Portuguese literature
While scientific research work was accumulating the bones of history
a creator arose in the person of ALEXANDRE HERCULANO (1810-77). He
had emigrated to France and England in 1831, lived for a time at
Rennes, and from the Azores in 1832 with Garrett accompanied the
Liberal army to Oporto as a private soldier. In the following year he
obtained work as a librarian. His _A Voz do Propheta_ (1836) (Castilho
in this year translated Lamennais’ _Paroles d’un Croyant_), written
in the impressive style of a Hebrew prophet, although it appeared
anonymously, brought its author fame, and in 1839 the King Consort D.
Fernando appointed him librarian of the Royal Library of Ajuda. The
salary was not large, under £200 a year, but the post gave him the
two necessaries of literary work, quiet and books. From that year to
1867 his life was taken up with his work, with which politics only
occasionally interfered. He edited _O Panorama_ from 1837 to 1844 and
joined in founding _O Paiz_. Although he was elected deputy to the
Cortes in 1840 he rarely attended the sittings. His friendship with
D. Fernando and King Pedro V continued unbroken till their death. In
1867 with characteristic abruptness he left Lisbon and literature and
gave his last ten years almost entirely to agriculture on the estate
of Val de Lobos, near Santarem.[665] The call of the land was combined
with disgust at the politics of the capital and probably a natural
disinclination to a sedentary mode of life. His retirement was greeted
as a betrayal, and attacks formerly directed against his historical
work were now directed against him for abandoning it. But since he had
no intention of continuing his history, his literary work was really
ended. It has three main aspects, poetry, the historical novel, and
history. From the prosaic height of forty-six he informed Soares de
Passos in a letter that he had been a poet till he was twenty-five.
Some of the poems of _A Harpa do Crente_ (1838),[666] especially _A
Tempestade_ and _A Cruz Mutilada_, rise to noble heights by reason
of a fine conviction and a rugged grandeur, as of blocks of granite.
Herculano had returned to Portugal imbued with profound admiration
for the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, ‘immortal Scott’ as he
called him, and Victor Hugo, and in his remarkable stories and sketches
contributed to _O Panorama_ and published as _Lendas e Narrativas_
(1851), as well as in the more elaborate _O Monasticon_, consisting of
two separate parts _Eurico o Presbytero_ (1844) and _O Monge de Cister_
(1848), he wrote romance based upon scrupulous historical research. A
slight leaning towards melodrama is as a rule successfully withstood,
and his intense and powerful style enchains the attention. _Eurico_
is really a splendid prose poem,[667] in which the eighth-century
priest Eurico is Herculano brooding over the degeneracy of Portugal in
the nineteenth century. His glowing patriotism unifies the action and
raises the style to an impassioned eloquence. The Middle Ages were well
suited to him in their mixture of passion and ingenuousness and their
scope for violent contrasts of evil and virtue, light and shadow. Most
of the _Lendas e Narrativas_ and _O Bobo_ belong to that period, and
his _Historia de Portugal_ (4 vols., 1846-53) ends with the year 1279.
That he should have stopped there when the character and achievements
of King Dinis must have offered him a powerful incentive to proceed
shows how deeply he had felt the controversial attacks levelled at
his work; but with the Renaissance and the subsequent history of
Portugal he was too intensely national to have great sympathy. As a
historian he has been compared with Hallam, Thierry, and Niebuhr, and
he stands any such comparison well. A passion for truth drove him to
the original sources and documents, and, since _alle Gelehrsamkeit
ist noch kein Urteil_, he brought the same patience and impartial
sincerity to their interpretation. The results obtained he imposed on
thousands of readers by his impressive and living style.[668] In his
case the style was the man. Beneath coldness or roughness he concealed
an affectionate, impetuous nature, a hatred of meanness and injustice.
In his personal relations austere and difficult, sometimes no doubt
unfair and undiscerning in the severity of his judgements, he was a
perfect contrast to Almeida Garrett, compared with whom he was as
granite to chalk or as the rock to the stream that flows past it. His
strong will was fortunately directed by the Marquesa de Alorna in his
youth to the thoroughness of German writers. Thoroughness marked all
his work. When the Academy of Sciences entrusted him with the task of
collecting documents on the early history of Portugal he threw himself
into the labour with a fervour which produced the splendid _Portvgaliae
Monvmenta Historica_, a series of historical works and documents of
the first importance which began to appear in 1856. From 1867 to 1877
he undertook agriculture not as an amateur’s pastime but as the work
of his life, with the result that he achieved another great success
scarcely inferior to his success as a writer. The same thoroughness is
evident in the Cyclopean fragment of his history and in his shorter
writings, the _Opusculos_ (1873-76). His _Da Origem e Estabelecimento
da Inquisição em Portugal_ (3 vols., 1854-9), a deeply interesting
account of the negotiations and intrigues at the Vatican, in ceasing
to be dispassionate may suffer as a purely historical work, but its
vigour brooks no denial and its literary excellence is acknowledged
even by those who dispute its fairness. Great as scholar and man, too
great to be always understood during his life, his memory received a
tribute from men so different as Döllinger and Núñez del Arce, and it
is probable that his reputation will only increase with time.
In the historical novel Herculano had many followers. ANTONIO DE
OLIVEIRA MARRECA (1805-89) wrote two laborious fragments in _O
Panorama: Manoel Sousa de Sepulveda_ (1843) and _O Conde Soberano
de Castella_ (1844, 53). JOÃO DE ANDRADE CORVO (1824-90), poet and
dramatist,[669] author of a novel of contemporary politics, _O
Sentimentalismo_ (1871), which contains excellent descriptions of
Bussaco, wrote a long historical novel, _Um Anno na Corte_ (1850), in
which interest in the actors at the Court of Afonso VI, in incidents
such as a bullfight or a boarhunt, in witchcraft or the Inquisition,
is skilfully maintained. His style in its sober restraint is superior
to that of ARNALDO DA GAMA (1828-69), whose historical episodes of the
French invasion of 1809 (_O Sargento Môr de Villar_ and _O Segredo do
Abbade_), or of Oporto in the fifteenth century in _A Ultima Dona de
S. Nicolau_, or in the eighteenth in _Um Motim ha cem annos_ (1861),
are of considerable interest despite their author’s excessive fondness
for Latin quotations. Perhaps the influence of Camillo Castello
Branco may be traced in his novel _O Genio do Mal_ (4 vols., 1857).
GUILHERMINO AUGUSTO DE BARROS (1835-1900) is the author of a novel of
the fifteenth century, _O Castello de Monsanto_ (2 vols., 1879), of
great length and dullness. Its chief interest is for the student of the
Portuguese language, owing to its large vocabulary. BERNARDINO PEREIRA
PINHEIRO (born in 1837) in _Sombras e Luz_ (1863) described scenes from
the reign of King Manuel, and drew a strange portrait of King João
III in _Amores de um Visionario_ (2 vols., 1874). But the mantle of
Herculano, as historical novelist, fell especially upon LUIZ AUGUSTO
REBELLO DA SILVA (1822-71), politician and journalist. His _Rausso por
Homizio_, a short novel of the time of King Sancho II, written with
the exaggeration of extreme youth, appeared in the _Revista Universal
Lisbonense_ (1842-3), followed by _Odio Velho não cansa_ (reign of
Sancho I), with similar defects, in 1848. In the same (the first)
volume of _A Epocha_ appeared his short _conto_ entitled _A Ultima
Corrida de Touros em Salvaterra_, which won and has retained popularity
by its skilful presentment of a stirring and pathetic episode in the
reign of José I (1750-77). Four years later Rebello da Silva published
his principal novel, _A Mocidade de D. João V_ (1852). In its somewhat
tedious descriptions the reader soon loses the thread of the story,
but is entertained by the quick dialogue and almost clownish humour of
the separate scenes. _Lagrimas e Thesouros_[670] (1863) may interest
English readers from the fact that its principal character is William
Beckford, but it has not the great merits of the preceding novel. The
author was already at work on his unfinished _Historia de Portugal nos
seculos XVII e XVIII_ (5 vols., 1860-71). In this, as in his _Fastos da
Igreja_ (1854-5) and _Varões Illustres_ (1870), his defects fall away,
while his real skill as a historian, his intensity, and his excellent
style remain; indeed, an added intensity gives his style a new vigour
and simplicity. His _Historia_, although less rigorously scientific
and far less methodically ordered than that of his master Herculano,
has value as history as well as literature. Rebello da Silva wrote too
much, but his work generally improved with the years and might have
resulted in a real masterpiece had he not died before attaining the age
of fifty.
Meanwhile the novel had entered on a new and intensely modern phase
in the hands of a slightly younger contemporary. The life of CAMILLO
CASTELLO BRANCO (1825-90), whose numerous novels have been and still
are read enthusiastically in Portugal, had about it an element of
improbability which is reflected in his works and made it possible to
combine their apparent sincerity with a peculiar unreality. Born at
Lisbon but left an orphan at the age of eight, and brought up by a
sister, wife of a doctor, in a small village of Tras-os-Montes,[671] a
widower in his teens, then a boisterous Oporto medical student, twice
imprisoned for love affairs and finally guilty of abducting an heiress
as a bride for his son, his whole life was spent in a whirlwind, actual
or imaginary, a tragicomedy which, stricken with blindness, he ended
by suicide. He read and wrote in the same tempestuous fashion. The
sentimental atmosphere of his novels is relieved systematically by
outbursts of cynicism and sarcasm. When he began to write romanticism
was in full swing, but his last twenty years were spent under what
was to him the vexing and tantalizing shadow of the new realism. His
first story, _Maria não me mates, que sou tua mãe!_ (1848),[672]
was sentimental and sensational, and something of these qualities
remained in the greater part of his work. His first more elaborate
novel _Anathema_ (1851), in which the story is interrupted by lengthy
musings and moralizings, he himself described as ‘a kind of literary
crab’, and most of his novels are somewhat lop-sided: he confessed
that his discursiveness was incurable. It is the more hysterical among
his works, such as _Amor de Perdição_ (1862)--its character is well
described by the title of the Italian version, _Amor sfrenato_--or
_Amor de Salvação_ (1864) and those which combine this character with
a chain of amazing coincidences, as _Os Mysterios de Lisboa_ (1854)
and _O Livro Negro do Padre Diniz_ (1855), which were read most avidly
in Portugal. He himself favoured the quieter _Romance de um Homem
Rico_ (1861) and _Livro de Consolação_ (1872). We may prefer the attic
flavour of the humorous sketch of a country gentleman (born in the
year of Waterloo) at Lisbon, in _A Queda d’um Anjo_ (1866), which
somehow recalls the best work of Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. Castello
Branco had a true vein of comedy, and although a great part of the
work of this specialist in hysterics has an air of unreality, he is