Portuguese literature
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_.
It might be said of that marvellous poet Victor Hugo that he is not
for exportation: the tendency has been for those who lack his genius
to take shelter in his defects. Since one of his earliest followers,
CLAUDIO JOSÉ NUNES (1831-75), published _Scenas Contemporaneas_
(1873) his influence has been very marked in Portugal and manifests
itself in the grandiloquence, over-emphasis, and love of antithesis
of much of Snr. ABILIO MANUEL GUERRA JUNQUEIRO’S work. The greatest
of Portugal’s living poets was born at Freixo de Espada á Cinta in
1850 and was thus a small child when Hugo’s poems _Les Contemplations_
(1856) and _La Légende des Siècles_ (1859) appeared. After studying
law at Coimbra he was returned to Parliament in 1878. Enthusiastically
revolutionary until 1910, he became Portuguese Minister at Berne in the
following year, but retired from the service of the Republic in 1914.
His first verses were published at the age of fourteen, _Duas paginas
dos quatorze annos_ (1864), and before he was twenty he had written
_Mysticae Nuptiae_ (1866), _Vozes sem Echo_ (1867), and _Baptismo do
Amor_ (1868), with a preface by Camillo Castello Branco. But it was
_A Morte de Dom João_ (1874), a poem or series of poems in which Don
Juan and Jehovah are attacked impartially, that brought him resounding
success, a success followed up and increased by _A Velhice do Padre
Eterno_ (1885) and, under the influence of the political crisis of
1890, _Finis Patriae_ (1890) and the play _Patria_, in which his eager
and vigorous patriotism found vent. In all these, as in the quieter
volume _A Musa em Ferias_ (1879), there is true poetry (as well as
unfailing sincerity and passionate sympathy for the oppressed), but it
has to be looked for. A weird ghostliness in _Finis Patriae_ and in the
_doido’s_ part in _Patria_ is accompanied by a strange and impressive
lilt in the rhythm[695] which corresponds to the haunting refrains of
some of the shorter poems. But there seemed a danger that on the wings
of applause, in political invective, and turgid rhetoric the poet
might allow his genius to be totally misdirected, and it is his most
remarkable achievement that in _Os Simples_ (1892) he laid all that
aside and returned to the simpler themes of peasant life which cast
a spell over some of the lyrics in _Finis Patriae_: harvesters, the
_linda boeirinha_ guiding her great oxen, the old shepherd with his
flute and crook on the scented hills, the _cavador_ going to his work
at cockcrow beneath the red morning star. _A Caminho_, the inimitable
opening poem, has a delicate inspiration which is masterly in its
restraint and ingenuous charm. It was well to rest on such laurels. In
two subsequent odes, _Oração ao Pão_ (1902) and _Oração á Luz_ (1904),
filled with a vague music, Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s poetry merges into
a mystic philosophy which he intends to express in prose. Some early
poems appeared in _Poesias Dispersas_ (1921). A victim of Victor Hugo
to whom it is not easy for a critic to do justice, is the Lisbon poet
ANTONIO DUARTE GOMES LEAL (1849-1921). His capacity is felt to be so
much greater than his achievement. The grandiloquence and declamatory