Poets

Tobias Barreto de Meneses (June 7, 1839 — June 26, 1889) was a Brazilian poet, philosopher, jurist and critic, famous for creating the "Condorism" and revolutionizing Brazilian Romanticism and poetry. He is patron of the 38th chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Life

Barreto was born in the city of Vila de Campos do Rio Real (renamed "Tobias Barreto" in his honor in 1909), in the State of Sergipe. He learned his first letters with professor Manuel Joaquim de Oliveira Campos, and studied Latin with priest Domingos Quirino. He was so dedicated to the course that, in the future, he would become a Latin professor in the city of Itabaiana. In 1861 he would go to Bahia in order to enter in a seminary, but after realizing that was not what he wanted, he quit. During 1864 and 1865 he became a particular tutor for many subjects. He tried to become a Latin (and later Philosophy) teacher at the Ginásio Pernambucano, but he couldn't make it either. Barreto was an enthusiast of the German culture, what was inherited to him by his taste of works by Ernst Haeckel and Ludwig Büchner. It influenced him to write a journal in German, Deutsche Kampfer (German for The German Fighter). However, the journal was short-lived and had a small repercussion. Moving to the city of Escada, he married the daughter of a colonel. He stayed in Escada for ten years before returning to Recife, penniless. During his last years of life, his health was conturbated, and he died in 1889, in Recif..