LITERATURE
[Sidenote: Theophilo Braga, and Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos.]
The Portuguese have reason to be proud of their literature, which,
though it does not abound in masterpieces of the first order, possesses
a very large number of works, in verse and prose, of conspicuous merit
and deserving to be far better known, both in Portugal and abroad. The
Portuguese have aroused themselves from their indifference in this
respect. Dr. Theophilo Braga has produced an immense work of discovery
and criticism. Dona Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos, a far more
scholarly critic, has, during the last forty years, carried through a
work no less immense and far more valuable and abiding. Her genius is
like an electric torch shedding powerful light as it rests in turn on
each of the great Portuguese writers, and illuminating by the way all
the nooks and crannies. The difference between these, the two great
authorities on Portuguese literature, is that the works of the former
satisfy no one but himself, those of the latter everyone but herself. And
there are many younger workers now in the same field eager to discover,
decipher, print and re-edit the old monuments of Portuguese literature.
[Sidenote: Lost Treasures.]
In the past the carelessness has been such that several famous works
which were in all probability originally Portuguese, have been allowed
to perish utterly or to survive only in Spanish translations. _Amadis of
Gaul_ is probably one of these, and another masterpiece claimed wrongly
by Spain is _Palmeirim of England_, by Francisco de Moraes Cabral, in the
first half of the sixteenth century, and held by Cervantes worthy to be
preserved as carefully as the poems of Homer. In the sixteenth century
Garcia de Resende regretted the loss of many poems, and Damião de Goes
lamented the number of valuable manuscripts that had perished because
they had not been placed in the _Torre do Tombo_. Even as recently as the
nineteenth century (in the eighteenth the earthquake and the fire that
followed it swallowed up hundreds of precious books and manuscripts),
the archives of the family of Niza were sold by a servant of the family
as waste-paper, like the original manuscripts of the Polyglot Bible of
Alcalá some thirty years earlier. The Niza papers had been placed for
safety in a cellar during the Peninsular War, and were sold by the kilo.
(The first Marquis of Niza was the great-great-grandson of Vasco da Gama.
The last Marquis was the grandfather of Dona Constança Telles da Gama,
whose imprisonment for eight months under the Republic caused so great
a sensation.) But although by this and similar mischances a vast number
of invaluable documents have been lost, a large store remains, and a
considerable number have been published of late years, the Lisbon Academy
of Sciences doing excellent work in this respect.
[Sidenote: Earliest Poetry.]
It was in verse that the Portuguese first distinguished themselves. In
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they attained such proficiency
in imitations of Provençal song that it became the fashion for lyrics
throughout Spain to be composed in Galician or Portuguese, and a large
collection of lyrics in praise of the Virgin was compiled and in part
written by King Alfonso X of Castille in the Galician tongue.
The first Portuguese poem was probably not prior to the beginning of the
thirteenth century, or prior by a very few years only, but unwritten
songs of the people had been composed, especially by the women, probably
without a break since the days of Rome. The Portuguese Court poets of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were not cut off from the life of the
people. How simple were the Courts of those days may be realised from the
rules drawn up for the King’s children by Alfonso the Learned, whose
daughter Isabel was mother of King Diniz of Portugal. The King’s sons
must wash their hands before and after meals, and not wipe them on their
clothes. They must not sing at meals lest they seem to be merry with
wine, nor bend over the dish as if they wanted all the food. And thus
among the more servile imitations of Provençal poetry crept in the Court
versions of the _Cantares de amigo_, sung by the people in Galicia and
Portugal, which still delight by their freshness and savour of the soil.
With the death of King Diniz (1325), of whose own poems over a hundred
survive, the Provençal Portuguese school of poetry ended. If Spain
borrowed from Portugal in the composition of the early lyrics, she repaid
the debt later with the _romances_, those lovely fifteenth and sixteenth
century crystallisations of the longer early heroic poems and chronicles
of Spain. So few _romances_ originally belonged to Portugal that
Spanish came to be regarded as the appropriate language for them, and a
Portuguese poet composing a _romance_ would do so in Castilian as in the
thirteenth century a Spanish poet would compose his lyrics in Portuguese.
Gil Vicente wrote his ballad of Duardos and Flérida in Spanish, and it
was only three centuries later that it was translated into Portuguese,
probably by Almeida Garrett. It was the Breton cycle which in its vague
romance especially appealed to Portuguese taste, and its episodes have
been, with the death of Inés de Castro, the prominent theme in Portuguese
literature. In history, too, in the fourteenth century, Nun’ Alvares
took Sir Galahad for ideal, and in the sixteenth King Sebastian became a
Portuguese King Arthur, his return long looked for in Portugal. There is
a gap in Portuguese literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
similar to that in the seventeenth and eighteenth, so far as poetry is
concerned, and the sixteenth, during which Portuguese poetry revived and
reached its highest expression, began with dull and uninspired Court
poems—of a Court now more artificial than that of King Diniz—such as the
majority of those in Garcia de Resende’s _Cancioneiro_, containing poems
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and published in 1516.
[Sidenote: First Prose.]
In prose, however, the fifteenth century was remarkable. Portuguese prose
began with brief jejune chronicles, and with _nobiliarios_ or _livros
de linhagens_ (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). A famous _Livro
de linhagens_, or book of descents, was that compiled by Pedro, son
of King Diniz, in prose which already possesses considerable literary
pretensions, although it cannot compare for clearness, grace, and
concision with the admirable work of King Duarte, _O Leal Conselheiro_
(_circa_ 1430).
[Sidenote: Chronicles.]
To the fifteenth century also belong the first important chronicles.
Fernão Lopes, who died in the middle of the century, and wrote chronicles
which have been set side by side with or even above those of Froissart,
was Keeper of the Royal Archives, and _Chronista môr_. As such he was
charged to “set forth in chronicles the histories of the kings—_poer
em coronycas as estorias dos reis_.” He wrote that of King João I, and
probably that of all the other Kings of Portugal to his own day. Lopes
is described as “a notable person” by his successor, Gomes Eannes de
Azurara, who died in 1474, and who completed the chronicle of João I,
and wrote among other works the _Chronica do descobrimento e conquista
da Guiné_ (published at Paris, 1841; translated into English, with an
important study, by Mr. Edgar Prestage). Ruy de Pina became _Chronista
môr_ in 1497, and wrote or re-wrote the chronicles of the Kings of
Portugal from Sancho I to João II in a somewhat more affected and
artificial style than that of his predecessors.
[Sidenote: Damião de Goes.]
The sixteenth century, famous for its poets in Portugal as in other
countries, was also exceedingly rich in Portuguese prose of the most
varied kinds. Damião de Goes (1502-74) took up the work of the early
chronicles, and wrote during the years 1557-66 his famous _Chronica de
Dom Manoel_, a clear and careful account of the discovery and conquest
of India and of events at home. Damião de Goes’ life and character are
even more interesting than his works, and although his travels did not
extend beyond Europe they were as arresting in their way as are the
_Peregrinações_ of Fernão Mendes Pinto (1509-80) in theirs.
[Sidenote: Fernão Mendes Pinto.]
During twenty-one years the life of the latter was a series of “great
hardships and misfortunes and dangers.” He was thirteen times taken
captive, and twenty-one times (in another passage he says sixteen times)
sold as a slave during his adventurous career in the East, and he has
left us the most vivid and delightful memoirs. They read like a modern
novel, but, except for some obvious mistakes in facts and figures, bear
the stamp of truth.
[Sidenote: History.]
The glorious enterprises and discoveries of King Manoel’s reign naturally
found many chroniclers. Fernão Lopes de Castanheda spent more than
twenty years over his “History of the Discovery and Conquest of India
by the Portuguese” (1554), scrupulously visiting the places and many of
the persons concerned. The knowledge thus acquired was all the wealth
he brought back with him from India, and he was reduced to accept the
office of beadle of the Faculty of Arts at Coimbra University. The style
of his history is plain and unadorned, sentence after sentence beginning
with “And”; the narrative is simple and outspoken, and has an ingenuous
freshness suitable to the account of the “seas ne’er traversed before.”
Some of his pages, as the description of the natives of Malabar, might
have come straight out of Herodotus. João de Barros, of Vizeu (1496-1570)
began the famous _Decadas_, describing the Portuguese conquests in
the East, and wrote a romance of chivalry and a Portuguese grammar.
His _Decadas_ were continued by Diogo de Couto (1544-1616), who was
able to bring to their composition the knowledge from fifty years of
personal experience in India. Gaspar Correa, born in 1495, wrote the
_Lendas da India_, and was killed in a quarrel, or perhaps deliberately
murdered at Malaca in 1564. Bras d’Albuquerque (1500-1580) composed
the _Commentarios_ of his father, the great Affonso d’Albuquerque,
from original letters written by the latter in India to King Manoel, a
straightforward account marked by much restraint and regard for truth,
and enlivened by vivid scenes here and there. Many of those who went to
India, missionaries, adventurers, soldiers, officials, wrote narratives
of their experiences. The _Roteiros_ of Vasco da Gama and João de Castro
are of remarkable interest both for their contents and their style. There
are few more stirring and pathetic narratives than those of the tragedies
of the sea, the _Historia Tragico-Maritima_ (Lisbon, 2 vols., 1735-6),
tales of shipwreck which made the greatest impression on those who read
and listened to them. One suspects that Mendes Pinto wrote some of his
wonderfully vivid shipwreck scenes under the recollection of those longer
narratives, to the most famous of which, the Shipwreck of Sepulveda, he
refers in his memoirs. Antonio Tenreiro wrote an _Itinerario_ of his
journey by land from India to Europe, combining with this an account of
other travels. His principal journey was from Ormuz to Tripoli by camel
with a single Arab (_Mouro alarve_) attendant, taking twenty-two days to
cross the desert. From Tripoli he proceeded to Cyprus, Crete, Ferrara,
Genoa, thence “with much fear of the Turks,” by sea to the coast of
Valencia, and on to Toledo and Lisbon. He observes minutely and raps out
his information in concise disconnected sentences. Pantaleão de Aveiro
wrote an Itinerary of the Holy Land, Frei Gaspar Fructuoso the _Saudades
da Terra_, Frei Gaspar da Cruz a _Tratado das Cousas da China e de Ormuz_.
[Sidenote: Great Prose Works.]
Apart from these profane writings, there were several notable preachers
in this century, as the celebrated Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu
dos Martyres (1514-90), Frei Miguel dos Santos (d. 1595), only one of
whose sermons, on the death of King Sebastian, remains. Of Diogo de Paiva
de Andrade (1528-75) 181 survive (3 vols., 1603, 4, 15), and there are
three volumes (1611, 3, 6) of those of Frei Francisco Fernandes Galvão
(1554-1610). Heitor Pinto (d. 1584), Professor of Scripture at Coimbra
University, wrote eleven dialogues: _Imagem da vida christã_ (Coimbra,
2 vols., 1563, 72). The _Trabalhos de Jesus_ by Frei Thomé de Jesus
did not appear till 1620 and 1629 (Lisbon, 2 pts.). Gonçalo Fernandes
Trancoso is remembered by his _Contos e historias de proveito e exemplo_,
twenty-nine of which first appeared in 1585. João de Lucena wrote the
life of St. Francis Xavier: _Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco Xavier_.
Samuel Usque, a Portuguese Jew of Lisbon, composed a _Consolaçam ás
tribulações de Israel_ (Ferrara, 1552), much needed in that period of
massacres of “new Christians.” It is written in a coloured and exuberant
style, recalling at times that of the Spanish writer Luis de León. All
these works and many more, though unequal in merit, are worth recording
and reading partly from the interest of the facts and descriptions
they contain, and partly because after them good Portuguese prose only
occasionally revisited the earth.
[Sidenote: Gil Vicente.]
But, of course, the sixteenth century, for all the excellence of its
prose, was also the golden age of Portuguese poetry. Gil Vicente (about
1470-1540), although he inaugurated the Portuguese drama in 1502, was
essentially a lyric poet. In his work the true spirit of old Portugal
survives, a spirit of simple mirth with dance and song, and a note of
gaiety so rare in Portuguese literature. His plays are of extreme value
to students of Portugal in the sixteenth century, the _cantigas_ and
_romances_, etc., which they contain are for all time.
[Sidenote: Miranda.]
Francisco de Sá de Miranda (_c._ 1490-1558) brought back from his
travels in Italy the fixed resolve to introduce the Italian metres
into Portuguese poetry, and, retiring some years later from the Court,
devoted the rest of his life to poetry, gardening, and the chase in the
beautiful province of Minho. A man of austere and noble character,
he was less generous to himself than to his friends, wrote an early
biographer. Friends he had many, among the peasants and shepherds of
the Minho hills, the neighbouring nobles and poets from all parts of
Portugal. He imprinted his individuality on his poems written in the new
style, and especially on his eclogues composed in the old octosyllabic
_redondilhas_. Among his friends were Diogo Bernardes, some thirty years
his junior, who celebrated his beloved river Lima, on whose banks was
his birthplace, with a softness and fluency in the new metres not given
to Sá de Miranda, and whose sonnets rivalled those with which Camões
soothed an exile’s grief; Antonio Ferreira (1528-1569), who was the first
to write a classical drama, _Inés de Castro_, and who remained faithful
to Portuguese when most of his contemporaries wrote indifferently in
Portuguese or Spanish; Dom Manoel de Portugal (1520-1606), the first
poet to follow Sá de Miranda in adopting the Italian measures; Pedro de
Andrade Caminha (_c._ 1520-89), highly praised by his contemporaries,
but whose verse has a certain wooden quality foreign to theirs. To name
all the poets whose verse was inspired by the genius of those spacious
times were an endless task. Frei Agostinho da Cruz (_c._ 1540-1619) wrote
verses, like his brother Diogo Bernardes—
Na ribeira do Lima em tenra idade.
Of Francisco de Sá de Meneses, Conde de Mattosinhos (he was created Count
of Mattosinhos in 1580 and died there in 1584) much of the poetry has
been lost, but what survives is of high excellence. His delightful verses
to the river Leça were not rediscovered till the nineteenth century, by
Dr. Sousa Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.
[Sidenote: Bernardim Ribeiro.]
About the lives of the two poets of _Saudade_, Bernardim Ribeiro and
Christovam Falcão, little is known, but their eclogues are notable for
their perfection of form and that passionate melancholy peculiar to
Portuguese literature. Elaborate efforts have been made to construct
their biographies out of their poems, a risky proceeding with poets who
so evidently delighted in dismal incidents for their own sake.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, BRAGA
[_See p. 56_]
[Sidenote: Camões.]
Luis de Camões, the greatest of all these poets, was a few years
younger than most of them. To him at least grief and disappointment
came in flowing measure, and he lived to die with his country in 1580,
probably at the age of 56. Out of his sorrows he built a fairy edifice
of verse, which has delighted and sustained his countrymen ever since.
With him Portuguese poetry reached a level only dimly heralded by his
predecessors: to judge from their poetry only, it would be difficult to
believe that the lives of Vicente, Miranda and Camões overlapped.
[Sidenote: Dom Francisco Manuel.]
The most notable literary figure of the seventeenth century in Portugal
is Dom Francisco Manuel de Mello (1608-66). Those who read of his
manifold adventures in Mr. Prestage’s biography will perhaps wonder
that he should have found time or temper to write at all, and his works
are many and various, from the “History of the War in Catalonia” to the
_Carta de Guia de Casados_ and _Cartas Familiares_, admirably clear and
direct in style.
[Sidenote: Seventeenth-Century Prose.]
Most of his contemporaries were infected with _gongorismo_ from Spain,
and their writings defaced by conceits and hyperbole. Jacyntho Freire
d’Andrade (1597-1657) wrote the biography of Dom João de Castro in an
artificial style closely modelled on that of Tacitus. Frei Bernardo de
Brito (1569-1617) composed _A Monarchia Lusitana_ (parts 1 and 2), of
which it has been said that it ends where it should have begun—with
the history of Portugal,[37] but which was written in good Portuguese
prose. Frei Luis de Sousa (1555-1632) wrote among other works the life
of Bartholomeu dos Martyres, Archbishop of Braga. As Manoel de Sousa
Coutinho, he returned from the disastrous Alcacer Kebir expedition after
a year’s captivity, and married the widow of Dom João de Portugal, who
was killed at Alcacer Kebir. He retired to a convent, as did also his
wife, after their daughter’s death. The legend of the return of Dona
Magdalena’s first husband inspired Garrett with his celebrated play,
_Frei Luis de Sousa_. There were a considerable number of miscellaneous
prose works of merit, as the _Discursos varios_ of Manoel Severim de
Faria (1583-1655) and the _Itinerario da India por terra até a ilha
de Chipre_ by Frei Gaspar de S. Bernardino. The works of the Jesuit
Antonio Vieira (1608-1697) fill twenty-six volumes (with 200 sermons, 500
letters), those of Manoel Bernardes (1644-1710) nineteen volumes (sermons
and moral treatises). In both Portuguese prose is seen at its best.
[Sidenote: The Love Letters.]
In 1669 appeared in French five love letters purporting to be written by
Marianna de Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun born in 1640, from her convent
to a French officer, afterwards the Marquis de Chamilly. They were
translated, or retranslated into Portuguese and are reckoned among the
masterpieces of Portuguese prose. Portugal was known for its sentimental
fervour, and the wholly untenable suspicion arises that a French writer
may have composed these letters (basing them on a foundation of fact),
and attributed them to the Portuguese nun as later Elizabeth Barrett
Browning called her love sonnets “Sonnets from the Portuguese.”
[Sidenote: The Eighteenth Century.]
In the eighteenth century, when lyrical poetry seemed to have died out
of Europe, it became more than ever evident how much the excellence of
Portuguese literature depends on the lyric. None of the Portuguese poets
of this any more than of the preceding century attained prominence,
while in the eighteenth there was no compensating excellence in prose.
Some letters and sermons and treatises on the Portuguese language there
were, and Barbosa Machado (1682-1772) composed his valuable _Bibliotheca
Lusitana_. It was the age of academies and _arcadias_. The _Academia Real
da Historia_ was founded in 1720, the _Academia Real das Sciencias_,
which has done and continues to do such good service to Portuguese
literature, first met in 1780.
[Sidenote: Eighteenth-Century Poets.]
Of the poets, many of whom met with a tragic fate, José Agostinho de
Macedo (1761-1831) was a dull and copious versifier, who apparently
reserved all his fire for attacks upon dead or contemporary writers.
He made bold to supersede the _Lusiads_ with his poem _Gama_ (1811),
subsequently revised and entitled _Oriente_ (1814). Corrêa Garção
(1724-72) was imprisoned by order of the powerful Minister, the Marquez
de Pombal, in 1772, and is stated to have died in prison on the very day
on which his release was ordered. His complete works were published at
Rome in 1888. Domingos dos Reis Quita (1728-70), a Lisbon hairdresser,
wrote odes, idyls, tragedies, a pastoral drama, but his poetry is
second-rate except when it closely imitates Camões. Antonio José da Silva
was born in Brazil in 1705. He belonged to a family of “new Christians,”
and by the people of Lisbon, which enjoyed his comedies, he was known as
“the Jew.” He perished, strangled and then burnt, in the _auto da fé_
of 18th October, 1739. Francisco Manuel do Nascimento (Filinto Elysio),
more fortunate, escaped from the Inquisition and lived and died in
Paris. He earned a living by translation, and his copious poetry had a
great vogue in his day but now has few readers. The most talented of all
the Portuguese eighteenth-century poets was another Arcadian, Manuel
Maria Barbosa de Bocage,[38] whose Arcadian name was Elmano Sadino.
Born at Setubal in 1765, he deserted from military service in India,
and returned to Lisbon in 1790, where he led a dissipated life and was
in 1797 imprisoned during three months in the _Limoeiro_ for having
published a poem entitled _A pavorosa illusão da Eternidade_. After the
_Limoeiro_ he was a prisoner of the Inquisition for four months, and was
then relegated to a monastery. He died, worn out by his own excesses,
at the age of 40, in 1805. With a fund of satire and gift of facile
improvisation, he rose occasionally to real poetry, as in some of his
sonnets.
[Sidenote: The Romantics.]
In the nineteenth century lyric poetry revived in Portugal as elsewhere,
although the influence of Byron did not there inspire any genius such as
Espronceda in Spain. The romanticism of Antonio Feliciano de Castilho
(1800-75) was of a gentler kind. Blind from the age of six, his literary
activity was nevertheless untiring. Besides writing a large number
of books of verse, he translated Ovid, Anacreon, Virgil, Molière,
Shakespeare, Goethe’s _Faust_. Other romantic poets were Soares de Passos
(1826-60); João de Lemos (1819-89), who in _A Lua de Londres_ regrets
Portugal and his native Douro; Mendes Leal (1818-86), who won a great
reputation with his heroic odes (especially _Ave Cesar_, _O Pavilhão_,
and _Napoleão no Kremlin_); José Simões Dias (1844-99), who, besides his
poems (_Peninsulares_), wrote a history of Portuguese literature, and
Gomes d’Amorim (1827-92).
[Sidenote: The Reaction.]
In 1865 appeared the _Poema da Mocidade_, by Pinheiro Chagas, with
a letter by Castilho, which gave rise to Quental’s _Bom senso e bom
gosto_ and the beginning of a new school of poets. Foremost among
these were Anthero de Quental (1842-91) himself, and João de Deus
Ramos (1830-96). Their poetry has nothing in common, but they are both
equally far removed from the traditional romantic school. The sonnets of
Anthero (many of which have been translated into English by Mr. Edgar
Prestage) have nothing to fear from comparison with those of any other
nineteenth-century poet. Portuguese in his hands became adamantine and
sonorous, and the sonnet a trumpet-call. João de Deus, on the other hand,
wrote feathery light lyrics with great naturalness and charm, and in his
easy flow of improvisation is far the more characteristically Portuguese
of the two. Thomaz Ribeiro (1831-1901) belonged to the romantic school,
and is the author of the celebrated ode _A Portugal_. Gonçalves Crespo
(1846-83) published only two small volumes of poems, _Miniaturas_ (1870)
and _Nocturnos_ (1882), which contain one or two little masterpieces,
such as the sonnet _Mater dolorosa_.
[Sidenote: Living Poets.]
Of living poets the most widely known is Senhor Abilio Guerra Junqueiro
(born in 1850), who now, however, rarely publishes any verse. He is a
true poet, and _Finis Patriae_, and, above all, _Os Simples_ (1892, sixth
edition, 1913), contain the best poems in the Portuguese language of the
last twenty years. In other works his poetry has often suffered from
an invasion of rhetoric, but it always displays vigour and courageous
patriotism. There are many schools, the Cloud Treaders (_Nephelibatas_),
of whom Snr. Eugenio de Castro is the head; the Parnassians, as Colonel
Christovam Ayres, Snr. Antonio Feijó, João Diniz, Joaquim de Araujo,
aiming at and sometimes achieving that perfection of form which marked
the work of Gonçalves Crespo, João Penha, Antonio Nobre; the pantheistic
school of the _Renascença_, of which the principal poets are Snr.
Teixeira de Pascoaes, and Snr. Mario Beirão. Two notable living poets are
Snr. Affonso Lopes Vieira and Snr. Antonio Correa d’Oliveira, whose works
are always read with eagerness, the latter especially having caught some
of the sixteenth-century lyrical vein. The living poets of Portugal are,
however, so numerous that it is impossible even to give the names of all
of them. A French critic, who names some sixty, says modestly: “On ne
peut tout citer.”[39]
[Sidenote: Almeida Garrett.]
It is preferable to leave them on one side (although an anthology of some
merit might easily be formed from their works) and to go back to that
strange figure and very real poet of the first half of the nineteenth
century, the Visconde de Almeida Garrett (1799-1854). He was master of
a peculiar and fascinating style of Portuguese prose, he revived the
Portuguese drama, he wrote long romantic poems and exquisitely finished
short lyrics, and he collected old Portuguese romances, which, however,
he could not refrain from retouching and adorning. It is impossible to
over-estimate his services to Portuguese literature, although the works
written by him that will be read a hundred years hence will probably fit
into a very small volume.
[Sidenote: Herculano.]
In prose the other great figure of the nineteenth century in Portugal was
Alexandre Herculano (1810-77), historian, poet and historical novelist
(_Historia de Portugal_; _Lendas e Narrativas_; _Eurico_, _etc_). His
works are of permanent value, and his prose bears the impress of his
strong exceptional character. Other historical writers were Pinheiro
Chagas (1842-95), Latino Coelho (1825-91), Rebello da Silva (1821-72),
and Oliveira Martins (1845-94).
[Sidenote: Oliveira Martins.]
The latter’s first work was a historical novel, and his work remained
romantic throughout, but he had the power of reconstituting historical
scenes in their picturesqueness and colour, and making the dry bones
live. His most celebrated works are his _Historia de Portugal_, _Portugal
Contemporaneo_, _A Vida de Nun’ Alvares_, and the _Filhos de João I_. He
did not, however, confine himself in his historical writings to Portugal,
but embraced the histories of Greece, Rome, and Iberian civilisation.
When one remembers that he was also an active politician and Minister of
Finance in 1892, it is not surprising that he had worn himself out before
reaching the age of 50.
[Sidenote: Camillo.]
The novel in Portugal since the middle of the nineteenth century has
embraced the most varied kinds and sometimes attained a high degree of
merit. Camillo Castello Branco (1826-1890), most Portuguese of writers
in theme and style, wrote over a hundred novels. He was gifted with a
temperament that could not fail to make his life restless and unhappy
and is reflected in the sentimental tragedies and nervous pessimism and
vitriolic satire of his books. By his countrymen his novels, especially
_Amor de perdição_, are still read with enthusiasm; for foreigners they
are redeemed by the pure Portuguese of their style and by the occasional
insight to be won from them into the Portuguese life of the second half
of the nineteenth century. But probably it is necessary to be born a
Portuguese in order to do them full justice. For those who wish to learn
Portuguese untainted with Gallicisms they are invaluable.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, COIMBRA
[_See p. 56_]
[Sidenote: Eça de Queiroz.]
Eça de Queiroz (1846-1900), the other great Portuguese novelist of
the century, is, on the contrary, almost as much French as Portuguese
in style, and is probably the best known of modern Portuguese writers
outside Portugal. His work contains many arresting pages, especially
those which describe country or provincial life in Portugal (in _O Crime
do Padre Amaro_, 1875; _A Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_, 1891; _A
Illustre Casa de Ramires_, 1897; _A Cidade e as Serras_, 1901). Life in
Lisbon is described, or perhaps one should say distorted, caricatured in
_O Primo Basilio_ (1878), _Os Maias_ (1880), and in part of _A Reliquia_
(1887). Eça de Queiroz went from strength to strength, or rather from
weakness to strength. His later work is more original and above all more
Portuguese. It is in parts very striking indeed, and through all his
novels runs that peculiar flavour of irony and sarcasm which prevents him
from ever being merged entirely in the French realistic or naturalistic
school.
[Sidenote: Julio Diniz.]
A writer of less vigorous talent was “Julio Diniz” (Joaquim Guilherme
Gomes Coelho) (1839-71), whose novels, _Uma Familia Inglesa_ (1862), _As
Pupillas do Sr. Reitor_ (1867), _A Morgadinha dos Cannaviaes_ (1868),
_Os Fidalgos da Casa Morisca_ (1871) treat of country themes with a
quiet charm and no little psychological interest. Some of his pages
recall those of the Spanish novelist Fernán Caballero in their delicate
observation and gentle optimism.
[Sidenote: Living Novelists.]
Of living novelists, Snr. Teixeira de Queiroz (born in 1848) also
occasionally recalls Fernán Caballero in a certain naïve and delightful
power of description, preferably of country scenes and peasants.
His best work is contained in the short stories of his _Comedia do
Campo_—_Contos_, _Amor Divino_, _Antonio Fogueira_, _Novos Contos_,
_Amores, Amores_, _A Nossa Gente_, _A Cantadeira_ (1913). Sr. Luiz de
Magalhães, born in 1859, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Senhor
João Franco’s Ministry, wrote in 1886 a novel entitled _O Brazileiro
Soares_, a careful study of a “Brazilian” (that is, a Portuguese
returning enriched from Brazil), which placed him in the front rank of
contemporary Portuguese novelists. Senhor Magalhães Lima, born in 1857,
did not publish his first novel, _O Transviado_, till 1899. Other novels
by the same author are _A Paz do Senhor_ (1903) and _O Reino da Saudade_
(1904). Senhor Abel Botelho, born in 1854, and appointed Minister at
Buenos Aires by the Republic, has a great reputation as a novelist.
His novels are professedly “pathological.” A Portuguese critic remarks
that his books sometimes “cause more moral indignation than aesthetic
enjoyment.”[40] Younger contemporary novelists, as contemporary poets,
are very numerous.
[Sidenote: The “Conto.”]
[Sidenote: Dona Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho.]
The short story, or _conto_, has been written with success by so many
authors that it has almost become a special feature of modern Portuguese
literature: Eça de Queiroz, Snr. Teixeira de Queiroz, Affonso Botelho,
Fialho d’Almeida (1857-1911)—stories of Alemtejo in _O Paiz das Uvas_
and other works—the Conde de Ficalho, the Conde de Sabugosa, Julio Cesar
Machado, the Visconde de Villa Moura (_Os Humildes_, _Bohemios_, etc.),
and above all, Trindade Coelho, whose _Os Meus Amores_ are stories
deliberately ingenuous, remarkable for their style. Dona Maria Amalia
Vaz de Carvalho, whose husband was the poet Gonçalves Crespo, has also
written _contos_ and poems. But her chief work consists in historical
studies and in critical essays. Her works comprise over twenty volumes,
and especially she has won English gratitude by introducing some part of
modern English literature to Portuguese and Brazilian readers.
[Sidenote: The Drama.]
“_Em Portugal nunca chegou a haver theatro_—a Portuguese drama has never
existed,” said Garrett (life to a Portuguese is perhaps not dull enough
to drive him to the theatre), and his own plays for long continued to
be an isolated achievement. Recently, however, a number of playwrights
by no means to be despised have arisen in Portugal. Foremost among them
are Snr. Julio Dantas, Dom João da Camara (1852-1912), Antonio Ennes
(1848-1901), Snr. Marcellino de Mesquita, Snr. Henrique Lopes de Mendonça
and Snr. Abel Botelho, the novelist. It would almost seem as if there
were two writers to every reader in Portugal. “Every passing season
inundates the bookshops with a flood of _brochures_ in verse and prose,
the proof of an exaggerated output of books. It seems as if even the
illiterates must be authors” (_Diario de Noticias_, 6th April, 1914).
What most amazes the foreigner is to see the Lisbon bookshops parade a
crowd of foreign books, while those in Portuguese are often tucked away
in some obscure corner. Modern Portuguese literature is, unhappily, like
finance and politics, largely of artificial growth, imported from abroad.
There is plenty of writers but no critical reading public.
[Sidenote: The Critics.]
The excessive number of writers is no doubt due in part to the defects
of a criticism which appears not to realise its power of regulating
this stream of production. A little sincere condemnation may serve to
prevent a whole series of inferior works of fiction or poetry, especially
as Portuguese writers are very sensitive to criticism. Fortunately
contemporary Portuguese literature now has a promising young critic in
Senhor Fidelino de Figueiredo, who combines sympathy with sincerity and
may do something to check copious, slovenly, and slavishly imitative
writing, and inaugurate a school of concrete criticism. Senhor Theophile
Braga does not deal with contemporary literature, but is still piling
Ossa on Pelion in the wide range of his works. His long poem, _A Visão
dos Tempos_, was published in 1864, and his _Historia da Litteratura
Portugueza_ continues to receive valuable additions from time to time.
There is plenty of literary talent in Portugal, but it needs direction:
it would be a thousand pities were it all to be frittered away from an
inability to select and concentrate.
[Sidenote: Art.]
In art the Portuguese have never occupied a very high position. Perhaps
they are too vague and romantic. Yet in early times they would seem to
have excelled rather in realistic representation on a small scale than
in large romantic pictures, as may be seen in the admirable, minute
sculpture on the tombs at Alcobaça and in the illustrations of old
manuscripts—for instance, the wonderfully life-like portrait of Prince
Henry the Navigator in the Chronicle of Gomes Eannes de Azurara, a
masterpiece attributed to Nuno Gonçalves, who painted the exceedingly
fine triptychs now in the Lisbon Museum. What treasures of art are or
were (being now transferred to museums) contained in Portugal’s churches
and convents is amply shown by an excellent magazine of art now being
published by Snr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos, whose researches in connection
with Damião de Goes, Francisco de Hollanda, and other Portuguese
classics have earned him the gratitude of all who interest themselves in
Portuguese literature. This _Arte Religiosa de Portugal_, begun in 1914,
is published monthly, each part containing eight beautifully reproduced
plates, and costing 500 _réis_ (about two shillings). No one who cares
for art will regret subscribing for it, and certainly after seeing these
plates they will never think of Portugal as a country without art. Nor
is talent lacking in painting and in sculpture at the present day in
Portugal. Witness the painters Sr. Bordallo Pinheiro, Sr. Carlos Reis,
Sr. José Malhoa and others, and the sculptors, Sr. Soares dos Reis and
Sr. Teixeira Lopes, whose Eça de Queiroz statue and other works have won
him universal admiration. In art, as in literature, caricature usually
flourishes in Portugal, and it is perhaps a useful corrective of the
tendency to copiousness and vagueness of outline, and, in the hands of
clever draughtsmen, has given ample proof that it need not degenerate
into vulgarity. The fervent activity in many fields gives good hope, at
any rate, of a twentieth-century crop of writers and artists who may
maintain or surpass the achievement of the nineteenth.
[Sidenote: The Language.]
The restoration of the Portuguese language to its original purity
is an essential condition, since it is vain to hope to gather figs
from thistles. The late Gonçalves Vianna, Julio Moreira, and others
watched over Portuguese with loving care, and it is now under the
protection of the celebrated philologist and folk-lorist, Dr. José
Leite de Vasconcellos. But all may do their share by forswearing and
rooting out Gallicisms to the best of their knowledge (Snr. Candido
de Figueiredo does excellent service here), and when the ground has
been cleared of these noxious weeds—Gallicisms, abstractions, trailing
circumlocutions—Portuguese literature is likely to thrive as it has not
thriven for the last three hundred years.