It’s our seventh CRSN Takeover this month. This time Prof. Susana Marques tells us all about a project led by scholars at the University of Coimbra called ‘Rewriting the myth’, which explores classical reception in contemporary Portuguese poetry.
Where it all began…
Classical reception in contemporary Portuguese poetry is naturally no new phenomenon. This is shown clearly by Maria Helena da Rocha Pereira in her landmark 1972 book: Temas clássicos na Poesia Portuguesa (Classical Themes in Portuguese Poetry).
Several publications on the same theme were to follow. These were not only by Pereira, but several other scholars, including J. Ribeiro Ferreira. It was a time for staking out the field, for collecting themes and authors related to the subject.
The myths of Narcissus, Ulysses and Penelope, Orpheus and Eurydice, the labyrinth and the Minotaur are among those which find most energetic treatment in contemporary Portuguese poets.
Self-knowledge, the fascination for one’s own image, wandering, persistent search, overcoming hostilities, love, human finitude, poetic creation are, of course, seductive topics to this day. Not only are they connected to the human condition, but they are also expressive of the concerns, questions, and lived experiences of several Portuguese authors of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Classical reception in Portuguese poetry today travels new paths. In the last three years, the project ‘Rewriting the myth’, following the challenge raised by the collaborative and longterm research project Classics and Poetry Now (CAPN), has instigated more systematic analyses of the work of specific poets. The CAPN project, led by Prof Lorna Hardwick, has acted mainly through the organisation of periodical meetings at Oxford University, at first to guide the ongoing work of the different members of the group, and then to promote seminars on specific subjects. One major output of the CAPN project is the eagerly anticipated Oxford Classical Reception Commentaries, which will be hosted on the OSEO platform. Energised by such activity, we have embarked on several Iberoamerican collaborative publications and teaching programmes.
Other partnerships, new strategies
The dynamics of CAPN instigated collaboration with fellow researchers in areas such as Literary Theory and Criticism and Modern Literature. It also encouraged contact with poets, and meetings with some authors are expected in the not-too-distant future.
Specific myths (Ulysses and Penelope, Europe) and a certain vision of Greece and dialogue with the classics, expressed by the poets themselves, were selected as the first motifs for analysis.
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Sophia … a suggestive name in itself
Among contemporary Portuguese creative practitioners, two names immediately stood out: Sophia de Mello Breyner (1919-2004) and Nuno Júdice (1949-). Why? You may ask… Well, it’s because these two poets shared a similar conception of poetic creation, which included a dialogue with other arts, but perhaps most importantly they both frequently draw on classical motifs.
Sophia’s fascination for Greece is reflected in her poetry, full of allusions to different places, heroes and myths of antiquity. But it is not only or mainly for her a question of elaborating a cultural brand dependent on books or texts. Sophia lived Greece: she visited Greece, saw Greece and felt Greece… There she found, in fullness, an understanding of the world that she already considered essential to her sense of existence.
Em Hydra, evocando Fernando Pessoa
Quando na manhã de Junho o navio ancorou em Hydra
(E foi pelo som do cabo a descer que eu soube que ancorava)
Saí da cabine e debrucei-me ávida
Sobre o rosto do real – mais preciso e mais novo do que o imaginado
Ante a meticulosa limpidez dessa manhã num porto
Ante a meticulosa limpidez dessa manhã num porto de uma ilha grega
In Hydra, evoking Fernando Pessoa
When on a morning of June the ship docked in Hydra
(And it was from the sound of the chain going down that I knew it anchored)
I left the cabin and bent over avidly
On the face of reality – more precise and younger than imagined
Faced with the meticulous cleanliness of that morning in a port
Faced with the meticulous cleanliness of that morning in a Greek island port
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Nuno Júdice, another reading of the classics
In Nuno Júdice, there is a reiterated reflection on poetic creation, as well as a permanent dialogue with various authors and other arts, generating renewed – and unexpected – combinations to tell of the present and the precariousness of the human condition.
As part of this takeover, we decided to interview Nuno Júdice, who integrates several classical myths in his poetic work. His most recent publication in verse, from 2017, has the suggestive title ‘The myth of Europe’. Here is what he told us:
What are the reasons that urge you to bring classical authors and myths into the contemporary world?
My poetics is based on a whole that covers the period from the Greco-Latin era to the present day. It is not possible to write poetry without having this field on the horizon, and each poet will choose his references according to his preferences and culture. Influences are often indirect: classical culture is found in more recent poets, and when we read them we sometimes find motifs or themes that may give rise to new poems. And I assume that, in our time, the more classical the more modern.
What relations does the present establish with antiquity in your poems?
There is a relationship that comes from two of the main themes of my poetry: nature and love. Many of the forms I use are born, therefore, from the models of the eclogue and the ode; and it is natural that the language approaches the tone that is found in poets I feel closer to, such as Ovid, Propertius, Horace.
In your most recent poetic work, The Myth of Europe (2017), you return to a motif already addressed in your poetry (cf. the poem ‘The Kidnapping of Europe’ (1998)) – why this return?
Europe is a topic that has long been in my imagination. I have always felt European (in the beginning, with the “Concept of Poem”, it was France and Germany that had a strongest presence) and I feel Portuguese in terms of language and tradition, but European in terms of the cultural and civilisational situation. That is what determined this book on how Europe, in recent times, has broken the link with the Mediterranean tradition without which it loses the essentials of its historical and cultural formation. It is a poem that is not just a requiem for the European ideal because I believe that Europe has the capacity, and the need, to reinvent itself in order to survive, and nothing better than this classic myth to illustrate this idea.
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Portugal and Brazil: classic poetry from both sides of the Atlantic
The affinity between Portugal and Brazil in terms of language and culture has also led to our extensive collaboration across the Atlantic. In addition to the Portuguese group, two groups were formed around two schools of particular relevance in Brazil in the area of Classical Studies: the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, Belo Horizonte) and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Brazilian poets interested in the classical world — Murilo Mendes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Guimarães Rosa, Manuel Bandeira — formed a nucleus of study, important in its own right, but dramatically bolstered by its interface with the Portuguese side.
In addition to the output of some articles in various publications, the results of a more systematic work, now extended to Brazil, promise breathtaking publications. A volume entitled Travels, routes and adventures – reception of classical motives in modern and contemporary Portuguese and Brazilian poetry, will soon be born from this joint effort.
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What the students think
Our ongoing research is also projected into teaching. In fact, in the Seminar ‘Modern and Contemporary Classical Tradition’ of the Master’s Degree in Classical Studies at FLUC, a module on poetry was included, in addition to another, already traditional, on theatre. New generations have thus been motivated to the attraction of reception.
The internationalisation of courses, which has become the norm at European universities, has opened up unsuspected paths of crossing and confrontation. The perspective has become global, from the very beginning due to the dispersed origins of the participants themselves. The testimony of a foreign student studying classical reception in Portuguese Literature is suggestive of the interest aroused:
The experience of analysing texts in this course has allowed me to know different patterns related to the approach that can be taken in a work about classical tradition in contemporary times: the study of sources, aesthetic and linguistic details and, in particular, the idea that there can be intermediate versions, i.e. modern works, not only of literature, but also of cinema or painting, for example, that can influence modern authors. What promised to be a study of Portuguese poets quickly became the discovery of unsuspected connections.
— Miriam Carrillo Rodriguez, University of Malaga
The meetings between teachers, writers, people of the arts and students, which are already part of the routine of this Seminar, can only increase in the future.
In December 2019, our Portuguese group gave a seminar as part of an APGRD Classical Reception series organised by Profs. Lorna Hardwick and Fiona Macintosh at Oxford University. The title of the seminar was ‘Modern Portuguese Poets and the Greeks: a poetic theory’.
In conclusion, we leave you with a poem by Nuno Júdice that we feel shows the perenniality and plasticity of myth:
The creation of the myth
The myths are preserved if we put them
in a clay pot, with no water, just a lot of
herbs, preferably aromatic, and some
bay leaves. Then you cover the neck
with a thick cloth and tie with a rope,
before we take the pot and take it
to the basement, some
years, or rather, a few centuries,
before we open it again. It may be that agnostics
see here a contradiction: if the pot can only be
open in a few years, or rather, centuries, whoever
will stay to see if the myth has been preserved? The unbelievers
always have arguments to counter the inventor
of myths; and what I can answer is that, although
of being closed and hidden, the myth does not need to be
open for us to check, as the heart
of lovers doesn’t have to be ripped out of the chest to
that both know that love exists
and pulses on their bodies. So, I conclude, just know
that the pot encloses the myth to recognise
its truth; and, at best, we can come closer
of the tissue that closes the pot and breathe its aroma,
divine as the perfume of love and sacred
like the feeling that goes with it.
A criação do mito
Os mitos conservam-se se os metermos
num pote de barro, sem água, apenas com muitas
ervas, de preferência aromáticas, e algumas
folhas de louro. Depois, tapa-se o gargalo
com um tecido grosso e ata-se com uma corda,
antes de pegarmos no pote e o levarmos
para a cave, onde terá de ficar fechado alguns
anos, ou melhor, alguns séculos,
antes de o voltarmos a abrir. Pode ser que os agnósticos
vejam aqui uma contradição: se o pote só pode ser
aberto daqui a uns anos, ou melhor, séculos, quem
ficará para ver se o mito se conservou? Os descrentes
têm sempre argumentos para contrariar o inventor
de mitos; e o que posso responder é que, apesar
de estar fechado e escondido, o mito não precisa de ser
aberto para que o verifiquemos, tal como o coração
dos amantes não tem de ser arrancado do peito para
que, um e outro, saibam que o amor existe
e pulsa nos seus corpos. Portanto, concluo, basta saber
que o pote encerra o mito para reconhecer
a sua verdade; e, quando muito, podemos aproximar-nos
do tecido que fecha o pote e aspirar o seu aroma,
divino como o perfume do amor e sagrado
como o sentimento que o acompanha.
— Nuno Júdice, in O mito de Europa (2017)
