The Outcast Artist in Mocidade Morta, by Gonzaga Duque

Abstract

This article discusses the artist’s figure in Mocidade Morta (1899), by Gonzaga Duque. As the text portrays the failure of writers and painters who formed the bohemian circle in Rio de Janeiro at the end of the 1880’s, it could be initially assumed that the novel depicts the inertia of the national cultural scene. Contesting such idea, this work argues that the artist’s protagonism in Mocidade Morta constitutes a means of resisting the dominance of the utilitarian logic. In order to do so, the analysis focuses on Camilo Prado, journalist and art critic who, tuned in to the current aesthetic debates, especially those on pictorial impressionism, aims to crush the local artistic milieu. Not being practical, despite the acute sensibility, the writer does not accomplish his plans; yet, he is the one who has a voice in the text through free indirect speech. In dialogue with the visual procedures of impressionist painting, which sought to apprehend the bustling of modern life, Mocidade Morta questions the limits of novelistic conventions by centering on this hero who, as an outcast, disrupts the society and the arts at once.