Modernity

"Arraial" (1950) by Vieira da Silva [1908-1992]

This term does not refer to an aesthetic movement, but instead represents a notion that is frequently used to describe the quality of a work in positive terms. Semantically disconnected from the concept of modernism, it evokes other historical periods of aesthetic and cultural revolution (the modernity of Renaissance humanism, the modernity of the spirit of the Enlightenment, the modernity of the concept of time and art in Baudelaire and, above all, after the Second World War, liberation in relation to the last remaining shackles of literary, artistic and cultural convention, of which even the most recent programmatic movements (precisely by virtue of their being so) still felt the restrictions).

In our view, Pessoa is a great poet because he is more closely connected, through the diversity of his heteronyms, to a notion of modernity than to the concept of modernism, just like Almada Negreiros. António Boto and Irene Lisboa, who were imperfect presencistas, were able to identify themselves as such in that they also enjoyed their share of modernity.

The renewal of the novel in the second half of the twentieth century (beginning with Agustina Bessa-Luís, in A Sibila, 1954, and her subsequent work, as well as with the novels of Vergílio Ferreira, and several other authors, e.g. José Cardoso Pires, Augusto Abelaira), together with the work of a number of poets (António Ramos Rosa, Eugénio de Andrade, Herberto Helder), form the basis of an indistinct and differentiated modernity, frequently recurring in the vocabulary of critics. In spite of its actually defining an identical universe, this term creates a certain amount of confusion, particularly as, in certain cases, it is confused with the notion of post-modernism that has since come into fashion.

© Instituto Camões, 2001