugal, † February 1810 in Mozambique) was a Brazilian poet of Portuguese descent. He is considered one of the most important Arcadian poet of Brazil.

Life and work

Gonzaga was born the son of the Brazilian Magistrate Dr João Bernardo Gonzaga and Dona Isabel Clark Tomásia. He spent his childhood in Recife and Bahia, where his father worked as an alderman each. At the Jesuit high school, he began his studies, which eventually brought him to the University of Coimbra in Portugal, where he graduated in law in 1768. From 1778 to 1781 he worked as a judge in Beja. In 1782 he returned to Brazil and went to live in Ouro Preto, where he worked as a civil servant. Because of his criticism of the states of the colonial government, and especially to the Governor-General Luís da Cunha Meneses he was in 1789 for three years on the Ilha do Cobra ( Cobra Island) banished in Rio de Janeiro and then spent exile in Mozambique, where he also married and his sons were born. He died in Mozambique to have seen home again without ever.

As a poet, he fell under the pseudonym " Dirceu " by strong love poetry on. In it, he sings about the 16 -year-old " Marilia ," but rejects his wooing. It is brasileiro as one of the masterpieces of Arcadismo, the neoclassical - exotic " Arkadismus in Brazil ". During his stay in Portugal also under the title " Tratado de Direito Natural " was a philosophical work, the - the Marquês de Pombal dedicated - the first treatise on natural law in the Portuguese language at all. Politically important are his critical and satirical comments in the anonymously published " Cartas Chilenes " in which he criticized the colonial government bluntly and openly.

Gonzaga was selected by the co-founder of the Academia Brasileira de Letras Silva Ramos as patron of the Academy chair No. 37.

Work

• Marilia de Dirceu (without year), love poetry.
• Cartas Chilenas ( critical and satirical letters about the state of Brazil ) ( 1786 ), published in 1845 and 1862.
• Tratado de Direito Natural ( natural law ), treatise, without year.
• Obras Completas. 2 vols. Rio de Janeiro in 1957.