Uma Torrente d ais ou A alma nacional? : o fado em perspectiva identitária na discussão acerca da nação portuguesa : (1878-1904)

Abstract

A musical style that is considered the national song in Portugal, the Fado arose in Lisbon suburb in 1840. From the 1860 s, it is possible to observe it circulating between the various strata of the Portuguese society. This paper investigates two images of the Fado made between the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, in order to unravel the fabric that plotted such pictures through time. The aim is, thus, to demonstrate the historicity in the construction of national symbols and the changing character of the concept of nation, by seizing these "images" of the Fado built in two moments in Portugal s History: sometimes as an element unable to appear as symbol of the Portuguese nation, sometimes as a genuinely Portuguese cultural object. Established in the context in which one perceives the change in time frame analysis of Portugal's history, when the Portuguese intelligentsia breaks with a past tradition in the nation's design and opens up the possibility of rethinking it based on the assumptions with conditions of consolidation in the future, the "images" of the Fado in question, it is argued, were linked to the "aesthetic of identity recomposition" developed by the Portuguese culture. Through the articulation of temporality expressed by the categories of "space experience" and "horizon of expectation", it is noted, as well, the establishment of these "aesthetic" by two logical thoughts linked to ideas around two intellectual groups. The first, marked by so-called Geração de 1870, of scientistic slant on the realistic literary trend and the rational model of nation of enlightenment inspiration, is summarized in the works of Eca de Queiroz, O Primo Basilio (1878) and A Ilustre Casa de Ramires (1900), in which Fado is disregarded as a national symbol. The second logical thought, attributed to the alleged Geração de 1890, whose ideas are characterized by a nationalist bias related to post-Ultimatum context of 1890, connected to the symbolist literary trend and an ethnocultural model nation of romantic inspiration, are present in the works of olisipography (study of Lisbon) by Pinto de Carvalho, História do Fado (1903), and Alberto Pimentel, A Triste Canção do Sul (1904), in which the Fado figures as an expression of "national soul".