Chapter D: MARIA AMALIA VAZ DE CARVALHO (1847-1921) collaborated with her

husband, the poet Gonçalves Crespo, in _Contos para os nossos filhos_, and in _Serões no Campo_ (1877), three stories, in one of which, _A Engeitada_, one may perhaps see reminiscences of Julio Diniz’ _A Casa Mourisca_, and _Contos e Phantasias_ (1880) treated slight themes with a delicate charm. But she is less well known as writer of _contos_ or as poet, in _Vozes do Ermo_ (1876), than as the author of a notable historical biography, _Vida do Duque de Palmella_ (1898-1903), and of critical essays on Portuguese and foreign literatures. In the latter the English predominates, but French, German, and Italian, as in _Arabescos_ (1880), are not forgotten. The sane judgement, sympathy, and insight of _Alguns homens do meu tempo_ (1889), _Figuras de Hoje e de Hontem_ (1902), _Cerebros e Corações_ (1903), _No Meu Cantinho_ (1909), _Coisas de Agora_ (1913), and other volumes have been appreciated by countless readers in Portugal and Brazil. A writer who likewise combines literary and historical criticism with original work in verse (_Poemetos_, 1882) and prose is the CONDE DE SABUGOSA (born in 1854), skilful and delicate reconstructor of the past in _Embrechados_ (1908), _Donas de Tempos Idos_ (1912), _Gente d’Algo_ (1915), _Neves de Antanho_ (1919), and _A Rainha D. Leonor_ (1921), who collaborated with another stylist, the CONDE DE ARNOSO[691] (1856-1911), author of _Azulejos_ (1886), in the volume of _contos_ entitled _De braço dado_ (1894). His historical portraits are full of life and charm, painted in the warm colours of knowledge and emotion.

If we except D. Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho, the literary achievement of women in Portugal in recent years has not been remarkable. Like D. CLAUDIA DE CAMPOS, author of the novels _Elle_ (1898) and _A Esfinge_ and short stories, D. ALICE PESTANA (_Caiel_) has cultivated with success both the novel, as in _Desgarrada_ (1902), and the _conto_, as in _De Longe_ (1904), which contains stories of familiar life written with sincerity and truth. If D. ANNA DE CASTRO OSORIO’S _Ambições_ (1903) gives the impression rather of a series of scenes than of a long novel, in her short stories _Infelizes_ (1898)--especially _A Terra_--and _Quatro Novelas_ (1908) she ably describes common family life in town or country, or (in _A Sacrificada_) the lives, past and present, of aged nuns in a dwindling convent. D. VIRGINIA DE CASTRO E ALMEIDA has written two novels concerning the development of the soil in Alentejo: _Terra Bemdita_ (1907) and _Trabalho Bemdito_ (1908).[692] They are frankly novels with a thesis to prove, but contain so much vigour and zest of living that they stand out from other more futile or anaemic novels of contemporary Portugal.

The growing prominence of the _conto_ is felt in the work of Castello Branco, Eça de Queiroz, Teixeira de Queiroz, Snr. Jaime de Magalhães Lima (_Via Redemptora_, 1905, _Apostolos da Terra_, 1906, _Vozes do Meu Lar_, 1912), and many other novelists. JULIO CESAR MACHADO (1835-90) showed talent in _Contos ao luar_ (1861), _Scenas da minha terra_ (1862), _Quadros do campo e da cidade_ (1868), _Á Lareira_ (1872). His skill in the description of rustic scenes would have been more convincing had he not thought it necessary to introduce touches of extraneous elegance and humour into his very real love of the country, so that the patent leather boot is ever appearing among the _tamancos_ in these light humorous sketches and romantic tales. As slight but perhaps more natural are the _Contos do Tio Joaquim_ (1861) by RODRIGO PAGANINO (1835-63); the pleasant stories of village life, _Contos_ (1874) and _Serões de Inverno_ (1880), written by CARLOS LOPES (born in 1842) under the pseudonym PEDRO IVO; and _Contos_ (1894) and _Azul e Negro_[693] (1897) by Afonso Botelho. The poet AUGUSTO SARMENTO (born in 1835) also wrote stories of village life, _Contos do Soalheiro_ (1876), but stories _à thèse_, treating of emigration and other _minhoto_ evils, among which he includes _beatas_, witches, and _brasileiros de torna-viagem_. A writer of _contos_ as disappointing as Machado is ALBERTO BRAGA (1851-1911). He has a sense of style and technique, and some of his tales, especially _O Engeitado_, are pathetic, but after reading his _Contos da minha lavra_ (1879), _Contos de aldeia_, _Contos Escolhidos_ (1892), _Novos Contos_, one has the perhaps somewhat unfair impression that they are mainly concerned with _viscondessas_ and canaries. The learned Conde de Ficalho in _Uma Eleição Perdida_ (1888) evidently relates his own experiences, and this and the five accompanying _contos_ contain some charming descriptions of Alentejo, of the _reisinho cacique_ Lopes, Paschoal the _passarinheiro_, the gossips of the village _botica_, the girls carrying _bilhas_, the scent of rosemary in morning dew. The same province supplies the background of the work of JOSÉ VALENTIM FIALHO DE ALMEIDA (1857-1912). Born at Villa de Frades, the son of a village schoolmaster, he spent seven years sadly against the grain as chemist’s assistant before he was able to turn more exclusively to literature. No recent writer has had a greater vogue in Portugal. One must account for this by the fact that in the somewhat nerveless literature of the day he showed a virile and often brutal colour and energy. A few descriptions of Alentejo gave interest to his _Contos_ (1881) and _A Cidade do Vicio_ (1882), an interest strengthened in _O Paiz das Uvas_ (1893). This collection of naturalistic stories of great variety and very unequal merit is, indeed, redeemed by the author’s love for his native province. He sometimes obtains powerful effects when his subject is the wide spaces, the night silences, or the summer drought and midday zinc-coloured sky of Alentejo. The shepherdess with her distaff, the village crier, the small proprietor, the harvesters with their week’s provision of coarse bread, goat’s cheese, and olives, toiling in a temperature of 122 degrees, appear in his stories. His art is wholly external. One need not have complained of his lack of psychology had he been able to express what he saw in good Portuguese prose. But if we turn to his style we find uncouth constructions, the constant use of French words, and worse still, French words disguised as Portuguese: _deboche_, _coquettemente_, _crayonar_. This is the more pity because, had he written in Portuguese, he might have left robust pictures of the Alentejan peasant’s life in its grim reality which would have been read with pleasure. A sober and fastidious style, sometimes recalling that of the Spanish essayist Azorín, marks the _Contos_ (1900) of the dramatist D. João da Camara. The clear etching of the blind man and his grandson going through the streets on Christmas Eve in _As Estrellas do Cego_ and, especially, the poignant sketch of the ruined old scholar _fidalgo_ in _O Paquete_ show admirably what a skilful craftsman can make of the slightest of themes. This is true to an even greater degree of the best of all the Portuguese _contistas_, JOSÉ FRANCISCO DE TRINDADE COELHO (1861-1908). His _contos_ collected under the title _Os Meus Amores_ (1891), natural and deeply felt scenes of peasant life, are all marked by an exceptional delicacy of style and by a most alluring freshness and simplicity. The tinkling of the bells of flocks, the thin blue smoke above the roofs, the evening mists, the flight of doves are in these pages. And the peasants are treated with the same sympathetic insight as their surroundings, the women singing at their work in the fields, the olive-gatherers at supper in the great farm kitchen; vintage and harvest, tragedy and idyll. The sympathy is extended to the animals, donkey (_Sultão_), goat (_Mãe_), and hen (_A Choca_). The _saudade_ of peasant soldiers for the land in _Terra-Mater_ gives an opportunity for describing the life of the peasants with its hardy toil and many simple pleasures. In _Á Lareira_, the longest of these stories, a rustic _serão_ of peasants _ao borralho_ is pleasantly drawn out with quatrains, riddles, anecdotes, fairy-tales, only interrupted by the ringing of the angelus for the saying of prayer on prayer. Two little masterpieces stand somewhat apart from the rest: _Abyssus Abyssum_, the tragic story of two small boys, brothers, rowing to overtake the evening star, and _Idyllio Rustico_, which with its two ingenuous little shepherds and their flocks of sheep in the lonely places might almost be a chapter from Don Ramón María del Valle Inclán’s _Flor de Santidad_ (1904). _Os Meus Amores_ shows realism at its best, that is to say, hand in hand with idealism. The author is not so enamoured of his delightful style that he does not make the peasants speak their natural language, and although he realizes keenly and expresses the poetry of their life, he never sacrifices truth to this perception any more than to the strange and essentially false propensities of the naturalistic school, nor 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 character of the verse in his first volume, _Claridades do Sul_ (1875), are accentuated in subsequent works: _A Fome de Camões_ (1880), _A Historia de Jesus_ (1883), _O Fim de um Mundo_ (1900), _A Mulher de Luto_ (1902). His satire here, as in _Satyras Modernas_ (1899), or the biting sonnets of _Mefistófeles em Lisboa_ (1907), is sincerely indignant but too often based on ignorance. In _O Anti-Christo_ (1884) it voices the eternal revolt against false civilization and materialism. This, the most celebrated of his works, presents a strange medley of persons, from Barabbas to Tolstoi and Huysmans, who have this in common that they all declaim in hollow sonorous Alexandrines. Science, saints, Hebrew prophets, Chinese philosophers, the eleven thousand Virgins pass in a vision before the Anti-Christ and converse with him. It is as if a Goethe without genius had written the second part of _Faust_. But _Claridades do Sul_ contains poems in a totally different kind, poems like _De Noute_ and _Os Lobos_, which seem to have caught something of the pathos and simplicity of _Les Pauvres Gens_, satire and _humorismo_ forgotten. In his descriptions of homely scenes his verse becomes quiet, natural, and effective; after reading the restrained and skilful _tercetos_ of _De Noute_ one is inclined to wonder whether the secret of his comparative failure is that here was an excellent Dutch genre-painter striving to be a high-flown Velazquez. But certainly he has no lack of talent, imagination, and power of expression in resonant verse.

The cult of _saudade_ has been deliberately revived by a group of poets in the north who have founded the school of _Saudosismo_, and in their monthly _A Aguia_ and the _Renascença_ press seek to foster all that is native in Portuguese literature. Their creed is a vague pantheism, their poetry is often equally vague and lacking in individuality, but they have the advantage of being remote from Lisbon and of not concerning themselves with foreign schools, and can therefore be natural and Portuguese. At the head of these poets Snr. JOAQUIM TEIXEIRA DE PASCOAES (born in 1877) sings musically in an enchanted land of mists and shadows of pantheism, _saudade_, and his native Tras-os-Montes. Merging itself entirely in Nature, his poetry becomes a wavering symphony[696] woven of night and silence. The vagueness present in the lyrics of _Sempre_ (1897), _Terra prohibida_ (1899), _Jesus e Pan_ (1903), _Vida Etherea_ (1906), _As Sombras_ (1907), is more marked in his longer poems _Marános_ (1911), in eighteen cantos, and _Regresso ao Paraiso_ (1912), in twenty-two cantos of monotonous blank verse. But Nature is justified of her child, and _Marános_, like a mountain-stream threading its transparent pools, shows abundantly that the author has also the power of condensing a picture into a single line. To this group belong Snr. MARIO BEIRÃO (born in 1891), whose verse in _O Ultimo Lusiada_ (1913) and _Ausente_ (1915) is strong and concrete; Snr. AFONSO DUARTE (born in 1896), Snr. AUGUSTO CASIMIRO, author of _Para a Vida_ (1906), _A Victoria do Homem_ (1910), and _A Evocação da Vida_ (1912), and other young writers of promise.

Few if any of the younger poets have found in Portugal so ready a reception for their work as ANTONIO NOBRE (1867-1900), whether this be due to the all-pervading melancholy, _saudades de tudo_, to the metrical skill, or to the haunting intensity of his verse. In a series of poems written between 1884 and 1894 he combined the dreams of a student at Coimbra, _a lendaria Coimbra_, the home-sickness of a Portuguese in Paris, and a real sympathy for the poor and miserable. In these poems of suffering and disillusion, published under the title _Só_ (1892), a strange alternation of ingenuousness and satanism, fantastic visions and serene simplicity, genuine poetry and sheer prose, refrains of rustic gaiety and of morbid sentiment, produces a certain measure of originality. He can fit his pliant metres to his will, mould them like wax, and if the book contains no perfect poems this is partly due to a deliberate intention to reflect his own incoherent moods and to an evident pleasure in incongruous effects. A second volume, of poems written between 1895 and 1899, _Despedidas_ (1902), appeared posthumously.

The permanent Secretary of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences, Colonel CRISTOVAM AYRES (born in 1853), has won distinction in many fields. Well known as an historian of the army (_Historia Organica e Politica do Exercito Portuguez_, 8 vols., 1896-1908) and as a critic, he has also written short stories and volumes of verse which have placed him in the front rank of the living Parnassian poets of Portugal. In _Indianas_ (1878), _Intimas_ (1884), _Anoitecer_ (1914), and _Cinzas ao Vento_ (1921), he displays great technical skill, especially in the reproduction of still scenes as in the sonnets _Paizagem_, _Aguarella_, or _Ao luar_. The Parnassian verse of JOAQUIM DE ARAUJO (1858-1917) in _Lyra Intima_ (1881), _Occidentaes_ (1888), and _Flores da Noite_ (1894) has a narcotic spell, a slow lulling music. And there is real opium in the pliant melodies of ANTONIO FEIJÓ (1862-1917), during sixteen years Portuguese Minister at Stockholm, in _Lyricas e Bucolicas_ (1884) and _Ilha dos Amores_ (1897). The words are heavy with sleep like cistus flowers: _Astros das noites limpidas velae-vos_ or _A neve cae na terra lentamente_ (_les lourds flocons des neigeuses années_). This perfection of metre is seen at its highest in his _Cancioneiro Chinez_ (1890), translations from the French _Livre de Jade_ (1867), itself a translation by Judith Gautier from various Chinese poets. The poems of JOÃO DINIZ, in _Aquarellas_ (1889); MANUEL DUARTE DE ALMEIDA (1844-1914), in _Estancias ao Infante Henrique_ (1889), _Ramo de Lilazes_ (1887), and _Terra e Azul_; Snr. Manuel da Silva Gayo, in _Novos Poemas_ (1906); Snr. Julio Brandão, in _Saudades_ (1893), in which he weaves the _linho luarento das saudades_, _O Jardim da Morte_ (1898) and _Nuvem de Oiro_ (1912); Snr. FAUSTO GUEDES TEIXEIRA (born in 1872), in his remarkable _O Meu Livro, 1896-1906_ (1908); Snr. LUIZ OSORIO, in _Neblinas_ (1884), _Poemas Portuguezes_ (1890), and _Alma lyrica_ (1891); Snr. GUILHERME DE SANTA RITA in _Vacillantes_ (1884) and _O Poema de um Morto_ (1897), and indeed of a great _caterva vatum_,[697] belong to this school. The chiselling of faultless sonnets has become a mannerism, but the critic who recalls the vague and often slipshod diffuseness of earlier romantic poems pauses before condemning. Perhaps it may be possible in time to combine the cunning artifice of the verse-cutter with thought and a breath of life and Nature.

The CONDE DE MONSARAZ (1852-1913) wrote some pleasant regional verse in _Musa Alemtejana_ (1908), in which he describes life in the _charnecas_ (moors) and _herdades_ (estates) of Alentejo: the sound of the well-wheel among orange-trees, the ringing of _trindades_, the long lines of women hoeing, the old herdsman singing melancholy _fados_, the smoking _açorda_ of the workmen’s meals, the storks fleeing from the July heat, the processions to pray for rain. The same out-of-door air and fullness of treatment pervade the work of Snr. AUGUSTO GIL, with a more popular strain, in _Musa Cerula_ (1894), _Versos_ (1901), _Luar de Janeiro_ (1909), _Sombra de Juno_ (1915), _Alba Plena_ (1916), Snr. JOSÉ COELHO DA CUNHA’S _Terra do Sol_ (1911) and _Vilancetes_ (1915),[698] and D. BRANCA DE GONTA COLLAÇO’S _Canções do Meio Dia_ (1912). A more vigorous talent, also, is that of Snr. JOÃO DE BARROS in _Algas_ (1899), _Entre a Multidão_ (1902), _Dentro da Vida_ (1904), _Terra Florida_ (1909), and _Anteu_ (1912). At the head of the Portuguese Symbolists (their symbolism has been rather external than philosophic) stands Snr. EUGENIO DE CASTRO (born in 1869). He wished, while retaining perfection of form, to fill it with a new imagery and colour, and that his verse in describing Nature through his sensations should remain detached and impersonal: the poet is _uma sombra saudosa d’outras sombras_. The success achieved in _Oaristos_ (1890) was strikingly maintained in _Sagramor_ (1895), _O Rei Galaor_ (1897), _Constança_ (1900), _Depois da Ceifa_ (1901), _A Sombra do Quadrante_ (1906), _O Annel de Polycrates_ (1907), _O Filho Prodigo_ (1910), and the twenty-one sonnets of _Camafeus Romanos_ (1921). His versification is not sufficiently varied (a defect naturally less apparent in the shorter poems), his rare words and rhymes often have a cumbrous air, but a real fire occasionally runs through the cold monotony of his verse, lighting up its heavy jewels with a glow almost of life. If it is sometimes an echo of Baudelaire, it is a Baudelaire thoroughly acclimatized.[699] His debt was not wholly to French Parnassian or Symbolist, for he had also drunk deep of Greek and German literature. His originality in modern Portuguese poetry is a very real one. Yet it is a pleasure to pass from verse often so perfect, always so artificial, to the more natural poems of two younger writers. Snr. ANTONIO CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA (born in 1880) in his _Auto do Fim do Dia_ (1900), _Raiz_ (1903), and _Auto de Junho_ (1904) shows a true lyrical gift, an inspiration of the soil, of the quatrains of popular poetry:

Passou Maio taful, Maio magano,
E por onde passou nasceram rosas.

In his later works, _Alma Religiosa_ (1910), _Auto das Quatro Estações_ (1911), _Os Teus Sonetos_ (1914), _A Minha Terra_ (1916), the effect is sometimes strained or marred by an almost morbid iteration. Snr. AFONSO LOPES VIEIRA (born in 1878) displays a genuine talent in _O Naufrago_ (1898), _O Encoberto_ (1905), _Ar Livre_ (1906), and _O Pão e as Rosas_ (1908). _Ilhas de Bruma_ (1918) is filled with the rhythm of the sea and with the traditions and native poetry of Portugal. There is a certain strength as well as a subtle music about his verse which is of good promise for the future. Whatever that future may be for Portuguese literature, Portugal will join the more worthily in the great literary age which will eventually spring from years of terrific upheaval if she studies and utilizes her full heritage of prose and verse. There is the less excuse now for its neglect since the devoted labour of many Portuguese scholars is rendering it yearly more accessible.

FOOTNOTES:

[680] The incomplete list in the _Dicc. Bibliog._, vol. viii. records forty-four published in 1865 and 1866. These include Julio de Castilho’s _O Senhor Antonio Feliciano de Castilho e O Senhor Anthero de Quental_ (1865, 2ᵃ ed., 1866), R. Ortigão’s _Litteratura d’Hoje_ (1866), Snr. Braga’s _As Theocracias Litterarias_ (1865), Quental’s _A Dignidade das Lettras_ (1865), and C. Castello Branco’s _Vaidades irritadas e irritantes_ (1866).

[681] The _outeiro_ (lit. ‘hill’) was an assembly of poets to _glosar motes_. Often the gathering-place was outside a convent, from the windows of which the nuns gave the _motes_ for the poets to gloss.

[682] Historical research and compilation are carried on by Snr. Fortunato de Almeida in his _Historia da Igreja em Portugal_ (1910, &c.), and by Snr. Afonso de Dornellas (_Historia e Genealogia_, 1913, &c.). Snr. Lucio de Azevedo, well known for his studies of Pombal (_O Marquez de Pombal e a sua epoca_, 1909) and Antonio Vieira (_Historia de Antonio Vieira_, 2 vols., 1918, 21), is a Brazilian.

[683] For the works of these and other authors here mentioned consult the Bibliography.

[684] It was published, with the necessary explanations, in two volumes (1874).

[685] In this most delicate upholstery, if Wedgwood and Baedeker (as well as Maple and Mappin) are introduced, they should surely be spelt correctly.

[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.