Afonso Arinos

Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco (1 May 1868 – 19 February 1916), usually known as Afonso Arinos, was a Brazilian writer, journalist, lawyer and professor. He wrote short stories, novels, political commentary, historical fiction and studies of folklore. His best-known books are Pelo sertão, a collection of short fiction, and Os jagunços, a novel about the War of Canudos, both published in 1898.

Born in Paracatu, Minas Gerais, Arinos graduated from the Faculty of Law of São Paulo in 1889. He practised law and taught in Ouro Preto, where he helped found the Faculdade Livre de Direito de Minas Gerais. A monarchist after the Proclamation of the Republic, he wrote for newspapers in Minas Gerais before moving to São Paulo to direct O Comércio de São Paulo. His journalism defended political and cultural continuity with the Empire and criticized the republican government's neglect of the Brazilian interior.

The sertão connected Arinos's literary and political thought. In Pelo sertão, he drew on the speech, oral narratives, landscapes and social life of Minas Gerais and Goiás. He argued that Brazilian literature should develop from the country's own histories and customs, rejecting the imitation of European models and the concentration on urban life along the coast. His nationalism gave the sertanejo a place within Brazilian culture while retaining a hierarchical and paternalistic view of social authority.

Arinos applied these ideas to Canudos in Os jagunços, first serialized in 1897 under the pseudonym Olívio de Barros. The novel portrayed the followers of Antônio Conselheiro as members of an abandoned rural population and blamed the conflict on government neglect and military force. Published four years before Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões, it was among the earliest fictional accounts of the war. Arinos was elected to the Academia Brasileira de Letras in 1901 and received into Chair 40 in 1903. He later lived in Paris and continued collecting Brazilian folklore, returning to Brazil in 1915 to lecture on popular traditions and national unity. He died in Barcelona the following year. Literary histories have placed him among Brazil's regionalist writers, while later scholarship has also examined his fiction, journalism and folklore studies as parts of the nationalist current in Brazilian letters.

Early life, family and education

Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco was born in Paracatu, Minas Gerais, on 1 May 1868. His parents were Virgílio Martins de Melo Franco and Ana Leopoldina de Melo Franco. The Melo Franco family had lived in Paracatu since the mid-eighteenth century. His forebears included the physician and writer Francisco de Melo Franco, author of the satirical poem O Reino da Estupidez. His father worked as a magistrate in Minas Gerais and Goiás, served in the provincial and national legislatures, and sat in the Minas Gerais Senate from 1892 to 1923.

"Arinos" was not on Afonso's baptismal record. Virgílio added the name, taken from the Arinos River in Mato Grosso, in keeping with the late nineteenth-century fashion for names drawn from Indigenous languages and Brazilian geography. He gave similar names to his other children, but only Afonso kept his. By the time he entered law school in 1885, he was using Arinos as a surname. His father's judicial posts took the family through cities in Minas Gerais and Goiás. Arinos began school in Goiás, and the family also spent time in Barbacena. In São João del-Rei, he attended a school run by Cônego Antônio José da Costa Machado. He completed his preparatory studies at the Ateneu Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro.

After graduating, Arinos moved with his family to Ouro Preto, then the capital of Minas Gerais. He opened a law office there in 1891. After finishing first in a competitive examination for a chair in Brazilian history, he taught at the Liceu Mineiro.

Afrânio went on to work as a diplomat and legislator and served as minister of foreign affairs. He was the father of the jurist and politician Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco (1905–1990). The younger Afonso was not given Arinos at baptism. He adopted his uncle's name after the writer's death.

Journalism and politics

Arinos remained a monarchist after the Proclamation of the Republic in 1889, although his father and brother accepted the new regime. He judged republican government unsuited to Brazil's past and its population, and criticized its conduct during the presidency of Floriano Peixoto. While working as a lawyer and teacher in Ouro Preto, he began publishing articles in O Estado de Minas.

During the repression surrounding the Revolta da Armada in 1893, writers who had left Rio de Janeiro found refuge in Ouro Preto, which lay outside the federal state of siege. Arinos opened his home and law office to them. The gatherings brought him into contact with Olavo Bilac, Coelho Neto and other writers active in the Rio press. From 1895, his work was published regularly in José Veríssimo's Revista Brasileira.

The newspaper was one of the chief outlets for monarchist opposition in São Paulo. It printed political articles by members of Prado's circle and serialized their literary and historical writing. Its offices were wrecked in 1897 amid accusations that monarchists were assisting the followers of Antônio Conselheiro at Canudos. Prado left Brazil soon afterward. Under Arinos, the paper kept its monarchist position but adopted a less combative tone. It expanded its commercial, financial and news coverage while retaining political commentary and literary serials.

Arinos argued that the government concentrated its attention and money on immigration, coastal cities and foreign institutions while knowing little about the people of central Brazil. Canudos had forced those people into national debate through violence. He wanted the sertanejos incorporated into the country without another military campaign, although his proposal still assumed that they would be assimilated into a civilization directed from above.

In 1900, Arinos published Notas do dia, which gathered journalism written between 1895 and 1899 for O Estado de Minas, O Comércio de São Paulo and Revista Brasileira. The articles dealt with politics and episodes from the Brazilian past, including the monarchy, independence and Canudos.

After Prado's death in 1901, a dispute arose over ownership of O Comércio de São Paulo. Arinos returned as provisional director at the end of January 1902 and stayed until the issue of 22 July 1903. During this second period, the newspaper serialized his unfinished novel Ouro, Ouro. He then left São Paulo for Rio de Janeiro. Arinos acknowledged in a prefatory note that the stories had been written at different times and did not form a unified narrative.

The book entered histories of Brazilian literature as an early example of regionalist prose. Its method was tied to Arinos's political thought: speech, stories and social types from the interior supplied the material through which he tried to define a national literature.

Os jagunços and Canudos

Arinos began writing about the War of Canudos before publishing his novel on the conflict. On 9 October 1897, four days after the destruction of Canudos, O Comércio de São Paulo printed his article "Campanha de Canudos: o epílogo da guerra". He rejected claims that the settlement formed part of an organized monarchist conspiracy. He traced the conflict instead to the government's ignorance of the sertão, its neglect of the local population and its decision to employ military force before examining the settlement and its grievances.

Os jagunços began appearing as a serial in O Comércio de São Paulo later that month and continued through November 1897. Arinos used the pseudonym Olívio de Barros. The newspaper's press issued the story as a two-volume book in 1898 under the subtitle novela sertaneja. The book preceded Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertões by four years and was among the first fictional treatments of Canudos.

The novel is divided into two parts. Its first four chapters establish the social and religious life of the sertão through fictional characters, especially the cattle worker Luís Pachola, and through scenes at the Periperi farm and a Festival of the Holy Spirit. The remaining five chapters follow the formation of Belo Monte and the military campaign against it, joining these fictional lives to people and events from the conflict. This mixed form distinguishes the novel from military memoirs and newspaper correspondence, although Arinos had not witnessed the campaign.

Arinos presented Antônio Conselheiro's followers as members of an abandoned rural population, not as a foreign body within Brazil. He condemned the government's failure to understand them and the scale of the repression. His proposed solution remained paternalistic. The sertanejo was to be incorporated through education, administration and direction from the political center, within a social order that Arinos regarded as hierarchical. It was first staged at the Theatro Municipal of São Paulo in May 1919, with incidental music by Francisco Braga. Francisco Mignone based his 1921 opera O contratador dos diamantes on the play.

A unidade da Pátria. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Francisco Alves, 1917. The book prints a lecture delivered at the Municipal Theatre of Belo Horizonte in 1915 during an event for people affected by the drought in northeastern Brazil. Arinos discussed regional divisions, migration through the interior and the work of ordinary Brazilians in maintaining the country's territorial unity.

Lendas e tradições brasileiras. São Paulo: Tipografia Levi, 1917. The book contains lectures given in 1915 at the Sociedade de Cultura Artística in São Paulo. Arinos wrote about Amazonian legends, stories of the São Francisco River, churches and shrines, Marian observances, popular saints, superstition, festivals and dances. The first edition, issued as volume three of the society's publications, has a preface by Olavo Bilac and was printed in a run of fifty copies.

O mestre de campo: romance do século dezoito. Rio de Janeiro: Livraria Francisco Alves, 1918. Despite its occasional classification as a play in biographical summaries, the work is a historical novel. It returns to eighteenth-century Minas Gerais and the disputes surrounding royal authority in the mining districts.

Arinos devoted much of his induction address to Prado. He presented Prado's monarchism as a defence of Brazilian customs and political continuity, and used the term "Americanism" for the work of forming nations in the Americas from their populations, territories and existing customs. The speech brought the political ideas shared by the two writers into the Academy. Bilac answered that Arinos's fiction had earned him the seat. He singled out the stories "Pedro Barqueiro" and "Assombramento" and rejected Arinos's modest claim that his friendship with Prado explained the election.

On 9 November 1907, Arinos received Admiral Artur Jaceguai into Chair 6. His reply drew on Jaceguai's service in the Paraguayan War and his writing on Brazilian naval history. Arinos also warned that an academy could become a refuge for ideas already rejected by a younger generation, and argued that the institution should remain open to work outside belles-lettres.

Final years and death

Arinos moved to Paris in 1904 and opened an import and export office. He and Antonieta received Brazilian writers passing through the city, among them Graça Aranha and the young Alceu Amoroso Lima. His nephew Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade lived with them from 1910 to 1914 while attending secondary school. Arinos had no children and regarded Rodrigo as a son.

Later criticism has questioned literary histories that dismissed turn-of-the-century regionalist writing as picturesque or mannered. Juliana Santini argues that this approach leaves little room for the social tensions and formal experiments found in writers of the period. Ricardo Souza de Carvalho likewise argues that regionalism is too narrow a category for Arinos. He reads the stories, political essays and 1915 lectures as parts of the nationalist current in Brazilian letters and examines their reception by Bilac and Mário de Andrade. Walnice Nogueira Galvão prepared the introduction to a new selection of his stories, published by Martins Fontes in 2006. Leopoldo Bernucci also discusses intertextual relations between the two works. Their forms differ: Arinos openly wrote a novel, while Euclides joined scientific argument, historical narrative and literary prose in a book whose genre has remained disputed.

Commemoration

The former settlement of Barra da Vaca, in northwestern Minas Gerais, was renamed Arinos in 1923, when it became a district of São Romão. The name honored Afonso Arinos. The district was elevated to municipality status in 1962, and its municipal government was installed on 1 March 1963.

In what is now the municipality of Comendador Levy Gasparian, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, the former Barra Longa railway station and surrounding locality were also renamed Afonso Arinos in honor of the writer. The locality became the municipality's second district when Comendador Levy Gasparian was established in 1991.

Praça Afonso Arinos in Belo Horizonte contains a monument to the writer created by sculptor Celso Antônio de Menezes and inaugurated on 1 August 1929. It consists of a granite column surmounted by a medallion bearing Arinos's portrait. Its sides depict a solitary buriti palm, referring to his short story "Buriti perdido".

In 2011, a state law named the public primary and secondary school in Arinos the Centro Estadual de Educação Continuada Afonso Arinos.