Literatura e Mundo em "Novas Cartas Portuguesas": O Azulejo dos Tempos

Abstract

I shall begin by focusing on the idea that literature heightens both thought and feeling – thus affecting and promoting freedom and solidarity. Departing from that idea, I shall then argue that the exercise of com/passion (cum+passion) and the notion of pact are central keys to New Portuguese Letters (a book written in 1972, during the Portuguese fascist dictatorship) and a path to the social exercise of affections. Com/passion and pact can then be of extreme value so as to resist to a world where ethical principles have been subdued by an economic model that threatens the very core of democracy. Because they repel the true loneliness that always underlies power without freedom.