Education
He studied law in Pernambuco and Sao Paulo, but abandoned his studies because of poor health.
He studied law in Pernambuco and Sao Paulo, but abandoned his studies because of poor health.
Handsome, rich, and talented, he won literary acclaim at an early age, identifying himself with the idealistic causes of his day, and putting his art at their service. His name is particularly associated with the Brazilian abolitionist movement. His antislavery poems Voices from Africa and The Slave-Traders' Ship had an influence in Brazil comparable with that of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the United States. With them Castro Alves won over great sections of public opinion to the antislavery cause, which was finally to triumph some years after his death. In his writings Brazilian poetry laid aside its usual individualistic tone and became concerned with social ideals; it has been said that he personified the moral conscience of his country. The impetuous eloquence of his lyricism recalls that of Victor Hugo in Les Chatiments by virtue of its sound and color, its grandiose images, and its use of rich, warm, and stimulating adjectives. Castro Alves was one of the founders of the poetic school known in Brazil as the escola condoreira ("condor school"), and he occasionally indulged in the declamatory bombast characteristic of many of its adherents. His early death lent a certain tragic appeal to his later reputation, which places him in the forefront of Brazilian poets.