what is the literature of Cape Verde?
The literature of Cape Verde, as a part of Lusophone inter-literature, should be seen as the product of the cultural ambitions of the local Creole middle class. Before the beginning of the colonial era, the islands were pratically uninhabited, and the weight of European models is heavier than any detectable African factors. Yet the Cape Verdean literature speaks of the marginalization of the islanders, their indigence, their painful sense of inferiority in relation to metropolitan standards.
This vogue of imitation of European models may be traced back to the 19th century, a period when the islands already enjoyed a rich cultural life promoted by dozens of journalists and minor authors. Most of the names are nowadays forgotten, yet just a handful, Eugénio Tavares, José Lopes ou Pedro Cardoso, are remembered as the precursors of the early-20th century literary blooming. Be that as it may, already in 1899, Mindelo had its own Revista de Cabo Verde, a periodical with a consistent preocupation of building up the cultural identity of the archipelago. Much more significant, the journal Claridade will contribute to the same effort. Arguably, the identitary awarness might be fostered by the painful experience of isolation, especially at the moments of successive hunger crises that victimized the archipelago.
This vogue of imitation of European models may be traced back to the 19th century, a period when the islands already enjoyed a rich cultural life promoted by dozens of journalists and minor authors. Most of the names are nowadays forgotten, yet just a handful, Eugénio Tavares, José Lopes ou Pedro Cardoso, are remembered as the precursors of the early-20th century literary blooming. Be that as it may, already in 1899, Mindelo had its own Revista de Cabo Verde, a periodical with a consistent preocupation of building up the cultural identity of the archipelago. Much more significant, the journal Claridade will contribute to the same effort. Arguably, the identitary awarness might be fostered by the painful experience of isolation, especially at the moments of successive hunger crises that victimized the archipelago.
I have readGermano Almeida, O último mugido
Filinto Elísio, Zen Limites |
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I have written... nothing ...
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afropean
Our times are no longer those of the Europeans departing to see the world. Since Tayeb Salih, it's the season of migrations to the North. Such is the voyage of Joaquim Arena's protagonist, who travels to the interior of Portugal in search of its heart of darkness. At the same time, the travel is a venture of exploration and of afropeism, not quite newly invented, appealing to the descendants of Europeans and those enslaved by them. For Arena, it's a long presence, long enough to create roots, legacies, identities.
The novel starts at a conference dedicated to the Black presence in Lisbon, where a modest teacher, Leopoldina reads a paper that apparently speaks of some Renaissance paintings but in reality is related to the conundrum of personal origins. The travel to Lisbon is an exploration in such a double sense: of (artistic) representations and embodied origins. In the city, there are such places as the botanical garden in Belém, a reminder of the Portuguese World exposition in 1940, still decorated with sculpted busts representing different ethnic groups of the empire. The excursion to the rice fields of the Sado river revisits the places where the slaves lived and worked, in the 18th century. The colonial cycle does not end with the Cape Verdean immigrations in the 1960s. The migration continues, perhaps its great era is still in front of us.
Joaquim Arena, Debaixo da nossa pele - uma viagem, Lisboa: IN-CM, 2017.
Lisbon, 4th December, 2024.
The novel starts at a conference dedicated to the Black presence in Lisbon, where a modest teacher, Leopoldina reads a paper that apparently speaks of some Renaissance paintings but in reality is related to the conundrum of personal origins. The travel to Lisbon is an exploration in such a double sense: of (artistic) representations and embodied origins. In the city, there are such places as the botanical garden in Belém, a reminder of the Portuguese World exposition in 1940, still decorated with sculpted busts representing different ethnic groups of the empire. The excursion to the rice fields of the Sado river revisits the places where the slaves lived and worked, in the 18th century. The colonial cycle does not end with the Cape Verdean immigrations in the 1960s. The migration continues, perhaps its great era is still in front of us.
Joaquim Arena, Debaixo da nossa pele - uma viagem, Lisboa: IN-CM, 2017.
Lisbon, 4th December, 2024.
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Nymphs of evening skimming the wavesCape Verde is a highly literate place in West Africa. As a Lusitanist, I should have much more to say about the archipelago than just that the local literary movement started as early as 1930s with the journal Claridade. But I am lazy to recapitulate a history that has been taught to me in detail in my Lisbon times, under the now obsolete denomination of literaturas de expressão portuguesa. I would just add a short comment on a recent poetic volume that strikes me not as much through its quality of expressing the Lusophone spirit, but quite to the contrary, by its pronounced inscription in the World Literature. As already its title, Zen limites, indicates.
The author, Filinto Elísio, has nothing to do with the celebrated Arcadian Portuguese poet. He is born in Cidade da Praia, Cape Verde. His eu viajante travels as far as Passargada, in Persia, I presume. And even farther into Central Asia, with Omar Khayyam. And to Japan, which is obvious. Also westwards, to Brasil of Drummond de Andrade, and to the other archipelagos, those of Derek Walcott. It is a white man's prejudice to ask what does the poet actually understands from the world, how deep are his readings of that World Literature to which he aspires. He makes impression of merely surfing the waves of the Great Ocean with the suspicious ease of a pseudo-erudite, which is by the way so very Portuguese. Nonetheless, it is also the distinct spirit of Claridade, a group that strive to give a classical touch of Hesperides to the West African archipelago. And this is how he defines his African Lusophone post-Homerian/post-Camonian antiquity in this kind of broken and staggering aftertaste of hexameter: Os deuses, em dissídio, como por Olimpo, cogito de Luís Vaz, à sorte de Gama, diziam que à morte de Omerus, no canto de Walcott, era, em tudo, senão Odisseia, a de Ulisses. Herói, além dos ventos furibundos nos odres, nas delícias de Nausicaa, das encantadas, que preso ao mastro, e como em Quixote, Cervantes irou Alonjo Quijano aos moinhos. [...] Amar Penélope, doze machados vencer, tal flecha em Soyinka, da prole do leão, ao que Sidi, era vinho em Omar Khayyam... (p. 53) Coming so late to World Literature, he takes it surfing, to be sure; he goes skimming the very surface of the global ocean. It takes him not more than a dozen of referential texts to complete the circumnavigation of his simplified geography. But he does it with such a delightful Creole touch. Filinto Elísio, Zen Limites, Lisboa: Rosa de Porcelana, 2016. Leiden, 13.08.2019 |
