Frey Apollonio: um romance no Brasil que o leitor brasileiro desconhece

Abstract

The novel Frey Apollonio, um romance do Brasil was written by the German naturalist Carl Friedrich Phillipp von Martius in 1831. After stay in the country, in which the author went to the Brazilian Amazon, he wrote a book not only as a trip report, common at that time, but also as a Bildungsroman. The main character, Hartoman, Martius’ alter ego, comes to Brazil with an extremely Eurocentric and prejudiced vision of the country and about those who live in this place, best known as Indians. However, after a period living together with the autochthonous, Hartoman partially changes his mind. If before he was shown as Eurocentric, this perception is then transformed, leading the character to a personal and intellectual development, like proposes the Bildungsroman. This novel “of Brazil” remained unpublished in Brazil, as well as in Germany, until 1967, when the manuscript was founded by Erwin Theodor at the Baviera’s Library. After this discovery, Erwin Theodor’s Brazilian translation occurred in 1992, to a simultaneous release with Germany. During the XIX century, it prevailed in Brazil a strand of Romanticism whose purposes were very different from the Martius’ novel, this one more inclined to the German Romanticism, particularly to its Jena period, which wanted a cooperation between different kind of people, not a nationalism as they wanted in Brazil. Thus, Martius’ novel would not be directed to the Brazilian public, anxious to meet a “genuine Brazilian Literature” in which fauna, flora and forest were exalted by national authors under the allegation that they would be symbols of Brazil, raising the country to a level of grandiosity. Frey Apollonio, um romance do Brasil is important to the national Literature for being a novel that approaches Brazil and tries to explore the country, even though through a foreigner’s point of view.