A Laboratory of Simulation and Provocation

The Aesthetics and Politics of the Orpheu Magazine and the Portuguese Modernismo

Abstract

The literary magazine Orpheu was launched in 1915, as the first forum of the Portuguese Modernismo sought to modernize the semi-peripheral cultural field of the nation by bringing it into synchronicity with contemporary European tendencies. The short-lived periodical also proposed to rewrite the prevailing hierarchies of world literature and aimed to transform Portugal into an authentic center of modernist art and literature. These ambitious aspirations on the one hand were in harmony with the main concerns of the Portuguese intelligentsia at the beginning of the 20th century, and on the other hand, reflected the core ideas of Fernando Pessoa’s literary project. Orpheu, hence, stands out from the avant-garde periodical scene of the decade: 1) for having a unique transmodernist profile that integrates the aestheticist tendencies of the fin du siècle with the experimentalism of the emerging avant-garde movements; and 2) for presenting itself as an authentic laboratory of simulation which questioned the traditional concept of the author in line with Pessoa’s heteronymy.