Portuguese literature
[686] _The Athenaeum_ in 1872 announced that Lord Stanley of Alderney
was preparing a translation of _As Pupillas_. According to a letter
of Julio Diniz (March 25, 1868), ‘an Englishman, a relation of Lord
Stanley, who is here [Oporto] studying the history of the Portuguese
discoveries’, had expressed a wish to translate it. The translation was
never published. The date of the first Portuguese edition is 1867. It
was dramatized at Lisbon in 1868.
[687] e.g. a girl, Rosario, in _Amor Divino_, is
described--annihilated--with the assistance of Cybele, Goya, the Venus
of Milo, Reynolds, Shakespeare. Cf. the names, from Descartes to
Darwin, in _O Conto do Gallo_.
[688] _Comedia do Campo_, vol. vi.
[689] Vol. vii.
[690] Pathology, religious and social, crops up in the later novels
of Snr. Vieira da Costa, _Irmã Celeste_ (1904), _A Familia Maldonado_
(1908); yet his earlier work, _Entre Montanhas_ (1903), a story of
contemporary life in the high-lying vine-lands of Douro written in
1899, was more original. The modern Portuguese novelists are nearly,
although not quite, as numerous as the poets. José de Caldas is the
author of _Os Humildes_ (1900) and _Cartas de um Vencido_ (1910), D.
João de Castro of _Os Malditos_ (1894) and _A Deshonra_, in which a
strange situation is too long drawn out.
[691] He wrote under the name Bernardo de Pindella or Bernardo Pinheiro.
[692] In novels intimately connected with the Portuguese soil such
expressions as _colorido gritante_ (_criard_), _lunchar_ (to partake
of luncheon), _endomingado_ (_endimanché_) are more than ever out of
place. The authoress has written other stories: _Capital Bemdito_
(1910), _Fé_ (a Socialist novel), _Inocente_ (1916), _A Praga_ (1917).
[693] A _conto_ written by Snr. Julio de Lemos in 1905 bears the same
title.
[694] de Quental or do Quental. See J. Leite de Vasconcellos, _Lições
de Philologia Portuguesa_ (1911), p. 125 _ad fin._
[695] e.g. _Tive castellos, fortalezas pelo mundo.... Não tenho casa,
não tenho pão._ The cadence here, as in many of Snr. Guerra Junqueiro’s
lines, is singularly arresting. The tendency to morbid repetition is
exaggerated in _Patria_ and has influenced many younger poets, as
Snr. Corrêa de Oliveira and, especially, Antonio Nobre. The reader
is credited with no imagination and the effect is diminished. For
instance, in _Patria_: _deixa-me dormir, Dormir em paz ... dormir!_
That is excellent; but the word _dormir_ is then again thrice repeated,
until the reader sleeps.
[696] In details his ear is not faultless. Cf. the unscannable line _E
que na corda do remorso enforçou Judas_ (unless this is deliberately
onomatopoeic).
[697] Without counting those of Brazil, which had an exquisite
word-chiseller in the poet OLAVO BILAC (1865-1918), author of
_Panoplias_ and other verse published in _Poesias_ (1888, Nova ed.
1904).
[698] He is the son of Snr. ALFREDO CARNEIRO DA CUNHA (born in
1863), whose _Versos_ (1900) contains the poignant lines _A uma
creança morta_, which recall Coventry Patmore and the pathos of Dr.
Robert Bridges’ _On a Dead Child_. The earlier edition, _Endeixas e
Madrigaes_, appeared in 1891.
[699] The word _Nephelibatas_ (= Cloud-treaders), formerly applied to
poets of the decadent school in Portugal, is now seldom heard.
APPENDIX
§ 1
Literature of the People
Side by side with literature proper there has always existed in
Portugal a literature of the people. Indeed, before Portuguese poetry
was written it flourished on the lips of the people, in the songs of
the women. Sometimes this popular literature almost coalesced with
written literature, as in the case of the _cossantes_ in the thirteenth
century. Its poetry lent a glow and magic to the work of Gil Vicente
and later to some of the lyrics of Camões; its proverbial lore was
reproduced in Jorge Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ prose plays and later
by D. Francisco Manuel de Mello; in indigenous folk-tales Trancoso
found part of his material. Eighteenth-century writers neglected it,
but Filinto Elysio returned to popular sources, and in the nineteenth
century they inspired two great poets, Almeida Garrett and João de
Deus. Literature and illiteracy have often gone hand in hand. In
Ferreira de Vasconcellos’ _Eufrosina_ (Act III, sc. ii) we read of
the workwoman (_lavrandeira_) who ‘sings _de solao_, composes songs,
loves to learn _trovas_ by heart, gives a schoolboy farthings to buy
cherries in return for reading _autos_ to her’; and the _Pratica de
Tres Pastores_ gives us a picture of an old peasant reading out from
the Bible[700] of an evening to the whole village:
Esse velhinho
Tinha hum cartapolinho
Feito de letra de mão
Em papel de pergaminho,
E chamava-se o feitinho
Do livro da creação.
E então
Que sempre cada serão
Á noyte depois da cea
Com oculos á candea
O lia por devoção
A toda a gente d’aldea.
The popular appetite for _autos_, simple Christmas plays, legends of
saints, and for long vague _romances_ never flagged, and some of the
literature written to satisfy it, by Balthasar Diaz and others, is
reprinted and hawked about the country in _folhas volantes_ at the
present day, as Diaz’ _Historia da Imperatriz Porcina_ (Porto, 1906)--a
_romance_ of some 1,500 octosyllables in -_ía_--and his _Tragedia do
Marques de Mantua_. The prose _Verdadeira Historia do Imperador Carlos
Magno_ (Porto, 1906) is the last descendant of Nicolas Piamonte’s
Spanish translation (from the French original) _Carlomagno_, printed at
Seville in 1525 and at Alcalá in 1570, or rather of Jeronimo Moreira
de Carvalho’s Portuguese version (2 pts., 1728, 37). It is an instance
of the Portuguese delight in strange, even fantastic, but in any
case foreign, themes. The _Verdadeira Historia da Donzella Theodora_
(Porto, 1911), daughter of a merchant of Babylon, was introduced from
the East and was translated by Carlos Ferreira from the Spanish (1524)
and published at Lisbon in 1735. The _Verdadeira Historia do Grande
Roberto Duque de Normandia e Imperador de Roma_ (Porto, 1912) is a
belated echo of the French story of Robert le Diable, which also came
to Portugal through Spain (Burgos, 1509). The _Verdadeira Historia da
Princeza Magalona_ (Porto, 1912) has a similar derivation from France
(14th or 15th c.) through Spain (Sevilla, 1519), and retains its
popularity as a record of unswerving constancy _na fe e na virtude_.
The _Verdadeira Historia de João de Calais_, reprinted at Oporto in
1914, is also undisguisedly foreign. The story of _Flores e Branca
Fror_, last offshoot (a ‘vile extract’ Menéndez y Pelayo called it)
of the charming Greek tale which came originally from the East,[701]
was mentioned by several poets (King Dinis, Joan de Guilhade, the
Archpriest of Hita) in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries[702] and
in the _Gran Conquista_ _de Ultramar_ (13th c.), and was condemned
by Luis Vives. The prose story copied by Boccaccio in his _Filocolo_
is still popular in Portugal and Galicia. There is an edition printed
at Oporto in 1912: _Historia de Flores e Branca-Flor, seus amores e
perigos que passaram por Flores ser mouro e Branca-Flor christã_.
García Ferreiro refers to _a historia de Branca Fror_ as recited at a
Galician _escasula_.[703] Most of these popular threepenny leaflets
are very quaintly illustrated on the title-page. The woodcut on the
1912 edition of _Flores e Branca-Flor_ is worth many an epic.[704] The
portrait of Robert le Diable (1912 ed.) represents no less a person
than Napoleon III, and the ‘true likeness of the beautiful Princess
Magalona’[705] (1912 ed.) is Queen Alexandra. These _folhas volantes_
of the _literatura de cordel_ with many _farsas_, such as _Manoel
Mendes_ by Antonio Xavier Ferreira de Azevedo (1784-1814), reprinted
at Oporto in 1878, and various progeny of the ingenious Bertoldo, as
_Astucias de Mengoto_, _Industrias de Malandrino_ (both Porto, 1879),
_Astucias de Zanguizarra_ (Porto, 1878), _Vida de Cacasseno_ (Porto,
1904), contain little of the real people and less of literature. More
indigenous, but still attracting by virtue of its foreign episodes, is
the _Auto_, _Livro_ (1554?), _Historia_ or _Tratado do Infante D. Pedro
que andou as quatro (sete) partidas do mundo_, which is attributed to
Gomez de Santo Estevam, one of the prince’s attendants in his long
travels, and of which the first known edition (1547) is in Spanish. It
has been constantly reprinted and, with romances of chivalry, formed
the education of the notary in _O Hyssope_.[706] Nor do the _Trovas do
Bandarra_ belong to literature, although these verses of the cobbler
prophet of Trancoso, GONÇALO ANNEZ BANDARRA (†1556?), which caused him
to figure in one of the earliest trials before the Inquisition (1541)
and were subsequently interpreted as referring to the return of King
Sebastian, exercised the fancy of the people and even the wits of the
educated for some three centuries. Forbidden in Portugal, they were
printed abroad, probably at Paris in 1603, at Nantes in 1644, Barcelona
1809, London 1810 and 1815. It was not until 1852 (Porto) that an
_Explicação_ of them could be published in Portugal. Their interest was
then much diminished, since the thirty scissors of the verse,
Augurai gentes vindouras
Que o Rey que de vos ha de hir
Vos ha de tornar a vir
Passadas trinta tesouras,
had been thought to signify the year 1808, i.e. thirty closed scissors
= 30 × 8: 240 years after King Sebastian began to reign (1568). A more
reasonable computation would have been from Alcacer Kebir (_de vos ha
de hir_) = 1818, or, if the scissors were open: ✂ (10), = 1878. Many
sought to connect with Bandarra’s prophecies the sayings of Simão
Gomez (1516-76), the ‘Holy Cobbler’, and his biography, written by
the Jesuit MANUEL DA VEIGA (1567-1647), _Tratado da Vida, Virtudes e
Doutrina Admiravel de Simão Gomes, vulgarmente chamado o Çapateiro
Santo_ (1625), a book in more than one respect singular and charming,
was burnt by the public hangman at Lisbon in 1768 in ‘Black Horse
Square’. The 1759 edition had received the ordinary _licenças_. But
farther afield, deeper in the heart of the people and far more ancient,
exists another literature. Writers who have gone to this source have
never come away unrewarded. Their work has gained a freshness and a
charm[707] which the most successful disciples of imported learning
and latinity have in vain attempted to rival, and gives the reader
the impression that if he is not plucking the bough of gold he is not
far from the tree on which it grows. And the reason is, perhaps, that
the Portuguese people still retains an element pre-Christian, even
pre-Roman, an element which goes back to solar myths and pagan beliefs,
and about which hangs a primaeval mystery and wonder, a glamour and
enchantment born of direct contact with the forces of Nature, and the
worship, fear, and propitiation of many unseen powers and divinities. A
great part of the people still inhabits a region of fiery dragons and
apples of gold, and with ready imagination peoples streams and woods,
sea and air with spirits. December and June are connected with the
birth and supremacy of the sun’s power, and paganism, thinly disguised,
survives in several of the ceremonies of the Christian Church, and
serves to increase the Church’s hold on the minds of the people.
Both the songs and the dancing with which it was accompanied were no
doubt originally religious. The movements of the dance seem to have
influenced the song, so that its metre was divided by real feet. When
the Archbishop of Braga, Frei Bartholomeu dos Martyres, was visiting