Relendo Carpeaux

Abstract

This article is an invitation to read the works of Otto Maria Carpeaux. Exiled in Brazil after the annexation of Austria by Germany, Carpeaux was an intensely active contributor to Brazilian cultural journalism from the 1940s to the 1960s. He wrote a monumental History of Western Literature, a unique work of its kind in Portuguese. He defined his critical method as socio-stylistic. His essays on literature and music always reveal the contradictory character of period styles and of the works he interprets from a dialectical viewpoint. Carpeaux wrote important essays on Brazilian authors, such as Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Graciliano Ramos. In his later years, he abandoned literary essays and dedicated himself to the struggle against the Brazilian military dictatorship writing polemical articles for underground newspapers.