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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº.1, TD4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026

REVISTA CLARIDADE AND AMÍLCAR CABRAL:

POETIC SEEDS OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE

RAQUEL ABI-SÂMARA

raquelabisamara@um.edu.mo

Assistant Professor at the University of Macau (China), where she teaches literature, translation

studies, and Portuguese. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the State University of

Rio de Janeiro. A translator from German into Portuguese, she has translated works by Paul

Celan, Franz Kafka, Hans-Georg Gadamer, among other authors. She co-edited the forthcoming

volume Beyond, Belated, and Out of Place? Non-Hegemonic Literary and Aesthetic Moments on a

Global Scale (Brill). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1300-9392

RIVALDO MENDES FREIRE TAVARES

yc57719@um.edu.mo

PhD student in Literary and Intercultural Studies (Portuguese) at the University of Macau (China).

His research focuses on Cabo Verdean Modernist poetry, Portuguese literature in African

countries, and Chinese poetry. He co-authored the forthcoming book Vozes das ilhas: canções de

Cabo Verde, which explores these musical traditions from a pedagogical perspective. He also

translated Amílcar Cabral poetry into Chinese, presented at the seminar commemorating Cabral’s

centenary (University of Macau 2025). https://orcid.org/0009-0003-3979-4231

Abstract

This study examines the poetic-political militancy of Amílcar Cabral through his essay

“Apontamentos sobre poesia caboverdiana” (Notes on Cabo Verdean poetry; 1952), in which

he undertakes a critical analysis of the new poetry of Claridade, the avant-garde Cabo Verdean

magazine published between 1936 and 1960. The magazine, a foundational milestone of the

so-called claridosa generation and recognized for circumventing the restrictions of colonial

censorship, introduced innovations in poetry that began to address cultural, social, and

identity-related issues. It even incorporated poems and mornas in Cabo Verdean Creole,

whose publication—given its status as a non-official language—was effectively repressed

during the Estado Novo. Although Claridade broke with the classical aesthetics of metropolitan

Portuguese poetry and began to thematize local problems—such as drought and famine

afflicting the colony—Cabral identifies in its poems an unacceptable tone of resignation and

passive hope for better times. In contrast, he proposes that poetry should transcend such

limits and be transformed into revolutionary energy. The analysis of Cabral’s essay requires,

first, a brief contextualization of the Claridade editions that preceded the publication of the

essay. In our reading of Cabral’s text, we identify and explore four movements that structure

the author’s argument: the relationship between poetry and social function; the periodization

of Cabo Verdean poetry into pre- and post-Claridade phases; the aesthetic inflection

introduced by the magazine; and the transition from “resigned” poetry to the affirmation of

an autonomous Cabo Verdean voice. We seek to trace, across the first seven issues of

Claridade published prior to Cabral’s essay, and likely read by him, the sources of his

arguments, which are not always explicitly acknowledged. These sources include poetic

verses, authors, literary works, and critical essays. We argue that one such essay, published

by Osório de Oliveira in Claridade 2 (1936), constitutes a key source for Cabral’s notion of

“resignation” in Cabo Verdean poetry. This concept, foregrounded by Cabral in his essay, is

examined here in dialogue with Oliveira’s text in order to show how this intellectual exchange

sheds light on Cabral’s broader project of transforming poetic sensibility into critical force and

a horizon for social change.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

Keywords

Claridade, Amílcar Cabral, Osório de Oliveira, seeds of struggle and resistance, Cabo Verdean

poetry.

Resumo

Este estudo examina a militância poético-política de Amílcar Cabral a partir de seu ensaio

“Apontamentos sobre poesia cabo-verdiana” (1952), no qual empreende uma análise crítica

da nova poesia da Claridade, revista vanguardista de Cabo Verde publicada entre 1936 e

1960. A revista, marco inaugural da chamada geração claridosa e reconhecida por contornar

as restrições da censura colonial, introduziu inovações na poesia, que passou a abordar

questões culturais, sociais e identitárias, incorporando inclusive poemas e mornas em crioulo

cabo-verdiano, cuja publicação, por ser uma língua não oficial, era reprimida, na prática,

durante o Estado Novo. Embora a Claridade tenha rompido com a estética clássica da poesia

metropolitana portuguesa e passado a tematizar os problemas da terra – como a seca e a

fome que assolavam a colónia –, Cabral identifica em seus poemas um inaceitável tom de

resignação e de esperança passiva por tempos melhores. Em contraposição, propõe que a

poesia supere tais limites e se converta em energia revolucionária. A análise do ensaio de

Cabral exige, inicialmente, uma breve contextualização das edições da Claridade que

precederam a publicação do ensaio. Na nossa leitura do texto de Cabral, identificamos e

exploramos quatro movimentos que estruturam o argumento do autor: a relação entre poesia

e função social; a periodização da poesia cabo-verdiana em fases pré- e pós-Claridade; a

inflexão estética introduzida pela revista; e a passagem da poesia “resignada” para a

afirmação de uma voz própria cabo-verdiana. Procuramos traçar, ao longo dos primeiros sete

números da Claridade publicados antes do ensaio de Cabral, e provavelmente lidos por ele,

as fontes dos seus argumentos, que nem sempre são explicitamente reconhecidas. Essas

fontes incluem versos poéticos, autores, obras literárias e ensaios críticos. Argumentamos

que um desses ensaios, publicado por Osório de Oliveira no n.º 2 da Claridade (1936),

constitui uma fonte fundamental para a noção cabraliana de “resignação” na poesia cabo-

verdiana. Este conceito, destacado por Cabral no seu ensaio, é aqui examinado em diálogo

com o texto de Oliveira, a fim de mostrar como esse intercâmbio intelectual ilumina o projeto

mais amplo de Cabral de converter a sensibilidade poética em força crítica e horizonte de

transformação social.

Palavras-chave

Claridade; Amílcar Cabral; Osório de Oliveira; sementes de luta e resistência; poesia cabo-

verdiana.

How to cite this article

Abi-Sâmara, Raquel & Tavares, Rivaldo Mendes Freire (2026). Revista Claridade and Amílcar

Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance. Janus.net, e-journal of international relations. Thematic

Dossier – Geopolitics of Anxiety: Ideology, Identity, and (Un)Bordering in Contemporary Europe

and Asia, VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD4, October 2026, pp. 87-110. DOI https://doi.org/10.26619/1647-

7251.DT0726.4

Article submitted on 27 June 2026 and accepted on 18 August 2026

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

REVISTA CLARIDADE AND AMÍLCAR CABRAL:

POETIC SEEDS OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE

RAQUEL ABI-SÂMARA

RIVALDO MENDES FREIRE TAVARES

Introduction

The historical impact of Amílcar Cabral (1924–1973), widely recognized as one of the

foremost revolutionary leaders of the African anticolonial struggle, founder of the African

Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde (PAIGC), and a

distinguished Pan-African intellectual, contributed to the relative marginalization of his

small yet significant literary output. His reflections and poetic incursions, though limited

in number, constitute a still underexplored dimension of his multifaceted intellectual

trajectory and prove fundamental to a more comprehensive understanding of the

formative process of one of the most brilliant political leaders of the twentieth century.

The preferred point of departure for reflection on Amílcar Cabral’s poetic-political

militancy is his essay “Apontamentos sobre poesia caboverdiana” (Notes on Cabo

Verdean poetry; 1952; hereafter referred to as “Apontamentos”)—published in Cabo

Verde: boletim de propaganda e informação (Cabo Verde: Bulletin of propaganda and

information)—in which he undertakes a critical examination of Cabo Verdean poetry,

particularly that of the magazine Claridade. The Boletim de Propaganda e Informação,

edited between 1949 and 1963, was the official journal of the colonial government,

designed to disseminate state propaganda—though recent scholarship suggests that its

editors and collaborators may not have been fully aware of this function, or may have

interpreted their work as vindication actions (Milheiro, 2022). Cabral’s decision to publish

in this official organ was strategically significant: it allowed him to address colonial

administrators and the educated elite directly, while simultaneously using the regime’s

Declaration of Interest - The authors declare that there are no known financial, professional, or personal

conflicts of interest that could have appeared to influence this research. The authors have no competing

interests to declare.

Acknowledgments - This research was supported by the University of Macau through Start-Up Grant

SRG2024-00008-FAH “Avant-Garde Movements in Non-hegemonic Portuguese-Speaking Contexts”. The

authors gratefully acknowledge this support. Furthermore, the authors acknowledge the use of Microsoft Copilot

in assisting with the formatting of references and the standardization of source citations in this work.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

own platform to challenge the resignation that characterized much of Cabo Verdean

poetry.

Cabral analyzes Claridade poetry through a materialist lens: Poetry is a product of its

environment and must fulfill a social function, serving the people and contributing to their

transformation. For this reason, Claridade represented, in Cabral’s (1952) words, the

“breaking of a new dawn” (p. 7).

Published under the constraints of colonial censorship,

Claridade marked the inaugural moment of aesthetic and thematic innovations that

shifted Cabo Verdean poetry away from metropolitan traditions toward the

problematization of insular realities—marked by drought, famine, emigration, and the

search for cultural identity. Yet the magazine’s poetry also remained deeply indebted to

Portuguese lyrical conventions, occupying an ambiguous space between rupture and

continuity. Cabral, however, observes that despite the formal and thematic rupture, the

poems retained a tone of resignation and passive hope, insufficient in the face of

historical urgencies. His intervention proposes that poetry transcend this limit and be

converted into a revolutionary force, capable of creating, as he envisions, “another land

within our land” (p. 8).

This article will examine Cabral’s “Apontamentos” from the perspective of his political

militancy, as well as the value he attributes to poetry—and, by extension, to culture—for

the renewal and liberation of the colonial environment. Since the magazine Claridade is

the object of discussion in Cabral’s essay, we will first provide a brief overview of the

magazine and of the possible issues Cabral considers in his essay. Building upon this

contextual foundation, our analysis offers a detailed reading of the essay’s internal

structure, revealing how Cabral’s argument unfolds through four distinct movements:

The first is a reflection on art and its social function; the second, a mapping of Cabo

Verdean poetry into two phases, pre- and post-Claridade; the third addresses the abrupt

aesthetic shift promoted by Claridade; and the fourth calls for Cabo Verdean poetry to

evolve beyond passivity and prepare for a decisive action of social transformation.

To deepen the understanding of the motif of “resignation” in Cabo Verdean poetry—an

aspect central to Cabral’s critique—the article examines the implicit dialogue he

establishes with Osório de Oliveira’s essay published in Issue 2 of Claridade (1936).

Published sixteen years before “Apontamentos,” Oliveira’s text was the first critical essay

on the Claridade poets to appear in the magazine itself, and it was there that the idea of

Cabo Verdean “resignation” was first formulated. Cabral, who approached the subject

not as a specialist in poetry but as an intellectual militant engaged in a broader project

of liberation, anchored his critique in the existing discourse of respected figures such as

Oliveira. By drawing upon—and ultimately surpassing—Oliveira’s diagnosis, Cabral

transformed a literary observation into the foundation for a political program, converting

the aesthetics of passivity into a call for conscious action. Through this interlocution, the

aim is to highlight how Cabral articulates his intellectual militancy by proposing the

overcoming of the historical passivity of Cabo Verdean poetry, transforming the

aesthetics of resignation into political force and symbolizing the passage from the literary

All translations are by the authors unless otherwise indicated.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

seed to the blossoming of a voice capable of breaking silence and affirming itself as an

instrument of social transformation.

Claridade, an Avant-Garde Cabo Verdean Magazine

In the 1930s, under Portuguese colonial rule and subjected to the repressive policies of

António de Oliveira Salazar’s Estado Novo, Cabo Verde faced a severe economic crisis

resulting from prolonged droughts across the archipelago, famine, and a strong wave of

emigration. It was in this context, amid strict censorship over the press and local cultural

production, that the avant-garde magazine Claridade emerged as a literary response to

those conditions of oppression, bringing new vitality to Cabo Verdean poetry and culture.

The impact of the magazine, however, was not limited to Cabo Verde. According to Norma

Lima (2024), Claridade is “in aesthetic terms, the magazine that ushered in modern

letters not only to the archipelago, but to Portuguese-speaking Africa” (p. 97).

Claridade published nine issues at irregular intervals between 1936 and 1960. The issues

appeared in three distinct phases: the first three came out between 1936 and 1937; the

next four between 1947 and 1949; and the last two between 1958 and 1960. In analyzing

the three distinct historical moments in which the issues of Claridade were published,

Ellen Sapega (2003) notes:

A single coherent project for the publication of Claridade never existed,

either in terms of the review’s content or of its actual physical layout. While

not explicitly identified as belonging to different series, three very different

incarnations of the review appeared at three different historical moments

(p. 161).

There was considerable variation in the number of pages across each of these phases:

The first three issues had eight to 10 pages each, which expanded to more than 40 pages

each in the second phase and approximately 80 pages each in the third phase. Some

elements, however, as Sapega observes, remained constant throughout the journal’s 24-

year history: For example, it was always published in Mindelo, on the island of São

Vicente, and each issue consistently featured contributions from two or three of the

intellectuals regarded as founders of the Claridade movement: Baltazar Lopes, Manuel

Lopes, and Jorge Barbosa.

Considering that Amilcar Cabral’s essay “Apontamentos sobre poesia caboverdiana” is a

text from 1952,

it is evident that the poems—as well as works of fiction and essays—

from Claridade that served as the basis for Cabral’s reflections were published in the

magazine’s first two phases, encompassing issues 1–7, released between 1936 and 1949.

The examination of these first seven issues raises an important point to be highlighted:

The way the magazine dealt with colonial censorship can help us to frame Cabral’s

critique regarding what he identifies as passivity and resignation in Cabo Verde’s avant-

garde poetry. Seven of the nine issues of Claridade carry the following phrase on their

Portuguese original: “Em termos estéticos, [Claridade é] a revista que instaurará as letras modernas, não

somente no arquipélago, mas na África de língua portuguesa.”

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

pages: “Visado pela censura” (approved by the censor). Curiously, issues 1 and 7 are the

only ones that do not bear this mark of control. The fact that Claridade was launched, as

indicated by its subtitle, as a “magazine of art and letters,” rather than as a newspaper

directly associated with political themes, may have been the reason its first issue did not

attract the attention of the censors. From the second issue onward, however, surveillance

was imposed, and all subsequent issues—with the exception of the seventh—were

explicitly subjected to censorship.

The fact that the first issue was not subjected to censorship explains the publication,

right on the opening page, of the transcript of a text in Creole: “Lantuna & 2 motivos de

‘finason’ (batuku da Ilha de Santiago)” (Lantuna and two motifs of “finason” [Batuku

from the island of Santiago]),

which did not recur in subsequent issues—a circumstance

that drew the attention of other critics, as Sapega (2003) highlights:

Several critics have called attention to the importance of this cover as

presenting a strong statement of the group’s project. For Pierre Rivas, “it is

a manifesto in act, provocative in its laconic style and revealing of its spirit,

at once manifest and concealed.”

By presenting these songs without

commentary or translation, Claridade begins its publication with a strong

and sure affirmation of the importance of the Creole language and of cultural

practices that are African in origin. After this moment, however, this gesture

is never repeated—while the cover of the following issue also transcribes a

text written in Creole, it is a morna [a traditional Cape Verdean form of

poetry and music], not a finason. The third issue of Claridade then opens

with the “Poema de quem ficou” [Poem by those who stayed] by Manuel

Lopes, and the covers of all the following issues, with only two exceptions,

also present original poems written in Portuguese rather than Creole (p.

163).

These early issues of Claridade, as Alberto Carvalho (2021) points out, are characterized

by an “identity affirmation that unsettled the hegemony of the Portuguese language” (p.

33).

Transcribing a Creole finason—one of the most traditional forms of Cabo Verdean

oral poetry, linked to batuku and other African musical practices—is a far more

provocative act than transcribing a Creole morna, which is a musical genre blending

African and European influences. The morna that Sapega refers to on the cover of Issue

2 of Claridade is not an anonymous text like the finason. It is authored by Xavier da Cruz,

and its title, “Venus,” has nothing to do with African culture. It is worth noting that the

finason in Issue 1 was not accompanied by a translation. Although “Venus” also appears

without a Portuguese translation, its lyrics are much closer to metropolitan Portuguese

and therefore far easier for Portuguese-speaking readers to understand.

So far, no explanation has been found for why the seventh issue of the magazine escaped censorship.

Finason is a lyrical form of moral and social critique delivered through spontaneous sung poetry within

performances of batuku, a female-centered musical performance from Cabo Verde, rooted in West African

rhythmic structures.

Portuguese original: “é um manifesto em ato, provocador no seu laconismo e revelador de seu espírito

duplamente manifesto e dissimulado” (Rivas, 1989, p. 40).

Portuguese original: “Uma afirmação identitária que desconcertava a hegemonia da língua portuguesa.”

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

According to Sapega (2003), “The choice of a morna for the cover of the second issue is

already indicative of a move away from a cultural model inspired by African artistic

practices” (p. 163). This editorial oscillation in the early issues of the journal reveals,

from the outset, the tension between the affirmation of a radical difference in relation to

the prevailing Portuguese colonial culture in Cabo Verde in the 1930s and the proximity

to culturally hybrid forms. The morna, Sapega adds, is “representative of the cultural

politics of miscegenation that would inspire a great deal of the literary and theoretical

works produced by the Claridade generation” (p. 164). This politics of miscegenation

drew heavily on the theories of Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, whose 1933

work Casa-grande & senzala celebrated racial mixing as a positive force in the formation

of Brazilian society (Freyre, 1933). Freyre’s ideas—particularly his later concept of

Lusotropicalism, which posited a distinctive Portuguese capacity for harmonious

coexistence with tropical peoples—were enthusiastically embraced by

the Claridade intellectuals as a framework for understanding Cabo Verde’s own creole

identity (Salla, 2014, pp. 108-110). As Salla (2014) demonstrates, the Freyrean

discourse of regionalism and miscegenation provided the claridosos with a conceptual

vocabulary to affirm Cabo Verde’s cultural specificity while simultaneously reinforcing the

archipelago’s integration within the Portuguese imperial sphere—a strategy of

“approximation rather than rupture” with the metropole (p. 114). This apparent paradox

is central to understanding the movement’s ideological complexity: while

the Claridade project sought to “rediscover” Cabo Verde’s social and psychological

reality, it did so within a framework that ultimately reaffirmed the success of Portuguese

colonization (Salla, 2014, p. 111). Moreover, as scholars have documented, Freyre’s

theories were only strategically appropriated by the Estado Novo regime from the 1950s

onward, when Lusotropicalism became a diplomatic tool to justify Portugal’s continued

colonial presence in Africa in the face of international decolonization pressures (Castelo,

1998; Costa, 2005). This chronology complicates any straightforward alignment between

the Claridade project and Salazarist ideology, suggesting instead that

the claridosos operated within a field of tension—at once asserting local identity and

participating in the broader cultural politics of the Portuguese imperial world. We should

note that Osório de Oliveira’s essay—which we will analyze later in dialogue with Cabral’s

“Apontamentos”—was also published in Issue 2 of Claridade and aligns with the politics

of miscegenation highlighted by Sapega.

In the next section, we will examine Cabral’s essay and his expectations regarding the

expressive and political function attributed to Cabo Verde’s avant-garde poetry, outlining

how this literary production is called upon to participate in a broader project of social

intervention.

Cabral’s Notes on the Poetry of Claridade

Cabral begins the essay “Apontamentos” with an epigraph that announces his critical

perspective on the poetic production of Claridade: “Nothing of my private life pains me.

/ I suffer the penances of the community. / Water from a sweet river, I entered the sea

/ And salted myself in the salt of immensity” (Torga, 1950, as cited in Cabral, 1952, p.

JANUS.NET, e-journal of International Relations

e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

5).

These are the opening verses of the poem “Fraternidade” (Fraternity) by Miguel

Torga (1907–95), taken from the book Cântico do Homem (Canticle of Humankind)

(1950). In Torga’s verses, poetry demands the sacrifice of individual pain in favor of the

community; that is, the poet does not suffer for his private life but bears the sorrows of

the collective. By leaving the sweet waters of lyricism and entering the sea, the poet

metaphorically dissolves himself into the sufferings of the community. The final verses

of Torga’s poem, which do not appear in the essay’s epigraph, reinforce the poet’s ethical

commitment to his community: “But I could not, lyrical poet, / Remain, with the reed

flute, exercising the ear, / Far from the world and far from the noise.”

The uncommon

Portuguese expression “ficar de avena” (to remain with the reed flute) indicates the

aloofness of the pastoral lyrical poet, with his musical instrument, the reed, detached

and indifferent to social life. The poet rejects the notion of “art for art’s sake,” for he

understands that he cannot withdraw from the noise of the world and recognizes his duty

to be present and to intervene in the life of the community.

Cabral’s use of a metropolitan poet like Miguel Torga as an epigraph is strategically

revealing and, at first glance, counterintuitive. After all, how to justify resorting to a poet

from the colonizing country to ground a critique of an emerging poetry that combined

diverse cultural heritages and claimed a differentiated identity? Rather than drawing on

a Cabo Verdean voice, Cabral appropriates the authority of the colonizer’s own literary

tradition to legitimize his call for a socially engaged poetry. What emerges from Cabral’s

engagement with Torga’s verses is the pursuit of a poetic model grounded in commitment

and artistic responsibility—the refusal to remain aloof from collective suffering.

In the following subsections, we will concisely examine the four movements that structure

Cabral’s essay: an initial reflection on art and its social function (“The Social Function of

poetry”); the pre- and post-Claridade phases of Cabo Verdean poetry (“Pre- and Post-

Claridade Cabo Verdean Poetry”); an analysis of the aesthetic inflection promoted by the

magazine (“The Breaking of a New Daw in Cabo Verdean Poetry”); and finally, the appeal

for Cabo Verdean poetry to abandon passivity and orient itself toward transformative

intervention (“From Resigned Poetry to the Cabo Verdean’s Own Voice”).

The Social Function of Poetry

Before reflecting specifically on Cabo Verdean poetry, Cabral (1952) takes a position

regarding the role of poetry as an artistic expression:

Poetry, like any artistic manifestation and despite all the individual

characteristics emanating from the poet’s personality, is necessarily a

product of the environment in which it finds expression. That is to say,

however great the influence of the individual upon the work they produce,

Portuguese original: “Não me dói nada meu particular. / Peno cilícios da comunidade. / Água dum rio doce,

entrei no mar / E salguei-me no sal da imensidade.”

Portuguese original: “Mas não podia, lírico poeta,/ Ficar, de avena, a exercitar o ouvido,/ Longe do mundo e

longe do ruído.”

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e-ISSN: 1647-7251

VOL. 17 Nº. 1, TD 4

Thematic Dossier – From Colonial Rule to Nationhood:

Amílcar Cabral and the Birth of Lusophone Africa

October 2026, pp. 87-110

Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

Raquel Abi-Sâmara, Rivaldo Mendes Freire Tavares

it is always, in the final analysis, a product of the social complex in which it

was generated (p. 5)

Although highlighted as a product of its environment, poetry, for Cabral, carries within

itself a great potential to transform that environment, and this is the tone that permeates

the entire essay, in a language marked by the use of expressions and vocabulary drawn

from the semantic field of political militancy, such as “taking a stand,” (p. 5) “voices that

rise to defend” (p. 5) a given manifestation, “raising the banner” (p. 5) with regard to

the function of art, and “to serve or to betray” (p. 6) the social complex. Subtle linguistic

strategies emerge in Cabral’s poetic-political critique, such as when, in defense of the

social function of poetry, he states: “Dissenting voices that rise to defend the exclusive

influence of the individual complex of artistic manifestation are becoming rare” (p. 5).

His militant voice, which defends poetry as an art form that is “dependent” on social

problems, an “engaged art,” gains greater expressiveness when contrasted, in the

passage above, with the multiple dissenting voices that are becoming rare and that still

defend poetry as a mere expression of a sensitive individual—an “independent” and

“disinterested” art—and therefore innocuous for society. Giving even greater emphasis

and weight to the way he sees and wishes to make poetry seen, Cabral adds:

Thus, while the ranks of those who seek or desire an art with a social function

grow day by day, the lines fill up around those who stubbornly raise the

tattered banner of “art for art’s sake.” And, in qualifying as tattered the

banner of those who defend a “disinterested” art, one is, even if implicitly,

taking a stand (p. 5)

For Cabral, art—and, by extension, poetry—is produced by a being that is above all

social—the human being—and is also moral, philosophical, scientific, religious, and so on.

From his perspective, as we have seen, art should not be conceived as a mere

externalization of the poet’s individual sentimentalism, nor as an aesthetic exercise

detached from purpose—art for art’s sake. On the contrary, he affirms the social function

of poetry, insisting that “what matters is determining whether such a work constitutes a

good or an evil for that complex, that is, whether it serves it or betrays it” (p. 6, our

emphasis).

With this established, Cabral moves on to the second part of his reflections,

in which he maps the two phases—pre‑ and post‑Claridade—of Cabo Verdean poetry,

Portuguese original: “A poesia, como qualquer manifestação artística e apesar de toda a característica

individual, emanente da personalidade do Poeta, é necessariamente um produto do meio em que tem

expressão. Quer dizer: por maior que seja a influência do próprio indivíduo sobre a obra que produz, esta é

sempre, em última análise, um produto do complexo social em que foi gerada.”

Portuguese original: “Rareiam as vozes discordantes que se levantam para defender a exclusiva influência

do complexo individual da manifestação artística.”

Portuguese original: “Assim, enquanto vão crescendo, dia a dia, o conjunto daqueles que pretendem ou

querem uma arte com função social, cerram-se as fileiras daqueles que, teimosamente, arvoram a esfarrapada

bandeira da chamada “arte pela arte”. E, ao qualificar-se de esfarrapada a bandeira dos que defendem uma

arte “desinteressada”, está-se, ainda que de maneira implícita, tomando posição.”

Portuguese original: “O que interessa determinar é se tal obra constitui um bem ou um mal para aquele

complexo, isto é, se o serve ou se o trai.”

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Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

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seeking to “determine” the nature of its social function, as we shall see in the following

section.

Pre- and Post-Claridade Cabo Verdean Poetry

The material and human environment experienced by the Cabo Verdean poet defines the

way in which their poetry is to be understood. Based on this principle, Cabral seeks to

identify the characteristics that underpinned the manifestations of the two poetic strands

of the archipelago: the one prior to the advent of Claridade and the one brought in by

the magazine. The distinction between these two phases of poetry is already presented

at the very beginning of his essay: “So distinct are these two phases that Osório de

Oliveira does not hesitate to affirm: ‘only now (that is, with Claridade) can one speak of

Cabo Verdean Literature’” (Cabral, 1952, p. 5).

This is no mere passing reference. By

grounding his periodization in Oliveira’s authority, Cabral strategically positions his own

critique within the very critical discourse that had first defined Cabo Verdean poetry as a

distinct literary phenomenon, while preparing the ground for his eventual departure from

Oliveira’s framework.

The first stage of Cabo Verdean poetic production, as outlined by Cabral, is distinguished

by an almost complete detachment from the environment, revealing itself as alien to the

reality “of the land and [of] the people of the archipelago” (p. 6).

The poets

representative of this phase, according to Cabral, are Eugénio Tavares, José Lopes, Pedro

Cardoso, and Januário Leite, although there are some works by Tavares and Cardoso

that do not conform to this classification. As for Leite and Lopes, Cabral states:

J. Leite, for example, offers in his sonnets the expression of the poet’s purely

sentimental reaction to phenomena that concern him and him alone,

whereas José Lopes conveys, more than any other poet, the stamp of

classical culture, detached from its environment, which characterizes the

ideological formation of the poets prior to Claridade (p. 6)

Cabral relies on another statement by Oliveira

to reach the conclusion that this mark

of classical culture in pre‑Claridade poetry results from the poets’ education at the

Seminary of São Nicolau, which was the first institution to offer religious and secondary

education in the archipelago and contributed to the formation of Cabo Verde’s cultural

and political elites.

The classical and bookish culture learned at the lycée did not favor

the poets’ thematic approach to their environment and local problems:

Portuguese original: “Tão distintas são essas duas fases, que Osório de Oliveira não hesita em afirmar: ‘só

agora (isto é, com a Claridade) se pode falar da Literatura Caboverdiana.’” This is one of the two passages in

Cabral’s essay in which he refers to Osório de Oliveira, without citing a specific work.

Portuguese original: “da terra e [d]o Povo do Arquipélago.”

Portuguese original: “Enquanto poesia de J. Leite, por exemplo, oferece, nos seus sonetos, a expressão da

reação puramente sentimental, do Poeta, perante fenómenos que a ele e só a ele interessam, a de José Lopes

traduz, mais do que qualquer outra, o cunho de cultura clássica, desligada do meio, que caracteriza a formação

ideológica dos Poetas anteriores à Claridade.”

Again, Cabral does not cite the work in which Osório makes this assertion.

The Seminary-Lyceum of São Nicolau was created by the Decree-Law of September 3, 1866, with the dual

objective of training priests for the diocese and cadres for the civil administration (Neves, 2008, p. 24). The

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Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

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With their eyes fixed on what they had learned from books and perhaps

supposed to be unsurpassable, they achieve little more than imitating the

authors they knew, producing a poetry in which love, intensely personal

suffering, patriotic exaltation, and nostalgia are the common traits (Cabral,

1952, p. 6)

Cabral further reinforces his critique of the elitist influence on the formation of the pre-

Claridade poets:

The seminary in São Nicolau could be attended by only a few. There, a

classical culture was imparted, to which those who had the fortune to receive

it remained strongly attached. So strong was the bond that seminarians (or

talented autodidacts), finding open to them the doors of a life where they

could enjoy positions of prominence, ignored or forgot the realities

surrounding them. In them, all that was merely philosophical, religious, or

moral gained supremacy over the economic. Better yet, it was the very

economic conditions in which they lived that facilitated this detachment from

Cabo Verdean realities. The land and the people were distant. The latter, in

the lyrics of the morna, sang of their sufferings and loves, while the poets

composed perfect sonnets to exalt some sentiment, the braids and eyes of

the beloved, the beauties of Greece, or a celebrated date in history (pp. 6–

To be considered “perfect,” Cabral observes, the sonnets must have “the sacred respect

for meter, the distressing submission to the shackles of rhyme” (p. 6).

He goes on to

contrast this elitist poetry with the morna.

It is important to highlight that the author

chooses the morna, and not the finason (published on the cover of the first issue of the

magazine), as a genuinely Cabo Verdean art form. This choice may be interpreted as an

choice of the island of São Nicolau for its establishment was because the seat of the Bishopric of Cabo Verde

and Guinea had been located there since the late eighteenth century (p. 24). During its 51 years of

uninterrupted operation, the Seminary received students not only from Cabo Verde but also from other

Portuguese colonies—Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique—as well as from

mainland Portugal and Madeira (pp. 25, 176). According to Neves, the seminary “was the driving force behind

cultural, political, social, and intellectual dynamics, in addition to paving the way for the formation of a schooled

stratum that produced extensively, encompassing poetry, fiction, essay, and journalism” (p. 25), which earned

it the designation of “cradle of Cabo Verdean intellectuality” (p. 24). Abolished by Law No. 701 of June 13,

1917, the building was later used, in 1931, as a concentration camp for political deportees from the Madeira

revolt (p. 27).

Portuguese original: “De olhos fixos no que aprenderam dos livros e que talvez supunham insuperável, pouco

mais conseguem do que imitar os autores seus conhecidos, produzindo uma Poesia em que o amor, o

sofrimento pessoalíssimo, a exaltação patriótica e o saudosismo, são os traços comuns.”

Portuguese original: “O Seminário, em S. Nicolau, por poucos pode ser frequentado. Ministra-se nele uma

cultura clássica, à qual se ligam fortemente os que tiveram a felicidade de recebê-la. Tão forte é o elo, que os

seminaristas (ou os autodidactas) de talento, encontrando abertas as portas duma vida onde pode desfrutar

de posições de relevo, ignoram ou esquecem as realidades que os cercam. Opera-se neles a supremacia de

tudo quanto é meramente filosófico, religioso ou moral, sobre o económico. Melhor: é a própria condição

económica em que vivem que facilita aquele alheamento das realidades caboverdianas. A terra e o Povo estão

distantes. Este, nas letras da Morna, canta os seus sofrimentos e amores, enquanto os Poetas compõem

sonetos perfeitos, para exaltar um sentimento qualquer, as tranças e os olhos da hegéria, as belezas da Grécia

ou uma data célebre, da História.”

Portuguese original: “O respeito sagrado à métrica, a confrangedora submissão às algemas da rima.”

The morna, the most emblematic and popular form of lyrical expression in Cabo Verde, was recognized in

2019 by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

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Revista Claridade and Amílcar Cabral: Poetic Seeds of Political Resistance

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indication of a critical predisposition to incorporate into his poetic reflection a cultural

policy of miscegenation: a comprehensive perspective that conceives local culture as a

dialogical phenomenon, without disregarding the elements inherited from metropolitan

traditions.

Cabral’s position on miscegenation, however, is more complex than a simple embrace of

hybridity. As Mário Pinto de Andrade (1976) observed, Cabral’s intellectual trajectory was

marked by a process of “reafricanization”—a “reconversion” of the spirits through which

colonized intellectuals, having been shaped by colonial education and assimilation, could

overcome the limits imposed by that assimilation and reclaim their African identity

(Sparemberger, 2011, p. 3). This process was not a rejection of all foreign influences,

but rather a critical appropriation: Cabral advocated that from the culture he defines as

African, experiences and knowledge from abroad should also form a part, but on African

terms. In this sense, his choice of the morna over the finason is strategically revealing.

By privileging a cultural form that already bears the marks of Portuguese influence—

rather than a more distinctly African form like the finason—Cabral signals that his project

was not one of pure nativism or a return to an idealized African past. Instead, he sought

to engage critically with the cultural hybridity that defined Cabo Verdean society,

transforming the “resignation” that Oliveira had identified into a conscious, critical

engagement with culture as a weapon of liberation. Cabral’s critique of Claridade poetry

is thus not a rejection of Portuguese cultural elements, but a call to transcend passive

acceptance—to move beyond the mere thematization of local suffering toward a poetry

that actively participates in the struggle for social transformation.

The poetry Cabral defines as claridosa begins primarily with some compositions by

Eugénio Tavares and Pedro Cardoso:

In E. Tavares (in singing of the atmosphere of Brava) and P. Cardoso (in

translating popular Creole quatrains from Fogo), there is already something

of what would later become reality in the poets of the new generation: an

intimate communion between the poet and their world (Cabral, 1952, p.

This intimacy between the poet and the world, however, also involves an intimacy

between the poet and the people, as appears clearly in Issue 7 of Claridade (p. 28), in

the poem “Poeta e Povo” (Poet and people) by Aguinaldo Brito Fonseca, whose verses

expose a collective suffering. But instead of naming aspects of a hostile environment, the

poet prefers to show solidarity with the people in a collective lament in response to

hunger:

The people cried out in hunger.

Many heard, but no one wept...

The voice of the poem was not the voice of the poet:

It was the voice of the people, the cry of the people.

The verses of the poem wept like the people...

Portuguese original: “Em E. Tavares (ao cantar o ambiente bravense) e P. Cardoso (ao traduzir, do crioulo,

quadras populares do Fogo) encontra-se já algo do que, mais tarde, se tornaria realidade nos Poetas da nova

geração: uma comunhão íntima entre o Poeta e o seu mundo.”

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and the poet, in writing them,

wept with them as well

The poet gives voice to the suffering of the people, but still does not propose a course of

action to overcome this suffering.

The Breaking of a New Dawn in Cabo Verdean Poetry

The magazine Claridade, whose advent Cabral (1952) called the breaking of a new dawn,

represented a sudden change in Cabo Verdean poetry:

It is the clarity that arises, giving form to real things, pointing to the sea,

the barren rocks, the people struggling in crises, the fight of the

“anonymous” Cabo Verdean—in short, the land and the people of Cabo

Verde. Hence the intentional—fortunately so—character of the name of the

magazine, which shows this profound transformation in Cabo Verdean

poetry: Claridade (p. 7)

The magazine introduces an innovation by bringing into poetry the natural, social, and

human landscape of Cabo Verde, in contrast to the exaggerated individual

sentimentalism, the references to Mt. Parnassus, and the idealizations of Greece in pre-

Claridade poetry, which proved dissociated from the concrete reality of the archipelago—

marked by infertile soil, prolonged droughts, and food scarcity that were the daily

struggles of the Cabo Verdean people, Cabral’s “anonymous Cabo Verdean.” This

expression is a direct reference to “Poema” (Poem) by Jorge Barbosa (1936), published

in the first issue of Claridade, which includes the following verses:

You crossed

seas

in the adventure of whaling,

in those voyages to America

from which ships sometimes never return...

On land,

in our poor islands,

you are the man of the hoe,

digging the dry soil in ungrateful regions

where rain seldom comes,

where drought is affliction

and hunger a tragic scene!...

(The morna...

seems like the echo in your soul

Portuguese original: “O povo gritou de fome. / Muitos ouviram mas ninguém chorou.// . . . // A voz do poema

não era a voz do poeta: / era a voz do povo, o choro do povo.// Os versos do poema choravam como o povo .

. . / e o poeta, ao escrevê-los, / chorava também com eles.”

Portuguese original: “É a claridade que surge, dando forma às coisas reais, apontando o mar, as rochas

escalvadas, o povo a debater-se nas crises, a luta do caboverdiano “anônimo”, enfim, a terra e o Povo de Cabo

Verde. Por isso, o caracter intencional—e felizmente intencional—do nome da revista que revela essa profunda

modificação na Poesia Caboverdiana: Claridade.”

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100

of the sea’s voice,

of the longed-for rain,

... the passive expression of our drama,

our revolt,

our silent melancholic revolt!)

America...

America has ended for you.

It has closed its doors to your yearning for expansion!

... To live always bent over the land,

our poor,

ungrateful,

beloved land!

O humble,

anonymous Cabo Verdean

—my brother! (p. 10)

This is one of the foundational poems of the Claridade movement, and its last verses

inspired Cabral to refer to the Cabo Verdean people as “anonymous”—a term we have

already encountered in the passage from his essay quoted above, where he describes

“the fight of the ‘anonymous’ Cabo Verdean” (Cabral, 1952, p. 7). The dialogical

composition in Barbosa’s poem, addressed to a “you” (“tu”)—the second person singular

indicating an intimate mode of address—is a device that brings the poet closer to his

subject of representation, namely the Cabo Verdean people shaped by emigration, the

harshness of the land, longing, and silent resistance. Barbosa’s choice signifies an

ideological stance, placing himself within the reality he describes, as demonstrated by

the final verse, laden with the force of affect and identity, in which he calls his anonymous

interlocutor “my brother.” Beyond its intimacy, the poem takes an anti-evasionist tone

when the poet declares that “America has ended for you.” We also note the inclusion in

the poem of the word “hunger,” whose use had been banned in local publications since

1927 by Governor Guedes Vaz (Lopes, 2021, as cited in Lima, 2024, p. 108).

Portuguese original: “Cruzaste / mares / na aventura da pesca da baleia, / nestas viagens para a América /

de onde às vezes os navios não voltam mais. // . . . // Em terra / nessas pobres ilhas nossas / és o homem da

enxada / abrindo levadas à água das ribeiras férteis / cavando a terra seca / nas regiões ingratas / onde às

vezes a chuva mal chega, / onde às vezes a estiagem é uma aflição / e um cenário trágico de fome! // . . . //

(A morna . . . / parece que é o eco em tua alma / da voz do Mar / e da nostalgia das terras mais ao longe que

o Mar te convida, / o eco / da voz da chuva desejada, / . . . / a expressão passiva do nosso drama, / da nossa

revolta, / da nossa silenciosa revolta melancólica!) // A América . . . / A América acabou-se / para ti. / Fechou

as portas à tua ânsia de expansão! // . . . // Viver sempre vergado sobre a terra, / a nossa terra / pobre /

ingrata / querida! // Ser levado talvez um dia / na onda alta de alguma estiagem / como um desses barquinhos

nossos / que andam pelas ilhas / e o Oceano acaba também por levar um dia! // . . . // Oh Caboverdeano

humilde / anónimo, /—meu irmão!

Vaz ordered a ban on the word “hunger” in local publications from 1927, and the Estado Novo regime

aggravated the situation by confiscating newspapers that reported on the famines (Lopes, 2021, as cited in

Lima, 2024, p. 108). Claridade, despite censorship, managed to circumvent this prohibition through literary

strategies. The reality of hunger, drought, and emigration is also portrayed in Claridade’s prose, notably in the

novel Chiquinho (1947) by Baltasar Lopes. The novel, which follows the protagonist’s life from childhood in a

village in São Nicolau to youth in Mindelo and eventual emigration to the United States, is considered a

foundational work of modern Cabo Verdean literature for its denunciation of living conditions in the archipelago

(Lima, 2024, p. 105). The first part of the novel was published under the title “Bibia” in Issue 1 of Claridade.

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The relevance of the local landscape in this new poetry is highlighted by Artur Augusto

(1937) in the essay “O Sentido Heróico do Mar” (The heroic meaning of the sea),

published in the third issue of Claridade:

Human geography has not yet unveiled, and perhaps will never be able to

unveil, the intimate spiritual communion that man will always have with the

land that was his cradle.

It is up to poets to reveal this hidden meaning that inextricably binds man

to the landscape he first beheld. And so powerful is this influence that many

preserve it solely through the atavism that holds them (p. 4)

On this founding moment of Claridade, which places poetry in communion with the land,

Cabral (1952) states:

The poets are now common folk who walk hand-in-hand with the people,

with their feet firmly rooted in the land. Cabo Verde is not the dreamed

Hesperidean garden, but rather the ARCHIPELAGO and its ENVIRONMENT,

where trees die of thirst and people of hunger—but hope never dies. The

sea no longer has mermaids, and the waves do not kiss the shore. The sea

is the road of liberation and longing, and the murmur of the waves is the

constant temptation, the permanent reminder of the “despair of wanting to

leave and having to stay” (p. 7)

The words Arquipélago (ARCHIPELAGO) and Ambiente (ENVIRONMENT) recall the titles

of two books by Barbosa. Ambiente (Environment) was published in Cabo Verde in 1941,

while Arquipélago (Archipelago) was released in 1935, a year before the first issue of

Claridade. In “The Heroic Meaning of the Sea,” published in the third issue of Claridade,

Augusto (1937) refers to this book: “Jorge Barbosa, in his latest book Arquipélago, notes

the influence of the sea: Ah, the strange / song / of the Atlantic / that does not fall silent

within us! . . . / Ah, the sea / that expands our dreams and suffocates our desires!” (p.

4). Given the relevance of this book for the renewal of Cabo Verdean poetry, Augusto

returns to it in the concluding sentence of his essay, not only to refer to Barbosa’s poems

but, more broadly, to the poetic production emerging with the Claridade writers: “In this

time of grave crisis for Portuguese letters, I have the greatest faith in the destiny of the

new generation of artists I see arising in this Archipelago.” (p. 4).

In addition to Barbosa, Cabral (1952) also highlights other “pioneers of the Claridade

event” (p. 7): Oswaldo Alcântara (the literary pseudonym of Baltasar Lopes, one of the

Portuguese original: “A geografia humana ainda não desvendou, e talvez nunca o conseguirá fazer, a íntima

comunhão espiritual que o homem há de sempre manter com a terra que lhe foi berço. Cabe aos poetas revelar

este sentido oculto que liga indissoluvelmente o homem à paisagem que primeiro viu. E é tão poderosa essa

influência, que muitos a mantêm só pelo atavismo que os prende.”

Portuguese original: “Os poetas, agora, são homens-comuns que caminham de mãos dadas com o Povo, e

de pés fincados na terra. Cabo Verde não é o sonhado jardim hesperitano, mas, sim, o Arquipélago e o

Ambiente, onde as árvores morrem de sede, os homens, de fome—e a esperança nunca morre. O mar já não

tem sereias e as ondas não beijam a praia. O mar é a estrada da libertação e da saudade, e o marulhar das

vagas é a tentação constante, a lembrança permanente do ‘desespero de querer partir e ter de ficar.’”

Portuguese original: “Nesta época de grave crise para as letras portuguesas, eu tenho a maior fé nos

destinos da nova geração de artistas que vejo surgir nesse Arquipélago.”

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founders of Claridade and author of the preeminent Cabo Verdean novel Chiquinho),

Corsino de Azevedo, Manuel Lopes, Teixeira de Souza, Jaime de Figueiredo are among

the main names.

These are the poets who, to Cabral (1952), give voice to the land, to the people, and to

the reality of Cabo Verde: “The land, ‘the martyred land’—is the mother who ‘nourishes’

her children ‘with the tenderness of her entrails’; who has not died, but lies asleep ‘in a

crumb of land in the middle of the sea’” (p. 7). Cabral is quoting from the poem “Mamãi”

(Mother) by Alcântara (1936), published in Issue 2 of Claridade, which takes the form of

a prayer of a child to Mother Earth:

Mamãi—Earth,

I come to pray at your feet,

Your son comes to raise his supplications . . .

for your other children—scattered

across the gray surface of your martyred womb.

Mamãi—Earth, . . .

I searched for your tomb

and did not find it

And then,

in my anguish as a grieving son,

they told me you had been buried

in a crumb of land

in the middle of the sea.

I boarded a sailboat

and went sailing, sailing. . . .

You have not died, have you, dear mother?

You are only asleep

so that tomorrow you may rise again. . . .

Dear Mother, move aside a little

and let your son fall asleep at your feet (p. 7, our emphasis)

Cabral identifies in Alcântara’s verses one of the most poignant personifications of Cabo

Verdean land, as a suffering mother, weakened and asleep, incapable of feeding her

children, yet receiving the profound affection of the child who shelters in her and does

not lose hope for better days.

In seeking the reason for such a profound transformation in Cabo Verdean poetry, Cabral

(1952) understands that the principal change occurred in culture, which he considered

“still the appanage of a restricted sector of Cabo Verdean Society” (p. 7).

The

democratization of school education, according to Cabral, allowed greater access to

Potuguese original: “Mamãi—Terra,/ venho rezar uma oração ao pé de ti,/ Teu filho vem dirigir suas súplicas

. . . / pelos outros teus filhos—espalhados/ na superfície cinzenta do teu ventre mártir,/ Mamãi—Terra,/ . . .

Eu procurei o teu túmulo/ e não o encontrei./ E depois,/ na minha dor de filho angustiado,/ me disseram que

te haviam sepultado/ numa migalha de terra/ no meio do mar./ Embarquei num veleiro/ e fui navegando,

navegando . . . // Não morreste, não, Mamãizinha?/ Estás apenas adormecida/ para amanhã te levantares./ .

. . Mamãizinha, afasta-te um bocadinho/ e deixa o teu filho adormecer ao pé de ti . . .”

Portuguese original: “Ainda o apanágio dum setor restrito da sociedade caboverdiana.”

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culture, forming intellectuals not only from more privileged classes but also “from the so-

called humble people”

(p. 7):

The fulcrum of Cabo Verdean intellectual life, shifting from São Nicolau to

the city of Mindelo, on the edge of Porto Grande, came into broader contact

with the world, where, day by day, the evolution of the human mentality

was unfolding, and the aspirations of humanity were being realized. It is to

be admitted that such a transformation resulted mainly from this contact,

essentially with metropolitan and Brazilian literature (p. 7)

It is worth noting that Cabral’s defense of a poetry that constitutes itself as the voice of

the land and of the Cabo Verdean people does not imply that it is confined within a strictly

identity-based horizon. On the contrary, the new poetry of Claridade, based in Mindelo,

emerges from an intellectuality in broader dialogue with the world, exposed both to the

literary trends of the metropolis and to international artistic currents. The hypothesis that

the Claridade writers may have been influenced by Brazilian literature had already been

suggested in Oliveira’s essay “Palavras sôbre Cabo Verde para serem lidas no Brasil”

(Words on Cabo Verde to be read in Brazil), published in Issue 2 of Claridade:

The Cabo Verdeans needed an example that Portuguese literature could not

provide, but Brazil offered it. The affinities existing between Cabo Verde and

the states of Northeastern Brazil predisposed the Cabo Verdeans to

understand, feel, and love the new Brazilian literature. Finding examples to

follow in the poetry and modern novels of Brazil and feeling supported in the

analysis of their case by the new Brazilian essayists, the Cabo Verdeans

discovered their path. A group was formed under the name Claridade

(Oliveira, 1936, p. 4)

For Oliveira, there were two reasons why the new writers—“some talented young men .

. . modest clerks, or employees” (p. 4)

—came to discover and sing freely using the

rhythms of their own land: one was the fact that they could not go to Portugal “like the

happy men of other generations” (p. 4), and so established more intimate contact with

their surroundings; the other reason was the example they found in the new literature

emerging in Brazil. By “the new Brazilian essayists,” Oliveira is primarily referring to

Gilberto Freyre, whose concept of Lusotropicalism strongly influenced the Claridade

intellectuals in the 1930s. However, the sixteen years separating Oliveira’s essay (1936)

Portuguese original: “Da chamada gente humilde.”

Portuguese original: “O fulcro da intelectualidade caboverdiana, passando de S. Nicolau para a cidade de

Mindelo, à beira do Porto Grande, encontrou-se em contato mais amplo com o Mundo, onde se operava, dia a

dia, a evolução da mentalidade humana, concretizando-se as aspirações do Homem. É de admitir-se que tal

transformação resultou principalmente desse contacto, em essencial com a literatura metropolitana e

brasileira.”

Portuguese original: “Os caboverdeanos precisavam dum exemplo que a literatura de Portugal não lhes podia

dar, mas que o Brasil lhes forneceu. As afinidades existentes entre Cabo Verde e os estados do Nordeste do

Brasil predispunham os caboverdeanos para compreender, sentir e amar a nova literatura brasileira.

Encontrando exemplos a seguir na poesia e nos romances modernos do Brasil, sentindo-se apoiados, na análise

do seu caso, pelos novos ensaístas brasileiros, os caboverdianos descobriram o seu caminho. Um grupo se

formou com o nome de Claridade.”

Portuguese original: “Alguns rapazes de talento . . . modestos funcionários ou empregados.”

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from Cabral’s “Apontamentos” (1952) are critical: during this period, the Estado Novo

strategically appropriated Freyre’s theories to justify its colonial presence in Africa,

transforming a discourse of cultural affirmation into an instrument of imperial propaganda

(Castelo, 1998; Costa, 2005). This temporal gap illuminates the differing positions of the

two authors: Oliveira’s discourse occupies a frontier space between an appeal to Cabo

Verdean resistance and a reaffirmation of colonial ideology, while Cabral, writing in the

early 1950s, could draw upon Oliveira’s notion of “resignation” only to transcend it,

transforming cultural critique into a call for political liberation.

It is also important to recognize the distinct historical contexts in which Oliveira and

Cabral were writing. Oliveira’s essay was published in 1936, a period when colonial

ideologies remained largely unchallenged in the public sphere, and when the Estado Novo

was consolidating its imperial mystique. His discourse, while appealing to Cabo Verdean

cultural resistance, inevitably operated within the ideological frameworks available at the

time—frameworks that were not yet subjected to the anti-colonial pressures that would

emerge after the Second World War. Cabral’s “Apontamentos,” by contrast, appeared in

1952, against a backdrop of progressive decolonization that had begun with the

independence of Asian countries such as India (1947) and Indonesia (1949). The political

stakes of literary criticism had shifted dramatically: where Oliveira could still invoke the

“excellence of Portuguese colonization” without immediate contradiction, Cabral’s call for

poetry to transcend resignation was already imbued with the language of national

liberation. This chronological distance does not diminish the intertextual relationship

between the two essays; rather, it illuminates how Cabral appropriated Oliveira’s

diagnosis of “resignation” and, in a new historical conjuncture, transformed it into a

revolutionary call.

Near the end of his essay, Oliveira says: “The high mental level of the Cabo Verdeans

has long been one of the greatest proofs of the excellence of Portuguese colonization and

of our civilizing capacity” (Oliveira, 1936, p. 4).

This statement reveals Oliveira’s

alignment with the ideological foundations of the Estado Novo, which promoted a self-

congratulatory narrative of Portuguese colonialism as a uniquely benevolent and civilizing

enterprise. The praise of Cabo Verdean cultural autonomy is immediately appropriated

as a justification for colonial presence. In the final paragraph, Oliveira deepens the

paternalistic tone, creating a brotherhood between Brazilians and Cabo Verdeans, both

“children” (filhos) of Portugal: “And may we, Portuguese of the Continent, know how to

see in this understanding . . . the best proof of the universality of our spiritual action,

our eternal glory.”

The rhetoric evokes the great navigations and parallel Catholic

proselytism—an ideology aligned with the Estado Novo.

Although Cabral refers to Oliveira’s statements several times in “Apontamentos,” at no

point can we see any affinity with Salazarist ideology, as might be expected. Yet Cabral’s

position is not entirely free from ambiguity. As noted earlier, his choice of the morna—a

Portuguese original: “O alto nível mental dos cabo-verdianos é, há muito, uma das maiores provas da

excelência da colonização portuguesa e da nossa capacidade civilizadora.”

Portuguese original: “E que nós, portugueses do Continente, saibamos ver nesse entendimento . . . a melhor

prova da universalidade da nossa acção espiritual, nossa glória eterna.”

For further details on the influence of Gilberto Freyre’s work on the avant-garde Claridade movement, see

Salla (2014).

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culturally hybrid form—over the finason may suggest a subtle alignment with the politics

of miscegenation that Oliveira had embraced. However, for Cabral, this choice reflects a

pragmatic recognition of Cabo Verde’s cultural reality rather than an endorsement of

colonial ideology. One of the observations Oliveira presented, on which Cabral strongly

relied, was Cabo Verdean “resignation”—an idea Cabral would incisively combat in the

fourth and final part of his essay, as we shall see in the following section.

From Resigned Poetry to the Cabo Verdean’s Own Voice

In the final part of “Apontamentos,” Cabral (1952) defends his position on this new form

of poetry, determining the following:

But the evolution of Cabo Verdean poetry cannot stop. It must transcend

“resignation” and “hope.” “Total insularity” and droughts are not enough to

justify perennial stagnation. The messages of Claridade and Certeza

must

be transcended. The dream of escape, the “wanting to leave,” cannot be

eternalized. The dream must be another, and it is up to the poets—those

who continue hand-in-hand with the people, with their feet firmly rooted in

the land and participating in the common drama—to sing it. The Cabo

Verdean, with eyes wide open, will understand their own dream, will discover

their own voice, in the message of the poets (p. 8)

Cabral’s emphasis on “resignation” as a recurring trait in Cabo Verdean poetry highlights

the implicit dialogue with Oliveira’s essay. Cabral opposes an alternative to this resigned

attitude, one that aligns with the critical perspective already announced in his earlier

writings, although those did not develop the detailed analysis of poetic production found

in “Apontamentos.”

Before examining how the dialogue between Cabral and Oliveira is

established regarding “resignation”—a concept that Oliveira first introduced in his 1936

essay published in Issue 2 of Claridade, and which Cabral would later engage with,

without direct citation, in his 1952 “Apontamentos”—it is necessary to make explicit the

terms of this debate. This is a crucial dimension of our analysis, as it reveals the often-

unacknowledged source that Cabral drew upon for his critique of Cabo Verdean poetry.

On Certeza, another avant-garde Cabo Verdean magazine that was highly representative, Cabral (1952)

says: “Years later, Certeza appears, an unfortunately short-lived publication, founded by students of the lycée.

In it, Arnaldo França, Nuno Miranda, Tomaz Martins, G. Rocheteau, and other young men attempt to put out a

new message and show that they understood that of the Claridade poets. But Certeza is not merely a

comprehension of Claridade” (p. 7).

Portuguese original: “Mas a evolução da Poesia Caboverdiana não pode parar. Ela tem de transcender a

‘resignação’ e a ‘esperança.’ A ‘insularidade total’ e as secas, não bastam para justificar uma estagnação

perene.”

As mensagens da Claridade e da Certeza têm de ser transcendidas. O sonho de evasão, o desejo de

‘querer partir,’ não pode eternizar-se. O sonho tem de ser outro, e aos Poetas—os que continuam de mãos

dadas com o Povo, de pés fincados na terra e participando no drama comum—compete cantá-lo. O

caboverdiano, de olhos bem abertos, compreenderá o seu próprio sonho, descobrirá a sua própria voz, na

mensagem dos Poetas.”

Cabral’s critique of resignation echoes in Onésimo Silveira’s “Consciencialização na literatura caboverdiana”

[Conscientization in Cabo Verdean Literature] (1963), where he argued that the claridosos’ focus on emigration

“ended up arbitrarily simplifying this complex problem and offering a stereotyped image of the Cabo Verdean

man (Silveira, 1963, p. 10, as cited in Sapega, p. 168). Silveira’s critique is particularly noteworthy given that

he himself published the poem “Saga” in Claridade (Issue 8, 1958), a work with strong political connotations—

suggesting that his critique emerged from within the movement he would later question.

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While Cabral does not cite Oliveira by name in this context, our research demonstrates

that his argument is fundamentally shaped by Oliveira’s earlier diagnosis of Cabo Verdean

“resignation,” a diagnosis that Cabral ultimately seeks to transcend by transforming

cultural lament into revolutionary action. This strategy of implicit appropriation and

transcendence is central to understanding Cabral’s poetic-political militancy.

Osório de Oliveira: Resignation as a Defining Trait of the Cabo Verdean

Oliveira’s “Palavras sôbre Cabo Verde”—signed in Lisbon on March 29, 1936, and

published in Claridade that August—is an ideologically hybrid text that calls for Cabo

Verdean resistance while simultaneously corroborating a colonialist discourse. Composed

of seven paragraphs, the text responds directly to the poem “Écran” (Screen) that Manuel

Lopes (1936) had dedicated to him in the first issue of the magazine, in which the poet

described the world that his eyes “drink in from outdated newspapers and magazines,”

before concluding melancholically: “that here [Cabo Verde] none of this exists: It is all

resignation”

(p. 4). The editorial epigraph—“We congratulate ourselves on Osório’s

collaboration, always welcome in this magazine whose explicit aim is to reveal the

message of the national soul”

(p. 4)—seeks to legitimize in advance a text that

flagrantly contradicts the magazine’s project of identity affirmation.

Oliveira (1936) highlights the Cabo Verdean’s “gentleness of temperament,” (doçura de

temperamento) which makes them “nostalgic, melancholic, and resigned” (um

nostálgico, um melancólico e um resignado) (p. 4). He adds that “resignation is the word

that defines their attitude in life when the harshness of destiny actually demanded revolt,

the energetic reaction of the strong” (p. 4).

He thus identifies “resignation” as a defining

trait of the Cabo Verdean—a resignation that contrasts with what the situation requires.

Further on—in the shortest paragraph of the essay, which seems to be a deliberate

choice—the core of Oliveira’s appeal is revealed:

But it is precisely this resignation that educated Cabo Verdeans need to

combat in their people. . . . If I could, I would go from island to island, from

village to village, from house to house, telling the Cabo Verdeans not to be

resigned. There are many things they can achieve if, instead of bowing to

implacable destiny, they cry out in a desperate will to live (p. 4)

Here, Oliveira summons a “cry” against resignation—a call for change from silence to

action. However, the “destiny” against which they must cry out is a vague and

depoliticized category: not the colonizer, not the regime, but an almost natural force.

Portuguese original: “Sorvem nos jornais e revistas atrasadas.”

Portuguese original: “Que aqui [Cabo Verde] nada disso existe: é tudo resignação.”

Portuguese original: “Congratulamo-nos com a colaboração de Osório, sempre benvinda nesta revista que,

justamente, procura revelar a mensagem da alma patrícia.”

Portuguese original: “Resignação é a palavra que define sua atitude na vida quando a inclemência do Destino

exatamente exigia a revolta, a enérgica reação dos fortes.”

Portuguese original: “Mas é precisamente essa resignação que os cabo-verdianos cultos precisam de

combater no seu povo. . . . se eu pudesse, iria de ilha em ilha, de povoação em povoação, de casa em casa,

dizer aos cabo-verdianos que não se resignassem. Há muitas coisas que eles podiam conseguir se, em vez de

se curvarem sob o Destino implacável, gritassem a sua vontade desesperada de viver.”

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The call remains on the plane of will, without translating into concrete political action.

Oliveira sees in the Claridade poets the possibility of this turn but cannot—or does not

dare—name the true enemy.

In the sixth and seventh paragraphs, Oliveira's discourse reveals a paternalistic colonial

logic: while acknowledging Cabo Verdean cultural autonomy, he appropriates it as proof

of the Portuguese civilizing mission. This rhetoric, echoed in his invocation of a spiritual

brotherhood between Brazilians and Cabo Verdeans as “children” of Portugal, aligns with

the Estado Novo’s ideology of imperial universality and its evocation of the great

navigations.

Oliveira’s essay contains structural contradictions. Although his discourse intends to call

the Cabo Verdean to expression—to the cry—it is anchored in markedly ethnocentric and

colonial assumptions, reiterating the supposed superiority of Portugal, the idea of a

“civilizing miscegenation,” and the eternal glory of the Portuguese people. Such internal

tensions stem, in part, from the demands imposed by the censorship of the period: In

order to obtain approval, the text had to incorporate statements that resonated with the

regime’s ideology. In this way, the “cry” that the author summons is immediately

neutralized by a discursive framework that empties it.

In “Apontamentos,” Cabral does not discuss Oliveira’s ambiguous political stance—both

conservative and anarchic—and it might be precisely because he disagreed with this

position and did not wish to propagate it (except occasionally, where it served his

critiques and political-poetic militancy) that he intentionally avoided citing his sources.

Yet it is clear that his critical vision of Cabo Verdean poetry is grounded in the notion of

“resignation” that was first pointed out by Oliveira. At the end of his critique of Cabo

Verdean poetry, Cabral (1952) identifies two poets—António Nunes and Aguinaldo

Fonseca—who to him “are at the forefront of this new poetry. They do not conform to

stagnation. The prison is not in the sea” (p. 8).

In his critique, Cabral highlights these

poets who expose a “shipwreck on land” (naufrágio em terra) and “another land within

our land” (outra terra dentro da nossa terra).

Final Remarks

The analytical path undertaken in this article highlights the relevance of the essay

“Apontamentos sobre poesia caboverdiana” as a fundamental document for

understanding Amílcar Cabral’s poetic-political militancy and his relationship with the

Claridade movement. More than a literary critique limited to aesthetic considerations,

“Apontamentos” is an intellectual intervention that articulates cultural reflection and a

political project, anticipating central categories of Cabral’s thought, such as the social

function of art, the need to overcome historical passivity, and the role of culture in the

anticolonial struggle.

The analysis of the first seven issues of Claridade revealed a literary movement marked

by significant internal tensions: On the one hand, the magazine broke with the

Portuguese original: “Que estão na vanguarda dessa nova Poesia. Não se conformam com a estagnação. A

prisão não está no mar.”

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metropolitan poetic tradition and introduced insular realities—drought, famine,

emigration—into the center of artistic creation; on the other, as Cabral observed, it

remained largely imprisoned by a resigned tone and passive hope, which were insufficient

in the face of the archipelago’s historical urgencies. The editorial oscillation between the

affirmation of a radical difference (the transcription of the finason in the first issue) and

the approximation to culturally mixed forms (such as the morna and Oliveira’s essay)

highlights the limits and contradictions of a project that, although innovative, did not

manage—or did not dare—to fully become a critique of colonialism.

The implicit dialogue that Cabral establishes with Oliveira, especially around the notion

of “resignation,” illuminates the originality of Cabral’s position. Although Oliveira

summons the Cabo Verdean to the “cry” against “destiny,” he remains entangled in

colonial assumptions that neutralize his appeal and also aligns himself with the ideology

of the Estado Novo. Cabral, by contrast, takes “resignation” as a political problem to be

overcome through conscious action and not as an intrinsic trait to be lamented. His

critique of Claridade poetry is therefore not a rejection of the movement but a call for its

transcendence: Poetry must cease to be a mirror of suffering and become an instrument

of transformation.

It is precisely at this point that the most enduring contribution of “Apontamentos” is

revealed: the defense that art—and poetry in particular—is not merely the externalization

of individual feeling, but also a complex field where collective struggle can find its voice.

The “poetic seed” planted by Claridade, by shifting the poet’s gaze toward the reality of

their land, contained within itself the potential to germinate into critical consciousness

and political action. By identifying the limits of this seed and pointing out paths for its

transcendence, Cabral calls it to blossom into its own voice, capable of breaking the

silence imposed by colonial oppression and affirming itself as a force of liberation.

Ultimately, Cabral’s essay reveals itself as a seminal text, in which the central concerns

that would mark his entire intellectual and political trajectory are announced: the function

of culture in the anticolonial struggle, the need to forge a Cabo Verdean identity beyond

the colonial legacy, and the conviction that social transformation is the work of the

conscious and organized action of the people. By critically examining Claridade poetry,

Cabral not only contributes to the literary history of Cabo Verde but also offers a key to

understanding his own project of national liberation.

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