Poesias sacras, e profanas para uso da Escola da Sociedade de Instrucção Elementar do Rio de Janeiro, colligidas por….

Rio de Janeiro, Typographia Universal de Laemmert, 1841.. FIRST EDITION. 12°, contemporary green cloth (heavily wormed, defective at foot of spine, worn at corners, front cover detached, other binding defects), spine and covers with gilt fillets. Wormholes throughout, mostly small and round, not affecting legibility of text. A working copy only. Blue imperial stamp on p. 5. 134 pp., (1 l.). *** FIRST EDITION of this anthology. The first part (pp. 5-65) is Sousa Caldas' Poesias sacras, the second his Poesias profanas. After them are two odes by José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva and other poems of Francisco Manuel Garção e Ferreira. Sousa Caldas (b. 1762), an Arcadian, was "o mais vigoroso lírico dos predecessores imediatos do romantismo" (Veríssimo p. 114). He was imprisoned in 1781 by the Inquisition on grounds of being "herege, naturalista, deísta e blasfemo" - apparently because he was influenced by Rousseau. Eventually he took orders and began writing sacred poetry. In 1808 he returned to his native Rio de Janeiro, where he died in 1814. Aside from a few cartas avulsas, the Poesias sacras and Poesias profanas are Sousa Caldas's only published works, first published in 1820-1821. Poesias sacras includes cantatas, sonnets and odes on the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the need for revelation, the virtue of Christianity, and others. Poesias profanas, includes some of the author's best works - a cantata entitled "Pygmalion" and the ode "Ao homem selvagem"—as well as "Sobre o amor, considerado como principio e esteio da ordem social," a sonnet improvised at the tomb of Ines de Castro, and a lengthy letter (pp. 90-131) in verse and prose describing a voyage to Genoa. The ode "Ao homem selvagem" made him rank, according to Werneck Sodré, with Santa Rita Durão and Francisco de Melo Franco as "os primeiros que, entre nós, trataram o tema do selvagem" (p. 263). Andrada e Silva (1763-1838), often referred to as the "Patriarch of Brazilian Independence," was one of the greatest Brazilian writers of the half century before independence. A native of São Paulo, he studied law at Coimbra; soon thereafter his aptitude for the natural sciences was noticed by the Duke of Lafões, who arranged his membership in the Academia Real das Sciencias. When he returned to Brazil, in 1819, he began working for Brazilian independence and was soon named royal minister and deputy to the Assembleia. Soon after, however, he was sent into European exile for seven years. When D. Pedro abdicated as emperor of Brazil, he entrusted the tutelage of his children to José Bonifacio. Andrade published a plethora of works in the early 1820s, including a few that were published under D. Pedro's name. He was a member of numerous learned societies in Europe and the Americas (see Innocêncio for a list), including the American Philosophical Society.The editor, a native of Rio de Janeiro, was the second administrator of the Imprensa Nacional. He taught Portuguese grammar to the daughters of Emperor D. Pedro II.*** Borba de Moraes, Período colonial p. 386. Sacramento Blake II, 427: without collation. Porbase locates a single copy, in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Not located in Jisc. KVK (51 databases searched) locates only the copies at Jena and Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Not located in NUC.