Poetry
Odes Modernas
Not translated into English
Antero de Quental · 1865
Synopsis
Poems of combat, which the author called the voice of the Revolution: they abandon drawing-room sentiment for revolt, justice and equality, in the spirit of Proudhon, Michelet and Hegel's dialectic. The Church, the monarchy and the great of the world are taken to task in them, the poet addresses the men of his century rather than a lover, and a prose note on the revolutionary mission of poetry accompanies the collection.
Context
The collection appeared in 1865, when its author was twenty-three. Castilho, a Romantic poet then master of Portuguese letters, having mocked the young men of Coimbra in a postface, Antero answered him the same year with the pamphlet Bom Senso e Bom Gosto: the quarrel, known as the Questão Coimbrã, lasted about six months and produced more than forty pamphlets. A second edition appeared in Porto in 1875, enlarged with unpublished pieces and in a toned-down manner; the author afterwards distanced himself from this book, which he judged declamatory and abstract.
Who it is for
A short collection; the philosophical and political references of the nineteenth century are constant, and an annotated edition helps.
Prizes and reception
Starting point of the Questão Coimbrã, the great literary quarrel of nineteenth-century Portugal, from which the generation of 1870 emerged.
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