Quotes from book
Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma

Name: Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma
Author: Lima Barreto

Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma is a novel by Pre-Modernist Brazilian writer Lima Barreto. The work was published under feuilleton form in 1911, from August to October in the Jornal do Commercio. The focus of the work is the nationalism in the early years of the First Brazilian Republic and criticism to the middle-class and the bureaucratic government. The work is comical in the beginning, transiting to harsh criticisms by the end. These critics demystify the figure of the president Floriano Peixoto , known as the Marechal de Ferro , and also of the Brazilian military.

“Nobody precisely knew where he born, but it's known it wasn't in São Paulo, nor in Rio de Janeiro, nor in Pará. It was wrong trying to find in this man any kind of regionalism. Before anything, Quaresma was a Brazilian.”

Lima Barreto book Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma

Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915)

“He was going to die, and who knows that it could be in that same night? What crime had he committed in his entire life? None. He has carried all his life with the mirage of studying his nation, loving it, intending to contribute to its happiness and prosperity. He has spent all his adolescence in this project, and all his virility too. And now, in his elder ages, how did life return him this favor? Killing him!”

Lima Barreto book Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma

Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (1915)