The writer’s self-learning outside and against the Portuguese school: Teixeira de Pascoaes and the sublimation of genius, from the Livro de memórias (1928) to Uma fábula (1952)

Abstract

The discussion that this article seeks to establish around the mythical figure of the poet Teixeira de Pascoaes (1877-1952) – a writer who leads the literary saudosismo movement in Portugal and who is still known today through school textbooks – is related to the cultural theses that successively permeate in his work on the artist’s self-education. Particularly in his autobiographical writings, Livro de memórias [Book of Memories] (1928) and A fable [Uma fábula] (1952), the latter only published in 1978, Teixeira de Pascoaes describes a schooling incapable of ensuring a teaching-learning process for literary writing, in particular the Portuguese language discipline. He describes his trajectory as a ‘school ordeal’, which he only managed to fight thanks to the literary life of his home, the Solar de Pascoaes, in a direct confrontation between family culture, school culture and a series of attributes of his artistic genius (destination, prodigious childhood, talent).