Poets of the 20th century (Part 1)

28 Novembro 2017, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

Reading and discussion of "To Love" by Florbela Espanca; "Standing at Fearful Attention" by Alexandre O'Neill; "Historical Truth" by Ana Luísa Amaral; "And Everything Was Possible" by Ruy Belo..

Main topics: unconventional, free love (Espanca); fear and dissolution of the individual (O'Neill); the poetic weight of daily life (Amaral); a happy coexistence between reading and living, the endless possibilities of life (Belo).

José Saramago: The Centaur

23 Novembro 2017, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

A brief note on José Saramago's biography and political views.

Reading and discussion of the short story "The Centaur":  the unresolvable hybridity and plurality of identity; the change of times and the maladjustment of mythology in civilized societies throughout the centuries (comparison with the idea of "disappearance of the noble hero" (George Steiner) through a textual reference to Cervantes' Don Quixote); notions on historiographic metafiction and the Romantic (19th century) motif of "the last survivor"; fantastic creatures (influence of Magical Realism) as outcasts.

Vergílio Ferreira: The Hen

21 Novembro 2017, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

Vergílio Ferreira as an existentialist and neorealist writer: the (lack of) meaning of life and the specificities of Portuguese history in the 1970s."The Hen" as a short nonsense story divided in five parts whose development follows a crescendo of violence (from a domestic to a nationwide scale), despite its apparently comic starting point (value of irony). Loss of the sense of community and the banality of evil (Hannah Arendt).

The irrationality, unsolvability and pointlessness of conflict as a representation for the absurdity of life in general and of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961-1974) in particular.

Oral presentations: Antonio Bolognini, Laura Campos, Niko Setar and Inga Podstawka.

Miguel Torga: Sesame

16 Novembro 2017, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

The relevance of Miguel Torga's biography (both his regional origin and his choice of profession) for understanding his humanist literary work as well as his choice of pseudonym. 

Reading and discussion of the short story "Sesame" (from Tales from the Mountain): its polysemic title (a reference to a cereal and to rural wealth; an incantation formula with a cultural meaning; an intertextual dialogue with Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves); notions of space (small villages' connections with tales and legends), characters (individual/collective) and symbologies (the cave). Main themes: innocence and delusion; learning processes and imagination; integration and community; reality VS fantasy; local and global; magic in everyday life VS magic in fiction.

Screening of a segment ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice") from Fantasia (1999, animation film) to discuss the concept of hybris, the connection between storytelling and magic and the idea that imagination isn't always better than reality. 

The figure and importance of the storyteller according to Walter Benjamin (excerpts from "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov", 1936).

Oral presentations: Daria Boiko, Daria Yakusheva, Dimitra Bakagianni and Ioana Mindru. 

Fernando Pessoa: Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and Alberto Caeiro

14 Novembro 2017, 10:00 • Helena Carvalhão Buescu

Álvaro de Campos' theatrical singing of machinery (an epic of modern life in direct relation to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass) in contrast with his melancholic desire to be everything and everyone at all times; his final sense of failure towards knowing how to connect with reality. Reading and discussion of "Lisbon Revisited (1926)" and "Salutation to Walt Whitman".

Ricardo Reis as a representative of intellectualism and as a follower of philosophical (Stoicism, Epicurism) and literary (Horatian odes) traditions from Classical Antiquity. A poetry of "control" in form and expression. The awareness of time and death as Man's greatest problem. Reading and discussion of "Not just those who envy and hate us", "Fruits are given by trees that live" and "Wise the man who's content with the world's spectacle".

Alberto Caeiro as a representative of empiricism and as a a poet of "complexity of the simple": an apparent and ironic simplicity that conceals the fact that he is a programatic poet - his program is to tell us not to think, which constitutes a program nevertheless. Reading and discussion of "II" (from The Keeper of Sheep). 

Fernando Pessoa (and all his (semi-)heteronyms) as an intellectual (ideas) rather than sentimental (feelings) poet.

Delivery of the second Response Paper (about the visit to Casa Fernando Pessoa).