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. ###