“Virginity is an illusion! What is more virginlike? She who is deflowered while sleeping? Or the nun who, with burning tears, tosses and turns in her bed and breaks her finger through her habit while reading some impure romance?”
When the Emperor arrived ‘a number of Brazilian residents in London crowded forward to meet them’. Who were these Brazilians resident in Victorian London? Can we know a little bit more about their histories?
Adelina began to live a double life. She remained a slave. But her unique knowledge of the town and its environs, and especially of all the places where it was easy for a person to ‘disappear’, meant that she became valuable resource for abolitionists who were on the run from the police.
Álvares de Azevedo, was Brazil’s most famous Romantic poet. This translation of Ai Jesus! is by Luiz Guerra and the first time it has been translated into English
Europe clamours for the organisation of labour and preaches communism. Here the same clamour translates into the cry of ‘War on the Portuguese’.
Luiz Guerra’s new, and very fine, translation into English of Azevedo’s Shadow of Don Juan [‘Sombra de Don Juan’] is the first English translation of Azevedo’s poem. With great skill, as is usual of Guerra’s translations, he has largely preserved the original rhyme scheme while retaining Azevedo’s meaning.
Leandro Machado’s translation of Brazilian Romantic poet Álvares de Azevedo’s ‘Lembrança de Morrer’ (Memory of Dying)
The monarchy of Pedro II, a figure who commanded respect from Conservatives and Liberals, was an ardent abolitionist whose support for the cause spelled the end of his reign.