Monday, April 19, 2010

CABO VERDE: short story MARCH 2010

by Albert Chambers...


I yawn as I stretch my body from limb to limb, my fingers pull up sand from the earth. I have risen to the morning sun again. This is usually my favorite spot to rest, right in the middle of this white filled sandy beach. So, I must shake my head like a wild lion shakes his mane in order to rid my hair of the obscene amount of sand that has accumulated in my in my curly locks of hair during the night time. This seems to have become a daily ritual of mine in the morning.


My mother was lucky enough that of the twelve children that she gave birth to, my brother and I were the only two survivors. Well, not true, my brother had been sacrificed in hopes that I would have an 'opportunity' at survival. My mother would usually be the one to stay home for at least a month mingling in nojad with those who came to pay tribute to Nikilo, my brother (Parsons 97). When I learned of this, I despised my mother. Who is allowed to walk freely after killing their own child? So, I write. "Road, asphalt, purity violated under murderous wheels. You, my land, come hidden in my suitcase" (Claridade, no.8, p.1). I have always been the lone shark. I have always tried to make sense of nonsense, like why is my skin so dark. I blame it on the unwritten rule to never stand underneath a tree during the sun's most dangerous of sun-rays (Parsons 92). Thank God for my African lineage or I would have surely died under this treacherous heat.


I am what my country refers to as a coude and would not be so if I stayed home (Parsons 92). I left home around nine years old. T'was the only way I would find a peace of mind, my path, or know who it was that I am, right? Plus, I smoke when, what and where I want to (Parsons 93). "Real men do what they want." That is what Mandello, my childhood friend, told me before he took sail to the motherland. I never wanted for much. I never asked for anything. I grew accustomed to working for my earnings and I took fancy to the opportunity to show my work, no matter what it was. The other guys went around stealing food and drink, especially during carnavale (Parsons 104). What they would do took the form of many names. I call them 'thieves.'


I never took kindly to the ideas of marriage either. It all just seemed way too complicated. Marriage seemed more like a trapped door. It was more like a nine month pregnancy, only it lasted longer and there were a lot more rules. That explains my creativity, I was alone a lot. Actually, it was rare to see me with someone, better yet anyone, even if there was a multitude of people around. I spent most of days looking for inspiration on whether or not I should stay of leave Cape Verde the way Mandello did.


Anyway, I went fishing after a quick swim to wash my away yesterday's troubles. I did not catch much but it was enough. It was only one catch but a mighty big catch I might add. Myth has it that once the "king fish" has been caught, there will be no more catches during that trip (Parsons 101). Knowing that, I set up my fire and my notepad to write a line or two and take a bite. I loved being able to do this.


I wrote a beautiful poem today. It was not like many of the poems that I had been told. I just learned to read and write, otherwise I would have been able to read for myself. The older guys would say that I am doing pretty well though, considering that I am yet to turn fourteen. Today, I looked up from my roasting fire, it took me by surprise what I had found. Wearing the colors found in the sun, sand, and the ocean, a mermaid perhaps, changed my life. I wondered what true beauty was for I had never truly experienced the phenomenon. Like the poem I had written today, I saw with my very own eyes, beauty in the form of a goddess. I love you Cabo Verde but you never made time stop. You never took my breath away. Oh today, look what you have brought to me! My life will never be the same.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Mariana's Love: A Fictional Story from Cape Verde

It was the summer that I was seventeen years old, that my husband’s father came to my house to arrange our wedding. Unlike some of my friends, I was lucky enough to know him before we got married. My father consented to the match, and all of the plans were set. As I got to know my husband more, I was glad to learn that he appreciated the natural beauty of the island. He understood my frustration with living with my parents, and most of all my love of the written word. Because we were so young it did not seem like anything would ever come from our appreciation of Cape Verdean poetry—but it would come to change our lives.

Less than a year after we were married, my husband heard about this new literary and cultural review called Claridade that published many great poems and stories in our own language—our own creole from Cape Verde (Hamilton 260-261). While there were other publications that came before it, we knew that this one would be different. We prayed that it would last longer than some of the other. For us, the poetry provided a link to our unique history, one both separate from and deeply connected to Portugal and its influence throughout the world. However, this time the review focused on Cape Verdeans writing about life in Cape Verde. But Claridade also taught us about Brazilian literature and the modernist movement that was sweeping through their culture. The interest in Cape Verdean literature that arose because of Claridade helped to spark my husband’s imagination and he began to focus much of his time on his writing.

It was around this time that I got pregnant with our first child. I never had to try wearing my husband’s shoes or jacket in order to conceive, but getting pregnant was something I wanted, something I had desired since I was a little girl (Parsons 6). I was told by the women in my family and those I talk to at the market that I was supposed to follow all of my cravings, no matter how ridiculous. I craved fresh fruit, something we luckily had an abundance of. However, my other craving was poetry. I could not stop reading it, I wrote lines down on any little scrap of paper I could find. I knew I would never be published, that my words would never grace the pages of Claridade, but they poured out of me. There was nothing I would do to stop them.

I resisted stopping my poetry because that is what Cape Verdeans do- we resist. We know that there is a lack of opportunity where we live. We are aware of the barrenness of our land. And yet, we stay. In fact, we resist being pulled under by these negatives by our celebrations. As some suggest, we “create wild music, dance until dawn, and write touching poetry,” all as acts of resistance to the hardships we face on the island (Carter 20). I believe this is true. Our culture seems to be stronger because we choose to live here, to remain where there is little, except the ocean. I agree with those who say that our food, music, and poetry are intimately tied to the ocean. The ocean represents our “isolation from the rest of the world, as well as a deep sad, longing—sodade—for family and friends” who have left the islands (Carter 32). But to me, the ocean represents more than an absence. It is a blanket that keeps us safe and sheltered. Because of the ocean we are able to resist some of the negatives from the outside world, to resist some change but to always remain Cape Verdean at heart.

Before our son was born, my husband’s poem was published in Claridade. I could not have been more proud of him. His poem was about brining new life to the island, just as I was about to with our child. My husband grew frustrated when his friends would leave Cape Verde for whatever reason—adventure, money, opportunity, a dream. We believed that we were placed on the island for a reason, and that the islands were where we belonged. Of course life was not always easy, and small droughts were frustrating, but for us, those were not reasons to leave our home. My husband and I knew that there were more important things in life than money or adventure. We have had fun and been successful, all while staying on in Cape Verde. We might live on an island, but our isolation is not a bad thing. It protects us and keeps life pure.

Our music, our holidays and festivals for Easter, Christmas and New Years, our religion, our traditions, and our beliefs are just a few of the reasons why I love this island. Life here has not been easy over the past seventy years, but my husband, our children and their children, are all lucky to live in Cape Verde. Thanks to men like Manuel Lopes, who worked to keep Claridade in print, we were inspired by the words of our islands (Parsons). Our poetry offers us hope, brings us healing, and expresses our joys. Like our mornas, poetry is able to capture one emotion that we know so well—sodade, or longing (Carter 140). While I was never published, my poetry lives on in my children, and the appreciation of Cape Verdean literature will live on in my grandchildren and their children for as long as there are people in Cape Verde. The poetry of the islands still expresses my full range of emotions, more than fifty years since it came into my life. The islands, the words, and my family are my loves.


Carter, Katherine, and Judy Aulette. Cape Verdean Women and Globalization: the Politics of Gender, Culture, and Resistance. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Hamilton, Russell G. Voices from an Empire: a History of Afro-Portuguese Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1975.

Parsons, Elsie Clews. “Folk-Lore of the Cape Verde Islanders.” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 34, No. 131 (Jan. - Mar., 1921), pp. 89-109. American Folklore Society. http://www.jstor.org/stable/534936

Monday, March 15, 2010

Tenreiro and the Poetry of São Tomé and Príncipe

BLUES FRAGMENT
For Langston Hughes

Francisco José Tenreiro
(Trans. by Don Burness)

All the melancholy of nights in Georgia
comes to me
this stormy night in Europe
through the solitary voice of the trumpet:
Oh! mammy! oh! mammy
rock yo lil’ chil’
Oh! mammy, oh! mammy
look at de world stealin’ yo chil’.

Black woman – your sweet voice
reaches me in the sadness of my heart
which breaks at the sad sound of a piano
playing in Harlem:
- Oh! King Joe
King Joe!
Joe Louis beat Buddy Bear
and Harlem laughed its white toothed negro laugh.

In these stormy nights in Europe
Count Basie plays for me
and black rhythms from America
inundate my heart;
- ah! black rhythms from America
inundate my heart.

And if I still am sad
Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen
Come to me
singing the poem of a new day
- ai! The black man is not dead
nor will he ever die!

…By and by with them I want to sing
by and by with them I want to struggle
ai, the black man is not dead
nor will he ever die!

Tenreiro and The Poetry of São Tomé and Príncipe
The poetry of São Tomé and Príncipe comes from a unique perspective, one filled with their racial, social, cultural, and political background that has been influenced by both history, the landscape, and outside forces. The works by both Donald Burness and Noel Ortega point out the Negritude that is evident in the poetry coming from São Tomé, especially after the 1940’s. Burness explains in the introduction to his collection of African Lusophone poetry and its English translation, A Horse of White Clouds, that the poetry from São Tomé and Príncipe is specifically important because they “were centers of exploitation, centers of racial cruelty” and that “voices from these twin islands have been less than meek” in voicing their opinions about their situation (Burness xviii). While many of the other African nations once colonized by Portugal share similar stories, those of São Tomé and Príncipe hold an important place in African Lusophone literature, one that Burness recognizes in his collection.

The pain and violence found on these islands is palpable in the lines of the poetry written by natives of São Tomé and Príncipe. Poets like Caetano da Costa Alegre, and Francisco Jose Tenreiro all share their opinions, emotions, and political beliefs. Tenreiro, for example, is able to identify with writers of the Harlem Renaissance in their empowering movement for African American writers and artists and so he references them in his poetry, even dedicating “Fragment de Blues” to Langston Hughes. His concluding stanza echoes something Hughes surely felt when he says:
“…By and by with them I want to sing
by and by with them I want to struggle
ai, the black man is not dead
nor will he ever die!...”.

Poetry and art become a way for poets to express their opinions, and while Tenreiro was not facing the oppression African Americans were in the United States, he and others from São Tomé and Príncipe were facing a government run by a dictatorship from Portugal, the scars of the slave trade, labor conflicts, and the effects of colonialism in the every day lives. Tenreiro alludes to the common ancestors that he and Hughes share, their roots from Africa, making this poem a multi-national poem about a shared culture. They do not share a language, or a common source of pain, but Tenreiro writes to Hughes and demonstrates the connection between them as poets and as black men. He is not meek about the racial struggles black men have faced in São Tomé when he says that no matter what “he will never die,” meaning he will never give in, go away, or be ignored.

In his essay “The Motherland in the Modern Poetry of S. Tomé and Príncipe” on modern poetry in São Tomé and Príncipe, Noel Ortega explores how the poetry of the islands has changed over the centuries. He shows how the concept of Negritude has become more pronounced in its literature and how poets like Antonio Luz and Tenreiro are critical of governmental policies, social convention and begin to express their feelings about their racial past and both the pride and disdain they feel with their country. Like many other nations, the literature of São Tomé and Príncipe undergoes changes as time progresses. Whether, like São Tomé and Príncipe, a colonizer leaves, a dictatorship crumbles, an independent nation is formed, or other traumatic and pivotal events occur, the voice of the poet is able to stand as a single perspective of a citizen of their country. The modern poetry of São Tomé and Príncipe has evolved to embody their complex and unique past and present in order to set it apart from other African Lusophone nations and their literature. Tenreiro and his poem “Fragmento de Blues” is only one example of this poetic perspective and its connection to the world.

Burness, Don, trans. A Horse of White Clouds: Poems from Lusophone Africa. Athens, OH: Center for International Studies, Ohio Univ., 1989.
Ortega, Noel. “The Motherland in the Modern Poetry of São Tomé e Príncipe” World Literature Today, Vol. 53, No. 1, The Three Worlds of Lusophone Literature (Winter, 1979), pp. 53-56 University of Oklahoma. <>.
Tenreiro, Francisco José. “Fragmento de Blues.” Burness, Don, trans. A Horse of White Clouds: Poems from Lusophone Africa. Athens, OH: Center for International Studies, Ohio Univ., 1989.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Poem of the Boy Who had been Torpedoed

Poem of the Boy who had been Torpedoed

This poem was written by Oswaldo Alcantara, a literary pseudonym for Baltasar Lopes de Silva. Before he began writing poetry, he was a Lawyer and philosopher. He was a co-founder of the magazine Claridade, which published local literature of Cape Verde that touched on social issues, cultural biases and local problems. Da Silva also published Chiquinho, The Creole of Cape Verde, and participated in the creation of the Anthology of contemporary Cape Verde fiction.

The poem starts out with the a feeling of hopelessness and an aimless journey with no food or water on the boat. It is through the torpedoed boy that the people in the boat find hope. Because the boy leaves his home and finds nothing, the people are reminded of wanderlust, the desire to stay in Cape Verde but also wanting to leave due to the problems of their home.

This poem was written in 1947, shortly after the end of World War II and is a representation of the idea that Cape Verde is a better place than other countries to live because they did not get caught up in the war. The “proud world” showing off its power is the direct reference to the war, and the they boy dieing because of his involvement symbolizes the idea that it is better to stay in Cape Verde than to leave.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Poetry Reflects Societal Values

Sao Tome and Principe have become a breeding ground for poetry and literature due to its unique culture and connections with both Portuguese and African roots that have produced multiple published authors. Because I did not have a poem to compare and contrast to, I will simply analyze the article and the differences between the authors and their purposes in writing their poems.

As the article by Noel Ortega states, there are two main types of literature that have come out of the Portuguese islands Sao Tome and Principe: literature written by white settlers and visitors, and literature written by natives dealing with social and racial protest. In “The Motherland in the Modern Poetry of Sao Tome and Principe” two major writers are discussed as being highly influential. Costa Alegre, the first of these writers, uses the sonnet and quatrain in a pessimistic form which describes the racial inferiority of blacks in his motherland. For example, his poem that describes blacks as rocks and whites as the tide foam presents the idea of power based on skin color. Alegre died before any of his poetry was published, but his work became famous immediately for its romantic style as well as important issues like racial inferiority and how beautiful his hometown is.

The white man saw Sao Tome and Principe a bit differently. Some authors portrayed the beauty the landscape of the islands, but other found it necessary to describe the people of the islands. This is where some turmoil gets mixed in with the literature because these people are not just Portuguese or African, causes slight confusion for the white writers. They still regard the natives as blacks, but do make notes that some have lighter skin and could even be considered a white man if not for the differences in hair and bone structure. Here is where Negritude and racism takes a part in the literature because there are so many different 'shades' of black that it formed a social hierarchy based on the color of one's skin.

Tenriero writes about his own heritage as well as focusing on injustices that are inflicting his people. One of his poems compares himself with a checkerboard, both white and black because he is a product of an interracial marriage, less heard of in the 1940's. He takes pride in his heritage and writing because he feels a racial superiority and blessing to have the advantages of both white and black. He also writes about how the white trade, while bringing goods and money, also caused problems for the natives because of the liquor they also brought to the islands. Tenriero writes a couple of poems about this problem, the first is about a white man's greed for power and money as he brings alcohol to a “thirsty island” - a great way to describe Sao Tome and Principe because of their arid dry weather and lack of alcoholic drinks. In another poem, Tenriero shows how alcohol can damage a family unit when a son drinks so much he goes to work at a winery just so he can drink more. This shows that the native people seem to not have much control when it comes to the influence of the white man on their culture and lives.

While Costa Alegre and Tenriero both write about their home in Sao Tome, their messages often coincide with each other on the issues of race and how the color of your skin is important indicator of success. In Alegre's “Maria” the speaker feels inferior due to his darker skin color. Similarly, Tenreiro's poem “The Ballad of Mista Silva Costa” describes the opposite side of the spectrum, where a white foreigner can come to Sao Tome with no money and become rich. This poem is fused with an ironic tone of voice making fun of the white man, but speaking a social truth as well. In conclusion, Alegre and Tenreiro both touch on the same social issues in their poems, but us different styles and ways of presenting their thoughts.

Bibliography

Poems from Sao Tome and Principe”

Ortega, Noel. "The Motherland in the Modern Poetry of Sao Tome e Principe." World Literature Today, Vol. 53, No. 1, The Thre Worlds of Lusophone Literature (Winter, 1979), pp. 53-56. University of Oklahoma. Web.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Regresso- Return by Jorge Barbosa

Regresso (Return)
by Jorge Barbosa
Ship where are you going
lying on the sea?
Where are you going
carried by the wind?
What course is yours
ship of the broad sea?
That country perhaps
where life
is a great promise
and a great fascination!
Take me with you
ship.
But bring me back!
  • Barbosa reflects on the continual invitation to escape that the sea offers to those in Cape Verde, while his situation and passion for the land forces him to stay.
  • Although he wishes to be free, he feels compelled to eventually return- a need to be in Cape Verde.
  • Having hardly left the islands, Cape Verdeans believe in hope and promise in other lands, but remain in allegiance to their homeland's beauty and majestic feel.

Jorge Barbosa:

  • (25 May 1902- 6 January 1971)
  • He was a Portuguese dialectologist and Cape Verdean poet/writer.
  • He contributed to many Portuguese and Cape Verdean journals.
  • He helped mark the beginning of Cape Verdean poetry with the publication of his poetry compilation Arquipelago (1935).
  • He was one of the three founders of the literary journal Claridade ("Clarity") in 1936- this which distinguished the start of modern Cape Verdean literature.

Themes of Barbosa's Poetry:

  • Flight- wanderlust, departing/staying, & narrow-mindedness
  • Concerned less with leaving and more with "having" to stay- yet still affectionate for his homeland
  • Believed in the existence of the common folk
  • Escapism and hope
  • Cape Verdeanness- sense of regionalism

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Langston Hughes & Marcelo Veiga: São Tomé e Príncipe



Marcelo da Veiga (1892-1976) wrote for 6 decades, his themes dealing mostly with national identity. The humiliation that the black man suffered was already denounced in his early poems like Africa é Nossa!, Africa is Ours! One of the most important facets of his writings deal with historical figures of S. Tomé, a real and imaginary past where he found the source of his land's pride. The irony that permeates his anti-colonial poetry is a powerful tool to face the inner demons of a man who lived most of his life in Portugal but kept his heart in S. Tomé.


COSTA ALEGRE by
Marcelo Veiga

On an island at the equator Where palm trees and cocoa grow And the brooks gently flow, Was born a man of dreams An ascetic, a seer, A soul pure and white it seems, A poet chosen by fate for us to hear.
While still a child awakened from sleeping, Like a bird first beating its beautiful wings And beginning to raise its voice to sing, One day he left laughing and without weeping His beautiful island caressed and embellished by the sun.
Alegre was his name; He was destined for honor and fame, He was born to triumph it was said But like the bird that takes off to the skies And after the first trill, falls and dies, Costa Alegre was dead.


AS I GREW OLDER
by Langston Hughes

It was a long time ago. I have almost forgotten my dream. But it was there then, In front of me, Bright like a sun--My dream. And then the wall rose, Rose slowly, Slowly, Between me and my dream. Rose until it touched the sky--The wall. Shadow. I am black. I lie down in the shadow. No longer the light of my dream before me, Above me. Only the thick wall. Only the shadow. My hands! My dark hands! Break through the wall! Find my dream! Help me to shatter this darkness, To smash this night, To break this shadow Into a thousand lights of sun, Into a thousand whirling dreams Of sun!




DREAMS
by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird. That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.


Norman Araújo, Cape Verde


Irony as social protest,
note the usage of creole!


Nhô ê branco, mi ê préto,
Nhôr sim; ma nhô considrá:
Branco ê papel, mas sim tinta
Ê mudo, êl ca ta papià.





You are white, I am black,
You, yes; but consider this:
White is paper, without ink
It is mute, it can’t talk.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Song- The Lira, Marcelo Veiga, S. Tomé and Prince

Irony as a political weapon.

Marcelo Veiga
Canção – A Lira

Quem embarcou no porão
Fechado a sete chaves,
Apertado entre traves,
Sem ver sol sem ver a lua?
Foi o preto!

Quem deixou a terra,
-filho ingrato que fugiu
ao pai e à mãe que não mais viu,
p’ra ir acabar como um cão?
Foi o preto!

Quem a mata derrubou,
E cavou e semeou
E co’a sua mão de bruto
Cuidou, recolheu o fruto?
Foi o preto!

Quem fez o ‘senhor ’– o patrão;
Lhe tirou da vida aflita
Lhe deu senhora bonita
E importância e situação?
Foi o preto!


Marcelo Veiga

Song -  The Lira


Who boarded the lower deck
chained with seven keys
stuck between the beams
without seeing the sun nor the moon?
It was the black man!

Who left his homeland,
-ungrateful sun who run away
from his father and his mother
whom he never saw again
to end up like a dog?
It was the black man!

Who tore down the trees
And plowed and planted
With his brutish hand
Cared for and collected the fruit?
It was the black man!

Who made the boss – the master;
Took him off a difficult life
Gave him a beautiful wife
Importance and situation?
It was the black man!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Desire in Germano Almeida




Desire in Germano Almeida
transl. excerpt of the book Construindo Germano Almeida. Lisboa: Nova Vega. 2008 by 
Paula Gândara


In fact, everything happens as if the world were very narrow for the simultaneous presence of  the desiring conscience, of the desired object and of the judging mind. Their coexistence produces an intolerable uneasiness. It is necessary that one of them become disguised, transformed or that it disappear altogether. Thanks to the power of the imagination, and of the acquiescent nature of desire, the possible solutions are many.


--Jean Starobinsky, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La Transparence et l’Obstacle, 1971 apud Novaes, 1990, 12


Germano Almeida is one of the foremost novelists in contemporary Lusophone Africa. He is also one of the most prolific.  To date his novels, short stories, and journalistic essays number ten volumes. His first novel, O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno da Silva Araújo (1989), has been adapted into a movie and is about to be published in English in the United States.
One of the characteristics of post-modernist writing in general, and of Germano Almeida’s writings  in particular, is the ability to juxtapose paradoxes, not necessarily reconciling them but making them inhabit the same space. The space of desire is no exception to this rule. In this presentation I will make an attempt to identify a possible  way to reconcile paradoxes within the space of desire in Almeida’s fiction. I will try to do that without recourse to disguise,  transformation, or disappearance as such, since any of these conditions is a reality in Germano Almeida’s texts, in spite of the presencein the texts under consideration of the desiring conscience, the desired object and the judging mind. 
At this point I would like to briefly summarize Marilena Chaui’s essay “Ties of Desire” (“Laços do Desejo”; in Novaes, 1990, 19-66), in order to apply the several definitions of desire she proposes to the texts under focus in this paper.
“Desire,” which derives from the Latin verb desidero–a term that falls under the purvue of astrology–signifies “ceasing to stare at the stars.” Desiderium is the equivalent of a sort of free will–that of controlling one’s destiny at the same time that one acknowledges the stars’ loss of influence in one’s life.  The term is split between two ambiguous meanings, that of the desiring subject who wishes to possess the object, and that of the desired object, which remains permanently absent.
Forthwith a couple definitons of  desire, the first being proposed by Spinoza and the second by Thomas Hobbes:

Desiderium is the desire or wish to possess something whose remembrance was preserved but, at the same time, remains hidden by the remembrance of other things (Spinoza, Ethics III, def. 32, prop. 36 apud Chaui, 1990, 23).

Those things that men desire they also love, and those things toward which they feel aversion they also hate. Thus, desire and love are one and the same, except that desire implies the absence of the loving object while love usually implies its presence (Hobbes, Leviathan I, apud Chaui, 1990, 24).

                        According to Chaui, it is with Freudian psychoanalysis that desire is finally recognized as an unconscious state of deprivation – deprivation of the desired object and the unconsciousness of the projection of one’s desire upon the Other. The well-known Freudian notion that our desire is always the desire of the Other’s desire also focuses one’s attention upon a dialectics of activity/passivity which remains in motion. In other words, this dialectics will last in accordance with the capacity of each subject to sustain it. When one of the subjects is no longer able to sustain it, desire as such ceases. This dialectics, I think,  becomes particularly clear when applied to the sex act. By the same token,  it seems clear that remembrance of the sex act recreates the dialectics of desire.
                        Admittedly less obvious is the connection between the corporeal and the imaginary spaces of desire when applied to the political situation of a given country. As we know, Aristotle maintained that man is a political animal and that his desire for knowledge has its ideal space of gratification in the polis. Aristotle’s idea will enable us to consider desire as extending beyond the Freudian binary opposition mentioned above. The expansion of desire from a personal to a political sphere allows us to envision an ethical space in which pure sexual energies will be redirected to  benefit the polis since the motion of desire will keep flowing from one citizen to another. This ethical/political space will be by now conceived as consisting of a dynamic virtue between desire and action–one that constrasts with the static Christian virtue which transformed the Aristotelian desire for knowledge into the Judeo-Christian notion of original sin.
                        Having established the connection between the personal and the collective spheres, between desire and knowledge, between desire and the absence of its object, we must now connect the interior sphere of desire to its exterior counterpart within the subject itself.  It is within the subject that feelings undergo change, from the conscious to the unconscious. It is desire, in its most absolute form, that prevents the death of the subject and at the same time propells  him into death. The desires that substitute the initial desire for the mother’s body are always unable to placate it. The strategies of substitution are the ones that prevent the subject from reaching the end. Reaching the end of desire is to reach death, to reach non-intereaction and the inability to conjugate one’s body with the Other. Once again, we must reconnect the ideas just delineated to the political sphere. According to Hobbes, happiness is a continuous progress of desire from one object to another. He also maintains that this object takes the shape of power.  Happiness, therefore, becomes the desire for more and more power–a desire that will only cease with death.   
We now have the missing link between desire and power, i.e., between the body and politics, between politics and a rhetoric of domination among men. It is obvious that the particular desire one wishes to fulfill determines not only a set of actions but the very concept of liberty, as the choice of fulfilling a particular desire rests on the free will that democracy values. Thus the ethical stance which we first outlined will no longer be based on a model of virtues but on the legitimizing of the uncertainty that underlies free will.  
We end up by accepting the inevitability of an irrational politics since it is not clear which is the active principle of pleasure, that  of the political man himself or that of the community that has elected him; in other words, his  own desire or the desire of others. Theoretically, the only way to solve this imbalance would be through a sort of love, a passion for the collective that would allow the politician to confuse his own desire with that of the community he is serving.
Before delving into Germano Almeida I still would like to call attention to Catherine Belsey’s Love Stories in Western Culture (1994). According to this author desire deconstructs the Cartesian binary opposition between body and mind. Desire subsists as an effect of the signifier–and does so before the verbalization of it.  That being the case, desire is construed as an absence without surrendering its value as a referent. Belsey  maintains that desire dwells in the flesh, and that it exceeds the duality of body and mind. This concept will guide us in the brief analysis I propose here today of  Germano Almeida’s novelistic corpus. We will view his fiction as constituting the object of desire, something which I henceforth will call “the body of desire”. From this perspective, Almeida’s discourse is itself  that body of desire. What I mean by this is that discourse or the novelistic substance may be understood as being both a physical entity and the reader’s possession of it.  Thus the duality of which Catherine Belsey spoke is eliminated.  But the language in which this  duality is embodied maintains its irrevocable tangibility. Desire resides in the plenitude of language, in the recurrence of the characters, and in the microstories. It’s this excessive repetition, this indispensable excess, that renders these novels challengingly open-ended, resistant to conclusion. This way, as I see it,  the author lends his works the ability to overflow from one into the other. There is no definitive conclusion to any of Almeida’s stories.  Since Almeida’s works imply specific historical moments in the relationship between Cape Verde and Portugal, the repetition of episodes within the same novel and from novel to novel may be viewed as recastings of official versions of History.  His entire ouevre thus lends itself to being  viewed as an example of political resistance.  Paraphrasing Camoens but also departing from him, it is wanting more for the sake of wanting more; it is never to be content with one’s lot; but it is also to look for strangeness and therein find  familiarity. Then we realize that this familiarity will itself be everyday-reality transfigured, one which we apprehend the first time as “x” and then rediscover as “x” plus “y”.
This fictional game–which, as we have seen, points to desire as conceived by psychoanalysis–has the effect of contributing to the indestructibility of that desire. In other words: if, as psychoanalysis maintains, desire remains the first desire forever unfulfilled (i.e., the desire for the mother’s body), when we recognize the ability to surmount the death of that first desire, we are reconceiving it and fantasizing an eternity based on the repetition of death itself. It is not a question of deceiving or avoiding death; it is a question of reconceiving reality through the word as if the word, all of a sudden, were capable of acquiring a maternal  nature. The several works then acquire the status of fraternal offspring born of the duality writer/reader. Writer and reader bring forth several works which bear both similarites and differences  as might be expected of siblings born and raised in the same verbal home.  
If we concentrate on the work itself  as instigator of as many readings/interpretations as possible, we will then have a maternity that imposes the law of desire and shapes the reader in accordance with its own needs in a way such that the final result can never distance itself from the primary project that the writing demonstrates, substantiates, corporealizes and imposes. If in accordance with Lacan the subject only starts speaking when he accepts the separation from his mother’s body and, furthermore, accepts the  absence resulting from that separation, then we have a divided subject whose desire attains its ultimate possibilities in the death wish.  We can then accept the Freudian desire as being equivalent to the Lacanian order, that is, the desire of death becomes the desire of recapturing the lost unity with the mother’s body.

That the body involves desire in such a clear manner belongs to the realm of fact.
But it is also part of the realm of fiction since a great deal of the impetus behind desire comes from imagination and fantasy. If the works of Germano Almeida can be conceived as historiographical metafiction, as defined by Linda Hutcheon, this same category is an ideal space for the development of the notion of desire.
In this way, the realm of fact in Germano Almeida encompasses History, and the realm of fiction is connected to the several stories told around History. Cases in point are O Caso das Calças Roladas,  a novel in which the fact is an incident related with the implementation of agrarian reform in Cape Verde, and  fiction are the different versions appertaing to the many characters surrounding this same incident. Fact is also the material text itself, and desire intermitently develops as the text is read.
Paraphrasing Catherine Belsey, desire is always quotable, i.e., manifests itself in a series of initial quotations that have been rewritten and recreated in conformity with the cultural and temporal  context of its users.Thus in Germano Almeida the initial quotation can be, for example, Manuel Bandeira’s text “Vou-me embora para Pasárgada” (1957), which is afterwards rewritten by Ovídio Martins as “Não vou para Pasárgada” (1973). Finally, the character O Meu Poeta, from the same novel, recaptures both texts in a dialogue with his secretary. He states that he wants to go to Pasárgada while the secretary asks whether they had not already decided not to go and, furthermore, whether they were or were not the flagelados do vento leste. The latter is an obvious allusion to Manuel Lopes’s famous novel Os Flagelados do Vento Leste (1959) and also to the poem of the same title by Ovídio Martins penned in 1962. (I might also add that Ovídio Martins dedicates his poem to Manuel Bandeira.) Not only does desire develop in Germano Almeida’s texts but also through them, thus creating a network of connections between different times and places: Brazil, Cape Verde, and Portugal, namely the 1950s in Brazil; the 1960s and the beginning of the  Independence movement; and, finally, the present moment (1989) in Cape Verde. The character O Meu Poeta parodies not only that network of connections but also the political  hypocrisy that informs present-day Cape Verde. I am referring to the ridiculousness embodied in the character O Meu Poeta. First, he is a poet who wrote no more than a couple of worthless poems. Second, he attained status by participating in a meaningless rebellion brought about by the closing of a restaurant-bar. These glories are what propell him to the successful candidacy to the presidency of Cape Verde, a post he attains by means of such transcendental actions as giving away washing machines in a country that suffers from a perennial lack of water.
We thus have the quotable desire mentioned above in intimate connection with the political and personal desire(s) to which we also referred. Postmodern writing is characterized by its ability to bring forth the phenomenon of constant and reiterative verbal interchange. Germano Almeida’s works in particular  talk to us about desire while at the same time postponing its consummation. The narrative, temporal and spatial discontinuity, parody, irony, allusions and glosses invoke the impersonality of desire. Lovers are never who they are. Their voices are echoes of other voices. And the love stories–which in Germano Almeida’s works are anticlimatically non-romanticized– destroy the Cartesian duality body-mind. The love memes having been destroyed in his works, destroyed are also the monotony and power games characteristic of essentially patriarchal societies. Germano Almeida’s texts are, above all,  texts of seduction in which the author is committed to seducing the reader–from the least informed to the most sophisticated. It seems as though the text wants to possess the reader–something which I view within a framework of colonialist absorption and authoritarianism.
But how can we view the author as a “colonial dictator” if the reader’s consciousness is the creative space of a new fiction, disconnected from the fiction that dwells in the primary text itself? How, if the reader him/herself, in accordance with their degree of erudition, can recreate something to which the author himself does not have access? The reality of fiction is another fiction, this time a highly individualized one.
As we have seen, the issue is too complex and could not be fully explained by means of theories such as reception and reader response, even if time allowed me to pursue fully these avenues. I will avoid the well-known concepts of writing degree zero and death of the author but I must refer to The Pleasure of the Text (1973). Barthe’s opening sentence immediately connects with Germano Almeida’s work O Dia das Calças Roladas, to mention the most obvious example of “denying nothing.” None of the hypotheses presented in Almeida’s novel is eliminated or accepted without questioning. The same goes for the novel Os Dois Irmãos when it exposes the different versions of the different witnesses of one crime tried in a court of law. Germano Almeida may be seen as the fiction of the reader who gets rid of the contradictions of one logic and accepts, unquestionably, the irony and the terror of the lack of a unitarian psychology. Is Germano Almeida, after all, the author, the reader, or both? We cannot answer this question as yet. But we must accept the Barthean idea that pleasure corresponds to the fruition of an anticipatory space of jouissance. If I am proposing that the reading entity be equated with the author himself, it is impossible to conceive the idea of a text written at the margins of pleasure. It is impossible to conceive of a frigid text separated from any nevrotic marks. The truth is that all the texts of Germano Almeida are constructed upon the foundation of the primary pleasure of the author himself. He is the one who maneuvers the action toward infinity and fatally assumes the role of commentator, observer, and reader of that same action. The situation approaches tiredness since the reader is transported into an unclear space in which his/her role is not obvious, for the author/narrator has already assumed most of the reaser’s funtions. The text should desire its own reader as it would be constructed in such a way that only reading would complete it. But this desire does not matter to us. Germano Almeida’s texts go far beyond this immanent desire of the written word, since it expands onto a para-historical universe where writing develops, as well as onto a parapsychological universe of its own characters whose construction is never completed. When characters flow from one text to another and History encompasses histories/stories, the Barthean rupture, which is the fundamental condition of desire, goes beyond the need of a desiring conscience for it is the rupture itself that constitutes the text(s). The author carries his own desire of characters’ recreation from text to text. And this godlike author is what constitutes a divergence from Barthes’ concept of plaisir du texte that, nevertheless, will help us to proceed. We have not yet answered the question regarding the ambiguity of the reader’s role vis-à-vis an overpowering narrator. If we accept the concept of the author’s jouissance, we can interpret the repetitions, the recreation of the characters, and the verbal excesses as une jubilation continue (Barthes, 1973, 17). This jubilation would redirect us into an analysis os this kind of discourse as political discourse. Moreover, the narrative overflow destroys the classic notion of narrative, transcending the space of writing and approaching the notion of writing as a body. The several texts are pieces of clothing slowly and systematically pealed off causing in the reader the same erotic sensations of a factual and unending strip-tease. The end of the story never comes. Even when the naïve reader believes he/she has finished the author’s first book, the pleasure of the text will lead the reader into another book. The reader will start out convinced that he/she came across something totally new, to realize that the first book had only constituted the first desire. Germano Almeida beckons the reader to stretch out the primary Edipean pleasure.