#felizmente ha luar

[justfinishedreading]

Part 2 – Reviewing the Play

Felizmente há luar! is a play inspired by a real event in Portuguese history from 1817. That year there were rumours that the people of Portugal were planning to revolt against the monarchy. An army general named Gomes Freire de Andrade was accused of being the leader of the conspiracy, he was imprisoned and condemned to death, but his guilt was never conclusively proven.

In part 1 I talked about what Portugal was like politically in the 1960s when the play was written; it was a time when the country had been under dictatorship for the last 30 years, a time when freedom of speech and the principals of democracy were oppressed. It could be argued that the author Luís de Sttau Monteiro choose to set his play in 1817 to avoid censorship; he may have tried to camouflage his message by using history, a tactic to mask the fact that he was outright criticising the current government. But the liberal message of the play is pretty clear, and the government banned it anyway. I prefer the idea that Monteiro used events of past history to illustrate how little has changed: how corruption and injustice still thrive and shockingly how many similarities still exist between past and present.

In 1817, (and without getting too deep into history because I did that way too much in Part 1), the king of Portugal, D. João VI, was far away in Brazil looking after the empire, back in Portugal the people were impoverished and hushed whispers of revolution floated in the air.

In the play three characters, without having any concrete evidence, offer up the name of General Gomes Freire de Andrade as a possible conspirator. These three characters, two policemen and a spy, have been pressured by men of power to name a suspect, but they are also blinded by their own ambition for wealth and status. The General was an easy target because of his popularity with the people and his liberal views.

Those in power grab onto the General’s name with relish and bring about his downfall. They are; a Portuguese governor named D. Miguel Forjaz, a ruling member of the catholic church, Principal Sousa, and a British marshal commissioned to lead the Portuguese army, Beresford. The governor is in fact the General’s cousin and has a personal dislike for the man. Sousa is worried that revolution would stray the people away from God… but more importantly away from the power of the church and those who rule it. Regarding the British marshal he has absolutely no love for Portugal or its people and simply wants to keep control long enough to earn himself a good commission. These three men of power choose the General to be a sacrificial lamb. Whether he truly is organizing a revolt or not is unimportant, the important thing is to show the people that liberal ideals are not to be tolerated. These ideals go again God, King and Country.

Truth be told, I don’t actually like Felizmente há luar! Sure it is an important work historically and has, and will continue to be, taught in schools in order to teach new generations of teenagers about politics, corruption, censorship and revolution. It’s even propelled me to do research about my own country and write an essay on Salazar and Portuguese colonialism. All art should educate and entertain, however while Felizmente há luar! covers the ‘educate’ bit very well, for me personally it isn’t good enough on the ‘entertain’ front. It lacks love, I don’t mean romantic love, I mean the love of art, the desire to create art because of the author’s love for art. Felizmente há luar! was created to criticize the dictatorship of the 60s, to criticize censorship and show the audience the true face of corruption. It was in essence: propaganda. Propaganda with a good purpose, but propaganda all the same.

Perhaps the problem is with me; so far what little I’ve experienced of classic Portuguese literature hasn’t meshed well with me. It’s too… melodramatic. But I’ll get to that in a moment. Firstly the things about the play which impressed me: the fate of General is what drives the plot, and yet he is never on stage, he is never heard. The man is conspired against, imprisoned, sentenced to death and yet he never has a chance to defend himself. This was a brilliant idea from the author, it reflects how in the 60s political activists, or even ordinary folk with ideas against the government, were taken away, imprisoned, tortured, hushed up, and made to disappear. Their voices never heard.

A scene which I felt was very poignant in the play was when the General’s “woman”, Matilde, having failed to persuade anyone of power to help her then turns to the common people for help. One of them gives her a coin and explains that when they ask for help, when they are starving and without a home, without a job and begging for help, the upper class feel that giving spare change is enough to ease their own conscience. Now when someone from a higher class asks them to repel against authority, to risk their lives for one man, the only help they are willing to give in return are those same measly coins.

Matilde is the character which gave me the most difficulties to accept. She is the classic heroine: a woman of kindness, eternally devoted to her man. That’s the problem; “good women” in classic literature are those whose main job is to fret over the hero and plead for him when he gets into trouble. Matilde is a one-dimensional character. But she has two potentially positive points. Firstly she’s described as the General’s companion, to me it’s unclear whether she’s his wife or his long-term unmarried lover. From a feminist point of view it would be excellent if they were unmarried, this would challenge the catholic church’s insistence on marriage and the idea that only a wife in holy matrimony or a virgin can be representations of women of virtue. But I’m not sure if Matilde’s position is deliberately ambiguous or if my understanding of the Portuguese language has let me down and they actually are married.

The second point and the reason I warmed up to her character was because I realised that of all the General’s friends and family, she was the only one who tried everything she could think of to save him. Unfortunately all she could do was… beg everyone for help, but the point is that she was the only one who was willing to give up her pride in order to save him.  

The last thing I want to talk about is the title Felizmente há luar! which translate as “Luckily there’s moonlight!”. I bought this book during my first year studying in uni in Portugal, at the time I was homesick and would buy books to cheer myself up, but I hated reading in Portuguese so only now, a decade later, am I reading some of them. Felizmente há luar! was a book I bought solely because I liked the cover design and I had mistakenly assumed that the play was a comedy based on the title. The phrase “luckily there’s moonlight!” is uttered twice in the play, both times at very distressing moments. The first is on the night the General is to be executed, burned at the stake. Governor D. Miguel comments “Lisbon will smell all night of burnt flesh, the smell will stay in their memories for many years to come… every time they think of challenging our orders, they will remember this smell… It is true that the execution will last all night, but luckily there’s moonlight…”

Oh how a phrase I thought was associated with a comedy turned so sinister.

The second occurrence is at the very end, Matilde watches the fire consume the General’s body and says “I thought this was the end but it is only the beginning. That fire will ignite this country!” (turns to the crowd) “Look well! Wash your eyes in the light of that fire and open your souls to what it teaches us! Even the night was made for us to see it until the end… luckily ­­­– luckily there’s moonlight!”

Review by Book Hamster

[smalltownfae]

My most disliked books according to Goodreads:

I've heard people say that books with an average rating of 3.7 is low for goodreads so that is what I am considering as low rating.

The book with the lowest average rating that I read is something that has just 12 pages and comes as an offer in the portuguese edition of a book of short stories by Joanne Harris. I have no idea if it was sold in english because GR only presents the portuguese version. It only has 10 ratings and an average of 2.60 stars. It's called A História de Anouk (The Story of Anouk) and it's just that character reflecting on some events in her life. I thought it was alright, gave it 3 stars and I think people are being mean about a free thing 😆

The books I agree with low ratings:

At 3.13 there's a short story collection by Mary Shelley (yes, that author of Frankenstein). I gave it 3 stars and it was pretty meh so I can see why the rating is so low.

Ghostgirl by Tonya Hurley

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Vampyre by John Willian Polidori

The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by John Tiffany

Poison Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Youth by Joseph Conrad

This was fine

Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris

Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

The Room in the Dragon Volant by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson

Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard

The Suicide Shop by Jean Teulé

Jigs & Reels by Joanne Harris

The Last Forgiveness Day by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Red Pony by John Steibeck

Little Tales of Misogyny by Patricia Highsmith

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn

The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

Into the Water bu Paula Hawkins

The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart by Mathias Malzieu

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

How dare you rate this so low?

Give Yourself Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine (you monsters! This series was so fun)

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Watchtower by Elizabeth A. Lynn

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Lady Susan by Jane Austen

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

Portuguese books:

There are a few portuguese books for those that don't believe me when I say portuguese classics suck: Felizmente há luar (3.21, I gave it 2), Fanny Owen (3.52, I gave it 1) and Auto da Barca do Inferno (3.68, I gave it 3). Not a classic, but the portuguese fantasy trilogy O Cetro de Aerzis has pretty low ratings and I gave it an average 3 stars too. O Cavaleiro da Dinamarca has 3.66 and I didn't even rate it but I remember thinking it was one of the worse books by the author.

Then there are my bad purchases of collections of legends. I say bad because the writing is atrocious and not engaging at all. There's Histórias e Lendas Fantásticas fos Celtas, Scottish Myths and Legends, Irish Fairy and Folk Tales . Neither of them is good but the last one at least has a pretty cover and it's the only one I didn't get rid off.

[filypadreams]

Sorry for how old these masterpieces are.

Three male portuguese writers I had to study in school(we didn't have many well known female writers that we could trade some of the original books with. These are books we would need to study for national exams too, so it's difficult to just trade.) :

José Saramago- " Memorial do Convento"

(Baltazar and Blimunda have the best and healthiest relationship you can depict. She was also writen as a witch in this story and learns with Baltazar and their ewually revolutionary friend Father Bartolomeu, to accept that part of her.)

Eça de Queirós - "Os Maias"

(Women from the 19th century here, so expect the obvious conversations between them, bht still well fleshed out to know where they stand in opinions like raising their kids or what they think of each other kids and the english studies Afonso made his nephew, Carlos Maia our protagonist, learn instead of portuguese studies because those were less strict. Since it's more character driven, our female protagonist gets more physical and psychological attention with both contrasting eachother.

Mature book btw)

Luis Sttau Monteiro - "Felizmente há Luar" ( A play made to contrast events in the 1817's with 3 dictators vs the current events at his time with Salazar as dictator in 1961, also a way to escape cersorship. The protagonist is Gomes Freire even though he never appears in the play. This is because he is the switch for the revolt.

The second most important character is Matilde, who tries to help the people living miserably, never doubts about her husband Gomes even when he is accused of being a traitor, honest, has her low points but never stops fighting, bold enough to call out one of the three dictators (the priest by accusing him of being poor of heart and not a real priest, even thowing a penny at him.). The moon shinning on that horrible night meant to show better to the common people what happe s if they don't conform (death), is seen by her and the others as hope actually and light vs darkness.

She is not alone by any means but she is the one who starts the revolt.)

women write men with so much nuance and care and more dimension than most men in real life will ever have and men write women like they’ve never spoken to a woman in their entire life 

[leninha28]

Reading ... 📚

[minimo-sou]

“Todos somos chamados, pelo menos uma vez, a desempenhar um papel que nos supera. É nesse momento que justificamos o resto da vida, perdida no desempenho de pequenos papéis indignos do que somos.”

 Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Felizmente há luar!

[jaudinis]

felizmente, felizmente há luar! há luz ao fundo da escuridão e por favor, apesar da luz negra da noite, lutem, não se acomodem aos erros piores que vieram. a morte do general gomes freire foi só algo que, por mais injusto que se lhe diga, importante em toda a nossa luta. ela continua, manter-se à mais forte ainda. Beresford, é para que saibas, felizmente há luar, em todas as lutas. e o teu dito felizmente há luar, foi nulo. a morte existiu para a esperança maior, essa é como a lua. está sempre lá, por mais escura que seja a noite que se aproxima.

felizmente há luar. em estudos para os exames

[justfinishedreading]

Part 1 – Historical Background

The most important thing to know about Felizmente há luar! is that it was a product of its time; this play was written in 1961 during the rule of Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, and it is now studied in Portuguese secondary schools because of its themes on politics, corruption and censorship. In researching the historical background of this work I’ve… ended up writing an essay on Salazar and in the process learnt quite a bit about my country. The following is information I found interesting from Wikipedia and which I’ve copy and pasted, and reworded and condensed:

The End of the Portuguese Monarchy

After the revolution in 1910 when the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown, the country fell into chaos with continual anarchy, government corruption, arbitrary imprisonment and religious persecution. The next 18 years saw the inauguration of 8 presidents, 44 cabinet re-organisations and 21 revolutions. According to official police figures, 325 bombs burst in the streets of Lisbon between 1920 and 1925. The public began to view political parties as elements of division and become more tolerant to the idea of being governed by an authoritarian regime.

António de Oliveira Salazar

Salazar became Minister of Finance in 1928, before that others had tried to persuade him to enter politics, but he found the state of parliament so chaotic that he refused. He finally agreed when the state of Portugal become too dire to be ignored. He agreed under the condition that he would have a free hand to veto expenditure in all government departments, not only his own. Within a year Salazar balanced the budget and stabilised Portugal's currency.

In 1932 he became Prime Minster. Now Salazar is quite an interesting figure to study, he did a lot of good for Portugal, but every good sentence written about him can be countered with something bad. He brought order to a country in chaos, but he did not believe in democracy, he used censorship and a secret police to crush opposition and ensure that he continued to be Prime Minister from 1932 until 1968.

World War II

Salazar had lived through the hard times of World War I, in which Portugal participated, so when it came to World War II Salazar kept Portugal neutral. From the very beginning Salazar was convinced that Britain would suffer in the war but remain undefeated and that the United States would step in and the Allies would win. However because Portugal was neutral, the country was forced to supply materials used for military purposes to both the Allies AND the Axis. In May 1943, the USA wanted to take control of Portuguese islands for strategic military use, the British responded that forceful measures weren’t necessary, Salazar would honour the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. In August of that year when the British requested military use of those islands, Portugal allowed it.

Salazar’s upbringing was religious, he studied at a seminary for eight years and considered becoming a priest. He was a devote catholic and nationalist but argued that Portuguese nationalism did not glorify a single race because such a notion was pagan and anti-human. In 1938, he sent a telegram to the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin, ordering that it should be made clear to the German Reich that Portuguese law did not allow any distinction based on race, and that therefore, Portuguese Jewish citizens could not be discriminated against. On 26 June 1940, four days after France's surrender to Germany, Salazar authorised the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in Paris to transfer its main office to Lisbon.

In July 1940, the civilian population of Gibraltar was evacuated due to imminent attacks expected from Nazi Germany. At that time, Portuguese Madeira agreed to host about 2,500 Gibraltarian refugees, mostly women and children, who remained there until the end of the war. Portugal, particularly Lisbon, was one of the last European exit points to the USA and a few hundred thousand to one million refugees found shelter in Portugal and escaped through there.

Portuguese Colonial Rule

Portugal can be proud of its action during the Second World War, but not so much of its colonial rule (…can any country ever be proud of colonialism?). Portugal had an extensive colonial empire that included Cape Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe, Angola (including Cabinda), Portuguese Guinea, Mozambique in Africa, Portuguese India in South Asia, and Macau and Timor in the Far East.

In 1947, Captain Henrique Galvão, a Portuguese parliamentarian, submitted a report disclosing the situation of forced labour and precarious health services in the Portuguese colonies of Africa. The natives, it said, were simply regarded as beasts of burden. All African men had to pay a tax in Portuguese currency, the government created a situation in which a large percentage of men in any given year could only earn the amount needed to pay the tax by going to work for a colonial employer. In practice, this enabled settlers to use forced labour on a massive scale, frequently leading to horrific abuses. Galvão's courageous report eventually led to his downfall, and in 1952, he was arrested for subversive activities.

Following the Second World War, the colonial system was subject to growing dissatisfaction, and in the early 1950s the United Kingdom launched a process of decolonization. Belgium and France followed suit. Unlike the other European colonial powers, Salazar attempted to resist this tide and maintain the integrity of the empire. In order to justify it and Portugal's alleged civilising mission, Salazar ended up adopting Gilberto Freyre's theories of Lusotropicalism, which propose that the Portuguese were better colonizers than other European nations because they had a special talent for adapting to environments, cultures and the peoples who lived in the tropics, this talent helped them build harmonious multiracial societies and promote pro-miscegenation.

Side note, we Portuguese are very proud of our history during the 15th century, the age of discovery, when we set out to map the world, many consider it our golden age. Less talked about is our involvement in the slave trade, the first European to actually buy enslaves was Antão Gonçalves, a Portuguese explorer in 1441 AD. The Spanish were the first Europeans to use enslaved Africans in the New World. I’ve just done a little googling to try to find out how many slaves the Portuguese took from Africa, it’s not easy finding a straight answer, about 20 websites later I find three that agree that officially the total number of Africans shipped by the Portuguese is conservatively put at 4.2 million. However this excludes the millions that died crossing land to get to the Portuguese slave ships or during the horrible Atlantic passage. Just to be clear these facts are regarding Trans-Atlantic Slavery, unfortunately the concept of slavery has existed in all societies long before that.

Anyway that’s a bit of a digression from the main topic of Salazar, moving forward to 1960-1, armed revolutionaries and scattered guerrillas were starting to become active in Mozambique, Angola, and Portuguese Guinea. The Portuguese just about managed to keep control in some parts but the Portuguese military warned the government that this was not a long term solution, the military would not be able to keep order for long.

1961

And now finally I’ve reached 1961, the year Felizmente há luar! was written. For the western world the 60s were the decade of cultural revolution: ‘Make Love, Not War’, just like the American hippies were protesting against the Vietnam war, the Portuguese were protesting against colonial wars they could not win and which were wrong to begin with. This was an age of liberalism, of drug and sexual experimentation, of artistic creativity. And yet those liberals and free thinkers were being governed by a 72-year-old Salazar, a conservative, nationalist and catholic whose motto was "Deus, Pátria e Familia" (meaning "God, Fatherland, and Family"). There was no free speech, anyone opposing the dictatorship was imprisoned and tortured. Portuguese laws and government procedures were changed to enable those in power to stay in power. Felizmente há luar! was written by Luís de Sttau Monteiro and censored, prohibited from ever being performed. That is until 1975, the year after the government was overthrown.

Wrapping Up Part 1

Phew, I haven’t even started reviewing Felizmente há luar! yet, I could have just written “the play was written during a time of great oppression of freedom of speech and during a reign of political dictatorship” and left it at that. But, it’s curious to know how things came about, extreme political movements don’t just suddenly manifest, they are born out of circumstance, and it is important to understand what gives raise to the systems that change our lives.

In Part 2, I’ll actually review Felizmente há luar! By the way it’s actually set in 1817, when real life general Gomes Freire de Andrade was accused of leading a revolt against the Portuguese government – so... yay even more history XS 

Most of this text on Salazar was taken from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/António_de_Oliveira_Salazar

Review by Book Hamster

[minimo-sou]

“Oiço-me falar mas já não sei o que digo.”

Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Felizmente há luar!

[minimo-sou]

“Há homens que obrigam todos os outros homens a reverem-se por dentro…”

Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Felizmente há luar!

[minimo-sou]

“Os degraus da vida são logo esquecidos por quem sobe a escada…”

Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Felizmente há luar!

[minimo-sou]

“Neste país de intrigas e de traições, só se entendem uns com os outros para destruir um inimigo comum (…)”

Luís de Sttau Monteiro, Felizmente há luar!