Poetry
A Morte de D. João
Not translated into English
Synopsis
Don Juan is no longer the lord of the legends: he is a man of the nineteenth century, who drifts through cafés, boulevards, theatres, churches and consciences. The poem follows him from conquest to conquest and makes of him the summary of everything the author considered sick in modern society: idealism, boredom, neuroses, indifference, doubt, lack of character. Little by little, it strips him of everything that made up his legend.
Context
The poem appeared in Porto in 1874, from Moré, when its author was twenty-four, dedicated to the memory of Alexandre Herculano; the first print run, of twelve hundred copies, sold out quickly. It was accused of obscenity and immorality, and the author replied in the preface to the second edition, in 1876, that he was neither withdrawing nor correcting anything, truth knowing no periphrasis. He said there that he had wanted to embody the corruption of one part of society, legible in literature, from the idealism of Lamartine to the realism of the Second Empire. Camilo Castelo Branco and Oliveira Martins wrote reviews of it.
Who it is for
A long narrative poem in verse, out of copyright and digitised; allusions to the French literature of the century are constant, and an annotated edition helps.
Prizes and reception
The book that made its author's reputation, and one of the texts through which the Coimbra generation broke with Romanticism.
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The pages consulted to check this page.