Portuguese literature may be said to belong largely to the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Europe can boast of no fresher and more
charming early lyrics than those which slept forgotten[1] in the
Vatican Library until the late Professor Ernesto Monaci published _Il
Canzoniere Portoghese_ in 1875. And, to take a few more instances
out of many, the poems of King Alfonso X, of extraordinary interest
alike to historian and literary critic, first appeared in 1889; the
plays of Gil Vicente were almost unknown before the Hamburg (1834)
edition, based on the Göttingen copy of that of 1562; Sá de Miranda
only received a definitive edition in 1885; the _Cancioneiro Geral_
became accessible in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the
three volumes of the Stuttgart edition were published; the exquisite
verses[1] of Sá de Meneses, which haunted Portuguese poetry for a
century,[2] then sank into oblivion till they were discovered by Dr.
Sousa Viterbo in the Torre do Tombo.[3] The abundant literature of
popular _quadras_, _fados_, _romances_, _contos_ has only begun to be
collected in the last fifty years.
In prose, the most important _Leal Conselheiro_[4] of King Duarte was
rediscovered in the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale and first printed in
1842, and Zurara’s _Cronica da Guiné_, lost even in the days of Damião
de Goes,[5] similarly in 1841; Corrêa’s _Lendas da India_ remained in
manuscript till 1858; so notable a book as King João I’s _Livro da
Montaria_ appears only in the twentieth century, in an edition by Dr.
Esteves Pereira, and the first trustworthy text of a part of Fernam
Lopez was published by Snr. Braamcamp Freire in 1915; D. Francisco
Manuel de Mello, who at the end of his second _Epanaphora_ wrote ‘Se
por ventura tambem despois de meus dias acontece que algum vindouro
honre ao meu nome quanto eu procuro eternizar e engrandecer o dos
passados’, had to wait two and a half centuries before this debt was
paid by Mr. Edgar Prestage.[6] Even now no really complete history of
Portuguese literature exists, but the first systematic work on the
subject was written by Friedrich Bouterwek in 1804. Other histories
have since appeared, and during the last half-century the ceaseless,
ingenious, and enthusiastic studies of Dr. Theophilo Braga have sifted
Portuguese literature, chiefly the poetry, in all directions, and
a flood of light has been thrown on it by the works of D. Carolina
Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Perhaps, therefore, one may be forgiven for
having been tempted to render some account of this ‘new’ literature
which continues to be so strangely neglected in England and other
countries.[7] Yet a quarter of a century hence would perhaps offer
better conditions, and a summary written at the present time cannot
hope to be complete or definitive. Every year new studies and editions
appear, new researches and alluring theories and discoveries are
made. The Lisbon Academy of Sciences during its long and honourable
history[8] has rarely if ever rendered greater services--‘essential
services’ as Southey called them in 1803--to Portuguese literature. A
short history of that literature must, apart from unavoidable errors
and omissions, do less than justice to many writers. In appropriating
the words of Damião de Goes, ‘Haud ignari plurima esse a nobis omissa
quibus Hispania ornatur et celebrari possit,’ one may hope that MR.
EDGAR PRESTAGE, who has studied Portuguese literature for a quarter
of a century,[9] and whose ever-ready help and advice are here
gratefully acknowledged, will eventually write a mellower history in
several volumes and give their full due both to the classics and to
contemporary authors and critics.
No one can study Portuguese literature without becoming deeply indebted
to D. CAROLINA WILHELMA MICHAËLIS DE VASCONCELLOS. Her concise history,
contributed to Groeber’s _Grundriss_ (1894), necessarily forms the
basis of subsequent studies, but indeed her work is as vast as it
is scholarly and accurate, and the student finds himself constantly
relying on her guidance. Even if he occasionally disagrees, he cannot
fail to give her point of view the deepest attention and respect. Born
in 1851, the daughter of Professor Gustav Michaëlis, she has lived in
Portugal during the last forty years and is the wife of the celebrated
art critic, Dr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos (born in 1849). Her edition
of the _Cancioneiro da Ajuda_ (1904) is a masterpiece of historical
reconstruction and literary criticism, and her influence on Portuguese
literature generally is as wide as her encouragement and assistance
of younger scholars are generous.[10] _Femina_, as was said of the
Princess Maria, _undequaque spectatissima et doctissima_.
Most of the works of DR. THEOPHILO BRAGA are of too provisional a
nature to be of permanent value, but a summary, _Edade Medieval_
(1909), _Renascença_ (1914), _Os Seiscentistas_ (1916), _Os_
_Arcades_ (1918), gives his latest views. The best detailed criticism
of the literature of the nineteenth century is that of DR. FIDELINO
DE FIGUEIREDO, Member of the Academy of Sciences and Editor of the
_Revista de Historia: Historia da Litteratura Romantica Portuguesa_
(1913) and _Historia da Litteratura Realista_ (1914).
The only completely methodical history of Portuguese literature in
existence is the brief manual by the learned ex-Rector of Coimbra
University, DR. JOAQUIM MENDES DOS REMEDIOS: _História da Literatura
Portuguêsa_ (5th ed., Coimbra, 1921), since it contains that rarity
in Portuguese literature: an index.[11] Dr. Figueiredo published
a short essay in its general bibliography in 1914 (_Bibliographia
portuguesa de critica litteraria_), largely increased in a new (1920)
edition, but otherwise little has been done in this respect (apart
from a few special authors). The bibliography attached to the present
book[12] follows--_longo intervallo_--the lines of PROFESSOR JAMES
FITZMAURICE-KELLY’S _Bibliographie de l’Histoire de la Littérature
Espagnole_ (Paris, 1913). After its proved excellence it would, indeed,
have been folly to adopt any other method.
It has been thought advisable to add a list of works on popular poetry,
folk-lore, &c. (since in no country are the popular and the written
literatures more intimately connected), and of those concerning the
Portuguese language. Unless energetic and persistent measures are
taken to protect this language it will be hopeless to look for a
great Portuguese literature in the future. Yet with the gradually
developing prosperity of Portugal and her colonies such expectations
are not unfounded. A new poet may arise indigenous as Gil Vicente
and technically proficient as Camões. And in prose, if it is not
allowed to sink into a mere verbiage of gallicisms, great writers may
place Portuguese on a level with and indeed above the other Romance
languages. The possibilities are so vast, the quarry ready to their
hand so rich--the works of Manuel Bernardes, Antonio Vieira, Jorge
Ferreira de Vasconcellos, Luis de Sousa, João de Lucena, Heitor Pinto,
Arraez; an immense mass of sermons (_milhões de sermonarios_), most
of them in excellent Portuguese, as those of Ceita, Veiga, Feo, Luz,
in which, as in a large number of political tracts, notably those
of Macedo, intense conviction has given a glow and concision to the
language; old _constituições_, _ordenações_, and _foros_[13]; technical
treatises,[14] folk-lore, popular phrases,[15] proverbs. But unless a
scholarly use of Portuguese be more generally imposed no masterpieces
will be produced. The same holds good of Brazilian literature, which,
although, or perhaps because, it has provided material for a history
in two portly volumes (Sylvio Romero, _Historia da Litteratura
Brazileira_, 2nd ed., 1902-3), is here, with few exceptions, omitted.
A supplementary chapter on modern Galician literature has been added,
for although the language from which Portuguese parted only after the
fourteenth century is now quite independent,[16] modern Galician is
not more different from modern Portuguese than is the language of the
_Cancioneiros_ with which Portuguese literature opens. The Portuguese
have always shown a strong aptitude for acquiring foreign languages,
and the individual’s gain has been the literature’s loss. Jorge de
Montemôr, who
con su Diana
Enriqueció la lengua castellana,
was not by any means the only Portuguese who wrote exclusively
in Spanish, and others chose Latin. The reason usually given in
either case was that Portuguese was less widely read.[17] It was
a short-sighted view, for the more works of importance that were
written in Portuguese the larger would naturally become the number
of those who read them. While Portuguese literature may be taken to
be the literature written in the Portuguese language, in a sense it
must also include the Latin and Spanish works of Portuguese authors.
Of the former, one collection alone, the _Corpus Illustrium Poetarum
Lusitanorum qui latine scripserunt_ (Lisbonae, 1745), consists of eight
volumes, and Domingo Garcia Peres’ _Catálogo Razonado_ (Madrid, 1890)
contains over 600 names of Portuguese authors who wrote in Spanish.
Portuguese names present a difficulty, for often they are as lengthy
as that which was the pride of Dona Iria in Ennes’ _O Saltimbanco_.
The course here adopted is to relegate the full name to the index and
to print in the text only the form by which the writer is generally
known.[18]
The Portuguese, a proud and passionate people with a certain love of
magnificence and adventure, an Athenian receptivity,[19] an extensive
sea-board and vague land-frontiers, naturally came under foreign
influences. Many and various causes made their country cosmopolitan
from the beginning. It is customary to divide Portuguese literature
into the Provençal (13th c.), Spanish (14th and 15th c.), Italian
(16th c.), Spanish and Italian (17th c.), French and English (18th
c.), French and German (19th c.) Schools. The question may therefore
be asked, especially by those who confuse influence with imitation, as
though it precluded originality: What has Portuguese literature of its
own? In the first place, the Celtic satire and mystic lyrism of the
Galicians is developed and always present in Portuguese literature.
Secondly, the genius for story-telling, displayed by Fernam Lopez,
grew by reason of the great Portuguese discoveries in Africa and Asia
to an epic grandeur both in verse and prose. Thirdly, the absence
of great cities, the pleasant climate, and fertile soil produced
a peculiarly realistic and natural bucolic poetry. And in prose,
besides masterpieces of history and travel--a rich and fascinating
literature of the East and of the sea--a fervent religious faith, as
in Spain, with a more constant mysticism than in Spain, led to very
high achievement. Had one to choose between the loss of the works of
Homer, or Dante, or Shakespeare, and that of the whole of Portuguese
literature, the whole of Portuguese literature must go, but that is
not to say that the loss would not be very grievous. Indeed, those who
despise Portuguese literature despise it in ignorance,[20] affecting
to believe, with Edgar Quinet, that it has but one poet and a single
book; those who are acquainted with it--with the early lyrics, with the
quaintly alluring eclogues of Ribeiro and Sá de Miranda, with the works
of Fernam Lopez, described by Robert Southey as ‘the best chronicler
of any age or nation’, _naïf, exact, touchant et philosophe_[21]; of
Gil Vicente, almost as far above his contemporary Juan del Enzina as
Shakespeare is above Vicente; of Bernardim Ribeiro, whose _Menina e
moça_ is the earliest and best of those pastoral romances which led
Don Quixote to contemplate a quieter sequel to his first adventures;
of Camões, ‘not only the greatest lyric poet of his country, but one
of the greatest lyric poets of all time’[22]; with Fernam Mendez
Pinto’s travels, ‘as diverting a book of the kind as ever I read’[23];
or Corrêa’s _Lendas_, Frei Thomé de Jesus’ _Trabalhos_, or the
incomparable prose of Manuel Bernardes--know that, extraordinary as
were Portugal’s achievements in discovery and conquest, her literature
is not unworthy of those achievements. Unhappily the Portuguese, with
a notorious carelessness,[24] have in the past set the example of
neglecting their literature, and even to-day scarcely seem to realize
their great possessions and still greater possibilities in the realm of
prose.[25] The excessive number of writers, the excessive production
of each individual writer, and the _desleixo_ by which innumerable
books and manuscripts of exceptional interest have perished, are all
traceable to the same source: the lack of criticism. A nation of
poets, essentially lyrical,[26] with no dramatic genius but capable
of writing charmingly and naturally without apparent effort, needed
and needs a severely classical education and stern critics, to remind
them that an epic is not rhymed history nor blank verse mangled prose,
that in bucolic poetry the half is greater than the whole, and to
bid them abandon abstractions for the concrete and particular and
crystallize the vague flow of their talent. But in Portugal, outside
the circle of writers themselves, a reading public has hitherto
hardly existed, and in the close atmosphere resulting the sense of
proportion was inevitably lost, even as a stone and a feather will
fall with equal speed in a vacuum. The criticism has been mainly
personal,[27] contesting the originality or truthfulness of a writer,
without considering the literary merits of his work. To deprecate such
criticism became a commonplace of the preface, while numerous passages
in writers of the sixteenth century show that they feared their
countrymen’s scepticism, expressed in the proverb _De longas vias mui
longas mentiras_, which occurs as early as the thirteenth century.[28]
The fear of slovenly or prolix composition was not present in the same
degree. But these are defects that may be remedied partly by individual
critics, partly by the increasing number of readers. Meanwhile this
little book may perhaps serve to corroborate the poet Falcão de
Resende’s words:
Engenhos nascem bons na Lusitania
E ha copia delles.[29]