Domingos Caldas Barbosa

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Domingos Caldas-Barbosa (born of a white father and a black mother at Rio de Janeiro in 1740; died in Lisbon, 9 November 1800) was a Brazilian mulatto poet.

[edit] Life

Trained at the Jesuit college in Rio de Janeiro, he developed a power of literary improvisation which he indulged at the expense of the Portuguese whites and thereby stirred them up against him. His enemies had him forcibly enrolled in a body of troops setting forth for the colony of Sacramento, where he remained until 1762. Returning to Rio Janeiro he soon embarked for Portugal, and there obtained the patronage of two nobles of the Vasconcellos family, the Conde de Pombeiro and the Marquez de Castello Melhor. Taking minor orders he received a religious benefice, being attached as chaplain to the Casa da Supplicaçáo.

Although he was a mulatto, he obtained entrance into high society in the Portuguese capital: he could improvise cantigas and play his own accompaniment on the viol. Hence the condescending nickname cantor de viola which was given to him. Well aware that his social status was uncertain, he retained his self possession even in the face of the insulting attitude of the poet Bocage and others.

With most of the Portuguese poets of the time he had good relations, consorting with them in one or another literary academy. His cantigas acquired great popularity. He was a minor poet with facility, able to express himself simply, and to avoid bombast and sensuality. His poetical definition of the characteristically Portuguese quality of saudades remains famous.

[edit] References

Edition of his poems published under his academic name of Lereno, Viola de Lereno: collecçao das suas cantigas, etc. (Lisbon, 1825);
De Varnhagen, Florilegio da poesia brazileira (Lisbon, 1850), I, II, III (Madrid, 1853);
Wolf, Le Brésil littéraire (Berlin, 1863); Sylvio Romero, Hist. da litt. brazileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1902)