João da Cruz e Sousa was a symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

 poet from Santa Catarina

Santa Catarina (state)

Santa Catarina is a state in southern Brazil with one of the highest standards of living in Latin America. Its capital is Florianópolis, which mostly lies on the Santa Catarina Island. Neighbouring states are Rio Grande do Sul to the south and Paraná to the north. It is bounded on the east by...

, 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...

. A son of freed slaves, he was one of the great Afro-Brazilian

Afro-Brazilian

In Brazil, the term "preto" is one of the five categories used by the Brazilian Census, along with "branco" , "pardo" , "amarelo" and "indígena"...

 writers. He published his first poem in 1877. He was one of the pioneers of Symbolism in Brazil.

Son of manumitted slaves, since he was a child, he received the custody and a good education from his ex-lord Marshal

Marshal (Brazil)

Marshal is the highest rank in both the Brazilian Army and the Brazilian Air Force, although the latter is titled Marechal-do-Ar . These ranks are equivalent to that of Admiral in the Navy...

 Guilherme Xavier de Sousa, whose family name he adopted. Cruz e Souza learned French, Greek and Latin, besides have been disciple of the German Fritz Müller

Fritz Müller

Johann Friedrich Theodor Müller , better known as Fritz Müller, and also as Müller-Desterro, was a German biologist and physician who emigrated to southern Brazil, where he lived in and near the German community of Blumenau, Santa Catarina...

, whom he learned Math and Science.

In 1881, he directed the journal Tribuna Popular, whereupon he fought the slavery and the racial prejudice. In 1883, he was refused as Laguna promoter for being black. In 1885, he published his first book, Tropos e Fantasias with Virgilio Varzea. Five years later he went to Rio de Janeiro, where he worked as an archivist at Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil, also helping with the journal Folha Popular. In February, 1893 he publishes Missal and in August, Broquéis, initiating Symbolism in Brazil, which extends itself until 1922. In November of the same year, Cruz e Souza married Gavita Gonçalves, whom he had four kids, all dead prematurely due to tuberculosis, leading him to madness.

He died on March 19, 1898 at the miner city of Antonio Carlos, in a village named Estação do Sitio, to where he was transported carrily, overcome by tuberculosis. He had his body transported to Rio de Janeiro in a wage destined for horse transports. Upon arrival, he was buried in the cemetery of St. Francis Xavier by his friends, among them José do Patrocínio; where he remained until 2007, when his remains were accepted by the Santa Catarina History Museum - Cruz e Souza palace downtown Florianopolis.

He was a member of the Academia Catarinense de Letras, whose chair is the patron 15.

A Forerunner of Negritude

Cruz e Sousa's 'fault' lay in his being a black (Symbolist) poet in a climate given over to prejudice, mediocrity, and Parnassian strictures of art. His fellow intellectuals could neither abide nor comprehend him while, for his part, he regarded them and their feeble creations with utter disdain.

The child of a free black woman and a black slave father, Cruz e Sousa was wholly black, without the mulatto-coloring so useful as a laisser-passer in the society of his day. In 1893 he married Gayita Rosa Goncalves, an educated black girl who worked as a seamstress. In the same year he brought out two collections of poems, Missal and Shields, which critics wasted no time in attacking-one anonymous author going so far as to publish a parody in which he castigated both the poet's race and his verse.

"A spiritualizing, half-wit dunce
brought up in distant Mozambique
has picked at true Art with his beak
Swaying sickly, with sonorous grunts.
And all the blacks from Senegal
do a buck-and-wing as they caterwaul
and hail him with rockets exploding in the air."

A proud artist who was aware of the depth of his talent, Cruz e Souza refused to bow to the literary establishment, with which he could never racially, culturally, or socially identify. Both as an artist and as a man, he realized that his 'identity' and 'fate' were inseparable; and in defiance of their 'nigger' he lifted aloft the banner of Blackness.

"I bore, like corpses lashed lashed to my back and incessantly and interminably rotting, all the empiricisms of prejudice, the unknown layers of long)dead strata, of curious and desolate African races that Physiology had doomed forever to nullify with the mocking papal laughter of Haeckel! . . . All the doors and passage-ways along the road of life are closed to me, a poor Aryan artist-yes, Aryan, because I acquired, by systematic study, all the qualities of that great race. To what end? A sad black man, detested by those with culture, beaten down by society, always humiliated, cast out of every bed, spat upon in every household like some evil leper! But how? To be and artist and black?"

O my hatred, my majestic malice
my sacred, pure and benign malevolence
anoint my forehead with your pure kiss
so that I may be both proud and humble

Humble and generous to the meek
but haughty to those lacking Desire,
lacking in Goodness and faith,
who know not the lamp of the gentle, fecund sun.

O my hatred, my blessed emblem
which flaps in the wind of my soul's infinity
while the others' banners droop

Hearty, benign hatred be my shield!
against those villains of love, whose
infamy resounds from the Seven Towers of Mortal Sin.

-"Sacred Hate", translation by Julio Finn.

(1). Julio Finn, Voices of Negritude, Quartet Books, London and New York, 1988.

Books

• Broquéis (1893)
• Missal (1893),
• Evocações (1898)
• Faróis (1900)
• Últimos Sonetos (1905)

External links

• Cruz e Sousa - Master of the Symbolism. Biography of Cruz e Sousa written by professor Evaldo Pauli.
• Newspaper A Notícia: Cruz e Sousa
• Encyclopedia Britannica