Part 36

Snr. MANUEL TEIXEIRA GOMES, versatile and gifted, traveller, diplomatist (Portuguese Minister at the Court of St. James), and author, is essentially an artist. With a clear, coloured, liquid style he excels in painting the blue seas, transparent air, and sun-burnt soil of Algarve in _Agosto Azul_ (1904). His pagan and unconventional art has the power of impressing incidents on the mind, as of giving sharp relief to fantastic persons such as the Canon and his three witless sisters in _Gente Singular_ (1909), the Danish literary lady in _Inventario de Junho_ (1899), or the avaricious Dona Maria and the inane Minister of _Sabina Freire_ (1905). This ‘comedy in three acts’ contains sufficient shrewdness, humour, and clever characterization for a long novel instead of a short play. The tiny volumes _Tristia_ (1893) and _Alem_ (1895) by Snr. ANTERO DE FIGUEIREDO (born in 1867) were notable for their style, and in other works, _Partindo da Terra_ (1897), the passionate letters of _Doida de Amor_ (1910), the novel _Comicos_ (1908), and the fascinating historical studies _D. Pedro e D. Inês_ (1913) and _Leonor Teles, Flor de Altura_ (1916), his prose maintains a restraint and charm which place him among the best stylists of the day. One of the noblest qualities of this prose is its precision, the scrupulous use of the right word, common or archaic. It is the more disconcerting to find good Portuguese words such as _estação_, _hospedaria_, _comodo_, _bondade_ ousted by _gare_, _hôtel_, _confortavel_, _bonomia_. But these are only occasional blemishes in a style of rare distinction. It can paint a whole scene in a brief sentence, as _os milheiraes amarellecem-se caladamente_. This power of description gives excellence to his _Recordações e Viagens_ (1905), whether the recollections be of Minho or of _uma aldeia espiritual_ in Italy. It is really as a writer of short sketches and essays that he excels. In _Senhora do Amparo_ (1920) and especially in the seventeen sketches of _Jornadas de Portugal_ (1918) skill in the choice of indigenous words gives a forcible and original poetry to glowing descriptions redolent of the soil.

D. MARIA AMALIA VAZ DE CARVALHO (1847-1921) collaborated with her husband, the poet Gonçalves Crespo, in _Contos para os nossos filhos_, and in _Serões no Campo_ (1877), three stories, in one of which, _A Engeitada_, one may perhaps see reminiscences of Julio Diniz’ _A Casa Mourisca_, and _Contos e Phantasias_ (1880) treated slight themes with a delicate charm. But she is less well known as writer of _contos_ or as poet, in _Vozes do Ermo_ (1876), than as the author of a notable historical biography, _Vida do Duque de Palmella_ (1898-1903), and of critical essays on Portuguese and foreign literatures. In the latter the English predominates, but French, German, and Italian, as in _Arabescos_ (1880), are not forgotten. The sane judgement, sympathy, and insight of _Alguns homens do meu tempo_ (1889), _Figuras de Hoje e de Hontem_ (1902), _Cerebros e Corações_ (1903), _No Meu Cantinho_ (1909), _Coisas de Agora_ (1913), and other volumes have been appreciated by countless readers in Portugal and Brazil. A writer who likewise combines literary and historical criticism with original work in verse (_Poemetos_, 1882) and prose is the CONDE DE SABUGOSA (born in 1854), skilful and delicate reconstructor of the past in _Embrechados_ (1908), _Donas de Tempos Idos_ (1912), _Gente d’Algo_ (1915), _Neves de Antanho_ (1919), and _A Rainha D. Leonor_ (1921), who collaborated with another stylist, the CONDE DE ARNOSO[691] (1856-1911), author of _Azulejos_ (1886), in the volume of _contos_ entitled _De braço dado_ (1894). His historical portraits are full of life and charm, painted in the warm colours of knowledge and emotion.

If we except D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho, the literary achievement of women in Portugal in recent years has not been remarkable. Like D. CLAUDIA DE CAMPOS, author of the novels _Elle_ (1898) and _A Esfinge_ and short stories, D. ALICE PESTANA (_Caiel_) has cultivated with success both the novel, as in _Desgarrada_ (1902), and the _conto_, as in _De Longe_ (1904), which contains stories of familiar life written with sincerity and truth. If D. ANNA DE CASTRO OSORIO’S _Ambições_ (1903) gives the impression rather of a series of scenes than of a long novel, in her short stories _Infelizes_ (1898)--especially _A Terra_--and _Quatro Novelas_ (1908) she ably describes common family life in town or country, or (in _A Sacrificada_) the lives, past and present, of aged nuns in a dwindling convent. D. VIRGINIA DE CASTRO E ALMEIDA has written two novels concerning the development of the soil in Alentejo: _Terra Bemdita_ (1907) and _Trabalho Bemdito_ (1908).[692] They are frankly novels with a thesis to prove, but contain so much vigour and zest of living that they stand out from other more futile or anaemic novels of contemporary Portugal.

The growing prominence of the _conto_ is felt in the work of Castello Branco, Eça de Queiroz, Teixeira de Queiroz, Snr. Jaime de Magalhães Lima (_Via Redemptora_, 1905, _Apostolos da Terra_, 1906, _Vozes do Meu Lar_, 1912), and many other novelists. JULIO CESAR MACHADO (1835-90) showed talent in _Contos ao luar_ (1861), _Scenas da minha terra_ (1862), _Quadros do campo e da cidade_ (1868), _Á Lareira_ (1872). His skill in the description of rustic scenes would have been more convincing had he not thought it necessary to introduce touches of extraneous elegance and humour into his very real love of the country, so that the patent leather boot is ever appearing among the _tamancos_ in these light humorous sketches and romantic tales. As slight but perhaps more natural are the _Contos do Tio Joaquim_ (1861) by RODRIGO PAGANINO (1835-63); the pleasant stories of village life, _Contos_ (1874) and _Serões de Inverno_ (1880), written by CARLOS LOPES (born in 1842) under the pseudonym PEDRO IVO; and _Contos_ (1894) and _Azul e Negro_[693] (1897) by Afonso Botelho. The poet AUGUSTO SARMENTO (born in 1835) also wrote stories of village life, _Contos do Soalheiro_ (1876), but stories _à thèse_, treating of emigration and other _minhoto_ evils, among which he includes _beatas_, witches, and _brasileiros de torna-viagem_. A writer of _contos_ as disappointing as Machado is ALBERTO BRAGA (1851-1911). He has a sense of style and technique, and some of his tales, especially _O Engeitado_, are pathetic, but after reading his _Contos da minha lavra_ (1879), _Contos de aldeia_, _Contos Escolhidos_ (1892), _Novos Contos_, one has the perhaps somewhat unfair impression that they are mainly concerned with _viscondessas_ and canaries. The learned Conde de Ficalho in _Uma Eleição Perdida_ (1888) evidently relates his own experiences, and this and the five accompanying _contos_ contain some charming descriptions of Alentejo, of the _reisinho cacique_ Lopes, Paschoal the _passarinheiro_, the gossips of the village _botica_, the girls carrying _bilhas_, the scent of rosemary in morning dew. The same province supplies the background of the work of JOSÉ VALENTIM FIALHO DE ALMEIDA (1857-1912). Born at Villa de Frades, the son of a village schoolmaster, he spent seven years sadly against the grain as chemist’s assistant before he was able to turn more exclusively to literature. No recent writer has had a greater vogue in Portugal. One must account for this by the fact that in the somewhat nerveless literature of the day he showed a virile and often brutal colour and energy. A few descriptions of Alentejo gave interest to his _Contos_ (1881) and _A Cidade do Vicio_ (1882), an interest strengthened in _O Paiz das Uvas_ (1893). This collection of naturalistic stories of great variety and very unequal merit is, indeed, redeemed by the author’s love for his native province. He sometimes obtains powerful effects when his subject is the wide spaces, the night silences, or the summer drought and midday zinc-coloured sky of Alentejo. The shepherdess with her distaff, the village crier, the small proprietor, the harvesters with their week’s provision of coarse bread, goat’s cheese, and olives, toiling in a temperature of 122 degrees, appear in his stories. His art is wholly external. One need not have complained of his lack of psychology had he been able to express what he saw in good Portuguese prose. But if we turn to his style we find uncouth constructions, the constant use of French words, and worse still, French words disguised as Portuguese: _deboche_, _coquettemente_, _crayonar_. This is the more pity because, had he written in Portuguese, he might have left robust pictures of the Alentejan peasant’s life in its grim reality which would have been read with pleasure. A sober and fastidious style, sometimes recalling that of the Spanish essayist Azorín, marks the _Contos_ (1900) of the dramatist D. João da Camara. The clear etching of the blind man and his grandson going through the streets on Christmas Eve in _As Estrellas do Cego_ and, especially, the poignant sketch of the ruined old scholar _fidalgo_ in _O Paquete_ show admirably what a skilful craftsman can make of the slightest of themes. This is true to an even greater degree of the best of all the Portuguese _contistas_, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE TRINDADE COELHO (1861-1908). His _contos_ collected under the title _Os Meus Amores_ (1891), natural and deeply felt scenes of peasant life, are all marked by an exceptional delicacy of style and by a most alluring freshness and simplicity. The tinkling of the bells of flocks, the thin blue smoke above the roofs, the evening mists, the flight of doves are in these pages. And the peasants are treated with the same sympathetic insight as their surroundings, the women singing at their work in the fields, the olive-gatherers at supper in the great farm kitchen; vintage and harvest, tragedy and idyll. The sympathy is extended to the animals, donkey (_Sultão_), goat (_Mãe_), and hen (_A Choca_). The _saudade_ of peasant soldiers for the land in _Terra-Mater_ gives an opportunity for describing the life of the peasants with its hardy toil and many simple pleasures. In _Á Lareira_, the longest of these stories, a rustic _serão_ of peasants _ao borralho_ is pleasantly drawn out with quatrains, riddles, anecdotes, fairy-tales, only interrupted by the ringing of the angelus for the saying of prayer on prayer. Two little masterpieces stand somewhat apart from the rest: _Abyssus Abyssum_, the tragic story of two small boys, brothers, rowing to overtake the evening star, and _Idyllio Rustico_, which with its two ingenuous little shepherds and their flocks of sheep in the lonely places might almost be a chapter from Don Ramón María del Valle Inclán’s _Flor de Santidad_ (1904). _Os Meus Amores_ shows realism at its best, that is to say, hand in hand with idealism. The author is not so enamoured of his delightful style that he does not make the peasants speak their natural language, and although he realizes keenly and expresses the poetry of their life, he never sacrifices truth to this perception any more than to the strange and essentially false propensities of the naturalistic school, nor refines his descriptions to a rose-colour insipidity. A good scent of the earth and of wild flowers pervades these realistic descriptions. On such lines, if this book influences younger writers, it might lead the way to many a delightful novel of the _parfum du terroir_ of Portugal. Snr. JULIO BRANDÃO (born in 1870), equally distinguished in prose and verse, is the author of _Maria do Ceo_ (1902), mystic love letters in a chiselled style, only with the mystic writers of old the style flowed naturally from an inner fervour, here it has evidently been the chief consideration. If the effort is apparent it is sometimes very successful, and in _Perfis Suaves_ (1903) and _Figuras de Barro_ (1910), fantastic stories and fascinating fairy-tales, he occasionally achieves simplicity. Equally studied is the prose of Snr. JUSTINO DE MONTALVÃO’S _Os Destinos_ (1904), twelve stories, of which _Conto dos Reis_ relates the death of a peasant child as voices outside sing _São chegados os tres Reis_. The VISCONDE DE VILLA-MOURA (born in 1877) has shown in the five _contos_ of _Doentes da Belleza_ (1913), as in _Bohemios_ (1914), that his sensitive plastic style is excellently suited to the short story. Snr. ANTONIO PATRICIO’S _Serão Inquieto_ (1910) contains two poignant _contos_: _O Precoce_ and _O Veiga_. _Os Pobres_ by Snr. RAUL BRANDÃO (born in 1869) is a succession of scenes, a striking analysis of suffering as exhibited in various strange types of the poor and of its beauty and necessity in the philosophy of Gabiru. Snr. SEVERO PORTELA displays a tortured style in _Os Condemnados_ (1906) and _Agua Corrente_ (1909); smoother but equally artificial is that of Snr. HENRIQUE DE VASCONCELLOS in _Contos Novos_ (1903) and _Circe_ (1908), the former of which contains the slight sketch _O Caminheiro_. _Excentricos_ is the title of a volume containing some notable stories by Snr. ALBERTO DE SOUSA COSTA. The large number of _contos_ is a sign of the times, corresponding to the favour shown towards the brief _revista_ in the drama and the host of sonnets which now replace the long romantic poems of the past.

ANTHERO DE QUENTAL[694] (1842-91), the Coimbra student who waved the banner of revolt against a too complacent romanticism in 1865, was that rare thing in Portuguese literature, a poet who thinks. Powerfully influenced by German philosophy and literature, his was a tortured spirit, and when in his sincerity he attempted to translate his philosophy into action the result was too often failure. Born at Ponta Delgada in the Azores, he studied law at Coimbra from 1858 to 1864, became a socialist, worked for some time as a compositor in Paris, in spite of his independent means; then, after a visit to the United States of America, settled at Lisbon for some years and figured as an active socialist. Weary and ill, he retired in 1882 to the quieter town in the north, Villa do Conde, but he could not escape from his own turbulent thoughts and nine years later he shot himself in a square of his native town. If his life was ineffectual in its series of broken, noble impulses, there is nothing vague or uncertain about the splendid sonnets of _Odes Modernas_ (1865) and _Sonetos_ (1881). They are the effect, often perfectly tranquil, of a previous agony of thought, like brimmed furrows reflecting clear skies after rain. His search was for truth, not for words to express it, far less for words to describe his own sensations. Indeed, he was far from considering poetry as an end in itself and destroyed more of his poems than his friends published. In his autobiographical letter addressed to Dr. Storck in 1887 he states that his poetry was written _involuntariamente_. That is to say, after much thought on the great problems of existence verse came to him unrhetorical and spontaneous, as it did to João de Deus without any thought whatever:

Já sossega depois de tanta luta, Já me descansa em paz o coraçam.

Quental’s poems owe their strength and intensity to the fact that they had passed through the fire of _tanta luta_.

Totally different from Quental’s was the genius of JOÃO DE DEUS (1830-96), the most natural Portuguese poet of the nineteenth century. Born at Messines in Algarve, he studied law at Coimbra, became a journalist, but did not come to live permanently at Lisbon until he was elected to represent Silves in the Chamber of Deputies in 1868. It is significant that many of his most perfect lyrics were contributed to provincial journals. They are written in the simple language of a peasant composing a quatrain. He sought his inspiration not in books or any of the rival schools of poetry but in his native soil and popular speech, and through him Portuguese poetry was renovated. His first published work, _A Lata_ (Coimbra, 1860), in _oitavas_, gives no measure of his genius, but some of his best poems, such as _A Vida_, were widely known before _Flores do Campo_ (1868) appeared, followed by _Ramo de Flores_ (1875), _Folhas Soltas_ (1876), and finally the collected edition, _Campo de Flores_ (1893). His last years were spent in advertising and perfecting his special method for teaching children to read. If ever poet was born, not made, it was João de Deus. He is at his best when he does not attempt thought or philosophy or even give rein to his satire. His verse, clear and light as a leaf, a cloud, a stream--its favourite metaphors--and entirely free from rhetorical effects, has a most spontaneous charm. Despite occasional defects, the use of lukewarm or unpoetical words, _objectos_, _chaile_, _affavel_, _bussola_, or such rhymes as _gotta_--_dou-t-a_, his work, which lacks the fire that more spacious times might have elicited, abounds in exquisite love lyrics. The popular inspiration is also evident in the _Peninsulares_ (1870) of JOSÉ SIMÕES DIAS (1844-99), many of whose poems are a mere string of _quadras_.

GUILHERME BRAGA (1843-76), who wrote vigorous political verse against ‘Jesuit reactionaries’ and the like in _Os Falsos Apostolos_ (1871) and _O Bispo_ (1874), proved himself a talented poet in _Heras e Violetas_ (1869), although even here are to be found words and expressions frequently out of tune. Like ALEXANDRE DA CONCEIÇÃO (1842-89), whose best-known volume of verses, _Alvoradas_ (1866), belongs to the romantic school, GUILHERME DE AZEVEDO (1846-82) began with romantic verse in imitation of Garrett in _Apparições_ (1861), wavered in _Raçõdiaes da Noite_ (1871), and succumbed to the new school in _A Alma Nova_ (1874). JOÃO PENHA (1839-1919) in _Rimas_ (1882) and _Novas Rimas_ (1905) shows a command of metre and harmony worthy of something better than his commonplace themes. Gonçalves Crespo heard in his verse ‘the plaining music of a guitar of Andalucía’, but Penha never cared to be serious. CESARIO VERDE (1855-86) was a Lisbon poet who in verse written between 1873 and 1883, _O Livro de Cesario Verde_ (1886), showed a most promising gift of presenting reality in phrases limpidly clear without straining after effect. Another poet who died almost as young left a far more definite achievement, although his poems are scarcely more numerous than those of Verde. Few Portuguese writers have, indeed, published less than ANTONIO CANDIDO GONÇALVES CRESPO (1846-83), a Portuguese born at Rio de Janeiro. He studied at Coimbra University, and became a distinguished journalist and a colonial member of the Portuguese Parliament from 1879 to 1881. Two tiny volumes of lyrics, _Miniaturas_ (1870) and _Nocturnos_ (1882), comprise his whole work, but his restraint and his fastidiously chiselled verse place him at the head of the Portuguese Parnassians. Portuguese in his hands becomes a pliant medium crystallizing round an emotion, _longes de saudade_, or, more frequently, round a concrete image, a parting at sunset (_Mater dolorosa_) or a village in a summer noontide (_Na Aldeia_). The latter sonnet recalls a few lines of Leopardi’s _Il Sabato del Villaggio_, and in one respect, the perfection of form with which he describes quite ordinary scenes, the Portuguese poet need not fear the comparison. An old woman spinning, children at play, a peasant’s song in the fields, an orange-grove at dawn musical with birds--these are incidental pictures in his poems, and by his combination of a vague dreaming temperament with a delicate, definite artistic sense they receive a new significance. An earlier Brazilian poet, ANTONIO GONÇALVES DIAS (1823-64), author of _Primeiros Cantos_ (1846), _Segundos Cantos e Sextilhas de Frei Antão_ (1848), and _Ultimos Cantos_ (1851), made a name for himself by his _sextilhas_.