The “Conto.”
Dona Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho.
The short story, or conto, has been written with success by so many authors that it has almost become a special feature of modern Portuguese literature: Eça de Queiroz, Snr. Teixeira de Queiroz, Affonso Botelho, Fialho d’Almeida (1857-1911)—stories of Alemtejo in O Paiz das Uvas and other works—the Conde de Ficalho, the Conde de Sabugosa, Julio Cesar Machado, the Visconde de Villa Moura (Os Humildes, Bohemios, etc.), and above all, Trindade Coelho, whose Os Meus Amores are stories deliberately ingenuous, remarkable for their style. Dona Maria Amalia Vaz de Carvalho, whose husband was the poet Gonçalves Crespo, has also written contos and poems. But her chief work consists in historical studies and in critical essays. Her works comprise over twenty volumes, and especially she has won English gratitude by introducing some part of modern English literature to Portuguese and Brazilian readers.
The Drama.
“Em Portugal nunca chegou a haver theatro—a Portuguese drama has never existed,” said Garrett (life to a Portuguese is perhaps not dull enough to drive him to the theatre), and his own plays for long continued to be an isolated achievement. Recently, however, a number of playwrights by no means to be despised have arisen in Portugal. Foremost among them are Snr. Julio Dantas, Dom João da Camara (1852-1912), Antonio Ennes (1848-1901), Snr. Marcellino de Mesquita, Snr. Henrique Lopes de Mendonça and Snr. Abel Botelho, the novelist. It would almost seem as if there were two writers to every reader in Portugal. “Every passing season inundates the bookshops with a flood of brochures in verse and prose, the proof of an exaggerated output of books. It seems as if even the illiterates must be authors” (Diario de Noticias, 6th April, 1914). What most amazes the foreigner is to see the Lisbon bookshops parade a crowd of foreign books, while those in Portuguese are often tucked away in some obscure corner. Modern Portuguese literature is, unhappily, like finance and politics, largely of artificial growth, imported from abroad. There is plenty of writers but no critical reading public.
The Critics.
The excessive number of writers is no doubt due in part to the defects of a criticism which appears not to realise its power of regulating this stream of production. A little sincere condemnation may serve to prevent a whole series of inferior works of fiction or poetry, especially as Portuguese writers are very sensitive to criticism. Fortunately contemporary Portuguese literature now has a promising young critic in Senhor Fidelino de Figueiredo, who combines sympathy with sincerity and may do something to check copious, slovenly, and slavishly imitative writing, and inaugurate a school of concrete criticism. Senhor Theophile Braga does not deal with contemporary literature, but is still piling Ossa on Pelion in the wide range of his works. His long poem, A Visão dos Tempos, was published in 1864, and his Historia da Litteratura Portugueza continues to receive valuable additions from time to time. There is plenty of literary talent in Portugal, but it needs direction: it would be a thousand pities were it all to be frittered away from an inability to select and concentrate.
Art.
In art the Portuguese have never occupied a very high position. Perhaps they are too vague and romantic. Yet in early times they would seem to have excelled rather in realistic representation on a small scale than in large romantic pictures, as may be seen in the admirable, minute sculpture on the tombs at Alcobaça and in the illustrations of old manuscripts—for instance, the wonderfully life-like portrait of Prince Henry the Navigator in the Chronicle of Gomes Eannes de Azurara, a masterpiece attributed to Nuno Gonçalves, who painted the exceedingly fine triptychs now in the Lisbon Museum. What treasures of art are or were (being now transferred to museums) contained in Portugal’s churches and convents is amply shown by an excellent magazine of art now being published by Snr. Joaquim de Vasconcellos, whose researches in connection with Damião de Goes, Francisco de Hollanda, and other Portuguese classics have earned him the gratitude of all who interest themselves in Portuguese literature. This Arte Religiosa de Portugal, begun in 1914, is published monthly, each part containing eight beautifully reproduced plates, and costing 500 réis (about two shillings). No one who cares for art will regret subscribing for it, and certainly after seeing these plates they will never think of Portugal as a country without art. Nor is talent lacking in painting and in sculpture at the present day in Portugal. Witness the painters Sr. Bordallo Pinheiro, Sr. Carlos Reis, Sr. José Malhoa and others, and the sculptors, Sr. Soares dos Reis and Sr. Teixeira Lopes, whose Eça de Queiroz statue and other works have won him universal admiration. In art, as in literature, caricature usually flourishes in Portugal, and it is perhaps a useful corrective of the tendency to copiousness and vagueness of outline, and, in the hands of clever draughtsmen, has given ample proof that it need not degenerate into vulgarity. The fervent activity in many fields gives good hope, at any rate, of a twentieth-century crop of writers and artists who may maintain or surpass the achievement of the nineteenth.
The Language.