Year: 2017
Type: article
Abstract: On 1 1 October 1835, Mary, queen of Portugal, wrote a note to the Duke of Palmela, then her foreign secretary: "I want you to pass a law appointing Luiz da Camara ambassador to Brussels; as to Garetti, he can go elsewhere [pode-se arranjar em outra parte]" (Carvalho 52).The note is remarkable, and not only for its sloppy syntax and imperiousness. 1 In fact, "Garetti" denotes, rather than the Italian tenor one would expect, the Portuguese writer and one-time ambassador to Brussels Joao Baptista da Silva Leitao, who had at that time already dubiously taken up the remote Irish family name Garrett for which he became, and is, known.On that count, this maneuver was a failure, at least from the standpoint of the admittedly dim lights of his sovereign: rather than evoking a bard, the person's name suggested to the queen little more than an opera singer.In a devious way this was almost true.The Marquis of Fronteira, in his memoirs, perhaps the best and most detailed account of the first half of the Portuguese nineteenth century, recalls seeing the poet for the first time at the Lisbon opera, reciting political poems to the general acclaim of the audi- ence, and being later carried in triumph around the room, much like an opera singer or a bullfighter.2 On a second count, however, the queen's note proved to be even more accurate: "he can go elsewhere" is an apt description of both the erratic life of the character and the main literary predicament of the author of Travels in My Homeland , which concerns us today.For reasons that will become apparent, I
DOI: 10.62791/ee1wj898
Author: Miguel Tamen
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4401024660