NarraçãO Dos Applausos Com Que O Juiz Do Povo E Casa Dos Vinte-Quatro Festeja A Felicissima InauguraçãO Da Estatua Equestre [Barbosa, Domingos Caldas] Americana,The Hispanic World

"THE FIRST PRINTED WORK OF AN AFRO-BRAZILIAN POET; NO COPY IN AUCTION RECORDS. 4to. (3), 4-123 pp, (3). Bound in tasteful modern blind-ruled calf à l’antique, spine richly gilt with red-and-gilt title label. Contents clean and fresh, an excellent copy. Sole edition, "a very important book, and very rare indeed" (Borba de Moraes), containing the earliest known work of the Afro-Brazilian poet Domingos Caldas Barbosa (ca. 1740-1800). Disparagingly nicknamed by his rivals as "Papagaio" [parrot], Barbosa was frequently referred to as "Caldas de Cobre" in order to distinguish him from his white contemporary Antonio Pereira de Souza Caldas. Aside from being his first printed work, the present text contains some of Barbosa’s only recorded references to his native America, in the two poems on that subject found on pp. 96-101. "Aboard a ship en route to Brazil from Angola, West Africa, sometime in 1738 or 1740, was a Portuguese merchant who had with him an Angola slave woman. Either during the voyage or soon after the couple arrived in Rio de Janeiro, a son was born to them. The young father, whose name is unknown, acknowledged the boy-infant, had him baptized in the same year he was born and called him Domingos Caldas Barbosa ." (Porter). When his satirical poetry offended some powerful citizens of his native city, he was sent to serve in the army at Colonia do Sacramento, in present-day Uruguay, for several years. Around 1770, the Afro-Brazilian sailed to Portugal to pursue studies at the University of Coimbra, but "due to the unexpected death of his father, the mulatto from Rio was unable to pursue his education and faced many misfortunes in Portugal, including poverty, illness, and homelessness. Out of necessity he became a minstrel, or ‘griot,’ who used praise signing as a way to survive." (Costigan). Although they do not survive in print, Barbosa is credited with introducing Afro-Brazilian folk themes to Portugal by composing lundas, comic popular songs of African origin in which Brazilian-Indian and African speech were used, to be performed on public occasions. Barbosa was commissioned to compose at least 11 poems in the present volume in honor of a new statue of the ruling King José I erected in Lisbon's Praça do Comercio in 1775. Among the pieces attributed to him are a series of four odes, each representing Portuguese conquests in a different continent; as the son of a slave and a European, Barbosa is thus able to express his ties to Africa, Europe and America. A second ode concerning the New World, "Vem a America applaudir o feliz dia da famosa inauguração da estatua equestre", is technically unattributed, but would seem to also be his work. Aside from these odes, the text gives a fascinating description of the festivities to celebrate the statue’s unveiling: a series of dancing women, for example, represented each continent; the Americans "wear little blue outfits, and pink peasant-style skirts, all bordered with gold; on their heads pink coifs embroidered with silver, and white round hats, with bows of hanging ribbons " (pp. 24-25). OCLC shows the British Library, BnF, the Royal Dutch Library, the National Library of Australia, and five copies in US libraries (Temple, NYPL, Indiana, Yale, and the Newberry). These poems also appeared (again unsigned) in an undated, 27-page Collecção de poesias feitas na feliz inauguração da Estatua Equestre, also extremely rare in census. * Borba de Moraes, Bibliografia Brasiliana I, pp. 70-1; Schäffer, Portuguese Exploration to the West and the Formation of Brazil, p. 92; Jong, Four Hundred Years of Brazilian Literature, p. 72, and on Barbosa, cf eg. Jane M. Malinoff, "Domingos Caldas Barbosa: Afro-Brazilian Poet at the Court of Doña Maria I" in From Linguistics to Literature (1981); David Brookshaw, Race and Color in Brazilian Literature (1986); Lúcia Helena Costigan, "Domingos Caldas Barbosa (1740-1800): A Precursor of Afro-Brazilian Literature" Research in African Lite