Lúcio Cardoso

Joaquim Lúcio Cardoso Filho, known as Lúcio Cardoso (Curvelo, Minas Gerais, Brazil, August 14, 1913 - Rio de Janeiro, September 22, 1968) was a Brazilian novelist, playwright, and poet.

The son of an impoverished but prominent family in Minas Gerais, Lúcio Cardoso was the brother of Adauto Lúcio Cardoso, a senator for the center-right União Democrática Nacional and later member of the Supreme Federal Court; and of Maria Helena Cardoso, who became a respected writer, including of posthumous memoirs of her brother Lúcio ("Por onde andou meu coração", 1967; "Vida-vida", 1973; and "Sonata perdida: Anotações de uma velha dama digna", 1979).

At an early age, having flunked out of or been expelled by several schools, Cardoso moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he got a job in an insurance company. [Carelli, Mario. "Corcel de fogo: Vida e obra de Lúcio Cardoso (1912-1968)". Rio de Janeiro: Editora Guanabara, 1988.] He soon came to the notice of the group of writers around the wealthy industrialist Augusto Frederico Schmidt, who published his first works. Many of these writers, including Octávio de Faria and Cornélio Penna, were, like Cardoso, both homosexual and Catholic in a time when Brazilian literature was dominated by leftist, regionalist themes. These writers were less interested in the then-dominant political concerns of Brazilian writing as they were in the inner experience and the need for personal salvation, a characteristic Cardoso shared with Clarice Lispector, who fell in love with Cardoso when she was an adolescent, and who remained a close friend until his death.

Cardoso was enormously prolific in several genres, including the theater, where, together with the Afro-Brazilian activist Abdias do Nascimento, he started the Teatro Experimental do Negro, Brazil's first black theater company. With Paulo César Saraceni, he was responsible for the first feature-length film of the nascent Cinema Novo, "Porto das caixas". Perhaps his most famous novel is "Crônica da casa assassinada" ("Chronicle of the Murdered House", 1959, a long, Faulknerian story of a family in Minas Gerais.

A famous figure in the bohemian milieu of Rio de Janeiro--"Ipanema should be called Lúcio Cardoso," according to one friend [Paulo César Saraceni quoted in Ruy Castro, "Ela é carioca: uma enciclopédia de Ipanema". São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1999. p. 223.] --his health deteriorated because of his alcoholism and dependence on prescription drugs. On December 7, 1962, at the height of his creativity, he suffered a terrible stroke. [Maria Helena Cardoso, "Vida-vida: memória". Nota de Clarice Lispector. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria José Olympio Editora, 1973. p. 81.] He struggled unsuccessfully to recover his ability to speak and write, and when that failed he turned to painting.

On September 22, 1968, following another stroke, he died in Rio de Janeiro.

elect bibliography

*"Maleita", Schmidt Ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1934. [This list mainly taken from Carelli, op. cit., 231-232.]
*"Salgueiro", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1935.
*"A luz no subsolo", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1936.
*"Mãos vazias", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1938.
*"Histórias da Lagoa Grande", Globo, Porto Alegre, 1939.
*"O desconhecido", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1940.
*"Céu escuro", Vamos Lêr!, Rio de Janeiro, 1940.
*"Poesias", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1941.
*"Dias perdidos", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1943.
*"Novas poesias", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1944.
*"O escravo" (play), Zélio Valverde Ed., Rio de Janeiro, 1944.
*"Inácio", in "Dez romancistas falam de seus personagens", Ed. Condé, Rio de Janeiro, 1946.
*"A professora Hilda", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1946.
*"O anfiteatro", Livraria Agir, Rio de Janeiro, 1946.
*"O enfeitiçado", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1954.
*"Crônica da casa assassinada", José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1959.
*"Diário I", Elos, Rio de Janeiro, 1961
*"O mistério dos MMM", in collaboration with João Condé. O Cruzeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 1962.
*"Diário completo", José Olympio/INL, Rio de Janeiro, 1970.
*"Três histórias da província", Bloch, Rio de Janeiro, 1969.
*"Três histórias da cidade", Bloch, Rio de Janeiro, 1969.
*"O viajante" (Unfinished novel, edited and prefaced by Octavio de Faria). José Olympio, Rio de Janeiro, 1973.
*"Poemas inéditos", (Introduced and edited by Octávio de Faria, prefaced by João Etienne Filho), Nova Fronteira, Rio de Janeiro, 1982.

External links

* [http://www.releituras.com/luciocardoso_menu.asp Biographical information and part of the novel "Crônica da casa assassinada" (In Portuguese)]

References