Baltasar Lopes da Silva

Baltasar Lopes da Silva (Caleijão, São Nicolau, 23 April 1907 - São Vicente, 28 May 1989) was a writer, poet and linguist from Cape Verde, who wrote in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole. With Manuel Lopes and Jorge Barbosa, he was the founder of Claridade. In 1947 he published Chiquinho, considered the greatest Cape Verdean novel. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Osvaldo Alcântara.

Biography

Baltasar Lopes da Silva was born in the village of Calejão on the island of São Nicolau in Cape Verde on April 23, 1907. He completed his secondary education in Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente, and then traveled to Portugal to attend the University of Lisbon. During his time in Lisbon, Lopes studied with important figures of Portuguese culture, such as Vitorino Nemésio and Câmara Reis, earned excellent grades, and graduated with degrees in Law and Romance Philology. After college, he returned to Cape Verde, where he began teaching at the Liceu Gil Eanes in São Vicente. After a few years, he was appointed Dean of the school. He left Cape Verde for a brief period to teach in Leiria, Portugal. Due to his conflicting views and attitudes toward Portuguese politics of the time, he returned to Cape Verde, where he continued to teach and practice law. His last days were spent in Lisbon, where he was transferred for treatment of a cerebrovascular disease and died shortly afterwards on May 28, 1989.

Career

In 1936, Baltasar Lopes, with the collaboration of other writers, such as Manuel Lopes, Manuel Ferreira, António Aurélio Gonçalves, Francisco José Tenreiro, Jorge Barbosa, and Daniel Filipe, founded the Cape Verdean journal Claridade. Claridade published essays, poems, and short stories. Its contributors wrote about the problems of their society, such as drought, famine, and emigration, bringing clarity to the study of Cape Verdean reality, especially with regard to the most disadvantaged social groups.

In 1947, Lopes published his first book, the novel Chiquinho. Chiquinho describes in detail the customs, people, landscapes, and social problems of Cape Verde in early twentieth century. It is a coming-of-age novel about the people of Cape Verde and the step that many Cape Verdeans had to take to achieve a better life: emigration. The novel is organized into three parts:

• 1. "Childhood" (Infância), in which the protagonist Chiquinho lives with his family and community in the village of Caleijão on the island of São Nicolau and learns his first letters.
• 2. "São Vicente," in which Chiquinho continues his education in high school on the island of São Vicente, where he meets new friends and his first love Nuninha. Chiquinho and his classmates found the Grémio, an association and a journal that is very similar to Claridade, in the sense that it attempts to change the social environment of the archipelago.
• 3. "The Waters" (As Águas), the third and final part of the novel, in which Chiquinho returns to his island and becomes a teacher. This part is focused on the calamity of drought, a major problem in Cape Verde, which results in famine and many deaths. At the end of the novel, Chiquinho emigrates to the United States with the hope of a better life.

Works

• Chiquinho (1947)
• Cabo Verde visto por Gilberto Freyre (1956)
• O dialecto crioulo de Cabo Verde, a description of the Cape Verdean creole language (1957).
• Antologia da Ficção Cabo-Verdiana Contemporânea (1961)
• Cântico da Manhã Futura (1986), volume of poetry published under the name Osvaldo Alcântara
• Os Trabalhos e os Dias (short stories, 1987)

External links

• Baltasar da Silva Lopes on britannica.com
• Baltazar Lopes da Silva