50 years have passed since the shocking publication of new portuguese letters (1972). An intertextual work written in six hands – those of Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Isabel Barreno and Maria Velho da Costa – the book has a prominent role in Portuguese literary history. In his genesis proposal was already the idea of challenging the regime. There, the subordinate relationship in which women lived was evidenced, which was denounced as a social construction and the naturalization that the Estado Novo imposed right and left was rejected. Once published, the book had the expected luck, although the scope of its reception was unimaginable, since its prohibition motivated acts of international solidarity and demonstrations, and the first group of the Women’s Liberation Movement was also created.
Let’s go to the beginning. my lady of me (1971), by María Teresa Horta, had been apprehended. Moreira Baptista, Secretary of State for Information, threatened Snu Abecassis, from the D. Quijote publishing house: if he published this book or any other signed by the author, he would close the publishing house. María Teresa Horta had received anonymous letters and phone calls, with threats, and she was forced to tap the phone. Chaos set in.
After the episode, María Isabel Barreno, at one of the weekly lunches of the three authors, proposed that they write a work for three. If a woman’s job caused so much fuss, what would one in three do? In the end they decided to do nothing, but the following week, María Isabel Barreno took the first text to lunch. From there, they went on to write. new portuguese letters. For that they started from portuguese letters, a novel published by the publisher Claude Barbin in 1669. The latter had been published anonymously and its effect was felt in the following centuries, having been published in Portugal in 1969, in a bilingual edition by Assírio & Alvim, translated into Portuguese by Eugenio de Andrade. epistolary novel, portuguese letters It consists of love letters written by Sóror Mariana Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun, to a French officer, from a convent in Beja.
new portuguese letters would start from here, with Mariana Alcoforado as the main figure. The name was not immediately agreed upon, since it represented the cloister, but there it was ahead of a kaleidoscopic set of texts. In the masthead, there were three rules for the authors: each one would write five letters, they would have absolute freedom and everything would be signed by the three of them. This last point was an unprecedented writing experience, since, even in cases where several authors got together to write books, each one assumed his part. Composed of letters, in prose and poetry, stories, monologues, essays and a transcript of the Portuguese Penal Code, new portuguese letters brought a broad portrait of the condition of women in Portugal during the Estado Novo. The plethora of characters served to show a transversal oppression, while touching on taboo subjects for the society of the time, such as the colonial war or female sexuality.
In this way, the book struggled with the barriers set up by the politics and morals of the Salazar regime. By refusing to acknowledge them, he confronted them and put them in check. If the legal context imposed fewer rights on women than on men, the authors placed gender discrimination at the center of the narrative, giving moving portraits, showing life without complacency. And there wasn’t even a tendency to make all the women Mariana Alcoforado or Joana d’Arc. On the contrary, everything happened, with women victims of rape by their own parents (“O pai”), accustomed to their own domination, women cloistered in convents against their will or women who refused to be subjugated (“A Luta” ). . With everything given to the reader on a whim, whoever read the book would immediately be confronted with the contradictions of a society. And, instead of simply reflecting or exposing it, new portuguese letters went to fight. It should be added here that the authors never needed to present arguments, list topics, create brochures. Literature was the weapon because it was imbued with real life, and it was the literary element that had power here. And, to carry out the literary project, the authors combined analytical capacity with aesthetic exercise. In the internal structure of the work is the social element. Instead of contextualizing the narrative, it made it possible, and the writing was also a social act, especially since it already responded to the censorship and violence of those who wanted to exclude women from access to symbolic production.
In addition to my lady of me (1971) in which María Teresa Horta peremptorily claimed the right to female sexuality, the trio had also Maina Mendes (1969), in which Maria Velho da Costa begins her path of transgression of social conventions, denouncing a patriarchal society, and with The other legitimate superiors (1970), in which María Isabel Barreno denounced the symbolic silence in which women lived. The first edition of new portuguese letters It came from Estúdios Cor and was directed by Natália Correia. The latter, urged to cut parts, published the entire work.
The effort was great and the paper died shortly after. The uncut version was made public, having been collected and destroyed three days later. The subsequent judicial process led to the applicants being interrogated separately by the PIDE/DGS. Marcelo Caetano’s censorship, which did not differ much from Salazar’s, accused the authors of having produced a pornographic work that affected public morals.
The opinion of the PIDE, contained in report No. 9462 of the boxes of the censored book, approved on May 26, 1972, pointed out parts considered particularly immoral:
This book consists of a series of texts in prose and verse linked to the story of Mariana, but in which the emancipation of women is always advocated in all its aspects, through stories and reflections.
Some of the passages are frankly shocking because they are immoral (eg pp. 48, 88, 98, 102, 122, 140, 164, 188, 214, 216, 246, 284, 316 and 318), constituting an offense against the costumes and morality in force in the country.
In conclusion: I am of the opinion that the circulation in the country of the book in question is prohibited. [sic]forwarding it to the Judicial Police for purposes of investigating the criminal case.”
The authors were called to the police station and were not immediately arrested because Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa posted bail of fifteen contos. María Isabel Barreno, after proving that she did not have the means to do so, started having to report to the police once a month, because the official body was present.
In June 1972, a raid was carried out to seize copies of the work. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rui Patrício, contacted the authors to publicly declare that, through the book, they had not wanted to offend either the government or the name of the country. In exchange, the accusation for the crime of abuse of press freedom would be withdrawn. The proposal was rejected by all three. Moreira Baptista had pressured the owner, the law, and the editor-in-chief of The capital, the newspaper where María Teresa Horta worked, to get her fired. She didn’t get what she wanted, but the author couldn’t sign any articles anymore. And he did not succeed because David Mourão-Ferreira threatened that if they did, he would reject a prize that had been awarded to him, revealing the reasons for the protest. Among them, María Teresa Horta would once again receive anonymous phone calls and threats.
In the country there was even a ban on reporting on this case through the written or spoken press. The threat, in case of non-compliance, was to close the newspapers. The pressure ended up having the opposite effect and the case had several repercussions in Europe, which included an occupation of women in the Portuguese Embassy in the Netherlands, demonstrations of rejection in Washington and several demonstrations in Paris, with figures such as Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras or Jean-Paul Sartre, creating a unique case of international reception. Furthermore, the book, smuggled into France, was quickly translated in several Western countries. In Portugal, no one could read it.
In between, even the writing process got in the way: penned by six hands, the work challenged notions of authorship. Although the interrogations tried to find out who wrote what, the authors never revealed it. The trial of the three plaintiffs began on October 25, 1973 and, after some delays, was not held due to April 25.
The impact that the work had is mainly due to its production conditions. Signed by three writers, the book was made with everything: class oppression, colonial war, the oppression of women. Besides that, he was already imbued with the element of courage, since it would be obvious that the publication of the book would not leave the authors unscathed. The Estado Novo condemned its opponents and seemed to threaten to perpetuate itself with the support of the ruling classes.
Today it occupies a unique place in literature to combat the Estado Novo. And, for that, it was enough for the authors to make literature in a reality in which the performative act of writing itself was already political and subversive. In new portuguese letters, opened up the role of social inferiority for women in a country in which a notion of family and nation was rooted and imposed the domestication of women in order to cede public space –political, therefore– to men, with their inherent power of decision . Refusing to lose access to decision-making and symbolic production, the authors showed the relationships between men and women in multiple faces, from the social institution to the bedroom.
For having created a discourse that bothered the power, the power tried to silence them, and for that reason defamed the work, separating it from its true content. All this generated the revolt and it was the revolt that responded, not allowing censorship to pass unscathed.
Today, looking at the new portuguese letters, we still see a living text, which also speaks to the contemporary reader. Fifty years later, it is still read and studied for its unique character, and also for the multiplicity it offers in terms of reading experiences. Marked by the context from which it arose and by the reception it received, the book is a literary work that had a hand in the world. Not only is it not a small thing, it is almost everything.
The author writes according to the old spelling agreement.
Source: Observadora
