When I write about opera, Broadway, the movies or mystery books; I may be right, I may be wrong, but at least I have some forty years’ experience for each. It is fair to say that I was not conscious of a specific Portuguese literature until one month ago and then I cannot even find all the books I want (in translation, naturally) as I write this article.
Why Portugal? Well, I fell in love with the country. I saw the tomb of Luis de Canoes, Portugal’s greatest poet. For me to realize that someone is considered to be a country’s greatest poet and I never heard of him is a spur to learning. Besides, I went Portugal nuts!
In order to understand the literature of a country, you must know its history. I recommend Charles E. Nowell’s Portugal in the Modern Nations in Historical Perspective series. This 168-page survey will do for a start and in most Cases for “an everything you always wanted to know about Portugal” course.
For our purposes, let me outline (apologetically briefly) some history. In the first place, the Moors never occupied the entire country. The country was probably settled by Romans or off-shoots thereof. Latins for sure. Portuguese is a romance language. The reconquest from the Moors probably was completed by the Ninth Century. This is some five hundred years before Spain’s reconquest. Thus, it was never as dramatic or traumatic.
In the 1400’s and 1500’s, Portugal fought off Spanish domination and developed a seaborne empire in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and South America. By agreement with Spain, Portugal was to go east and Spain, west. However, a Portuguese ship “accidentally” was blown off course to Brazil, and Spain was literally tricked out of it. Vasco da Gama, the Admiral, is the hero of this period, although Magellan is also part of the era. Prince Henry, known as the “Navigator” can be thought of as the father of exploration. This era, and coincidentally the life of Canoes came to an end when the boy King, Sebastian, led 50,000 Portuguese horsemen to defeat in Morocco. Sebastian died heirless and in disgrace. Paradoxically, a legend arose in Portugal that “The Boy King” would return as a messiah to lead Portugal back to greatness. The years of empire-building sapped Portugal of manpower needed for internal development and the country became impoverished and a backwater of Europe.
Along the way a Queen Leonor was considered a whore, and Ines de Castro and her children were murdered. I bring these two incidents up because they are covered by various literary figures, and especially by Canoes.
For me, the greatest critic of Portuguese letters is Aubrey Fitzgerald Bell. Grand Army lists eleven titles for him relative to Portuguese letters, but I have not yet been able to obtain any. The only reason I know of his existence is because he wrote the main monographs in my Encyclopedia Britannica on Canoes and Gil Vicente. I do know his dates are 1882 to 1950. He translated four plays of Gil Vicente. Sorry I have not found it or read it.
One last thing you should know about is Coimbra. Coimbra is Portugal’s equivalent of Salamanca. It is a University. Canoes and Eca de Queiroz went there. We will deal with them. Gil Vicente was probably self-taught, although that is a subject of controversy. Ferdinand Pessoa, Portugal’s modern poet who died in 1935, attended one year at Lisbon University, but Coimbra may have been first to publish his works.
Gil Vicente wrote in both Spanish and Portuguese, but at the end he wrote only in Portuguese. He is covered in the Twayne’s World Authors Series by Jack Horace Parker. Parker quotes Bell often. Suffice it to say that both feel that Vicente paved the way for Lope de Vega and Calderon. Bell goes further and puts him on a level with Shakespeare. He was believed (some doubt it) to be a goldsmith as well as a dramatist. His dates are circa 1465 to 1537, so he had a fairly good run for those times. He was dramatist to the royal family. A collected edition of his works was published by his son in 1562. Sight unseen I think you will enjoy Vicente if you can find some translations. You might enjoy the Twayne’s just for the times and for criticism of what the plays were like.
Canoes in The Lusiads covered the entire era of the explorations with da Gama as his hero. However, his poem is broader. He aimed for an epic poem on the order of Virgil’s Aeneid. He digresses to cover Portuguese history, Ines de Castro, Leonor, the folly of ambition and the gods. What gods? Bacchus and Venus take part. One siding with the infidel Muslims. Canoes probably never realized what an insult he was dealing the Muslims with Greek gods when they have a maxim that there is no god, but one God. For that matter he had to protect himself from the inquisition by having his Greek gods admit that they were imaginary. Penguin has a prose translation by William Atkinson. A new verse translation is necessary. It is fair to say that Canoes in the 1500’s wrote an epic poem in the style of Virgil or Homer. He died in 1 580 with knowledge of Sebastian’s defeat in Morocco. He knew it was the end of both his king and his era.
We then jump to Eca de Queiroz (1843-1900). He is known as a realist. In fact, you may want to read Alexander Coleman’s Eca de Queiroz and European Realism. Sadly, that book is short on biographical details so I can tell you little about the man except that he was a portuguese diplomat. His books are the most readily accessible in both B rooklyn (G.A.P.) and Manhattan. To me his books are not only realistic, but have a light comic touch. In The Relic, a young Roux convinces a rich aunt to send him to the Holy Land. He consorts with prostitutes. He buys his aunt a relic of Christ (phony I might add) on sale everywhere in the Holy Land. Unfortunately, he mixes up his boxes and gives his aunt his whore’s chemise instead of the relic. He is forced to earn an honest living. In The House of Ramires, a nobleman lives for luxury and to write about his “illustrious” family. A legislative vacancy opens in Lisbon and in order to secure it he must expose his sister to the man who seduced and abandoned her. In The Sins of Father Amaro a priest impregnates a gullible parishioner. Other priests convince him he can still be a good priest and he does not leave the church. Eca de Quiroz, is a realist in Zola’s class, and he was both friends with, and influenced by Zola. I see elements of Cervantes. His noblemen and the Portuguese tilt with windmills.
I have not covered Letters o f a Portuguese Nun from an earlier era. These are a series of letters of a nun to a French officer. No one knows if these are fiction or autobiographical. In Queiroz’s era, I have left out Almeida Garrett a dramatist and novelist because I cannot find his work.
Let’s end this inadequate survey with Fernando Pessoa (l 888-1935). My Encyclopedia Britannica, copyright 1956, does not even list him. Yet today he is regarded as one of the world’s (let alone Portugal’s) greatest modernist poets. I recommend Fernando Pessoa, the Man Who Never Was a series of essays edited by Monteiro relative to a symposium on the Poet’s works held at Brown University. I also recommend the poems of Fernando Pessoa translated (some he actually wrote in English) by Quintalha.
The latter translates Mensagem (message) which is Pessoa’s Lusiads with an admonition to the Portuguese to look West instead of East. Allegedly, you cannot call it homage to Canoes because Pessoa did not admire Canoes. However, you would never know it from Mensagem. Pessoa has been called the man who never was because he wrote under some 28 names each to represent a different personality. They call it heteronyms or orthonyms, but not pseudonyms. Oh well, you may have to read the book.
Portuguese literative, dive in and explore for yourself just like a da Gama or a Magellan.