Fernando Pessoa and the Portuguese Modernist Heritage

The early twentieth century was a tumultuous time for Portuguese society. Shortly before World War I began, the Portuguese monarchy fell and gave way to the First Republic on October 5, 1910. Collectively, the 1890 British ultimatum to Portugal—which forced Portugal to retreat from its claimed colonial African territories—the fall of the monarchy, and the country’s participation in the First World War set the framework for the post-romantic period. The cultural elite of the time initiated movements such as the Portuguese Renaissance in defense of a nation open to Europe yet still marked by a desire to return to its origins. In this context, Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa and his friend Mário de Sá-Carneiro emerged as the founders of Portuguese modernism, which they would develop under the concept of sensacionismo (sensationism). Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, along with Almada Negreiros are some of the major representatives of modernism in painting and literature in Portuguese-speaking countries. In this article, we analyze the impact of modernism in Portugal at the beginning of the twentieth century and the role played by the work of Fernando Pessoa in the sociocultural context of that Portuguese era

Art · Art history · Humanities · Linguistics · Portuguese · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · History, Culture, and Society · Philosophy

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