Goan writing 'withered on the vine with the advent of the Salazar
dictatorship' -- Paul Melo e Castro
Paul Melo e Castro [paulmeloecas...@yahoo.co.uk] is a
University of Leeds prof in his thirties, who has been doing
some serious work on Goan writing in Portuguese. After his
translated collection of short stories written by Goans in Portuguese
(Lengthening Shadows, published in 2016 in two volumes), he
has collaborated with Prof Helder Garmes of Brazil to edit an
undiscovered novel by the late Epitacio Pais, of Batim (Goa).
In Goa currently, for the launch of the novel 'Preia Mar' or
High Tide (at the Xavier Centre of Historical Research on
Friday, Jan 15, 2016 at 5.30 pm), he responds to queries from
Frederick Noronha about his work and his views.
Q: How did you discover Epitacio Pais?
Paul Melo e Castro: I first discovered Epitacio
Pais in Vimala Devi and Manuel de Seabra's 'A
Literatura Indo-Portuguesa'. Though today we might
want to reflect critically on the way they frame
Goan society and Goan writing -- it was composed in
the early 70s when Portugal was still a
dictatorship -- their work has been crucial in
preserving Goan writing in Portuguese and whetting
the interest of successive generations of (mainly
non-Goan) scholars.
Q: What is his relevance in Goan writing and, particularly,
Goan writing in Portuguese?
PMC: Epitacio Pais is the only Goan writer in Portuguese to
deal with the sea changes in Goa at the end of the Portuguese
period and the first decade of Indian rule. Vimala Devi
radiographs Goa in the last years of the colonial period.
Maria Elsa da Rocha provides intimist stories set in the
personal and domestic spheres. But it's Pais who deals with
mining, tourism, the shifts of attitude and clash of castes
and classes.
I see three fields of discussion in which Goan
writing in Portuguese could enter: the discussion
around the literary representation of Goa (where it
could play an important comparative role in
relation to Goan literatures in other languages);
the discussion of post-colonial literatures in
Portuguese (where it can help us expand and
challenge commonplaces either shipped in from
anglophone discussions or formed in relation to the
former Portuguese Africa); discussions around
Indian literature in general, given that it is the
only Indian literature not written in English or an
Indian regional language. Epitacio Pais's writing
can shift the frame of all three.
Q: Briefly, what were the strengths and weaknesses of GWiP,
or Goan Writing in Portuguese?
The strength of GWiP is that it contains a representation of
Goa that challenges some of the commonplaces present in
today's discussions of Goan identity and society. I think
there is a tendency to imagine that Portuguese writing from
Goa is 'pro-Portuguese', but that is not the case at all with
Pais or with most other Portuguese-language writers.
The weakness is that Goan writing, while it really
started to get going in the late 19th century and
early 20th century with Francisco Luis Gomes,
Francisco Joao da Costa and Jose da Silva Coelho,
it withered on the vine with the advent of the
Salazar dictatorship. It's hard to see why exactly,
given that this time saw the flowering of
literature from Cape Verde, a society that shows an
interesting play of parallels and divergences with
Goa. Then, there is one last outpouring in the
1960s, the odd outlier in the following decades,
and a lingering death, replaced by English.
Q: Has GWiP been sufficiently studied or got adequately noticed?
Not at all. It's been ignored in Goa because the language has
been disestablished and the texts aren't always easy to
locate, and relatively ignored in Portuguese because Goa has
become the 'phantom limb' of lusophony -- present as a name
in discussions but not really coming into the equation.
Q: The Brazilians seem interested in this field too now. Why?
In general, it seems that as Brazil grows and
becomes more confident on the world stage, it has
every interest in creating across the world. India
is obviously high on its list and the shared
aspects of Portuguese colonialism make Goa an
obvious point of contact.
I think that Goa could make much more use of its past in this
way, but other people more versed in geo-political relations
have made this point better than me. I think here the role of
Helder Garmes in getting the Pensando Goa
[http://goa.fflch.usp.br/] project up, running and financed
cannot be overestimated. Hopefully it will lead to a step
change in the image of Goan literature in the
Portuguese-speaking world.
Q: Is this interest coming a bit late?
Too late for what's been lost, just in the nick of time for
what still exists. And as Epitacio Pais's novel shows, who
knows what's still out there. According to Vimala Devi and
Manuel de Seabra, Ananta Rau Sardessai, Walfrido Antao,
Augusto do Rosario Rodrigues, Telo de Mascarenhas all had
unpublished novels or short story collections. If anybody has
copies hidden away from the termites, I'd love to hear from
them.
Q: Do you expect any more Goans to write in Portuguese?
Probably not, but I hope a lot more translation
from/by/about Goans from English, Portuguese,
Konkani and Marathi will happen. Duarte Braga and I
have translated a couple of Konkani short stories
into Portuguese (via Augusto Pinto's English). I
hope a lot more things like that can happen. There
has also been a spate of novels written in Portugal
about Goa, which I'd love to see translated into
English and read and critiqued by Goans. 'Era Uma
Vez em Goa' by [former Fundacao Oriente delegate
for India in Goa] Paulo Varela Gomes is probably
the best.
Q: What are your suggestions to those writing in Portuguese in
Goa today, and those studying it?
For those writing in Portuguese in Goa today, contact us!
We'll happily read and respond to your work. For those
studying Portuguese, while of course it's important to read
and engage with production in that language from Europe,
America and East Asia, dig into your own archive, you must be
surprised at what you can find.
Q: Lastly, a bit about yourself and family links with Goa?
My father comes from a 'descendente' family that
lived in Fontainhas, Panjim until 1961. I grew up
with stories about Goa, eating Goan food. After I
finished my PhD and was looking for a new project,
I decided to try to see what, if anything had been
written in Portuguese. I found Devi and Seabra's
work and my research snowballed from there. It's
been a real pleasure over the past years to help
preserve and divulge Goan literature.
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