The Portuguese language as spoken in the provinces and by the peasants is far clearer and more attractive than as it is often spoken at Lisbon. As to the written language, it is too often debased by Gallicisms and by sesquipedalian words. It appears to shun directness like the plague. A “large crowd” becomes an “innumerable multitude,” a “fine view” is an “admirable panorama,” a horse is a solipede, a dog is um exemplar canino (O Seculo, 21st June, 1915). The terse phrase, “Wait and see,” translated into modern Portuguese, would become “Will you have the goodness to adopt an attitude of expectation and devote yourself to a consideration of the progress of events.” A sentence is often a great wave of abstract terms which leaves the reader stunned and breathless. Take the following from the Parnasso Portuguez Moderno (Lisbon, 1877): “A par das grandes descobertas scientificas do nosso seculo que pela via inductiva conduziram á demonstração integral dos phenomenos cosmicos pelo movimento etherodynamico.” All that this really means is “Beside the great discoveries made by science in our time in cosmic phenomena.” Or attempt to extract the character of the unfortunate Luis de Camões from this: “A forma da genialidade de Camões não foi a de uma sobrexcitação da sensibilidade mantendo em estado morbido os elementos nervosos; a boa cultura synthetica, completandose pela synessia da sua vida em diversissimos meios teve um objectivo para onde convergiram todas as assimilisações mentaes e adaptações praticas.” In a single page of one recent novel occur no less than fourteen abstract words ending in -ade.
True Portuguese.
Yet there is ample evidence to show that Portuguese at its best is well qualified to rival or even excel Castilian. It has by nature that softness and pliancy which the Castilian only attains exceptionally, at the hands of genius, and in Portuguese it is for the master hand to give this language that force and concision which comes naturally to the Castilian, and which was once a characteristic of Portuguese also. The saying, “Fortune usually kicks a man when he’s down,” is expressed in Portuguese in three words, “Sobre queda coices”—“after fall kicks,” and innumerable words are in Portuguese reduced to half the length they have in Latin and in other modern Romance languages. Solus, alone, becomes só; dolor, grief, dôr, major môr. As to its softness, delightful words such as chuva, rain, and all those words expressive of bittersweet regret and similar feelings—saudade, saudoso, meigo, mavioso—occur continually. But the tendency has been always to praise and exaggerate this softness, whereas it needs a corrective of terseness if it is not to become excessive. Even occasional harshnesses of construction are not amiss. The uglinesses and thicknesses of Portuguese pronunciation and spelling are of comparatively modern growth. Open some folio of the sixteenth century, and you will find not the nasal ão, but the straightforward am, not prompto but pronto, not lucta but luta, not tracto but trato—everything clearer and more direct. And as the scholar goes to his books the politician must turn to the people, not the people to which the Lisbon political press addresses itself, but the inhabitants of the remote provinces which have remained as stationary as old folios in a convent library, and preserve many uncorrupted excellences of language and custom. And indeed this is no matter of vain pedantry: for unless the language, and the citizens too, hark back to the sixteenth century, they are doomed to perish. No great literature can come of Portuguese as it is at present too often spoken and written, and without a literature a nation dwindles and dies. (Witness the Basques, who have the vigour of six ordinary nations, and are losing their language and nationality because they have never given much attention to the written word, content with their splendid old games and customs.) It is a pity that the passion for politics in Portugal has not inspired its devotees with nobler prose; though there are some journalists who are also men of letters, the majority of articles published are scarcely written in anything worthy of the name of prose, and this is the more regrettable as politics in Portugal stretches its net so wide, and thousands read the newspaper who have never opened a book.
The Political Octopus.
Nearly a century ago, that is at about the time of the introduction into Portugal of constitutional government, a Portuguese writer proposed that the vanity of his countrymen should be turned to account by bestowing such titles as Viscount and Baron on rich persons according as they built a large or small number of houses, a large or small village in the more deserted parts of the country. Succeeding governments seemed to adopt the suggestion, only the titles were given systematically to those rich brazileiros and others who paid in so many contos to the public exchequer or who helped by their local influence to win an election. Thus, politics became more and more a dreadful octopus, its tentacles closing round and crushing the life out of the nation. Even those who do not know a ballot-box from a sheep-trough or a Minister from a counter-jumper, find themselves compelled to take part in politics. They may gain nothing from it, but they cannot escape it. And if a man wishes to get anything done, if he desires a road mended, a church built, a son placed, a title conferred, an opponent imprisoned, it is possible to arrange the matter, by means of politics. As to Lisbon, of course, it would not be Lisbon were it not for politics. Alas for the clubs of the Chiado, the cafés of the Rocio, the arcades of Black House Square, and even the shops, the streets, the praças, where men do gather together and gossip, were there not a new government to discuss every three or four months. The country may be driven to the dogs by these continual changes, but the politicians, amateur and professional, are in clover. And indeed this soft air and warm sun needs a spice of maledicencia and criticism of politicians. In England the climate affords an abundant topic, in Portugal the days are often monotonously beautiful, sometimes monotonously rainy, so that whereas people in England discuss a late fall of snow or an early frost, in Portugal they pass the time over the fall of the Government or a partial ministerial crisis. A wonderful amount of excellent wit and intelligence is expended over the subject, and it is extraordinary how every shopkeeper even, every newspaper-boy almost, has his political views, his favourite politician. Men whose education consists in being able to spell out the newspaper of their predilection will discuss the political situation with considerable eloquence and knowledge. Each political group counts as many real adherents as may fit into a not very large hall, and each politician who takes office is the target at which all the other political groups aim the shafts of their ridicule.
Political Groups.
Nowhere have political parties been more numerous and more picturesque in their names and their theories than in Spain and Portugal. In Spain at a recent general election members of nearly a dozen political parties were returned to Parliament, and in Portugal since the introduction of constitutional government there have been Cartistas and Septembristas, Regeneradores, Dissidentes, Reformistas, Nacionalistas, Progressistas, and since the Revolution of 1910, Evolucionistas, Independentes, Reformistas, Integralistas, Unionistas, and Democratas. These are but a few of the many parties which have misinterpreted and abused the Parliamentary system in Portugal, some of them with names and actions as vague as Emilio Castelar’s celebrated Posibilistas. To take the present time there are the “Democrats” under the leadership of Dr. Affonso Augusto da Costa (their chief newspaper organs are O Mundo, A Montanha and A Patria), the “Evolutionists” under the leadership of Dr. José Antonio de Almeida (organ, A Republica), the “Unionists,” led by Dr. Manuel Brito Camacho (A Lucta), the “Independents” or Reformistas under Senhor Machado Santos (O Intransigente). The Democrats consider themselves the direct continuation of the original Republican party, and thus in a sense the only legitimate party, the others having branched off from it since the Revolution. These four are the definitely constituted Republican parties, besides which there are the more advanced Radical Republicans, the Syndicalists (O Sindicalista), Socialists (O Socialista), etc. There are also the Miguelists (A Nação), Manuelists (O Dia), and a Royalist party which may be called Sebastianist, and which vaguely desires the return of former conditions without having any very definite political creed. It must be remembered that there are but a million and a half Portuguese who can read and write, and that the Republic has disfranchised the remaining 4,500,000. But even of the 1,500,000 the majority take no active part in politics. The parties are in fact small personal groups collecting round any politician of intelligence or energy, or who knows the political ropes and the art of placing or promising to place his friends, and as a consequence they are too much inclined to give prominence to small personal questions and storms in the Lisbon teacup. The followers of the various parties are also known as Affonsistas, Almeidistas, Camachistas, as before the Revolution there were Franquistas, Henriquistas, Teixeiristas, etc.
Ministries and Elections.
These groups bicker with all the venom of personal hatred amid the most profound indifference of the country. The formation of a new party or a new ministry has nothing to do with the country. Even were elections in Portugal to be regarded as a sign of the people’s will, there had been but one general election since the Revolution at a time when the number of governments had to be counted on the fingers of both hands, and the Ministers of Finance on fingers and toes. So a new party will spring up in Lisbon and have little root in the country outside Lisbon. The attitude of the people towards all these politicians is one of profound distrust. They give them credit for sufficient intelligence to understand their own interests, but not sufficient to understand the interests of the country. A peasant in one of Eça de Queiroz’ novels is of opinion that quem manda lucra, and this melancholy sentiment (that he who has charge of affairs feathers his nest) may be heard at the present day. It is not said in anger, but as the expression of a very natural fact. They would be surprised if it were otherwise. While the unfortunate Minister of Finance is gazing at an empty exchequer, they imagine him plunging both hands in a rich store for himself and his friends. And in a sense they are right. It is expected of ministers in office to help their friends, in their business affairs, and to find places for their political followers somewhere in that huge bureaucracy which has been the bane of Portugal since the sixteenth century. And, of course, each new government appoints new civil governors and new mayors and usually many other officials in the provinces.