PESSIMISM AND TRAGEDY IN THE WORKS OF AUGUSTO DOS ANJOS THROUGH A HISTORY OF READING

Abstract

Augusto de Carvalho Rodrigues dos Anjos (Paraíba, 1884 - Minas Gerais, 1914) was a Brazilian writer who died at the age of thirty. He is known for his poetry rather than his assays. His poems were shunned during his lifetime since they did not comply with current literary models and since they dealt with themes outlandish to Brazilian literature. Augusto dos Anjos´s tragic vision of life is the substratum of his reading and the absorption of his ideas, especially with regard to the philosophy of Tragedy. Current research analyzes Augustus dos Anjos´s cultural world in the appreciation of his reading, makes explicit the author´s life and works, partially acknowledging literary references and influences in his works through the history of reading. His writing will foreground the above relationships. His writings will be analyzed from the pessimistic and tragic perspective. His thoughts, literary practices and ideas will not be restricted, but related to the philosophy exposed by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with regard to their philosophy on the tragic. In fact, they are influences mainly detected when his poems are read.