what is the literature of Timor?
There are ready-made postcolonial answers to such questions. For many people, the literature of Timor Lorosae (the state on the eastern end of the island, former Portuguese colony) is simply a tiny Lusophone body of writing, with such names as Luís Cardoso (or just the name of Luís Cardoso). But of course, the question is much more complex.
The indigenous population of the island, that to some degree accepted Christianity, and thus contrasting sharply with Indonesian Muslim identity, has an oral heritage of its own, but no written tradition. The ethnic group that is considered as Timor's autochthonous population are the Atoni ("people of the dry land"), a Melanesian ethnos speaking Vaiqueno. Another ethnic group are the Tetun-speaking Belu. Overall, there are some 15 tongues spoken in Timor, belonging to Indonesian and Papuan language families.
In the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century, Timor was in the orbit of the empire of Majapahit. Around 1478, this rule was destroyed by the newly Islamicized Malai. Before the coming of the Portuguese in the beginning of the 16th century (1512), the autochthonous inhabitants were united under the Waiwiku-Wehale monarchy, suzerain of petty kingdoms, each of them with its own leader called liurai. Only some Chinese and Javanese traders were visiting these shores for the trade of sandalwood. The Portuguese were the first to settle down. With time, this marginal part of their maritime empire got its own rather disreputable population called the Topasses, or the "Black Portuguese", a group formed by the descendants of sailors and traders.
For centuries to come, the production of any written records continued extremely slow. Some accounts on the organization of the first Franciscan, Jesuit and Dominican missions to Timor may be found in Church literature, such as Frei Joao dos Santos' Ethiopia Oriental or Francisco de Sousa's O Oriente conquistado a Jesus Cristo pelos Padres da Companhia de Jesus da Província de Goa.
It was only in the 20th century that the island got a coherent literary expression, with such books as A ilha verde e vermelha de Timor, by Alberto Osório de Castro, published in fascicles in the review Seara Nova, in Lisbon, between 1928 and 1929, and in volume, by Agencia Geral das Colónias, in 1943. It was a hybrid text, a specific type of colonial monograph, interweaving such elements as a travelogue written in poetic prose, where the author jotted down his observations concerning the land and its inhabitants, fragments of ethnographic work, with translations of traditional songs, and the type of discourse that we might qualify as "academic" or "scientific". Similar mixture of scientific and poetic aspirations may be found in the writings of Rui Cinatti, a Portuguese botanicist who visited the island in 1946-1947 and 1951-1955. Many years after his disenchanted return from Timor, he still published poetic work about the island, such as Uma sequência timorense (1970). Another colonial book, more uniform in its tone, was the travel essay, or a poetic travelogue, of Paulo Braga, A ilha dos homens nus, in which the island "of naked men" is almost a libertarian paradise, with its fraternity and its erotic freedom.
The history of Timor during ww2 was quite dramatic. Due to its estrategic location, it was occupied in 1941 by the Australians and the Dutch. However, in February 1942, the island was attacked by the Japanese, resulting in thousands of casualties among the local population. After the war, contrary to what happened in Indonesia, the population of Timor accepted the Portuguese rule. The independence of Timor was proclaimed at the moment of the disintegration of the Portuguese colonial empire, in 1974. Yet the territory was never properly "decolonized"; merely a few days later, it was occupied by Indonesian forces. The situation caused a profound implication of the Portuguese state and society in the events, making the cause of independence of Timor Lorosae extremely popular in Portugal throughout the decade of 1990s. Those troubled years of struggle have also been portrayed in a 2009 Australian movie Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly and based on a novel by Jill Jolliffe, The Balibo Conspiracy. It is a story of five Australian journalists who disappeared somewhere south of Dili.
At the present time, as I have already mentioned, the most recognizable Lusophone name associated with Timor is Luís Cardoso, a writer born on the island in 1958. Although he benefited from Portuguese education, first in a seminary and then at the Institute of Agronomy in Lisbon, he rebuilt his links with the spiritual universe of the islanders, working among the Timorese refugees in Portugal. He published various novels and short stories, from Crónica de uma travessia – A época do ai-dik-funam (1997) and Olhos de Coruja, Olhos de Gato Bravo (2001) to O plantador de abóboras (2020), of which I speak at length below. Yet speaking of Lusophone literature of Timor, it is necessary to keep in mind that the population of the island, as a whole, does not know Portuguese. Usually, the Timoreans only know some basic prayers, such as Paternoster, in Portuguese, the effect of centuries-old missionary presence. For the rest, what remains from the colonial era are some Portuguese words interspersed in Tetun.
My favourite bibliography
John Villiers, As derradeiras do mundo: The Dominican missions and the sandalwood trade in the Lesser Sunda Islands.
The indigenous population of the island, that to some degree accepted Christianity, and thus contrasting sharply with Indonesian Muslim identity, has an oral heritage of its own, but no written tradition. The ethnic group that is considered as Timor's autochthonous population are the Atoni ("people of the dry land"), a Melanesian ethnos speaking Vaiqueno. Another ethnic group are the Tetun-speaking Belu. Overall, there are some 15 tongues spoken in Timor, belonging to Indonesian and Papuan language families.
In the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century, Timor was in the orbit of the empire of Majapahit. Around 1478, this rule was destroyed by the newly Islamicized Malai. Before the coming of the Portuguese in the beginning of the 16th century (1512), the autochthonous inhabitants were united under the Waiwiku-Wehale monarchy, suzerain of petty kingdoms, each of them with its own leader called liurai. Only some Chinese and Javanese traders were visiting these shores for the trade of sandalwood. The Portuguese were the first to settle down. With time, this marginal part of their maritime empire got its own rather disreputable population called the Topasses, or the "Black Portuguese", a group formed by the descendants of sailors and traders.
For centuries to come, the production of any written records continued extremely slow. Some accounts on the organization of the first Franciscan, Jesuit and Dominican missions to Timor may be found in Church literature, such as Frei Joao dos Santos' Ethiopia Oriental or Francisco de Sousa's O Oriente conquistado a Jesus Cristo pelos Padres da Companhia de Jesus da Província de Goa.
It was only in the 20th century that the island got a coherent literary expression, with such books as A ilha verde e vermelha de Timor, by Alberto Osório de Castro, published in fascicles in the review Seara Nova, in Lisbon, between 1928 and 1929, and in volume, by Agencia Geral das Colónias, in 1943. It was a hybrid text, a specific type of colonial monograph, interweaving such elements as a travelogue written in poetic prose, where the author jotted down his observations concerning the land and its inhabitants, fragments of ethnographic work, with translations of traditional songs, and the type of discourse that we might qualify as "academic" or "scientific". Similar mixture of scientific and poetic aspirations may be found in the writings of Rui Cinatti, a Portuguese botanicist who visited the island in 1946-1947 and 1951-1955. Many years after his disenchanted return from Timor, he still published poetic work about the island, such as Uma sequência timorense (1970). Another colonial book, more uniform in its tone, was the travel essay, or a poetic travelogue, of Paulo Braga, A ilha dos homens nus, in which the island "of naked men" is almost a libertarian paradise, with its fraternity and its erotic freedom.
The history of Timor during ww2 was quite dramatic. Due to its estrategic location, it was occupied in 1941 by the Australians and the Dutch. However, in February 1942, the island was attacked by the Japanese, resulting in thousands of casualties among the local population. After the war, contrary to what happened in Indonesia, the population of Timor accepted the Portuguese rule. The independence of Timor was proclaimed at the moment of the disintegration of the Portuguese colonial empire, in 1974. Yet the territory was never properly "decolonized"; merely a few days later, it was occupied by Indonesian forces. The situation caused a profound implication of the Portuguese state and society in the events, making the cause of independence of Timor Lorosae extremely popular in Portugal throughout the decade of 1990s. Those troubled years of struggle have also been portrayed in a 2009 Australian movie Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly and based on a novel by Jill Jolliffe, The Balibo Conspiracy. It is a story of five Australian journalists who disappeared somewhere south of Dili.
At the present time, as I have already mentioned, the most recognizable Lusophone name associated with Timor is Luís Cardoso, a writer born on the island in 1958. Although he benefited from Portuguese education, first in a seminary and then at the Institute of Agronomy in Lisbon, he rebuilt his links with the spiritual universe of the islanders, working among the Timorese refugees in Portugal. He published various novels and short stories, from Crónica de uma travessia – A época do ai-dik-funam (1997) and Olhos de Coruja, Olhos de Gato Bravo (2001) to O plantador de abóboras (2020), of which I speak at length below. Yet speaking of Lusophone literature of Timor, it is necessary to keep in mind that the population of the island, as a whole, does not know Portuguese. Usually, the Timoreans only know some basic prayers, such as Paternoster, in Portuguese, the effect of centuries-old missionary presence. For the rest, what remains from the colonial era are some Portuguese words interspersed in Tetun.
My favourite bibliography
John Villiers, As derradeiras do mundo: The Dominican missions and the sandalwood trade in the Lesser Sunda Islands.
I have readLuís Cardoso, O plantador de abóboras (Sonata para uma neblina) (2020), Crónica de uma travessia. A época do Ai-Dik-Funam (1997)
Alberto Osório de Castro, A ilha verde e vermelha de Timor (1943) Paulo Braga, A Ilha dos homens nus (1936) |
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I have written... nothing ...
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delirium & erudition
Sinto o perfume das Pergulárias. Lindas convolvuláceas floridas de azul pálido ou de branco, nas azinhagas do caminho, os longos cachos de flores roxas da Mucuna pruriens, inúmeros feijoeiros bravos (Lablab vulgaris), a Clitoria ternatea de flor branca, as primeiras dessa côr que vejo desde Gôa e Surabaia, as flores amarelas da Cassia tora, com cuja semente o povo de Gôa faz um caféç a flor branca e o pepinosinho côr de granada das babassas, ou tendelins de Gôa (Coccinia indica), as Datura de grandes cálices brancos ..., as Grewia, o Heliotropum indicum, de flores azuis em cachos escorpioides e sem aroma, ... a herva formiguera ou de Santa Maria (Chenopodium) ... ... Sôbre uma grande árvore, uma coloquíntida (Citrullus colocynthis) sólta um verde manto núbio picado de estrêlas de oiro ... (p. 3-4).
A ilha verde e vermelha de Timor, by Alberto Osório de Castro is a hybrid text, presumably aspiring to the status of a learned monograph. The book if stuffed with sesquipedalian adjectives, Latin names of animals and plants, quotations of fellow scholars, references to other colonial explorations and even the art of other colonial empires. As I guess, it is for the display of the authors erudition, rather than enlightenment, that the local construction ("barraca de atalaia indígena") is compared to similar buildings sketched by Russian artists in their own territories in Central Asia ("a moda do Turquestan dos quadros de B. Wereschshaguine", p. 5 -- he probably means Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin, a Russian painter and traveller).
Be that as it may, it is clear that Osório de Castro overstrains his resources to give an adequate description of the tropical island. What shines brightly through the interstices of the text is the delirium that overcomes the colonial subject who strives to remain ponderous, reasonable, and learned while the surrounding nature attacks him with voluptous Clitoria and scorpion-shaped blossoms ("cachos escorpioides", p. 3). He greets the species he had already known in Goa as good old companions soothing his confusion and sense of estrangement. Meanwhile, he tries to keep his record exactly, noting hours of departures and arivals ("partimos sol o sol esbrazeante das 2 horas para Liquiçá, onde chegaremos pelas 3 e três quartos", p. 4). As he navigates among plants, he also tries not to lose the track of his social duties, carefully enumerating the names of Portuguese officials and governors, and their Dutch counterparts from the other half of the island. Nature and the insipient civilization ("ruas amplas já traçadas para os bairros do porvir", p. 5), everything so beautiful, so harmonious, calling for exploitation, the brush of an artist, a separate monograph on each aspect. Osório de Castro is in full descriptive delirium. He will remain with the plants for another dozen of pages, only to switch, progressively, to bees, voices of different animals resounding in the twilight (geckos, wild lynxes, owls), and various scents and odors penetrating the air, only to recover, after some dense pages, his dream of primordial forests ("É um paraíso arbóreo da época seccundária da terra, evocado no sonho paleontológico", p. 24).
Clearly, work is a colonial invention; all the coffee plantations are recent, and the islanders try to digest the novelty chanting the agricultural revolution and their new identity of Governor's peasants in their songs ("Não somos do sol nem da terra, mas do Embóote (Governador). Dantes não queríamos nem sabíamos trabalhar. Mas agora já nos ensinaram, já queremos trabalhar", p, 25). Yet Osório de Castro does not have conceptual means to muse on this shift of lifestyles. And he barely spends a short paragraph to mark the existence of an "androgyne", a transsexual individual integrates in a female chorus ("No grupo das mulheres uma destaca, vestida à malaia, como quási tôdas as outras, mas com barbada cara de homem, todo o aspecto viril. Explicam-me que era um andrógino, e como tal passado pela tribu para o rancho «do género feminino»", p. 26). Also, he is only slightly interested in luwak, a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee beans, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet; apparently, he takes the whole story, about which he had read in a foreign journal, for a legend (p. 27). He prefers the history of the nutmeg, that provokes so naturally another wave of his erudition, speaking of the Luso-Dutch rivalries in the Moluccas and returning, over and over again, to the paradigm whose richness he would perhaps like to equal: the Peregrination, by Fernão Mendes Pinto.
Alberto Osório de Castro, A ilha verde e vermelha de Timor, Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1943.
Lisbon, 11th December, 2024.
Be that as it may, it is clear that Osório de Castro overstrains his resources to give an adequate description of the tropical island. What shines brightly through the interstices of the text is the delirium that overcomes the colonial subject who strives to remain ponderous, reasonable, and learned while the surrounding nature attacks him with voluptous Clitoria and scorpion-shaped blossoms ("cachos escorpioides", p. 3). He greets the species he had already known in Goa as good old companions soothing his confusion and sense of estrangement. Meanwhile, he tries to keep his record exactly, noting hours of departures and arivals ("partimos sol o sol esbrazeante das 2 horas para Liquiçá, onde chegaremos pelas 3 e três quartos", p. 4). As he navigates among plants, he also tries not to lose the track of his social duties, carefully enumerating the names of Portuguese officials and governors, and their Dutch counterparts from the other half of the island. Nature and the insipient civilization ("ruas amplas já traçadas para os bairros do porvir", p. 5), everything so beautiful, so harmonious, calling for exploitation, the brush of an artist, a separate monograph on each aspect. Osório de Castro is in full descriptive delirium. He will remain with the plants for another dozen of pages, only to switch, progressively, to bees, voices of different animals resounding in the twilight (geckos, wild lynxes, owls), and various scents and odors penetrating the air, only to recover, after some dense pages, his dream of primordial forests ("É um paraíso arbóreo da época seccundária da terra, evocado no sonho paleontológico", p. 24).
Clearly, work is a colonial invention; all the coffee plantations are recent, and the islanders try to digest the novelty chanting the agricultural revolution and their new identity of Governor's peasants in their songs ("Não somos do sol nem da terra, mas do Embóote (Governador). Dantes não queríamos nem sabíamos trabalhar. Mas agora já nos ensinaram, já queremos trabalhar", p, 25). Yet Osório de Castro does not have conceptual means to muse on this shift of lifestyles. And he barely spends a short paragraph to mark the existence of an "androgyne", a transsexual individual integrates in a female chorus ("No grupo das mulheres uma destaca, vestida à malaia, como quási tôdas as outras, mas com barbada cara de homem, todo o aspecto viril. Explicam-me que era um andrógino, e como tal passado pela tribu para o rancho «do género feminino»", p. 26). Also, he is only slightly interested in luwak, a coffee that consists of partially digested coffee beans, which have been eaten and defecated by the Asian palm civet; apparently, he takes the whole story, about which he had read in a foreign journal, for a legend (p. 27). He prefers the history of the nutmeg, that provokes so naturally another wave of his erudition, speaking of the Luso-Dutch rivalries in the Moluccas and returning, over and over again, to the paradigm whose richness he would perhaps like to equal: the Peregrination, by Fernão Mendes Pinto.
Alberto Osório de Castro, A ilha verde e vermelha de Timor, Lisboa: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1943.
Lisbon, 11th December, 2024.
the island of naked men
A ilha dos homens nus is a 40-page-long text published by Paulo Braga in "Cadernos coloniais" by Editorial Cosmos in Lisbon (no. 30). He was a stable collaborator of the colonial series, having published other contributions on Timor: A terra, a gente e os costumes de Timor (no. 7), Dili-Bázar Téte (no. 14), Nos Antípodas (no. 21).
The text is essentially an idealized travelogue, starting on Pulo-Cambing (a Ilha dos Carneiros, Ataúro), a tiny piece of land to the north of Timor. It is described as a dreamed, imaginary island of adventure, "um pouco Robinson Crusoe, um pouco Tarzan" (p. 4). The naked men appear at the very moment of the arrival of the traveller, emerging out of darkness and out of turbulent water: "Curvados á volta do barco, a puxá-lo para a areia, meia dúzia se homens nus saíam da água como tentáculos de um monstro". Yet as the protagonist overcomes his fear, the appeal of unrestrained, free life is in the air. First of all, he tosses his necktie into the ocean. It would only be a hindrance in breathing the sweetly scented tropical air. The night in Pulo-Cambing is "negra, serena, louca de aromas morfinizantes [...] a desfazer-se em perfumes, sombras, mistério e ansiedades voluptuosas" (p. 6-7). This is the world where fancies take the place of duties and vice versa: "os desejos nascem como imperativos" (p. 8).
The description of the natural and human conditions in the Part II begins with the dry season in the jungle, full of yellowed leaves: "as próprias pedras tém uma cor amarelada, de tanto que o sol as vai queimando" (p. 12). It is a world of reptiles. Yet higher up, on the slopes of the mountain, the vegetation is luxuriant. And on the other side of the range, there is a blessed, edenic valley, full of waterfalls, tiny birds... and the naked men again, their nudity gaining an Adamic resonance. Naked men... and a naked woman!
This is how the author comes to the description of usages and ways of life. The inhabitants of the island dive for pearls and live in houses built on the top of tree trunks, where the wind is softer and horizons larger. In their material poverty, they practice what the author calls "a emigração espiritual" (p. 15). They are "estetas do ar livre", sportsmen with no vile interest in material possessions (p. 16). No wonder that the terrain is a common property; the earth belongs simply to those who feel inclined to cultivate it, while the majority is quite satisfied with the wild fruits that they find. Only the tax exiged by the Portuguese overlords makes them think about producing anything whatsoever. In this southern paradise, work is a colonial invention, and it remains as flimsy as the Portuguese power over the island. The social organization of local population is qualified as a perfect communism (p. 20). Only in Raimeta, a village serving as a capital of the island, there is a dozen of assimilados, "homens nus que já se vestem" (p. 21).
The only island treasure of interest to the foreigners are the pearls. The divers sell them at a price that amounts to theft. Yet, disinteressed about propertly, they only vaguely sense their exploitation. They can hardly imagine the destinies of those jewels. "Se ele soubesse sonhar com o destino das pérolas..." (p. 26). But much more beautiful than the black pearls are the eyes of those people, "cheios de uma docura indizível e estranha" (p. 27), especially those of women, speaking of love. Love that makes part of the natural order of the paradisiac island, and of its "perfectly communist" social organization: "Nem sobre as mulheres o homem nu aprendeu a monopolizar direitos" (p. 28). The author sees local usages even more unrestraining than those of the main island of Timor. No wonder that love is also the main topic of the local art: "Homens e mulheres aparecem representados em séries successivas de atitudes mais ou menos lúbricas" (p. 36). Yet it is all very simple, or the colonial author makes it simple: "As mulheres [...] param sentadas a praia e esperam. Param nas sombras do vale e esperam. Caminham ao luar e esperam. Quando chega alguem, olham receosas e fogem. Mas, se as perseguem, deixam-se sempre apanhar" (p. 28). And this is what Paulo Braga calls "a tragedia e a aventura" of his island.
Paulo Braga, A ilha dos homens nus, Lisboa: Editorial Cosmos, 1936.
Lisbon, 9th December, 2024.
The text is essentially an idealized travelogue, starting on Pulo-Cambing (a Ilha dos Carneiros, Ataúro), a tiny piece of land to the north of Timor. It is described as a dreamed, imaginary island of adventure, "um pouco Robinson Crusoe, um pouco Tarzan" (p. 4). The naked men appear at the very moment of the arrival of the traveller, emerging out of darkness and out of turbulent water: "Curvados á volta do barco, a puxá-lo para a areia, meia dúzia se homens nus saíam da água como tentáculos de um monstro". Yet as the protagonist overcomes his fear, the appeal of unrestrained, free life is in the air. First of all, he tosses his necktie into the ocean. It would only be a hindrance in breathing the sweetly scented tropical air. The night in Pulo-Cambing is "negra, serena, louca de aromas morfinizantes [...] a desfazer-se em perfumes, sombras, mistério e ansiedades voluptuosas" (p. 6-7). This is the world where fancies take the place of duties and vice versa: "os desejos nascem como imperativos" (p. 8).
The description of the natural and human conditions in the Part II begins with the dry season in the jungle, full of yellowed leaves: "as próprias pedras tém uma cor amarelada, de tanto que o sol as vai queimando" (p. 12). It is a world of reptiles. Yet higher up, on the slopes of the mountain, the vegetation is luxuriant. And on the other side of the range, there is a blessed, edenic valley, full of waterfalls, tiny birds... and the naked men again, their nudity gaining an Adamic resonance. Naked men... and a naked woman!
This is how the author comes to the description of usages and ways of life. The inhabitants of the island dive for pearls and live in houses built on the top of tree trunks, where the wind is softer and horizons larger. In their material poverty, they practice what the author calls "a emigração espiritual" (p. 15). They are "estetas do ar livre", sportsmen with no vile interest in material possessions (p. 16). No wonder that the terrain is a common property; the earth belongs simply to those who feel inclined to cultivate it, while the majority is quite satisfied with the wild fruits that they find. Only the tax exiged by the Portuguese overlords makes them think about producing anything whatsoever. In this southern paradise, work is a colonial invention, and it remains as flimsy as the Portuguese power over the island. The social organization of local population is qualified as a perfect communism (p. 20). Only in Raimeta, a village serving as a capital of the island, there is a dozen of assimilados, "homens nus que já se vestem" (p. 21).
The only island treasure of interest to the foreigners are the pearls. The divers sell them at a price that amounts to theft. Yet, disinteressed about propertly, they only vaguely sense their exploitation. They can hardly imagine the destinies of those jewels. "Se ele soubesse sonhar com o destino das pérolas..." (p. 26). But much more beautiful than the black pearls are the eyes of those people, "cheios de uma docura indizível e estranha" (p. 27), especially those of women, speaking of love. Love that makes part of the natural order of the paradisiac island, and of its "perfectly communist" social organization: "Nem sobre as mulheres o homem nu aprendeu a monopolizar direitos" (p. 28). The author sees local usages even more unrestraining than those of the main island of Timor. No wonder that love is also the main topic of the local art: "Homens e mulheres aparecem representados em séries successivas de atitudes mais ou menos lúbricas" (p. 36). Yet it is all very simple, or the colonial author makes it simple: "As mulheres [...] param sentadas a praia e esperam. Param nas sombras do vale e esperam. Caminham ao luar e esperam. Quando chega alguem, olham receosas e fogem. Mas, se as perseguem, deixam-se sempre apanhar" (p. 28). And this is what Paulo Braga calls "a tragedia e a aventura" of his island.
Paulo Braga, A ilha dos homens nus, Lisboa: Editorial Cosmos, 1936.
Lisbon, 9th December, 2024.
the origin of dreams
Ai-Dik-Funam means the beginning of all dreams. Luís Cardoso's book is a collection of autobiographic texts concerning his life between infancy and the end of adolescence. It may also be considered as a book of a travel across Timor, experienced by a boy accompanied by his father, and then the maritime passage to the nearby island of Ataúro. Another iniciatic passsage is completed when the boy reads the Bible stolen from a soldier, and finds in it the narration of Exodus, a premonition of his nation's destiny, with a vague Promissed Land on the horizon. Overall, the book is full of various religious hints and references, like the whiteness of the garments endorsed on the day of his first communion. Such notes sound strange and probably false under the pen of any European writer. But it is somehow more natural in Timor, where compulsive, colonial Christianity became the center of a complex spiritual worldview, or rather way of being in the world.
In the background of the personal story, there is the constant, heavily-weighing presence of History, with such events as the revolt and failure of the liurai of Manufahi, D. Boaventura, in 1912. There is a striking sincerity in the way how the author gives full account of his familiar history on the side of the Portuguese, that might characterize him as a descendant of traitors and collaborationists, rewarded for their support of the colonial hegemony with educational opportunities. Everything depends on the point of view and the corresponding narrations. Cardoso's effort is to transcend all of them. The history of things seems to help him: the account of the petrol lamp shaped as a prelate clothed in white, with a colonial hat on his head, a perfect metaphor of illumination recieved from the Portuguese, must be read as ironic. The author recollects how he learned how to write in the light of this petrol lamp, and how its light attracted bats and owls, and other creatures that "vinham de muito longe da ilha, do fundo da terra e dos mares, do horizonte dos meus sonhos e pesadelos" (p. 15).
Luís Cardoso, Crónica de uma travessia. A época do Ai-Dik-Funam, Lisboa: Publicacoes Dom Quixote, 1997.
Lisbon, 10th December, 2024.
In the background of the personal story, there is the constant, heavily-weighing presence of History, with such events as the revolt and failure of the liurai of Manufahi, D. Boaventura, in 1912. There is a striking sincerity in the way how the author gives full account of his familiar history on the side of the Portuguese, that might characterize him as a descendant of traitors and collaborationists, rewarded for their support of the colonial hegemony with educational opportunities. Everything depends on the point of view and the corresponding narrations. Cardoso's effort is to transcend all of them. The history of things seems to help him: the account of the petrol lamp shaped as a prelate clothed in white, with a colonial hat on his head, a perfect metaphor of illumination recieved from the Portuguese, must be read as ironic. The author recollects how he learned how to write in the light of this petrol lamp, and how its light attracted bats and owls, and other creatures that "vinham de muito longe da ilha, do fundo da terra e dos mares, do horizonte dos meus sonhos e pesadelos" (p. 15).
Luís Cardoso, Crónica de uma travessia. A época do Ai-Dik-Funam, Lisboa: Publicacoes Dom Quixote, 1997.
Lisbon, 10th December, 2024.
pumpkins planted and sown
(female frustration in Manu-mutin)
Irão dizer que enloqueceste por teres vindo até à fazenda da noiva mutin de Manu-mutin para lhe pedir se podias plantar abóboras. Semeiam-se abóboras. Aqui em Manu-mutim plantamos durante o ano inteiro; plantas, pedras, animais, casas e pessoas. Planto-me nesta cadeira de lona a ouvir o grasnar de um ganso do qual apesar de ter desaparecido há tanto tempo, ainda se pode escutar a voz nesta varanda, virada do avesso we para dentro de mim (p. 27)
O plantador de abóboras may be qualified as a small novel, constructed as a three-movements sonata. There is a female voice, aware of the fact that pumpkins are sown, speaking to an absent male who believed they should be planted (a surprizing error for someone who, as we will discover later on, wanted to study agronomy; what is significant, the male character, due to resemblance of biographical circumstances, may eventually be read as the author's alter ego and a metaphor of his personal regret for being absent from the island for the greater part of his life). Timor is described not as a paradisic island, but as the republic of Manu-mutin, characterized by a year-round rainfall. This is why the island is permanently shrouded in fogs to which the literary sonata is dedicated.
The female figure on the veranda of her house strangely opening over her inner landscape ("uma varanda virada do avesso", p. 15) is waiting - just as the local women were supposed to wait in Paulo Braga's travelog? Or rather, like the women in a country from where war has chased men, left behind in a company of a white goose (of which only the honk remains). The whole story has a political resonance, even if it may eventually remain obscure for a global reader, who naturally has no idea of the political upheavals going on in such a remote corner of the world. The blunder of planting pumpkins was committed by Xanana Gusmão, the leader of resistence who, in a speech, mentioned his desire of planting pumpkins rather than leadering the guerilla. This is how he proved to be so woefully alienanted from his people's everyday life -- or from the life of women who cultivated pumpkins to feed their families during the Indonesian occupation. On the other hand, the country's history is translated into stories about different kinds of birds, just like the petty kings, liurai, are the cocks who fought among themselves and couldn't get rid of the foreign ones (cock fights are a traditional diversion in Timor). Apparently, also the current politics are those of a poultry house, following the rules of bright feathers, not quite those of democracy: "Ganhou o galo extraordinário, o mais vistoso, de penas brilhantes e lustrosas, por ser astuto e por se ter preparado melhor com as manhas do tempo em que lutavam contra os galos estrangeiros. Passou a ser o dono da capoeira. Nunca mais outro galo cantou" (p. 28). It could be a summary of so many postcolonial histories...
The female narrator that presents herself as a "foreign bride" (would it be the meaning of the Portuguese-Tetum expression "a noiva mutin"?) is a descendant of a Mozambican soldier, a Landim, a "black cock" brought to the island by the Portuguese state to pacify a local revolt in 1912. Family lore, transmitted orally, is interwoven with the colonial history, even if Timor is the farthest end of the empire, a ruined castle in its outskirts, a mere remainder of the long-gone glory of the Estado da India. Be that as it may, the bride's white gown is splashed with her father's blood, which is yet another powerful symbol of the intricate and ambiguous colonial-decolonial-postcolonial history. It is synthesised in a single sentence enumerating layers of historical occupations: "Primeiro foram os malae colonialistas, depois os kamikazes do Japao, mais tarde os komodo ou lagartos da Indonésia e, por fim, os seus libertadores. Nao sabe como se há de libertar dos seus libertadores" (p. 180). Be that as it may, the postcolonial Ophelia is abandonned by her bridegroom who disappeared after having killed her father, and suspended in a future-less temporality of an island in the mist.
Luís Cardoso, O plantador de abóboras (Sonata para uma neblina), ill. Ana Jacinto Nunes, Lisboa: Edição #111, 2020.
Lisbon, 9th December 2024.
The female figure on the veranda of her house strangely opening over her inner landscape ("uma varanda virada do avesso", p. 15) is waiting - just as the local women were supposed to wait in Paulo Braga's travelog? Or rather, like the women in a country from where war has chased men, left behind in a company of a white goose (of which only the honk remains). The whole story has a political resonance, even if it may eventually remain obscure for a global reader, who naturally has no idea of the political upheavals going on in such a remote corner of the world. The blunder of planting pumpkins was committed by Xanana Gusmão, the leader of resistence who, in a speech, mentioned his desire of planting pumpkins rather than leadering the guerilla. This is how he proved to be so woefully alienanted from his people's everyday life -- or from the life of women who cultivated pumpkins to feed their families during the Indonesian occupation. On the other hand, the country's history is translated into stories about different kinds of birds, just like the petty kings, liurai, are the cocks who fought among themselves and couldn't get rid of the foreign ones (cock fights are a traditional diversion in Timor). Apparently, also the current politics are those of a poultry house, following the rules of bright feathers, not quite those of democracy: "Ganhou o galo extraordinário, o mais vistoso, de penas brilhantes e lustrosas, por ser astuto e por se ter preparado melhor com as manhas do tempo em que lutavam contra os galos estrangeiros. Passou a ser o dono da capoeira. Nunca mais outro galo cantou" (p. 28). It could be a summary of so many postcolonial histories...
The female narrator that presents herself as a "foreign bride" (would it be the meaning of the Portuguese-Tetum expression "a noiva mutin"?) is a descendant of a Mozambican soldier, a Landim, a "black cock" brought to the island by the Portuguese state to pacify a local revolt in 1912. Family lore, transmitted orally, is interwoven with the colonial history, even if Timor is the farthest end of the empire, a ruined castle in its outskirts, a mere remainder of the long-gone glory of the Estado da India. Be that as it may, the bride's white gown is splashed with her father's blood, which is yet another powerful symbol of the intricate and ambiguous colonial-decolonial-postcolonial history. It is synthesised in a single sentence enumerating layers of historical occupations: "Primeiro foram os malae colonialistas, depois os kamikazes do Japao, mais tarde os komodo ou lagartos da Indonésia e, por fim, os seus libertadores. Nao sabe como se há de libertar dos seus libertadores" (p. 180). Be that as it may, the postcolonial Ophelia is abandonned by her bridegroom who disappeared after having killed her father, and suspended in a future-less temporality of an island in the mist.
Luís Cardoso, O plantador de abóboras (Sonata para uma neblina), ill. Ana Jacinto Nunes, Lisboa: Edição #111, 2020.
Lisbon, 9th December 2024.
