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 English Corner |
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English Corner |
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That the Portuguese enterprise in the Age of Discovery was one based on commercial mercantilist interests, is undoubtedly true, but the religious, global intention of the Portuguese that went along with it, is what has inspired the rest of them these many centuries. It is, indeed, one of their characteristics as a people, their inclination, that they gladly open to other cultures and customs, that they actualize themselves outside Portugal, venture to some other country in some other part of the world, there realize their dreams, prove their meddle. The Portuguese Flag, for example includes a globe at its center, and that along with the shield represent, probably the very nature of all the Portuguese, as the world is to them their Holy Grail; and to go out into the world is their deep rooted crusade, their mission. From very young, as Portuguese, they aspire to leave, find outside their world, a better living, other opportunities. Born with an ingrained displeasure with the way things are, they are led to seek their fortune, go on a voyage, pull away, start anew, explore their chances outside the country. It is their vocation, their manifest destiny. The Portuguese, therefore, will willingly and gladly partake of any project, any experience that brings them to learn about other cultures and other languages or give them that world wide dimension imagined or real, which they crave. They gladly, therefore, join any international, multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-national project, movement or organization of a global nature. Today in almost any part of the world, in fact, whether it be in the Northern, Southern, Western or the Eastern hemisphere, one can always find a Portuguese. The better Portuguese, indeed, in Portuguese terms, are those who have traveled the world and have come back to prove it materially or intellectually, or if at home, those who live up to some form of international, world wide , definitely inter- European repute. Heirs to a history that brought them around the world with Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Cabrillo, and Magellan, among others, in them we invariably find the staunch supporters of any global ideal or plan for the future. They, probably, more than anyone else are the ones who better appreciate the new spirit that is uniting Europe, not only for financial benefits, but as the answer to their own utopian views of a world order where everyone comes together to celebrate the diversity and uniqueness of everyone else, where oceans are the only natural barriers and those through their courage and endeavor the place in which they actually find themselves best at home. They, who contributed to dispel the flat earth way of thinking, although displaced by the whims of history the last two centuries themselves, keep an open mind about the different variables for the future and do their best to stay in step with the rest of Europe, the rest of the world. In their gentle and well mannered disposition, they are sensitive to the plight of others, and will rally in prayer and consideration on the side of the oppressed, the underprivileged, the mistreated or abused. Among many European nations they, for example, were one of the first countries to abolish capital punishment or slavery. As a sport form, their bullfights do not have the importance and attention that they do in Spain, nor do they ever kill the bull in public. They abhor violence and intolerance as a means of solving problems or making points and do try to have the right attitude to solve them or welcome change. Where other countries have undergone change through social turmoil and war, the Portuguese have chosen to rely on their faculty of self denial and sacrifice to move way, emigrate, be absorbed by some other country or culture and not resort to fighting, and killing amongst themselves. Compared to other European countries, their history is one of struggle with powerful enemies such as the Romans, the Suevi, the Visigoths, the Moors, the Spaniards, the ocean itself, but their own revolutions and political and social transitions have been mild, many even bloodless, where the art of persuasion, and dialogue, their sense of tolerance, their common sense, and patience displaces any need for violence and bloodshed. It was indeed those qualities that made them suffer a dictatorship for as long as it could be tolerated, and only by a bloodless, and unavoidable revolution did they welcome a new age, and let go of the old. Fishermen by nature, they better than anyone else know that if you rock your boat violently, no matter what, you will drown in the end or have no boat with which to go back to shore again. For as a result of their experience with the sea, no matter how bad things may be inside any boat, one is always better off in it, than outside in the restless waves of the sea. Thus, unless the cliffs of history threaten to rip apart the boat in which they find themselves, by nature, the Portuguese will rarely want to rock it, or dare to make waves, whenever possible. Their wars, therefore, have always been against some outside force. All their internal disputes are handled as in a family, sometimes loudly and vehemently, by arguing or discussing, even cursing and threatening, but nonetheless with a degree of common sense and respect that will choose reason over rash or violent reactions. As examples, we have Brazil, the country in which we invested so much of what we are, that it won its independence with hardly, if any bloodshed, the most remarkable colonial transition the world had ever seen. Owners of a sense of self denial and sacrifice which made their sailors leave the comfort of their homes, their families, their houses and adventure into the unknown, the Portuguese still today, give up everything they have in order to go out in search of a better life, earn their money, invest in their future, fulfill their most pressing ambitions. It is part of their character to let go, to dare the distance, the new, the strange, the different. It is no wonder therefore that they came down in history as the explorers and discoverers par excellence. Made for the world, it was not mere coincidence that the Portuguese, as many foreign historians would like to have it, set out to sea. From back in time as back in time as we can remember in song and literature, that aspect of the Portuguese character expressed itself, indeed marked their distinction from the Spanish people next door to them. It is part of the Portuguese soul that longing they call Saudade, which they respect and nurture as some feeling akin to the ocean and to the world, some form of inner motion, the origins and the reason of everything, some mystical quality which somehow they store in their memories and which as in wine gives a special timeless quality to living, pushes them forward. A people constantly moving away, they all inherited this feeling. Sons and daughters of the Atlantic, they were born with this inner movement that thrusts them forward, forces them at some time to partake in some wondrous voyage, as a river to find the sea. Like the albatross, they obey that call, pull away, seek their fortune in the high sea, be there where no one else was first-- sail away. Then, the moment they settle, the moment they seem to be going nowhere, like any old sailor saudade is what they get, this feeling which is a sense of motion, or the bobbing left and right of their dreams and ambitions, a feeling that they are still sailing when all around them is motionless being, is "terra firme" the end, no more. If Jewish people held on to a belief in a supreme being that shaped their destinies, their very history, in the Portuguese, it is saudade, this feeling that they brag, only the Portuguese own it, and cannot find translation in any other language. To explain what Saudade is, one need look at life itself as an ocean, and living is a banishment of sorts from some Land, some Atlantis, sunk in time, this longing for the past, an indefinite past that is also present and future. To understand it one needs to develop indeed a Lusitanian a Portuguese soul, like those Celtic, Roman and Moor shepherds, who after roaming the European continent or crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, found in Portugal the silence and roar of the sea, a land that led to the wide expanse of inner silence and reflection--the land at the end of the world, where powerful rivers, suddenly encounter the all embracing ocean and stop their forward rush to become part of the whole. The more saudade one feels, therefore, the better proof that they are Portuguese, obeying the same law that their ancestors. Then, also, any Portuguese who is out at sea, who has left the country and is the farthest away from Portugal itself, and, as their predecessors did at one time from India, Africa the Far East or Brazil, he who brings back the most riches, is with a certain degree of vanity the best of the best, a Portuguese to look up at. That the Portuguese soul is thus a poet, a philosopher, one immerse in deep thoughts, is a reality. Whoever listens to the voice of Fado, the eternal Portuguese ballads will find it there. That is his fate, his destiny, his very essence of self in the wide expanse of the self immerse in the sea o life and time. That there are tomes written about it, or that the Portuguese have impressed the world with such philosophies by publishing them to the four winds, is something that has not happened, for it is to him as deep and as personal as his religiosity, is part of his make-up, his very nature. Only when they sing the fado, like Amália, or when they write their poems like Camões, Antero or Pessoa, or when you catch them gazing aimlessly at things, the way sailors look at distant horizons, can you, then, catch a glimpse of this reality in them. Then, if on one hand he craves for the world, to explore, go out and work, and discover, share with the world his being there, on the other hand he grabs to his uniqueness like no people on the planet. It is known that as the Romans advanced on the region of Lusitania in central Portugal and border line with Spain, many of those tribes partook of mass suicide. The Portuguese therefore will share with the ocean of whatever land or reality their own shores, their will even stop speaking Portuguese of their own will at times and will adjust in whatever land they choose to live in, become one with the natives of any country, but when it involves their very essence , their very concept of self ---and that with all the attachments, fate, melancholy, deep sense of soul, land, pride and valor, they wake in them a lusitanian energy, like an unruly and loud sea, that will keep any law, army, earthly power at bay, as it was the case of their empire, which, in spite of world pressure, they kept till well into the second half of the twentieth century, longer than any other European power, but the Soviet Union, and this against tremendous odds, causing its their impoverishment in the end. Consider, this small stretch of land trapped between the Ocean and the mighty Spain, lord of the Lower-Countries and the Holy Roman Empire at one time, and observe with how much vigor and conviction these Portuguese kept their character, their language and culture distinct from the Spaniards a thousand or more years; the Spaniards, who were kept back from the wide Atlantic ocean to the West by this very nature of the Portuguese, who like that Atlantic ocean itself of one will, dominant and powerful, are resilient to any change by force, by being taken over without their consent. Indeed one of the deep ingrained characteristics of any Portuguese is his religiosity, his staunch conviction of his missionary role in the world. This religiosity appears in all their thinking activity . It is a giving of all their energies to some cause, idea, or way of living, to the point of accepting the most challenging situations, sacrificing everything they have, giving it their best to reach an end result or an aimed shore. Like dories in a storm at sea, they will fight the odds, take in water, but somehow make it to the distant goal of their ambitions and come back to port with enough sardine for everyone. Such religiosity is applied to politics, with diligence at work, to the keeping of traditions , with the same energy make plans for the future, aim at excellence, fund their dreams, dare the new and difficult, emigrate, settle where no one else is willing to settle, deny self and let go; allow destiny to have a last say knowing that as Pessoa expressed in his "Vale a pena. Tudo vale a pena, se a alma não é pequena", that "It is worthwhile. Everything is worthwhile, if the soul itself is not wanting (cheap)." To document this point, all one needs to do is look at their contribution to the Age of Discovery and Exploration, today, at the way the Portuguese worked to bring about EXPO 98, the bridge Vasco da Gama over the Tagus River, their participation as a member of the European Union, the recent progress they are undergoing, and the projects they have for the future. Flared up by a new spirit, the Portuguese feel they need to prove to the world, that this country that aged with history, went into a long sleep after a glorious age that made Lisbon a world capital at one time, like their own wine, their country is one of quality, second to none, that they want the world to taste and confirm and be assured that it is still of the finest caliber. Inspired by such religiosity, their priorities now, back in the little balcony of Europe, having let go of one of the great and first European empires in the newly discovered world, is to find themselves again, put out to sea again, this time within the context of a new Europe. A country considered one of the poorest in Europe at one time, they mean business, when they say, they will get up again from centuries of corruption, social injustice, backwardness, inability to act. They will get up again and walk from being thought of as a backward and unimportant part of Europe, and each Portuguese will build a home as they love it, open to the world, bright and sweet. They will take their people away from the beach shack that Portugal became the last century, and bring their people to a new home, a new PortuGal, the way they were meant to be from the beginning. In their new outlook for the future, they dream of a PortuGal opened again to the world, but this time from this verandah like land stretched into the sea, they plan to sail the new seas as they are, a member of Europe with no pretensions of a world empire, but with a genuine eagerness to welcome an age of inter-human relations, tolerance, cooperation and real human progress for all on this planet. In other words, they will do their best to merit the future and be front row in the building and planning of the European dream and the global village. Silvério Gabriel de Melo Vogelbach, Germany silverio@mail3.bunt.com |
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