Raul Pompéia
1863–1895
Biography
Raul d'Ávila Pompeia (1863–1895) was a Brazilian novelist, short-story writer, journalist and republican activist. He was born in Angra dos Reis, a coastal town in Rio de Janeiro state, and he died in Rio de Janeiro. Late in life he had fallen out with many of his former friends, and on Christmas Day 1895 he took his own life, at the age of thirty-two.
His best-known book is O Atheneu, a novel first published in the late 1880s. Its narrator recalls his years at a boarding school in Rio de Janeiro, where rivalry, display and cruelty shape a small and unequal world under a headmaster who cares more for show than for the boys. Critics have disagreed about its school. It is often read as naturalism, though some later critics place it among impressionist or symbolist writing. Pompeia was also a staunch supporter of the government of Floriano Peixoto, the second president of the Republic.
The book on this site is O Atheneu (chronica de saudades), the work through which he is still most often read. After his death he was named patron of chair 33 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, which confirmed his place in the nation's literature. For readers of Brazilian fiction of the late nineteenth century, the novel offers an intimate picture of schooling and social life as seen through a child's memory.
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Books
O Atheneu (chronica de saudades)
by Raul Pompéia
Sérgio looks back on his years as a boarder at the Ateneu, a prestigious school in Rio de Janeiro ruled by its vain headmaster Aristarco. Raul Pompeia's novel portrays the school as a small society of rivalries, friendships and hypocrisy. This book uses the racial and other…
Summary written by Claude Opus 5.5.