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Categoria: Literary Narratives

The island of utopia

Posted on | By caparicio

Few places depend as much on their vision as islands, where everything happens as if thing and representation were one, by an operation that would immediately make the reality correspond to its image. We see the island being in the world at the same time as being born to its intellection via a whole imaginary. We can see it at the same time as we discern it. One of the reasons for its myth is its centrality. If the island is, from antiquity, presented as a navel (omphalos), it is not only because it represents, in a small way, the Ecumene surrounded by water, but also because it indicates an origin. Now, this cradle of the island, where mythology gives birth to Zeus (on Crete), Apollo (on Delos) and Aphrodite (on Kythera), is also the tomb painted by Böcklin in his Island of the Dead. An idea of origin thus leads to the notion of a cycle. And to speak of the umbilicus also leads to the cordon that is the island, once considered not in its singularity but in its globality as an archipelago, where centrality gives way to decentring. So much so that we never finish going around the island, which is both total and finite, fragmentary and discontinuous. Therein lies an explanation for the success of the island archetype: its ambivalence, or rather its reversibility.

It is by inversion that the term “archipelago” (Aigaion pelagos, etymologically the Aegean Sea) today designates not the container “sea” but the content “islands”, or that conversely the word “Mediterranean” did not designate the sea of the same name but, literally, what lies in the middle of the land. And it is in the same way that utopia, a genre impossible to dissociate from the island with which it was born, cannot be envisaged without simultaneously postulating its spatial reality and its fiction of a place situated nowhere. Ou-topos, in other words “non-place”. But to pose the negation is – such is its paradox – to deny it. It is not that utopia is not in any place, it is that it is the place of its non-place. It is that its very nature is to be other, and its nowhere an elsewhere, or even a nowhere-where – a fictional reality conditioned by a void where the best of all possible worlds (eu-topos) will be constituted, on a play on words[1] .

We know that the pages of the manuscript that are supposed to inform us about the coordinates of Thomas More’s island of Utopia (1516) have disappeared, that Raphael Hythloday, the traveller and Utopian narrator of the book, is unconscious during his arrival on an unknown land, and that, as if this were not enough, the coughing fit of a servant prevents us from hearing his position for the first time in Book I through words that are only whispered. The place of Utopia will remain without location. The narrative alone, after the narrator has left the island, will attest to its truth, through fiction. It is what restores it that institutes it. Utopia makes discourse a condition of space, and it is the eponymous book here that qualifies not only the island but also, soon, the entire utopian genre.

A first utopian act is to cut the isthmus attaching the future island to the continent. This movement of geographical foundation (a cut immediately followed by a fence) is completed by the naming of the place of the sort established after the name of its founder, Utopus, with which it merges as a place founded on what names it, a place whose configuration is presented in the form of an amphitheatre and constitutes the island in scene. A strait succeeds the isthmus, inverting the ancient terrestrial continuity into a solution of liquid continuity. A rock, “visible from far away”, then achieves a reduplication by diminutive nesting. (This “abyssal” device is redoubled by the mention of an “immense” gulf in the form of a “great lake” inside). In the centre of the island (in its “navel”): a city acting as a capital. Finally, a string of lighthouses spread out over the entire island territory gives the island complete visibility. “(…) Thomas More’s island offers itself (…) entirely as a map“[2] .

Foundation effect: the island is a new world. Condensation effect: the island is a small world. Reduction effect: the island is a mirror world. Naming effect: the island is a monogram[3] . Appropriation effect: the island is made suitable for the achievement of power and knowledge. Modelling effect: the island is a pictorial world that must be seen, at all points, as a map, a scene, a painting. But this other world of the island is our own, a Mundus alter et idem, as defined by the title of a utopia by Joseph Hall written in 1605: “The decisive criterion of insularity is the obligation to think of the island in its secondarity rather than in its singularity. Inseparable from the reference to what it is not, the theme of the island would necessarily stem from the dialectical link that it maintains with the continental space.[4]

This explains why the bipolarity, not only of utopia (no utopia without dystopia…), but of the signified of the island in general (edenic/apocalyptic, erotic/eremitic, historical/ideological, etc.) has no equivalent but its reversibility. This is why, instead of the notion of difference or gap, we will substitute the notion of neutral or interval. Or heterotopias: “kinds of counter-locations, kinds of effectively realised utopias in which the real locations, all the other real locations that can be found within culture, are at once represented, contested and inverted, kinds of places that are outside of all places, though they are indeed locatable.[5]

Éric Fougère

[1] See Louis Marin, Utopiques: jeux d’espaces, Paris, Éditons de Minuit, 1973.

[2] Jean-Michel Racault, Robinson & Company, aspects de l’insularité politique de Thomas More à Michel Tournier, Paris, Éditions Pétra, 2010, p. 28 (emphasis added).

[3] Monogram is the term used by Frank Lestringant to indicate the singularity of the island paradigm. See Le Livre des îles, atlas et récits insulaires de la Genèse à Jules Verne, Geneva, Droz, 2002, pp. 333-334.

[4] J.-M. Racault, Ibid, p. 16. Underlined in the text.

[5] Michel Foucault, “Des espaces autres”, lecture at the Cercle d’études architecturales (14 March 1967), in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, no. 5 (October 1984), pp. 46-49. Reprinted in Dits et écrits II, Paris, Quarto Gallimard 2001, p. 1574-1575.

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Island and Robinsonade

Posted on | By caparicio

Robinsonade is the name given to stories about deserted islands where castaways are thrown to live alone. A name (without a first name) that comes from the eponymous character from whom we have subtracted his second surname: Crusoe – an anglicised form of Kreutznaer, as Robinson’s German father was called when he came to settle in England. In this “Crusoe” we have three of the most reported directions of Daniel Defoe’s novel (1719)[1] . At the narratological level, a series of journeys before and after the one that leads Robinson to the island (where the itinerant structure is repeated) inscribes the narrative in a dimension of adventure and rupture (Crusoe/cruise). Another approach has seen the Robinsonade as a fable (admittedly realistic) inspired by an economic context in which Robinson can be seen as the puritanical representative of a booming individualism and capitalism[2] (kreuzer and cruzade are currencies whose names can be read implicitly in Crusoe’s name – especially the latter: it makes Robinson’s fortune on his plantations in Brazil) At the level of what Defoe himself calls an “allegorical” reading[3] , finally, some critics have made Robinson Crusoe, on the model of the “spiritual autobiographies” encouraged by Protestantism, a novel of repentance and conversion[4] (Crusoe/cross – the cross of a reconquest crusader, the trials thus undergone in order to merit salvation)

When Defoe makes Robinson say that all his reflections “are the exact history of a state of forced confinement which, in [his] real history, [he] represents by a confined retreat to an island”[5] , it is no longer clear what is biographical and what is allegorical. Beyond the interpretations aimed at considering Defoe’s novel as a cryptic autobiography, we would rather be faced with the invention of a myth at the source of innumerable rewritings among which stands out John M. Coetzee’s novel, Foe (1986), which makes the author of Robinson Crusoe, son of his works and father of the Robinsonade, a character at work in his own literary posterity[6] . There are two main reasons for this myth: an identification of the island space with existential experience (desert island = solitude) and of the starting situation with the notion of beginning (shipwreck = origin). However, just as there is a plurality of critical accesses to the

desert island narrative, there is also a great deal of ambiguity in this narrative, which remains enigmatic.

Equivocal, to begin with, is this island, which is supposed to be deserted: “it is […] by ceasing to be so that it becomes representable, the presence in its midst of a shipwrecked person being the only thing that can authorise its description”.[7] This trompe-l’œil origin of an arrival on the island, which is presented to us as a baptism and whose wreckage has all the makings of a technical Noah’s Ark authorising the identical reproduction of the old world, is biased.  A double discrepancy prevents the beginning from being an absolute origin, as Robinson claims when he makes each year begin with the anniversary of his shipwreck. A gap between the internal chronological narrative and the Diary (written in the past tense, by the way!) that Robinson begins to keep when looking back on his arrival on the island. Another discrepancy, between the time on the island and “real” time, is the reason for the gap of one year when all the dates are counted, even though they are meticulously mentioned in the novel, and Robinson’s illness, which left him unconscious for several days, deprives him of the necessary credit for the name Robinson gives to Friday to indicate the day of his rescue.

One interest of Michel Tournier’s novel Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique (1967) is that it centres the island narrative on the invention of this other named Vendredi: “If Robinson Crusoe is a myth, then it can only be the myth of the origin of the other.[8] Nothing better prefigures this other than the footprint discovered one day on the shore by Robinson. This footprint is that of a single foot. The footprint is a testimony to loneliness to the extent that it prompts the character to make sure that it is not his own foot, and it is the hollowed-out mark of an Other whom he hopes for as a fellow human being and fears as a cannibal or possible enemy. The animals on the island (a billy goat, a parrot, etc.) fulfil an alter ego function in this respect, so that Robinson sometimes believes he sees himself in them, sometimes distances himself from them – in both cases forcing himself to think about his otherness.

One island always hides another. This explains not only the interlocking spaces of the “island within the island” shared by the majority of Robinsonades (antres, enclosures, arenas or pools) but also the simultaneous presence of at least two “codes”, heuristic (island to be cleared), hermeneutic (island to be deciphered), well demonstrated by Roland Barthes in relation to L’Île mystérieuse (1874)[9] and allowing us to distinguish between an island narrative – appropriation of the island on the surface – and an island novel – elucidation of a secret of the island in depth. There is a secret when the always forever lost but always forever already there anteriority of the island narrative is internalised in such a way as to suggest island is deserted it is because it is virgin to any writing and that it is therefore up to each rewriting to invent its other island by founding its own origin on it[10] .

Éric Fougère

[1] See Éric Fougère, Les Voyages et l’ancrage, représentation de l’espace insulaire à l’âge classique, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995, p. 61.

[2] See Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, London, Chatto and Windus, 1957; ‘Robinson Crusoe as a Myth’, in Michael Shinagel ed, Robinson Crusoe, New York, London, Norton & Company, 1975.

[3] In his preface to Robinson Crusoe’s Réflexions sérieuses (1720), Paris, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1972, p. 594.

[4] See George A. Starr, Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1965; John Paul Hunter, The Reluctant Pilgrim, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1966.

[5] D. Defoe, ibid (emphasis added).

[6] See Jean-Paul Engélibert, La Postérité de Robinson Crusoé, un mythe littéraire de la modernité, Geneva, Droz, 1997.

[7] Jean-Michel Racault, “Le paradoxe de l’île déserte”, in Lise Andries ed, Robinson, Paris, Éditions Autrement, 1996, p. 104.

[8] Jean-Pascal Le Goff, Robinson Crusoe ou l’invention d’autrui, Paris, Klincksieck, 2003, p. 176.

[9] See R. Barthes, “Par où commencer ?”, in Nouveaux Essais critiques, Paris, Points Seuil, 1972, p. 145-155.

[10] See É. Fougère, ‘Un point sur la reprise insulaire’ in Maria de Jesus Cabral and Ana Clara Santos eds, Les Possibilités d’une île, Paris, Petra, 2014, pp. 15-32; ‘Pierre Benoit, récit d’île et roman de l’île’, in Carnets, revue électronique d’études françaises, IIe series, no. 3 (2015).

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Viagens, de João dos Reis Gomes

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Viagens appears in the travel literature of Madeiran authors as the posthumous compilation of three works by João dos Reis Gomes, Através da França, Suíça e Itália, Três Capitais de Espanha and Através da Alemanha. The particularity of this work is that could be understood as an exemplar of travel literature by a Madeiran author about trips made outside the insular space or the portuguese space.

            We believe that this type of travel literature produced by authors from Madeira who travel to continental spaces allows, in the case of João dos Reis Gomes, the opening of another research suggestion that is the vision of the European continental space by an islander from a territory of the current European outermost region. The texts by João dos Reis Gomes also suggest the interpretation of the tourist phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th century, linked to religious, leisure or medicinal and therapeutic reasons, something also experienced in the insular space.

            In this context, the testimony of an islander’s journey in a continental space reveals a measure of description characteristic of someone that lives on an island and could measure the world through it, which allows us to envision insularity as an opening to the world.

            In Viagens, João dos Reis Gomes, motivated by the knowledge of the other, offers the reader the perspective of the traveling writer and not a simple tourist commentary: “apodera-se do ritmo e da técnica do episódio e do relato histórico, assegurando a cor local, através de um olhar testemunha, subjetivo. Surge, então, a categoria do escritor viajante, com uma dupla função: ser um olhar que escreve e, ao mesmo tempo, um escritor” (Mello, 2010: 145). Regarding the three books that make up the volume Viagens, we talk about an experience resulting from the second Madeiran pilgrimage to European Marian shrines, a leisure trip to Spain and a trip for health and leisure reasons to Germany.

            Através da França, Suíça e Itália was published as a book in 1929, based on the chronicles of João dos Reis Gomes first published in the Diário da Madeira, in 1926, the year of the second Madeiran pilgrimage. We think that the second Madeiran pilgrimage is part of the context of the great transnational pilgrimages that take place all over Europe, influenced by the climate of the apparitions of Fátima, of the canonization of Margaret Mary Alacoque, on May 13, 1920, by Pope Benedict XV, and by the large number of pilgrims to the Lourdes cave, a phenomenon of faith, facilitated by Catholic groups.

            However, we are talking about a story that is a non religious testimony, because João dos Reis Gomes confesses that he does not feel able to address religious matters and writes because his friends asked him to do so: “Tinham-me alguns amigos pedido, com penhorante insistência, que lhes desse umas breves impressões desta peregrinação” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 23). We believe that one of the main points of interest of this travel testimony is the demonstration of the author’s conservative thinking and the reflections on politics, society and culture, taking into account that João dos Reis Gomes is a military man and an islander who is faced with different ways of being. We can also add a certain admiration for the Italian political order, especially if we are confronted with the events in Portugal and the precarious situation of the First Republic: “O viajante sente a perfeita comunhão do povo com o salvador da Itália [Mussolini]” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 157).

            As an island traveler, nostalgia takes hold during some episodes of the author and his entourage, as is the case of the comparison with the Côte d’Azur and the mountains of Switzerland: “O espetáculo [the swiss landscape] é, na verdade, grandioso e comovedoramente evocativo. Ninguém deixou de pensar, mais vivamente, na sua casinha da alterosa ilha” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 195).

            Três Capitais de Espanha is the report of a private trip, dedicated to the son of João dos Reis Gomes, Álvaro Reis Gomes, “companheiro nestas digressões” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 227). The journey of the traveling writer is intertwined with Spanish history, from the North, Burgos, through Toledo, conquered by Alfonso VI, to the imperial city of Seville. The traveling writer’s testimony is based on art and culture and the subjectivity of admiration: “Mas, porque escrevo, então?! Primeiro, por uma imposição de espírito ou, melhor, de sensibilidade, que me não deixa conter as emoções colhidas – […]; segundo, porque, dado o direito de admirar, na apreciação de qualquer facto, país ou obra de arte, há sempre um certo fator subjetivo” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 229).

            Através da Alemanha is a book of 1949, based on the chronicles first published in Diário da Madeira, in 1931. The purpose of the book edition is to witness to the reader the German civilization before the Second World War: “apenas elementos para um confronto entre o passado [1931] e o presente [1949]; confronto que, por tão desolador como expressivo, oxalá pudesse contribuir – ingénua utopia! – para adoçar a alma e prevenir a consciência” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 283).

In addition to approaching a country far from the European periphery, João dos Reis Gomes’ interests lie in Neubabelsberg, the visit to the UFA studio (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft) and the contemplation of cinematographic art, the ascent of the Rhine (where he found inspiration to his book A Lenda de Loreley, contada por um latino) and the emotion, as journalist and writer, in the visit of Gutenberg’s museum, in Mainz.

For all these reasons, we believe that Viagens is an example of the island traveler writer and the outside perspective he adds to the island world, due to the awareness that these are different worlds. The themes discussed reflect that insularity is part of a global world, in which events that occur in a given space and time are interconnected and act on several other geographic points, whether of a political, cultural, philosophical or scientific nature.

Paulo César Vieira Figueira

References

Collot, Michel (2014). Pour une Géographie Littéraire. Paris: Éditions Corti.

Cristóvão, Fernando (2002). Condicionantes Culturais da Literatura de Viagens. Coimbra: Almedina.

Mello, Maria Elizabeth Chaves de (2010). O relato de viagem – narradores, entre a memória, o fictício e o imaginário. In Dalva Calvão e Norimar Júdice (Org.). Gragoatá, 28. Niterói: Universidade Federal Fluminense. 141-152.

Nucera, Domenico (2002). Los viajes y la literatura. In Armando Gnisci (Org.). Introducción a la Literatura Comparada. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica. 241-290.

Pita, Gabriel de Jesus (1985). Decadência e queda da Primeira República analisada na Imprensa Madeirense da época. In António Loja (Dir.). Atlântico, 3. Funchal: Eurolitho. 194-209.

Reis Gomes, João dos (1949). Através da Alemanha. Lisboa: Livraria Clássica.

Reis Gomes, João dos (1929). Através da França, Suíça e Itália. Lisboa: Livraria Clássica.

Reis Gomes, João dos (1931). Três Capitais de Espanha: Burgos-Toledo-Sevilha. Funchal: Diário da Madeira.

Reis Gomes, João dos (2020). Viagens. Funchal: Imprensa Académica.

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Historical Novels – João dos Reis Gomes

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The historical novels of João dos Reis Gomes correspond to three titles, A filha de Tristão das Damas (1909 and 1946), O anel do Imperador (1934) and O cavaleiro de Santa Catarina (1942), which focus on political, historical and cultural issues and local traditions. From the point of view of literary technique, these are not innovative novels, clearly influenced by the structure of the romantic historical novel model.

            The relationship of these works by João dos Reis Gomes with insularity, specifically with the construction of Madeiran identity, takes place in a perspective in which regionalism and the affirmation of regions begins to be a reality in Europe.

            Born in France, in the mid-19th century, regionalism influenced the struggle for emancipation in many regions, including Madeira (Vieira, 2001: 144). The Madeiran intellectual elite sought to legitimize the struggle for greater visibility of the archipelago, through the recovery of historical references, traditions and folkloric traits that supported this insular identity: “Tão pouco uma classe política, alheada ou desconhecedora do passado histórico terá possibilidades de fazer passar e vingar o seu discurso político” (Vieira, 2001: 143).

The insular identity difference starts to be built by the generations of the beginning of the 20th century, emphasizing History, other sciences and Literature: “estas gerações, com evidentes influências regionalistas, procuraram, através da história, da literatura, da ciência, a construção e validação de um panteão regional sobre o qual assentasse uma marca de diferença” (Figueira, 2021: 130)[1].

            It is in this context that A filha de Tristão das Damas is published, in 1909. The first self-styled Madeiran historical novel has as its central point the help of the third donee of Funchal, Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, in the conquest of Safim, by Portugal. This motive serves to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Madeira’s intervention, as one of the archipelago’s historical episodes, as well as to present a subtle critique of the administrative autonomy of 1901. The publicity of Portuguese foreign policy’s commitment to the maintenance of the African Empire is also relevant. In fact, in 1946, the date of the second edition of the work, in addition to the regionalist aspect, it is again the assumption of Portugal as a colonial power, outside the sphere of emerging powers (USA and USSR), that guides the publication of this historical novel. In 1962, the novel is published again, but in fascicles by the Diário de Notícias do Funchal, with the aim of defending the Guerra do Ultramar (Overseas War) and the legitimation of the Portuguese Empire.

            O anel do Imperador tells the story of Napoleon’s passage through Funchal, during his second exile, this time to the island of Saint Helena. The question of this historical episode allied to the fictional visit of Miss Isabel de S. to the French Emperor created a popular tradition fixed in the novel by João dos Reis Gomes. Behind the fiction there is, however, the propaganda of the figure of Salazar, similar to the episode of Napoleon in Madeira, seeking to present the figure of a sensitive political leader who deserves the acceptance of his Madeiran peers. It should be remembered that, in the 1930s, between the government of the military and the definitive rise of the Estado Novo, the episode of Revolta da Madeira, a political-military insurrection against the government of the military dictatorship, deepened the atmosphere between Madeira and the capital, in addition to the monopoly laws in relation to flour and milk, at the time, important industries in the archipelago.

            Salazarism, in its propaganda action, sought to welcome the Madeiran elites into its midst, in a climate of harmony between the archipelago and the Government, in which the regionalist slope was exponentiated according to the homeland.

            O cavaleiro de Santa Catarina offers the reader an account of the life and legend of Henrique Alemão, “sesmeiro da Madalena do Mar”, whose identity is believed to be that of Ladislaus III, the Polish king who disappeared in the Battle of Varna (1444).

The author, with this book, in addition to the attempt to preserve a heritage buffeted by the 1939 alluvium in Madalena do Mar, seeks to explore the myth of sebastianism, as there is a clear identification between the life of the Polish king and that of D. Sebastião, because both try to fight the Mohammedans, but end up missing in the decisive battle, the Polish king in Varna and the Portuguese king in Alcácer Quibir.

The circumstances of this historical novel, the 1939 alluvium and the myth of D. Sebastião, are also related to the exhibition of the Portuguese World in 1940 and the celebration of Portuguese double independence (1140 and 1640). Once again, João dos Reis Gomes appropriates a pantheistic figure from Madeira’s history and tradition to serve regionalist intentions and, at the same time, the homeland, which, in a difficult political period, in the middle of the Second World War, seeks to maintain the shaky neutrality in relation to the blocs of the belligerent powers. The sebastic figure of Henrique Alemão, in this context, invokes, in our view, the soul of national resistance and Portuguese courage in a difficult juncture.

Paulo César Vieira Figueira

References

Figueira, Paulo (2021). João dos Reis Gomes: contributo literário para a divulgação da História da Madeira [Phd thesis]. Funchal: Universidade da Madeira.

Figueira, Paulo (2019). O romance histórico na Madeira: o caso de A filha de Tristão das Damas, de João dos Reis Gomes. In Sérgio Guimarães de Sousa e Ana Ribeiro (orgs.). Romance histórico: cânone e periferias. Vila Nova de Famalicão: Húmus/Centro de Estudos Humanísticos da Universidade do Minho.

Marinho, Maria de Fátima (1999). O romance histórico em Portugal. Porto: Campo de Letras.

Rodrigues, Paulo (2012). O Anel do Imperador (1934), de João dos Reis Gomes, entre a História e a Ficção: Napoleão e a Madeira. In Maria Hermínia Amado Laurel (dir.). Carnets, Invasions & Évasions. La France et nous, nous et la France. Lisboa: APEF/FCT, 81-97.

Vieira, Alberto (2001). A Autonomia na História da Madeira – Questões e Equívocos. In Autonomia e História das Ilhas – Seminário Internacional. Funchal: CEHA/SRTC, 143-175.

Vieira, Alberto (2018). Arquipélagos e ilhas entre memória, desmemória e identidade. Funchal: Cadernos de Divulgação do CEHA.

[1] Alberto Vieira conceived the idea of ​​building a pantheon of regional heroes in the sense of differentiating between regional and national history: “desenvolvem-se os estudos locais e regionais. A História local e regional ganha evidência e diferencia-se da nacional. Constrói-se o panteão de heróis regionais” (Vieira, 2018: 20).

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Cenáculo

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Cenáculo was a group of gatherings that met at the Golden Gate[1], founded by João dos Reis Gomes, Fr. Fernando Augusto da Silva and Alberto Artur Sarmento, which became relevant for the ideas presented, although, so far, no minutes or official documents of the gathering that allow us to objectively evaluate the intellectual debate. As for the constituent members, and aware of the lack of space for the acceptance of new elements, Joana Góis reports on 24 members (Góis, 2015: 24-25), among them the son of João dos Reis Gomes, Álvaro Reis Gomes.

Visconde do Porto da Cruz expresses that the group is not open to new generations: “Em volta do ‘Cenáculo’ apareciam curiosos que não se afoitavam a aproximar-se de centro tão restrito, onde, especialmente, Reis Gomes e o Padre Fernando da Silva, não viam com bons olhos o advento de novos valores” (Porto da Cruz, 1953: 12).

Joana Góis shares Visconde’s opinion and adds that the gathering was a mystery in terms of collective action, but expressed itself very well through the role of its individualities: “A ‘misteriosa’ geração reunia-se em silêncio e permaneceu, acima de tudo, na esfera privada e sem expressão pública dos seus trabalhos” (Góis, 2015: 21).

            Cenáculo elements gravitate towards the edition of two periodicals directed by Major João dos Reis Gomes, Heraldo da Madeira and Diário da Madeira, respectively, whose orientations approach subjects related to autonomy, regionalism and history, literature, traditions and politics related to Madeira, all under the inspiration of a certain conservatism and patriotism, but with the focus on the construction and defense of a Madeiran identity.

            We believe that the most outstanding action of Cenáculo, as a collective, is the formation of Mesa do Centenário, with the objective of carrying out the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Madeira. Always with the intention of a nationwide celebration, the action of the members of Mesa do Centenário led to the challenge of modernizing Funchal, in order to dignify the event’s stage.

            Between Cenáculo and Mesa do Centenário there seems to have been a natural transition and, based on the positions conceived and publicized in the Diário da Madeira, the commemorative program of the Madeira Centenary was designed. The “Geração do Cenáculo” managed to add a cultural foundation to the event, which triggered an atmosphere of conflict with metropolis, which meant that, between December 1922 and January 1923, Lisbon was not represented, despite the several international commissions.

The fact turned out to be fruitless due to the lack of argumentative sustainability in relation to the Madeiran identity because, according to Nelson Veríssimo, “Faltaram intelectuais que exaltassem esses princípios que congregaram vontades e animaram a condução de populações por entusiásticos guias” (Veríssimo, 1985: 232). After the festivities, the “cenaculistas” were also participatory voices in the Comissão de Estudo para as Bases da Autonomia da Madeira.

Cenáculo’s line of thought approaches, from what we can assess from its members, through the newspapers and the action of Mesa do Centenario, a Madeiran identity close to patriotic values ​​(Portuguese settlement, exaltation of the Portuguese element) and not so much cosmopolitanism also present in the Madeiran feeling[2].

The meetings and ideas of the “ninho da águia” (Eagle’s Nest) are the target of critics who were fascinated by the group: “[Reis Gomes] Vindo do labirinto da vista da cidade, depois de haver feito a sua longa jornada profissional diária – […] – encontrava no íntimo cavaco com amigos, reunidos numa das salas do hotel Golden Gate, o benéfico oásis para o seu descanso físico e intelectual” (Vieira, 1950: 18). In relation to literature, João dos Reis Gomes and the “Geração do Cenáculo” became forerunners of intellectuals who, in the 1940s, saw “na narrativa de ficção com forte cunho regionalista” the possibility “de constituir uma história, uma memória, uma biblioteca, uma identidade cultural forte para as gerações futuras da Ilha” (Santos, 2008: 569).

Paulo César Vieira Figueira

References

Góis, Joana Catarina Silva (2015). A Geração do Cenáculo e as Tertúlias Intelectuais Madeirenses (da I República aos anos 1940) [Masters dissertation]. Porto: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto.

Gouveia, Horácio Bento de (1952). Reis Gomes – Homem de Letras. In Das Artes e Da História da Madeira, nº 13. Funchal, 29-31.

Gouveia, Horácio Bento de (1969). O académico e escritor João dos Reis Gomes. In Panorama, nº 29. Lisboa, 6-9.

Figueira, Paulo (2021). João dos Reis Gomes: contributo literário para a divulgação da História da Madeira [Phd thesis]. Funchal: Universidade da Madeira.

Pestana, César (1952). Academias e tertúlias literárias da Madeira – “O Cenáculo”. In Das Artes e da História da Madeira, vol. II, nº 38. Funchal, 21-23.

Porto da Cruz, Visconde (1953). Notas & Comentários Para a História Literária da Madeira, 3º Período: 1910-1952, vol. III. Funchal: Câmara Municipal do Funchal.

Salgueiro, Ana (2011). Os imaginários culturais na construção identitária madeirense (implicações cultura/economia/relações de poder). In Anuário do Centro Estudos e História do Atlântico, nº 3. Funchal: CEHA, 184-204.

Santos, Thierry Proença dos (2008). Gerações, antologias e outras afinidades literárias: a construção de uma identidade cultural na Madeira. In Dedalus, nº 11-12. Lisboa: APLC/Cosmos, 559-582.

Veríssimo, Nelson (1985). Em 1917 a Madeira reclama Autonomia. In António Loja (dir.). Atlântico, nº 3. Funchal: Eurolitho, 230-233.

Vieira, G. Brazão (1950). Um grande vulto que a morte levou: João dos Reis Gomes. In Das Artes e da História da Madeira, nº 2. Funchal, 17-19.

[1] The Golden Gate, known as one of the “esquinas do mundo”, in the words of Ferreira de Castro, and due to its geographical location, close to the Cathedral of Funchal, the port, the Palácio de São Lourenço and the Statue of Zarco, is a famous restaurant space that favors the passage of citizens from all over the world, mainly through its esplanade, something that is still verifiable today.

[2] Cf. Ana Salgueiro, “Os imaginários culturais na construção identitária madeirense (implicações cultura/economia/relações de poder)”, 184-204.

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Romances históricos de João dos Reis Gomes

Posted on | By caparicio

João dos Reis Gomes was a Madeiran military man who stood out, in the society of his time, as an author in areas such as journalism, theater, history, romance, philosophy, music and cinema. His intellectual training will draw from the transition period between the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, marked by the wave of events that took place on the Mainland and Madeira.
Born in Funchal, on January 5, 1869, where he died, on January 21, 1950, he became known as Major João dos Reis Gomes (as if the patent was associated with his own name) and recognized as a professor, writer and essayist, member of several academies, such as Academia de Ciências de Lisboa, and founder of the delegation of Sociedade Histórica da Independência de Portugal, in Funchal. He almost always opted for an action in the field of intellectuality and not so much in terms of political exposure. Directed two periodicals, Heraldo da Madeira e Diário da Madeira, who advocated a regionalist, autonomous and conservative vision, although imbued with a patriotic spirit.
Personality inserted in a generation that fights for a better autonomy for Madeira, at the beginning of the 20th century, the insular aspect, either by resorting to themes dear to Madeiran folklore or to History, Reis Gomes was one of those responsible for building an Madeiran identity.
His action, linked to a perspective of insularity based on autonomy and regionalism, lead him to debates on issues about Madeira with the creation of the “Cenáculo” gathering, participation in Comissão de Estudo para as Bases da Autonomia da Madeira and the celebration of the 500 years of Madeira, between December 1922 and January 1923.
As a multifaceted man in the field of writing, we are mainly interested in the playwright and novelist, although he has also published books of short stories. We believe it is mainly in A filha de Tristão das Damas, O anel do imperador, O cavaleiro de Santa Catarina and Guiomar Teixeira, that we can glimpse the connection of his writing to the island and the concern with the Madeiran identity.
One of the good examples of this insular connection that guided the literary writing of João dos Reis Gomes is the historical drama Guiomar Teixeira, adapted from the historical novel A filha de Tristão das Damas, and which brings together the attributes of an insular identification and an identity cry. This play is known for being believed to be the first, in the world, to merge, in its representation, the theatrical art with the cinematographic art, being attributed the merit to Major .
In the drama, as in the historical novel, the center of the action is the Madeiran aid, provided by the donee Simão da Câmara to the capture of Safim, during the reign of D. Manuel I. In a subtle allegory with the situation experienced in Madeira at the time of autonomy administration of 1901, Reis Gomes points to the example of the conquest of the Moroccan square as a way of exposing that better autonomy would result in a better region and, consequently, a better country.In order to understand the Madeiran identity intentions and protest against the political situation of the archipelago, the Quincentenário commission chose the play Guiomar Teixeira for representation, which seems to us a clear allusion to the dissemination of the insular territory. The main actors were Sofia de Figueiredo, in the role of Guiomar Teixeira, and João dos Reis Gomes, in the role of Cristóvão Colombo.
Due to his role, we can consider João dos Reis Gomes as one of the builders of Madeira’s cultural memory, in the sense that the author’s literary production “estabelece entre o ontem e o hoje, modelando e atualizando de forma contínua as experiências e as imagens de um passado no presente, como recordação geradora de um horizonte de esperanças e de continuidade” (Antunes, 2019: 204). Merged with the concept of cultural memory, we find the “madeirensidade”, in the sense that “A literatura, por exemplo, contribui para a construção da Madeirensidade, mas ao mesmo tempo é também o devir desta que promove a emergência, a afirmação e o desenvolvimento daquilo que podemos designar como literatura madeirense” (Rodrigues, 2015: 167).
At the end of the diary on the Madeiran pilgrimage of 1926, in the original Através da França, Suíça e Itália – Diário de Viagem, Major João dos Reis Gomes expressed the feeling of nostalgia in relation to Madeira, “Estou nostálgico […]. Por momentos, ante a visão da pequenina terra [Madeira Island], apaga-se-me da memória a lembrança dessa existência de tão grande e variada beleza que eu acabo, febrilmente, de viver” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 223), which seems to us a declaration of geographical and cultural belonging dear to many Madeirans.
From the work of João dos Reis Gomes we highlight: O Theatro e o Actor (1ª ed., 1905, 2ª ed., 1916), Histórias Simples (1907), A Filha de Tristão das Damas (1ª ed., 1909, 2ª ed., 1946, 3ª ed., 1962), Guiomar Teixeira (1ª ed., 1914) , A Música e o Teatro (1919), Forças Psíquicas (1925), O Belo Natural e Artístico (1928), Figuras de Teatro (1928), Através da França, Suíça e Itália – Diário de Viagem (1929), Três Capitais de Espanha: Burgos, Toledo, Sevilha (1931), O Anel do Imperador (1934), Natais (1935), O Vinho da Madeira (1937), Casas Madeirenses (1937), O Cavaleiro de Santa Catarina (1941), De Bom Humor… (1942), A Lenda de Loreley – Contada por um Latino (1948), Através da Alemanha – Notas de Viagem (1949) and Viagens (2020) .

Paulo César Vieira Figueira

References

Antunes, Luísa Marinho (2019). A construção da memória cultural por meio da literatura: alguns aspectos. In Pro-Posições Culturais. São Paulo, 189-211.
Figueira, Paulo (2021). João dos Reis Gomes: contributo literário para a divulgação da História da Madeira [Phd thesis]. Funchal: Universidade da Madeira.
Gouveia, Horácio Bento de (1969). O académico e escritor João dos Reis Gomes. In Panorama, nº 29. Lisboa, 6-9.
Marino, Luís (s.d.). Panorama Literário do Arquipélago da Madeira [unpublished text]. Arquivo Regional da Madeira/Arquivo Luís Marino.
Reis Gomes, João dos (2020). Viagens (Ed. Literária Ana Isabel Moniz). Funchal: Imprensa Académica.
Rodrigues, Paulo (2015). Da Madeirensidade: Contributo para uma reflexão necessária. In Nelson Veríssimo e Thierry Proença dos Santos (orgs.). Universidade da Madeira: 25 anos. Funchal: Universidade da Madeira, 165-190.

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