Via Láctea: História (parnasiana) de uma paixão

Poesias (1888), Olavo Bilac’s first book, contains Via Láctea, a collection of sonnets of love that, in frank rupture with the romantic sentimentalism, is characterized by neoclassical moderation and contention. Universalizing treatment of the themes results in concealment of the particular circumstances in which the poems were composed. It is intended in these few pages to evidence the links between these texts and known episodes of the courtship of the poet and Amélia de Oliveira, the sister of Alberto de Oliveira, with the goal of providing an understanding of Via Láctea as a “love diary” in which the painful stations of a frustrated passion were registered.