Francisco Mangabeira
This time I will tell you about a grand-uncle that I never met. He had a very short life, he died when he was 25 years old. He was born in 1879 and died in 1904. He was a poet. He was also a physician and a soldier. Francisco Mangabeira Drawing by Maria Sílva Mangabeira Albernaz In 1968 my father wrote a book about him, called “Sonho e Aventura” (“Dream and Aventure”). I remember the time when he undertook the project of writing this book. He talked many times with his uncles João and Octavio, Francisco’s younger brothers, collected in Salvador many unpublished poems and writings and went to São Luís, in the state of Maranhão, to visit his tomb. My father never knew his uncle; he only heard from his parents that Chico (as the family called him) had carried him when he was two years old. But Chico stayed many years in different areas and my father was 8 years old when the family received the news that Chico had died. Now my nephew Eduardo Mangabeira Albernaz republis...