Portuguese literature
Duke, and self-sacrificing Margarida. _A Morta_ (1891) deals with Pedro
I’s justice and _saudade_ for the dead Inés. _Affonso d’Albuquerque_
(1898) has a tempting subject (handled previously by Costa Lobo in
his play--also in verse--_Affonso d’Albuquerque_, 1886), but it is
embarrassing to find the most unrhetorical of heroes, will of iron
but not as here tongue of gold, solemnly haranguing in couplet after
couplet, (although here, as in the other plays, the atmosphere of
Portugal’s spacious days is well maintained):
E em psalmos de christão se ha de mudar o cantico
De Brahma, confundindo o Indico no Atlantico.
It is perhaps a relief to turn to the prose plays, _O Azebre_ (1909,
written in 1904), the interest of which centres in the artist Fidelio,
_Nó Cego_ (1904), dealing with divorce, and especially to _O Salto
Mortal_, which treats of more homely peasant affairs, and to the
admirably natural fishermen’s scenes and dialogues enacted at Ericeira
in the second half of the nineteenth century, in _Amor Louco_ (1899).
The author succeeds in giving a more definite picture of a whole
community here than of any of his individual heroes in high places. _A
Herança_ (1913) also has the lives of fishermen for its subject. An
equally slight but charming one-act piece in verse is _Saudade_ (1916),
while the dramatist’s power of evoking past scenes is shown in the
glowing historical tales of _Sangue Português_ (1920), _Gente Namorada_
(1921), and _Lanças n’Africa_ (1921).
The most conspicuous among slightly younger dramatists is Snr. JULIO
DANTAS (born in 1876), who published a first volume of poems, _Nada_,
in 1896. He is gifted with wit, lightness of touch, an excellent style,
and a sense of atmosphere, which enables him to bring a pleasant
archaic flavour to reconstructions of the past and observe the true
spirit of history in periods the most diverse. His malleable talent
is equally at its ease in _O que morreu de amor_ (1899) and _Viriato
Tragico_ (1900); in Spain of the seventeenth century: _Don Ramón de
Capichuela_ (1911); contemporary Lisbon: _Crucificados_ (1902), _Mater
Dolorosa_ (1908), _O Reposteiro Verde_ (1912); the Inquisition-clouded
Portugal of the seventeenth century: _Santa Inquisição_ (1910), or its
lighter side, with the _bonbon_ marquis: _D. Beltrão de Figueiroa_
(1902); the gentle, romantic Portugal of the middle of the nineteenth
century: _Um Serão nas Laranjeiras_ (1904), or the bull-fighting
Portugal of the same period: _A Severa_ (1901) with the gallant Marques
de Marialva and the beautiful and magnanimous gipsy of the Mouraria.
The filigree of his elaborate stage directions is skilfully used
to enhance the effect,[685] and some of his scenes are exquisite,
especially the simple, very charming, and tragic one-act comedy _Rosas
de todo o anno_ (1907). If the characters are usually sacrificed to
their setting, here and there a slight sketch stands out, as that of
the cynical old cardinal who delights in the mental torture of others,
in _Santa Inquisição_, the attractive bishop of _Soror Mariana_ (1915),
or the characters in _A Ceia dos Cardeais_ (1902). ERNESTO BIESTER
(1829-80) in the middle of last century wrote lively comedies of
contemporary Lisbon life. The comedies of GERVASIO LOBATO (1850-95), as
_Os Grotescos_, _A Condessa Heloïsa_ (1878), _O Festim de Balthazar_
(1892), _O Commissario de Policia_, _Sua Excellencia_, and many others,
are natural, farcical scenes of high spirits and real good humour and
good feeling. More literary and charming is the work of Snr. EDUARDO
SCHWALBACH, whose _O Dia de Juizo_ (1915) and _Poema de Amor_ (1916)
came to crown a long series of plays and _revistas_. There are touches
of real comedy in the lightly sketched scenes and characters of Snr.
AUGUSTO DE CASTRO’S _Caminho perdido_ (1906), _Amor á Antiga_ (1907),
_As nossas amantes_ (1912), _A Culpa_ (1918), as in his slight,
attractive essays _Fumo do Meu Cigarro_ (1916), _Fantoches e Manequins_
(1917), and _Conversar_ (1920); thought and character in Snr. AUGUSTO
LACERDA’S _O Vicio_ (1888), _Casados Solteiros_ (1893), _Terra Mater_
(1904), _A Duvida_ (1906), _Os Novos Apostolos_ (1918). In Snr. BENTO
MANTUA’S _O Alcool_ (1909) and _Novo Altar_ (1911) the problem may be
a little too much in evidence, but in his prose plays _Má Sina_ (1906)
and _Gente Moça_ (1910) the human interest is insistent. _Má Sina_,
apart from the author’s weakness for strained coincidences, is a story
of peasant life very naturally told. A young playwright of promise is
Snr. VASCO DE MENDONÇA ALVES, author of _Promessa_ (1910) and _Filhos_
(1910). The subject of _Filhos_ is unpleasant if not original (it is
that of Eça de Queiroz’ _Os Maias_ and Ennes’ _Os Engeitados_), but is
treated with dignity and in a good prose style. Snr. JAIME CORTESÃO,
hitherto known rather as a poet, has turned to the drama in _Egas
Moniz_ (1918).
The novelists of the second half of the century were numerous and, as
a rule, too dependent upon foreign models, chiefly French. JOAQUIM
GUILHERME GOMES COELHO (1839-71) neither by date nor inclination
belonged to one or other of the two schools between which lies his
brief ten years’ activity. His talent developed early. As a medical
student at his native Oporto he published poems and several stories,
originally printed in the _Jornal do Porto_ and later collected with
the title _Serões de Provincia_ (1870), and at the age of twenty-one,
under the pseudonym JULIO DINIZ, he wrote the novel which brought him
immediate fame and is still sometimes preferred to his later works:
_Uma Familia Ingleza_ (1868). In these scenes of the life of Oporto he
drew with the most elaborate analysis the relations between English
and Portuguese which he had had frequent opportunities of observing in
that city. Portuguese critics hint that what to superficial readers has
seemed the tediousness of his novels is due to the influence of Dickens
and other English novelists who revel in detail, and it is interesting
that Gomes Coelho’s maternal grandmother was an Englishwoman, Maria,
daughter of Thomas Potter. But it is a mistake to call his work
tedious; the deliberate dullness of his novels has an excitement of
its own, ‘’tis a good dullness’. The reader, tired with sensational
plots and strained incidents, follows not only with relief but with
growing absorption the homely daisy-chain of his stories, in which
not the tiniest link in the development of the action or thought,
especially the latter, is omitted. The interest never flags and never
disappoints, leading gently on with carefully measured steps; the
approval of virtue and disapproval of wickedness only occasionally
becomes obtrusive and insipid. Julio Diniz confessed to a preference
for _bourgeois_ types, but his real interest was in the country,
and _As Pupillas do Senhor Reitor_[686] (1866), a village chronicle
suggested by Herculano’s _O Parocho de Aldea_, is by many held to be
his best work. The characters are delineated with the same delicate
charm as that of Jenny in his earlier novel, and there is a background
of curious observation--_esfolhadas_ (husking the maize), _espadeladas_
(braking flax), _ripadas_ (dressing the flax), _fiadas_ (gatherings
of women to spin at the winter _lareira_ in the faint light of a lamp
hanging on the smoke-blackened wall), the men at cards in the tavern,
the old country doctor going his rounds on horseback, the solemn
greetings _Guarde-o Deus, Louvado seja nosso Senhor Jesu Christo_. If
he sometimes sees the peasants as he would have them be rather than as
they are, if his realism is subdued and gentle, his descriptions are
at least truer than those of the naturalistic school. In _A Morgadinha
dos Canaviaes_ (1868), another village chronicle of Minho, the winter
life of the peasantry is described, the _consoada_ preceding ‘cock-crow
mass’ on Christmas Eve, the _auto_ represented on a rough stage in the
village on the Day of Kings, together with the inevitable missionaries,
_beata_, enriched ‘Brazilian’, and electioneering intrigues. Some
critics have seen a falling off in his last novel, _Os Fidalgos da Casa
Mourisca_ (1871), written in the winter of 1869-70 at Madeira, whither
he went in vain quest of health, but it is perfectly on a level with
his previous work. There may be a slight tendency to exaggerate some of
the characters, as there was in _A Morgadinha_, the contrast between
Jorge and Mauricio may be too crude, the last scenes may be touched
with melodrama, the style may have traces of the _francesismo_ which
Castilho noticed in his first novel, the execution may be excessively
minute--these were not new defects in his works. On the other hand,
the ruined _fidalgo_ D. Luiz, his chaplain and agent Frei Januario,
who scents a Liberal doctrine leagues away, the large-hearted peasants
Anna do Vedor and Thomé da Povoa, are as interesting as Tio Vicente
the herbalist or any of his previous characters, and the charming and
accurate descriptions of the country that he loved so well show him at
his best. This demure chronicler of quiet scenes, this specialist in
the obvious, in his _romances lentos_, as he calls them--a Portuguese
blend of Jane Austen, Enrique Gil, and Fernán Caballero: his delicacy
is essentially feminine--achieved an originality which so often eludes
those who most furiously pursue it. His _Poesias_ (1873), partly
consisting of poems interspersed in his novels, have a quiet, intimate
charm. A curious originality had been attained earlier by a young naval
lieutenant, FRANCISCO MARIA BORDALLO (1821-61). When he published
_Eugenio_ (1846) at Rio de Janeiro, and a second edition at Lisbon in
1854, it was claimed that this sea novel (_romance maritimo_) was the
first of its kind to be written in Portuguese; but his use of naval
technical terms and descriptions of the sea is perhaps too deliberate.
His _Quadros maritimos_ appeared in _O Panorama_ in 1854.
Few authors are more interesting to the critic (owing to the
courageous and persistent development of his art) than JOSÉ MARIA DE
EÇA DE QUEIROZ (1843-1900), a far more robust writer than Julio Diniz
and the greatest Portuguese novelist of the realistic school. Born at
Villa do Conde, the son of a magistrate, he was duly sent to study law
at Coimbra, and after taking his degree contributed in 1866 and 1867 a
series of _feuilletons_ to the _Gazeta de Portugal_. These _folhetins_,
reprinted in _Prosas Barbaras_ (1903), are remarkable because they show
beside a love of the gruesome and fantastic (_O Milhafre_, _O Senhor
Diabo_, _Memorias de uma Forca_) at least one story (_Entre a neve_)
of a perfect simplicity, such as the author is sometimes supposed to
have attained only towards the end of his life. His partiality for
the exotic was fostered by travels in Egypt and Palestine in 1869 and
manifested itself in _A Morte de Jesus_, _Adão e Eva no Paraiso_,
and _A Perfeição_, as well as in _A Reliquia_ and in part of _A
Correspondencia de Fradique Mendes_. In 1873 he went to Havana as
Portuguese Consul, and twenty-six years as Consul at Newcastle-on-Tyne
(1874-6), Bristol (1876-88), and Paris (1888-1900), where he died,
enabled him to see his own country in a new light. His prose lost
its exuberance, his taste became more severe, his extravagant fancy,
so strangely combined with realism in many of his works, was merged
in natural descriptions of his native land. He regained his own soul
without losing that peculiar mockery with which he veiled a kindly,
sensitive temperament, and which agreeably stamps the greater part of
his writings. But indeed the introducer of the naturalistic novel into
Portugal only played with materialism, which in his hands was always
unreal: legendary and romantic, as in _Frei Genebro_, _S. Christovam_,