From orality to the appearance of the press
Was it Diogo de Silves or Gonçalo Velho Cabral who first set foot on the Azores in the early 15th century? Whatever the case, literature was soon being written here, as the settlers quickly moved in. Contrary to the saying, there are no written records of this period, but the words have not disappeared. Thus, O Romance de Vila Franca, which mourns the earthquake that struck the eponymous municipality on the island of São Miguel on the night of October 21 to 22, 1522, is the oldest surviving oral story from Azorea, in several versions, including the one collected by Gaspar Frutuoso a few decades after the tragedy. He was born in the same year as the disaster, in the village of Ponta Delgada, but while records preserve the history of the land given to his parents, they are less forthcoming about him, until we find him, in 1548, studying arts and theology at the University of Salamanca. From 1558, he was a parish priest in the village of Lagoa, and later became vicar, perhaps after learning medicine, until his death in 1591. But above all, a text has come down to us from this humanist, somewhat by chance. The numerous annotations suggest that Frutuoso intended to publish his Saudades da Terra, but for some unknown reason this was not to be, and they remained in manuscript as part of the legacy he bequeathed to the Jesuit College in Ponta Delgada. It wasn't until 1873, when it was first published, that the adventure of two friends driven from their homeland and forced to travel from island to island was revived, and the curious (and Portuguese-speaking) reader discovered 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 on the archipelago, thanks to the introduction of the press in 1829, and the cultural pages that encouraged exchanges and the appearance of writings that until then had been tucked away at the bottom of drawers.
Castilho and Quental
This century also saw the return to the Azores 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 here, as well as Alexandre Herculano and António Feliciano de Castilho. These Romantic writers undoubtedly influenced island culture, not least through the Society of Friends of Letters and the Arts founded in Ponta Delgada by the blind poet and pedagogue in September 1848. It was with Castilho that Antero de Quental learned the rudiments of French, at the very time when he was being introduced to poetry at a very young age. Born in the archipelago in 1842, the young boy left ten years later to settle in Lisbon with his mother. At the Colégio do Pórtico, he was reunited with his teacher. This first stay in Lisbon was short-lived, as the school had to close its doors, but after a brief stopover on his native island, Quental headed back to the mainland and, at the age of 16, entered the famous University of Coimbra. There, he studied law, began to rub shoulders with socialist ideas, and with some of his fellow students created the Sociedad do Raio, a secret association whose motivation was to promote literature among the masses, and whose unavowed aim was to depose the rector who, according to António Cabral who recounts the anecdote, was considered too severe. The revolutionary ideas of the young man, who became an official writer with the publication of his Odes Modernas in 1865, only grew stronger, as evidenced by the Coimbrã Question that stirred up the literary world the following year. This controversy was sparked off by an afterword that Feliciano de Castilho, himself, wrote to a poem by Pinheiro Chagas. In it, he attacked university students, accusing them of scuttling poetry by making it opaque, and of lacking "common sense and good taste". Antero de Quental's response was swift, bouncing off his former master's expression and retorting harshly that the new generation was proudly embracing the great changes underway, and taking advantage of the occasion to scratch at his elder's supposed talent. The argument went on for several months, not always with the utmost delicacy. It augured well for the 1871 Lisbon Casino Democratic Conferences, five meetings during which innovative European ideas were spread, and in which, of course, Quental took part alongside his friend Eça de Queiros, who had joined him in the Cenáculo, an anarchist intellectual group. The Generation of '70 was born. This was the high point of Quental's political career, but his literary apogee came in 1886 with the publication of his Sonetos Completos, which became his swan song. Five years later, the poet committed suicide in Ponta Delgada, the town where he was born. The curious can discover an anthology of his sonnets, Tourment de l'idéal, published by L'Escampette.
Quental's life echoes that of his contemporary, fellow citizen and friend, Teófilo Braga (1843-1924). He too attended law classes at Coimbra University, was one of the spearheads of the Generation of '70 and devoted himself to politics, eventually becoming head of the provisional government following the fall of King Manuel II, and then President of the Republic for a few months when the coup d'état of May 14, 1915 ousted another Azorean, Manuel de Arriaga. But Braga was also the author of a considerable body of work, excelling in poetry(Tempestades sonoras) and fiction(Viriato), and working to safeguard Azorean culture(Cantos populares do Arquipélago Açoriano), before taking a more general interest in his country's literature. He has produced numerous anthologies and written just as many essays, and his four-volume História de Literatura portuguesa remains a benchmark.
A wealth of literature
Finally, the 19th century saw the birth of a poet who is all too little known in our country, Roberto de Mesquita. He was born in Santa Cruz de Flores on June 19, 1871, into a family linked to the Florentine aristocracy. Not yet 20, he published his first poem, Fé, under the pseudonym Raul Montanha, in the local newspaper. From publication to publication, he was eventually spotted by a friend of his brother's studying in Coimbra, Henrique de Vasconcelos, who edited the symbolist magazine Os Novos. As the years went by, Mesquita became preoccupied with his career as a clerk at the Treasury and the worries he encountered there; he gradually stopped publishing, but not writing. He died quite suddenly in 1923. As a tribute, his widow decided to print very few copies of the manuscript he had left behind, Almas cativas e poemas dispersos. However, it wasn't until 1939 that he was finally recognized, thanks to the intervention of another poet, Vitorino Nemésio. Since then, Mesquita has been the subject of numerous studies, and is considered the best representative of Lusophone symbolism. Born on the island of Terceira in 1901, and dying in Lisbon in 1978, Vitorino Nemésio occupied an important place on the literary scene throughout his life. Founder of the Revista de Portugal, where he published Mesquita's verses, he taught in Brussels, directed the University of Lisbon for a time, and even hosted a television program. But it's his masterpiece, Gros temps sur l'archipel, that earns him his letters of nobility, a text that we are fortunate enough to be able to read in French from Editions 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 touched Natália Correia, who was 21 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 countrymen inspired her all her life in the same way as surrealism and mysticism. A committed journalist and Social Democratic Party activist, she was censored and received several suspended prison sentences. As a writer, she evolved in eclectic registers, with a passion for theater, fiction and poetry, in a recurrent desire to create powerful images and use symbols, in abundant creations such as the play A Pécora, which strongly displeased the Church, and her collection of poems, Memória da sombra. Two other writers of his generation are also remembered: Pedro da Silveira (1922-2003) and José Dias de Melo (1925-2008). Critic, translator and researcher, the former made a name for himself as early as 1953 with the publication of A Ilha e o mundo(The Island and the World), and it was with Todas do mar e da terra(Everything in the Sea and the Earth) that the latter gained his reputation as a poet. Land and sea, the archipelago or the world, to leave or to stay: these are questions that run like a red thread through island authors who have never forgotten where they came from.
