Almeida Garrett © fotokon - Stockphoto.com.jpg
António Feliciano de Castilho © Alex_Sunderland - shutterstock.com.jpg

From orality to the appearance of the press

Could it be Diogo de Silves or Gonçalo Velho Cabral who first set foot in the Azores at the beginning of the 15th century? It doesn't matter for the literature that was soon written there, as the settlers arrived and quickly settled there. Contrary to the maxim, we have no writings left from this period, but the words have not disappeared. Thus, O Romance de Vila Franca, which mourns the earthquake that struck the eponymous municipality of São Miguel Island on the night of October 21-22, 1522, is the oldest oral narrative from the Azores to have come down to us, in several versions, notably the one collected by Gaspar Frutuoso a few decades after the tragedy. He is said to have been born the same year of the disaster, in the village of Ponta Delgada, but although the records preserve the memory of the history of the land given to his parents, they are less talkative about him, until we find him again, in 1548, studying arts and theology at the University of Salamanca. He then became parish priest in the village of Lagoa in 1558 and later became vicar, perhaps after having learned medicine, until his death in 1591. But from the humanist, above all, a text has come down to us, somewhat by chance. The numerous annotations suggest that Frutuoso thought of publishing his Saudades da Terra, but for some unknown reason this was not the case, and it remained in manuscript form as part of his legacy to the Jesuit College of Ponta Delgada. It was not until 1873, when it was first published, that the adventure of the two friends, who were expelled from their native country and forced to travel from island to island, was reborn, and the curious (and Portuguese-speaking) reader would discover a precise description of what the Azores, Cape Verde and Madeira were like in the 16th century. It was also in the 19th century that stories really began to flourish in the archipelago, thanks to the introduction of the press in 1829, and to the cultural pages that fostered exchanges and the appearance of writings that until then had been nestling in the back of drawers.

Castilho and Quental

During this century, and this is also important, the Azores welcomed the return of the great novelist Almeida Garrett (1799-1854), author of the famous Voyages dans mon pays (published by La Boîte à documents), who had spent part of his childhood there, but also the passage of Alexandre Herculano and António Feliciano de Castilho, it is certain that these romantic writers influenced island culture, especially thanks to the Society of Friends of Letters and Arts founded in Ponta Delgada by the blind poet and pedagogue in September 1848. Antero de Quental learnt the rudiments of French alongside Castilho at the same time as he was introduced to poetry at a very young age. Born in 1842 in the archipelago, the young boy left him ten years later to settle in Lisbon with his mother. At the Colégio do Pórtico, he found his teacher. His first stay in Lisbon was short, as the school had to close its doors, but after a brief setback on his native island, Quental left for the mainland and, at the age of 16, entered the famous University of Coimbra. There he studied law, began to get into contact with socialist ideas, and together with some of his classmates he founded the Sociedad do Raio, a secret association whose aim was to promote literature to the masses, and whose ulterior motive was to dismiss the rector, who, according to António Cabral, who relates the anecdote, was considered to be too severe. The revolutionary ideas of the young man, who had officially become a writer since the publication of his Odes Modernas in 1865, only grew, as evidenced by the Coimbrã Question that agitated the literary world the following year. This polemic was inflamed by the afterword that Feliciano de Castilho, again, wrote about a poem by Pinheiro Chagas. In it, he attacked the students of the University, accusing them of scuttling poetry by making it opaque, of lacking "good sense and good taste". The answer was not long in coming, rebounding on the expression used by his former master, Antero de Quental replied sharply that the new generation was proud of the great changes taking place, and he took advantage of the occasion to scratch the so-called talent of his elder. The dispute lasted for several months, although it was not always a delicate matter, and it augured well for the Democratic Conferences of the Lisbon Casino in 1871, five meetings during which innovative European ideas were propagated, and in which Quental obviously took part alongside his friend Eça de Queiros, who had joined him in the Cenáculo, an anarchist intellectual grouping. The Generation of 70 was born. This was the high point of Quental's political career, but his literary peak came in 1886 with the publication of his Sonetos Completos, which became swan song, because five years later the poet committed suicide in Ponta Delgada, the town where he was born. Those who are curious can discover an anthology of his sonnets, Tourment de l' idéal

, published by L'Escampette. Quental's life resonates strangely with that of his contemporary, fellow citizen and friend, Teófilo Braga (1843-1924). He too attended law classes at the University of Coimbra, was one of the spearheads of the Generation of 70 and devoted himself to politics, until he became head of the provisional government after the fall of King Manuel II, and then President of the Republic for a few months, when the coup d'état of 14 May 1915 ousted Manuel de Arriaga from power. But Braga was also the author of a considerable body of work, excelling in poetry(Tempestades sonoras) and in Romanesque art (Viriato), also working to safeguard the culture of the Azores(Cantos populares do Arquipélago Açoriano), before taking a more general interest in his country's literature. He has produced a number of anthologies and written as many essays, and his História de Literatura portuguesa in four volumes remains a reference.

A wealth of literature

Finally, the 19th century saw the birth of a poet who was far too little known in our regions, Roberto de Mesquita. He was born in Santa Cruz de Flores on 19 June 1871 into a family linked to the small Florentine aristocracy. When he was not even 20 years old, he published under the pseudonym Raul Montanha his first poem, , in the newspaper of his town. From publication to publication, he ends up being spotted by a friend of his brother's who studies in Coimbra, Henrique de Vasconcelos, who is at the head of the symbolist magazine Os Novos. Over the years, Mesquita is monopolized by his career as a clerk at the Treasury and the worries he encounters there, he gradually stops publishing, but not writing. Death mowed him down rather brutally in 1923, and as a tribute his widow decided to have the manuscript he left behind, Almas cativas e poemas dispersos, printed in very few copies. However, it was not until 1939 that he was finally recognised, thanks to the intervention of another poet, Vitorino Nemésio. Since then, Mesquita has been the subject of many studies and is considered the best representative of Lusophone symbolism. Born on the island of Terceira in 1901, Vitorino Nemésio died in Lisbon in 1978. Throughout his life, Vitorino Nemésio occupied an important place on the literary scene, founder of the Revista de Portugal, where he published Mesquita's verses, taught in Brussels, directed the University of Lisbon for a time, and even hosted a television programme. But it is thanks to his masterpiece, Gros temps sur l'archipel, that he acquired his letters of nobility, a text that we are fortunate enough to be able to read in French at the éditions de la Différence. The story takes place in the Azores, from December 1917 to August 1919, and features two lovers, children of two rival families. An uncompromising description of island life, but above all a magnificent portrait of a woman, that of Margarida, who oscillates between her desire to flee and the reason that pushes her to stay. A theme that must have particularly affected Natália Correia, who was celebrating her 21st birthday when the book was published in 1944. She herself had left the island of São Miguel to attend secondary school in Lisbon, but by her own admission her native land and her fellow citizens inspired her all her life in the same way as surrealism and mysticism. A committed journalist and activist in the Social Democratic Party, she experienced censorship and was repeatedly sentenced to suspended prison terms. As a writer, she evolved in eclectic registers, with a passion for theatre, fiction and poetry, with a recurrent desire to create strong images and use symbols, abundant creations of which the play A Pécora, which the Church strongly disliked, and her collection of poems, Memória da sombra, are worthy of note. In his generation, two other writers have left their mark: Pedro da Silveira (1922-2003) and José Dias de Melo (1925-2008). Critic, translator and researcher, the former made his name in 1953 with the publication of A Ilha e o mundo(The Island and the World), and it was through Todas do mar e da terra (Everything in the Sea and the Land) that the latter acquired his reputation as a poet. The land and the sea, the archipelago or the world, leaving or staying, questions like a common thread among island writers who never forgot where they came from.