Otto Maria Carpeaux
| Otto Maria Carpeaux | |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 March 1900 Vienna, Austria |
| Died | 3 February 1978 (aged 77) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Occupation | Literary critic |
| Notable works | História da Literatura Ocidental |
Otto Maria Carpeaux (March 9, 1900 – February 3, 1978), born Otto Karpfen, was an Austrian-born Brazilian literary critic and multilingual scholar.
Carpeaux was born Otto Karpfen in 1900 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a Jewish family, and lived there until 1939. At the age of 20, he enrolled at the University of Vienna to study Law. In 1925, he received a PhD in letters and philosophy and began working as a journalist. Latter, he also studied exact sciences and mathematics in Leipzig, sociology and philosophy in Paris, comparative literature in Naples, and politics in Berlin. At some point in his life, Karpfen converted to Roman Catholicism, adding the Maria to his name and using Fidelis as his surname for some time. This conversion was evident in his political books (such as Wege Nach Rom) and his thinking, and led to his participation in the right-wing government of Engelbert Dollfuss.
When the Anschluss occurred and the Nazis took over Vienna, Carpeaux fled to Belgium. He stayed there for about a year and, at the break of the Second World War, he went to Brazil. Carpeaux did not speak Portuguese at first, and he mastered the language on his own, eventually also frenchifying his lastname to "Carpeaux", considering that it would seem more prestigious among Brazilian intellectuals. At first, he was given a simple rural job, but he gradually established himself as a literary critic. His first published article was on Franz Kafka, on the newspaper Correio da Manhã, something he did in desperation when living under harsh conditions. He was to introduce writers such as Robert Musil and Kafka to Brazilian audiences, along with the literary criticism of Wilhelm Dilthey, Benedetto Croce, Walter Benjamin and others.
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