Erico Verissimo

Infobox Writer
name = Érico Veríssimo

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imagesize = 200px
caption = Drawing by André Koehne
birthdate = birth date|1905|12|17
birthplace = Cruz Alta
deathdate = death date and age|1975|11|28|1905|12|17
deathplace = Porto Alegre
occupation = novelist, short story writer
nationality = Brazilian
period = 1933-1975
movement = Modernist
children = Luis Fernando Verissimo
influences = Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Machado de Assis

Érico Veríssimo (December 17, 1905 - November 28, 1975) is an important Brazilian writer, who was born in Rio Grande do Sul. His father, heir of a rich family in Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, met financial ruin during his son's youth. Veríssimo worked in a pharmacy before obtaining a job at Editora Globo, a book publisher, where he translated and released works of writers like Aldous Huxley. During the Second World War, he went to the United States. This period of his life was recorded in some of his books, including: "Gato Preto em Campo de Neve" ("Black Cat in a Snow Field"), "A Volta do Gato Preto" ("The Return of the Black Cat"), and "História da Literatura Brasileira" ("History of Brazilian Literature"), which contains some of his lectures at UCLA. His epic "O Tempo e o Vento" ("The Time and the Wind'") became one of the great masterpieces of the Brazilian novel, alongside "Os Sertões" by Euclides da Cunha, and "" by Guimarães Rosa.

Four of Veríssimo's works, "Time and the Wind", "Night", "Mexico", and "His Excellency, the Ambassador", were translated into the English language by Linton Lomas Barrett.

He was the father of another famous writer of Rio Grande do Sul, Luis Fernando Veríssimo.

Biography

Érico Veríssimo was the son of Sebastião Veríssimo da Fonseca and Abegahy Lopes Veríssimo. He was born into a wealthy family that went bankrupt, and consequentially didn't manage to complete secondary school because of the need to work.

Veríssimo settled in Cruz Alta as the owner of a drugstore, but was unsuccessful. He then moved to Porto Alegre in 1930, willing to live solely by selling his writing. There he began to live around writers of renown, such as Mário Quintana, Augusto Meyer, Guilhermino César and others. In the following year, he was hired to occupy the position of secretary of edition of the "Revista do Globo", of which he would become editor in 1933. He then undertook the whole editorial project at Editora Globo, propelling its nationwide fame.

He publish his first work, "Fantoches" ("Puppets"), in 1932, with a sequence of short stories, mostly in the form of short plays. The following year, he saw his first great success with the romance "Clarissa".

Veríssimo married in 1931 to Mafalda Volpe and had two children, Luis Fernando Veríssimo, also a writer, and Clarissa.

In 1943 he moved with his family to the US, where he gave lessons on Brazilian Literature in the University of Berkeley, until 1945. Between 1953 and 1956 he was director of the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Organization of American States, in Washington, DC. From these trips and from the stay in the US, two books originated: "Gato Preto em Campo de Neve" ("Black Cat in a Snow Field") in 1941, and "A Volta do Gato Preto" ("The Return of the Black Cat") in 1947.

His historical trilogy "O Tempo e o Vento" ("The Time and the Wind") is considered as his greatest work, written in the period of 1949-1961, from which arose primordial characters such as "Ana Terra" and "Capitão Rodrigo" that went on to become popular amongst his readers.

In 1965 Veríssimo published the romance "O Senhor Embaixador" ("His Excellency, the Ambassador"), in which he reflected upon the deviations of Latin America.

In the romance "Incidente em Antares" ("Incident in Antares"), written in 1971, he traces a parallel with Brazilian politics with the use of fantasy, with the rebellion of corpses during a strike of the gravekeepers, in the fictitious city of Antares.

After suffering from a heart attack in 1975, Veríssimo was unable to complete the second volume of his autobiography entitled "Solo de Clarineta" ("Clarinet Solo"), which was intended to be a trilogy, apart from a romance which would be entitled "A Hora do Sétimo Anjo" ("The Hour of the Last Angel").

Works

His works have been compiled in three different occasions:

*"Obras de Erico Verissimo" ("Works of Érico Veríssimo") – 1956 (17 volumes)
*"Obras completas" ("Complete Works") – 1961 (10 volumes)
*"Ficção completa" ("Complete Fiction")– 1966 (5 volumes)

Érico Veríssimo's books have been translated to German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Dutch, Hungarian, Indonesian, English, Italian, Japan, Norwegian, Romanian, Russian and Czech.

hort Stories

*"Fantoches" ("Puppets")
*"As mãos de meu filho" ("My Son's Hands")
*"O ataque" ("The Attack")
*"Os devaneios do general" ("The reveries of the general")

Romances

*"Clarissa" – 1933
*"Caminhos Cruzados" ("Crossed Paths") – 1935
*"Música ao Longe" ("Music to the afar") – 1936
*"Um Lugar ao Sol" ("A place by the Sun")– 1936
*"Olhai os Lírios do Campo" ("Look at the Lilies of the Field")– 1938
*"Saga" – 1940
*"O Resto É Silêncio|" ("The Rest is Silence") – 1943
*"O Tempo e o Vento" (The Time and the Wind"):
**"O continente" ("The Continent") – 1949
**"O Retrato" ("The Portrait") – 1951
**"O Arquipélago ("The Archipelago") – 1961
*"O Senhor Embaixador" ("His Majesty, the Ambassador") – 1965
*"O Prisoneiro" ("The Prisoner") – 1967
*"Incidente em Antares" – 1971

Novels

*"Noite" ("Night") - 1954 (the versions published in Portugal still contain "A Sonata" ("The Sonata"), a short story written by a solitary music teacher, that sees himself transported to the past, to the year of his birth, where he falls in love for a beautiful woman)

Children's literature

*"A vida de Joana d'Arc" – 1935
*"As AVenturas do Avião Vermelho" – 1936
*"Os Três Porquinhos Pobres" – 1936
*"Rosa Maria no Castelo Encantado" – 1936
*"Meu ABC" – 1936
*"As Aventuras de Tibicuera" – 1937
*"O Urso com Música na Barriga" – 1938
*"A Vida do Elefante Basílio" – 1939
*"Outra vez os três porquinhos" – 1939
*"Viagem à aurora do mundo" – 1939
*"Aventuras no mundo da higiene" – 1939
*"Gente e bichos" – 1956

Travel literature

*"Gato Preto em Campo de Neve" – 1941
*"A Volta do Gato Preto" – 1946
*"México" – 1957
*"Israel em Abril" – 1969

Autobiographies

*"O escritor diante do espelho" – 1966 (in "Ficção Completa")
*"Solo de Clarineta" – Memórias (Volume I) – 1973
*"Solo de clarineta" – Memórias (Volume II) – 1976 (posthumous edition, organized by Flávio L. Chaves)

Essays

*"Brazilian Literature: an Outline" – 1945
*"Mundo velho sem porteira" – 1973
*"Breve história da literatura brasileira"

Biographies

*"Um certo Henrique Bertaso" – 1972

Translations

;Romances
*"The Ringer", by Edgar Wallace – 1931
*"The Crimson Circle", by Edgar Wallace – 1931
*"The Door with Seven Locks", by Edgar Wallace – 1931
*"Jahrgang 1902", by Ernst Glaeser – 1933
*"Point Counter Point", by Aldous Huxley – 1934
*"Kleiner Mann, Was nun?", by Hans Fallada – 1937
*"We Are Not Alone", by James Hilton – 1940
*"Goodbye Mr. Chips", by James Hilton – 1940
*"Of Mice and Men", by John Steinbeck – 1940
*"Portrait of Jennie", by Robert Nathan – 1942
*"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?", by Horace McCoy – 1947
*"Then and Now", by Somerset Maugham – 1948
*"The Clue of the New Pin"), by Edgar Wallace – 1956

;Short Stories
*""Psychology"", by Katherine Mansfield – 1939 (Revista do Globo)
*"Bliss", by Katherine Mansfield – 1940
*"Her First Ball", by Katherine Mansfield – 1940 (Revista do Globo)