By Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo and Luiz Marques
Machado de Assis defined Alberto de Oliveira (1859-1937) as a “domestic, delicate, refined” poet. A pharmacist by profession, Oliveira held various public positions in Rio de Janeiro, including that of general director of Public Education between 1893 and 1898. At eighteen years of age, he published Canções românticas, mentioned by Machado de Assis in very complimentary terms a year later in A nova geração (1879). Machado de Assis only criticizes the poet’s programmatic insistence on imitating Victor Hugo, confessed in the verses dedicated to Fontoura Xavier. The critic follows this with an amusing comment: “the verses of Mr. Alberto de Oliveira are of average size, a soft tone, a bluish color; in short, a graceful and non-epic air. The giants require a masculine tone. There are plenty of places where the author of Luz Nova and Primeiro Beijo can find material for his verses. What does he care about the warrior who goes off to Palestine? Let him stay in the castle with the warrior’s daughter, perhaps not for the two of them to strum an untuned mandolin, but to read together some page of domestic history”. In 1883, Sonetos e Poemas was to confirm Alberto de Oliveira as one of Brazil’s most important Parnassian poets. A founding member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras, during the Academy’s meeting on August 11, 1905, Alberto de Oliveira was to congratulate Machado de Assis “in friendly verse” on the homage that Joaquim Nabuco had paid to him (letter written by Machado de Assis to Joaquim Nabuco, n. 144, 1905).
Nothing is known about Belmiro’s relationship with Alberto de Oliveira at the time when the Portrait of the Poet Alberto de Oliveira was made, around 1895 to 1900 to judge from the subject’s apparent age. What is sure is that Belmiro’s masterpiece, Arrufos –, believed to allude humorously to the relations between the painting and the critic (it is common knowledge that Belmiro portrayed Gonzaga-Duque in the figure of the indomitable husband) – could well serve to illustrate a poem about the “domestic history” to which Machado de Assis refers in defining Oliveira’s theme. In any case, it is noteworthy that the work of the poet and that of the painter featured flagrant affinities in theme and style. Attention should also be drawn to the fact that the portrait, in the form of a cartoon, which shows Alberto de Oliveira stroking his mustache to emphasize his nature as a dandy, similar to that of the painter Belmiro, very concerned with impeccable grooming, as Gonzaga-Duque had mentioned in 1887. The caricature may have been occasioned by the ceremony held in 1897 when the poet was sworn in as a member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras.
— Eugênia Gorini Esmeraldo and Luiz Marques, 1998
