REVISTA CLARIDADE AND AMÍLCAR CABRAL: POETIC SEEDS OF POLITICAL RESISTANCE

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.