Moog, Clodomiro Vianna (1906–1988)

views updated

Moog, Clodomiro Vianna (1906–1988)

Clodomiro Vianna Moog (b. 28 October 1906; d. 16 January 1988), Brazilian intellectual, novelist, and diplomat. His comparative study of national characters in the Americas, Bandeirantes e pioneiros (1954; Bandeirantes and Pioneers, 1964), contrasted the predatory style of Brazilian colonizers with the settler style of American pioneers.

Moog's experience of contrasts within the nation led him to define Brazil as a "cultural archipelago." After political exile in the Amazon, from 1932 to 1934, he published O ciclo do ouro negro (1936; The Cycle of Black Gold), depicting the challenge of nature to colonization of the Amazon. Upon return to his native Rio Grande do Sul, he directed the newspaper A Folha da Tarde. His novel Um rio imita o Reno (1939; A River Imitates the Rhine), reflecting on Brazil's assimilation of German immigrants, won him election to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1945. Thereafter, his career was that of a diplomat and man of letters, representing Brazil on economic and social commissions at the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

See alsoBrazilian Academy of Letters .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Vianna Moog, Obras completas (1966).

Richard M. Morse, ed., Bandeirantes: The Historical Role of the Brazilian Pathfinders (1964), includes criticism and a review of Moog's comparative frontiers thesis.

Additional Bibliography

Monteiro, John M. Negros da terra: Índios e bandeirantes nas origens de São Paulo. São Paulo, Brazil: Companhia das Letras, 1994.

Weinstein, Barbara. "Racializing Regional Difference: São Paulo versus Brazil, 1932." In Race and Nation in Modern Latin America. Nancy P. Appelbaum, et al., eds. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

                                        Dain Borges