Antonio Feliciano de Castilho
Encyclopedia
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
man of letters, born at Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
.
He lost his sight
Visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight, or vision...
at the age of six, but the devotion of his brother Augusto, and aided by a retentive memory, enabled him to go through his school and university course with success; and he acquired an almost complete mastery of the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
language and literature.
His first work of importance, the Cartas de Echo e Narciso (1821), belongs to the pseudo-classical school in which he had been brought up, but his romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
leanings became apparent in the Primavera (1822) and in Amor e Melancholia (1823), two volumes of honeyed and prolix bucolic poetry. In the poetic legends A noite do Castello (1836) and Ciúmes do bardo (1838) Castilho appeared as a full-blown Romanticist
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
. These books exhibit the defects and qualities of all his work, in which lack of ideas and of creative imagination and an atmosphere of artificiality are ill-compensated for by a certain emotional charm, great purity of diction and melodious versification.
Belonging to the didactic and descriptive school, Castilho saw nature as all sweetness, pleasure and beauty, and he lived in a dreamland of his imagination. A fulsome epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
on the succession of King John VI
John VI of Portugal
John VI John VI John VI (full name: João Maria José Francisco Xavier de Paula Luís António Domingos Rafael; (13 May 1767 – 10 March 1826) was King of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (later changed to just King of Portugal and the Algarves, after Brazil was recognized...
brought him an office of profit at Coimbra
Coimbra
Coimbra is a city in the municipality of Coimbra in Portugal. Although it served as the nation's capital during the High Middle Ages, it is better-known for its university, the University of Coimbra, which is one of the oldest in Europe and the oldest academic institution in the...
. On his return from a stay in Madeira
Madeira
Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago that lies between and , just under 400 km north of Tenerife, Canary Islands, in the north Atlantic Ocean and an outermost region of the European Union...
, he founded the Revista Universal Lisbonense, in imitation of Herculano's Panorama, and his profound knowledge of the Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
classics served him well in the introduction and notes to a very useful publication, the Livraria Classica Portugueza (1845-47, 25 volumes), while two years later he established the "Society of the Friends of Letters and the Arts."
A study on Luís de Camões
Luís de Camões
Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas...
and treatises on metrification and mnemonics followed from his pen. His praiseworthy zeal for popular instruction led him to take up the study of pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
, and in 1850 he brought out his Leitura Repentina, a method of reading which was named after him, and he became government commissary of the schools which were destined to put it into practice.
Going to Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in 1854, he there wrote his famous Letter to the Empress. Though Castilho's lack of strong individuality and his excessive respect for authority prevented him from achieving original work of real merit, yet his translations of Anacreon, Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
and the Chave do Enigma, explaining the romantic incidents that led to his first marriage with D. Maria de Baena, a niece of the satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
poet Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida
Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida
Nicolau Tolentino de Almeida , from Lisbon, was the foremost Portuguese satirical poet of the 18th century. Beginning at age 20, Tolentino studied law for three years at the University of Coimbra; he then ended those studies to teach rhetoric. He was sent to Lisbon in 1776 to fill a post, and was...
and a descendant of António Ferreira
António Ferreira
António Ferreira was a Portuguese poet and the foremost representative of the classical school, founded by Francisco de Sá de Miranda. His most considerable work, Castro, is the first tragedy in Portuguese, and the second in modern European literature.-His life:Ferreira was a native of Lisbon...
, reveal him as a master of form and a purist in language. His versions of Goethe's Faust
Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
, made without a knowledge of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, scarcely added to his reputation.
When the Coimbra question arose in 1865, Garrett was dead and Herculano had ceased to write, leaving Castilho supreme, for the moment, in the realm of letters. But the youthful Antero de Quental
Antero de Quental
Antero Tarquínio de Quental , old spelling Anthero, , a Portuguese poet, philosopher and writer, whose works became a milestone in the Portuguese language, alongside those of Camões or Bocage....
withstood his claim to direct the rising generation and attacked his superannuated leadership, and after a fierce war of pamphlets Castilho was dethroned. The rise of João de Deus
João de Deus
João de Deus Ramos , better known as João de Deus, the greatest Portuguese poet of his generation, was born in Silves, São Bartolomeu de Messines, in the province of Algarve, son of Pedro José Ramos and wife Isabel Gertrudes Martins...
reduced him to a secondary position in the Portuguese Parnassus, and when he died ten years later much of his former fame had preceded him to the tomb.