Adonias Filho
Adonias Filho was a notable Brazilian writer born in 1915 in Bahia, Brazil. He grew up in a wealthy plantation family and completed his education in the capital, where he became friends with the renowned novelist Jorge Amado. Initially working as a journalist, Filho pursued a law degree but never practiced law, opting instead to focus on literature. His first novel, "Os servos da morte," published in 1946, marked a significant departure from the social realism of earlier Brazilian literature and initiated a trilogy inspired by his upbringing. This trilogy explores themes of rural life, madness, and revenge, drawing on the harsh realities of his childhood environment.
Over his career, Filho contributed to various literary journals and was involved in national artistic institutions, including serving as director of both the National Theater Service and the National Library. His writing evolved to include novels set in different contexts, novellas, and children’s stories, showcasing a blend of modernist techniques and elements of Magical Realism. Filho's work is often compared to that of William Faulkner, reflecting complex narrative styles and perspectives. He passed away in 1990 and was interred in the Brazilian Academy of Letters mausoleum, leaving behind a significant legacy in Brazilian literature.
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Subject Terms
Adonias Filho
Writer
- Born: November 27, 1915
- Birthplace: Ilheus, Bahia, Brazil
- Died: August 2, 1990
- Place of death: Itajuape, Brazil
Biography
Adonias Aguiar Filho was born in 1915 in the northeastern Brazilian province of Bahia. He was the son of Adonias Aguiar, a wealthy plantation owner, and Rachel Bastos de Aguiar. Filho received his high school education in the province’s capital city, Bahia, where he was a fellow student of Jorge Amado, Brazil’s most successful novelist and a lifelong friend.
After high school, Filho became a journalist in Bahia and then moved to Rio de Janeiro to further pursue his career. In the early 1940’s, he completed a law degree at the Federal Law School, but he never practiced law. He translated several European novels and attempted to write his own novel, which he later destroyed. In 1944, he married Rosita Galiano, by whom he had two children, Rachel and Adonias.
In 1946, two major career events occurred in his life: he was appointed director of Editore a Noite, a daily newspaper in Rio de Janeiro, and he published his first novel, Os servos da morte. The novel, the first of a trilogy about rural life in Bahia, draws on his plantation boyhood and the raising of its main crop, cacao. It is full of rage and revenge, often resembling a Greek tragedy in its descriptions of insanity and murder. Os servos da morte marks a decisive move away from the social realism of the 1930’s Brazilian provincial novel. The two other novels in the trilogy, Memórias de Lázaro (1952; Memories of Lazarus, 1969) and Corpo vivo (1962) continue to feature primitive characters living in a harsh and crude world.
Alongside his other writing, Filho regularly contributed literary criticism to a number of journals and newspapers, including the Portugese daily O Diário Popular. Some of his criticism later was collected in the two-volume Modernos ficcionistas brasileiros, his examination of modern Brazilian fiction writers. Filho also received a number of distinguished appointments to national artistic institutions, such as serving as director of the Serviço Nacional do Teatro (National Theater Service) from 1954 through 1956 and the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library) from 1961 through 1964.
Filho’s subsequent novels include two books set in Salvador, Bahia, a historical novel based on his travels to the Portugese colonies in Africa, and a detective novel set in Rio de Janeiro. He also published two sets of novellas, which won high praise, and several stories for children. In 1985, Brazil’s military dictatorship ended and Filho took the opportunity to retire to his boyhood home, where he died of a sudden stroke in 1990. He was buried in the mausoleum of the Brazilian Academy of Letters in Rio de Janeiro. In April, 1965, he was made a member of the Academia Brasileira de Lettras.
Both as a writer and literary critic, Filho played an important role in the development of Brazilian literature in the years following World War II. His use of modernist techniques and style, multivalent perspectives, and unreliable narrative viewpoints moves toward Magical Realism. In many ways, his work can be compared to that of William Faulkner.