““Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit” (Aen., I, 203): A Filha do Doutor Negro como exemplo de catarse e projecção do presente na ficção camiliana

A Filha do Doutor Negro is a novel with interwoven memories, pervaded by the same extreme and professedly real experience, characteristic of Camilo’s Romanticism. Written in 1863 and published the following year, this work coincides with the aftermath of his and Ana Plácido’s fight against her husband and public morality. Their passion, cursed by Pinheiro Alves, evokes the tragic story of Albertina and João Crisóstomo, relentlessly pursued by her father’s, the Doutor Negro, hatred and 1810 morality, a parallel encouraged by the novelist by pointing out in the “ Prefácio” that only in 1863 – almost 20 years after hearing the story – he felt “able to translate what I saw and I see without borrowing from the imagination”. However, the memory of this finished tragedy is also the omen of an unfortunate end to Camilo’s scandalous love, already tragic and still with no outcome, with the aggravating circumstance that the undeserved sufferings of the chaste couple had shown that divine Providence cannot be invoked to restore justice in the world of the living. The Camillian narrative ends up representing a cathartic effort, which the “Prefácio” foresees with some hope, attested by the Virgilian quotation, but that the “Conclusão” darkens by giving the last word
to the curse – entirely fulfilled and presented as the novel’s morality – imposed by the Doutor Negro on his daughter, which he himself could not disavow. The pessimistic anguish that overwhelmed the restless writer seems to increase with the unfolding of the story, stressing the inter-relation of the two tragedies.