Cape Verde : Language, Literature & Music

Notes on the Historical Context of Claridade Ellen W. Sapega Abstract. This essay takes its starting point from the premise that a single coherent project for the publication of Claridade never existed, either in terms of the reviews contents or of its actual physical layout. After demonstrating that three very different incarnations of Claridade appeared at three distinct historical moments (1936-7; 1947-49; 1959-60), I set about examining each “series” in light of the specific date in which it appeared. Paying particular attention to the selection and treatment of texts written in Creole, I identify several clear-cut changes in the placement and framing of these texts that occurred between the first and the second series. This, in turn, indicates that the purpose and reception of Claridade changed significantly over the course of its publication, as the editors sought different solutions to the problem of how to provide a metaphoric entry of Cape Verdean culture into the “Portuguese” text. The literary review Claridade has undoubtedly received more critical attention than any other single publication in the history of Cape Verdean literature. As it occupies a central, yet ambiguous, place in the literature of the archipelago, Claridade has been the object of much praise; yet, at the same time it has received its equal share of negative critical responses. The review’s founders were among the first to investigate the specificity of Cape Verdean experience, basing their studies on carefully documented customs, traditions and cultural practices of the islands, and the initial publication of Claridade in 1936 clearly marks an important historical moment in the process of imagining Cape Verdean identity as unique and autonomous from that of ^ 160 PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES 8 metropolitan Portugal. For Claridades critics, nonetheless, much of its contents have been judged disappointing since its contributors never venture so far as to issue a proclamation of political independence, or to affirm the cen- trality of an African component in Cape Verdean cultural identity. This latter position, which took the claridosos to task for their emphasis on the twin themes of drought and emigration, was first staked out by the generation of nationalist writers who appeared on the Cape Verdean literary scene in the 1950s and 60s. Influenced by the philosophies of Negritude or by pan-African theories of liberation, writers such as Manuel Duarte (“Caboverdianidade e africanidade” [1954]) and Onesimo Silveira {Conscien- cializagdo na literatura caboverdiana [1963]) accused the review’s founders of grounding their literary project on a simplistic and escapist critique of the problems facing the Cape Verdean population. ^ Attempting to insert a model of Cape Verdean experience into a more generalized debate regarding the independence of Portugal’s African colonies, this later generation also faulted the claridosos for having committed the unpardonable error of having placed too much emphasis on the European origins of the Creole culture and language that they wished to promote. While these accusations may appear a bit extreme today, they accurately reflect the polemical nature of the debate regarding Claridades significance that took place in the decades prior to Cape Verdean independence.^ It is difficult, however, to interpret these negative criticisms as directed at the final issues of the review, published in 1959 and I960. Appearing at a moment when the idea of independence had begun to circulate in Portugal’s provlncias ultramarinas, these issues contained material that was far less problematic for the younger generation. Indeed, several of Claridades collaborators at this point were also associated with the fight against Portuguese colonialism.^ In the same vein, it is also very unlikely that the movement’s detractors were addressing the first three issues of Claridade, published in 1936 and 1937. At that early date, it would have been nearly impossible to attempt more than a simple revindication of Cape Verdean political and cultural autonomy. In contrast, the decade of the 1940s represents an important transitional period, both in the history of the review and in the history of Portugal’s colonial empire. At that time, some ten years after the appearance of Claridades inaugural issues, its founders’ cultural project was to undergo several important transformations. In order to accurately assess these transformations, it is essential to return the review to its original socio-historical context and to examine each issue of — CAPE VERDE: LANGUAGE, LITERATURE & MUSIC 161 Claridade in light of the specific moment in which it appeared. Only through SAPEGA an analysis that takes into account the attendant conditions surrounding W. Claridades publication will it be possible to identify and understand the sub- ELLEN tle changes to the project that took place over the twenty-four year period that the review was published. As I shall demonstrate in the analysis that fol- lows, it is not a coincidence that the most controversial issues of Claridade (numbers four to seven) are those that were published between 1947 and 1949. Presenting a view of Cape Verdean culture that was less engaged in a thoroughly defined political project, these are undoubtedly the most problematic issues when viewed from a pro-independence perspective. These issues appeared at a time when the Portuguese empire in Africa was undergoing sig- nihcant structural changes that resulted in new concrete demands and more subtle ideological shifts. In keeping with these shifts, the pages of Claridade register at this time a seemingly more ambivalent response to the hegemonic discourses that aimed to justify the continued existence of the Portuguese empire in Africa. A preliminary step to understanding the choices and restrictions that the claridosos forced to confront in the 1940s entails the recognition that a single coherent project for the publication of Claridade ntYtr existed, either in terms of the review’s content or of its actual physical layout. While not explic- itly identified as belonging to different series, three very different incarnations of the review appeared at three different historical moments. There are, of course, several elements that remained constant throughout Claridades existence: it was always published in Mindelo, on the Island of Sao Vicente; after the fourth issue the director remained the same;5 and each issue also contained work by at least two of three figures considered as the movement’s founders Baltasar Lopes, Manuel Lopes and Jorge Barbosa. However, some notable changes to the physical layout of the review did take place between the first and the second series. When the review reappeared in 1947, after ten years of silence, the initial length of eight to ten pages was extended to an average of forty-hve pages. In a similar fashion, the number of collaborators increased from less than half a dozen to almost double that number. Moreover, in the second series, Claridades original subtitle of “Revista de arte e letras” was modihed to include the notice in parentheses, “nao periodica,” and the actual physical size of the pages was reduced in size by more than half While the third series of the review maintained a layout similar to the second, the final two issues that comprise this group (published in May 1959 ^ 162 PORTUGUESE LITERARY & CULTURAL STUDIES 8 and December 1960) continued the practice of adding new voices and new materials. Containing seventy-five and eighty-two pages, respectively, the number of contributors increased at this time to twelve, in issue number eight, and hfteen in the hnal issue. In both cases, Manuel Lopes’s name is absent; by this time he had left the archipelago, moving first to the Azores in 1944, then to Lisbon. As a final note to this brief overview of Claridade^ material features, it is intriguing that only the last issue used a graphic design on its cover: in the place of the customary poetic text that was used to open the previous issues, the cover of this final issue contains an unsigned drawing of five women on a dock clustered around a fisherman. As these simple facts suggest, Claridade opened up its pages to new voices in the second and third phases of its publication. Logically, these new contributors were younger and brought with them new social and aesthetic con- cerns. Bearing in mind that it was also inevitable that the review’s founders were to modify their views in light of the specific context of the moment, it becomes evident that each phase or series of the review consisted of a reread- ing and reformulation of the earlier issues. Turning our attention to the contents of Claridade^ it is curious to note, however, that the changes that occurred between the first and second series seem, at least initially, to be slight. Besides the greater number of pages and contributors that mark the second series, the division of material into specific genres is maintained. It is possible, on one hand, to identify modernist-inspired poetry that covers topics ranging from the social to the existential as well as literary prose written in Portuguese but inspired by the popular culture of the islands (good examples of this are excerpts from Chiquinho by Baltasar Lopes and various short stories by Manuel Lopes). On the other hand, we find essays that attempt to interpret the Cape Verdean experience already alluded to in the fiction and poetry from a sociological point of view. In this vein, a recurring topic is the study of Creole carried out by Baltasar Lopes that deals, in particular, with its origins and status as a language, and not just as a mere dialect of Portuguese. As a complement to this linguistic study, it was natural that the pages of the review also contained transcriptions of compositions from Cape Verdean popular music, such as finacons, batuques and mornas, in which the original Creole language was maintained.

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