Description

FIRST POETRY BOOK PUBLISHED IN MOZAMBIQUE:

Arthur SERRANO (fl. 1884 – 1906).

Moçambique [Ilha de Moçambique]: Imprensa Nacional, 1891.

8° (19 x 13 cm): xv, 95 pp., bound in original peach-coloured printed paper wrappers, title bearing the author’s mss. dedication to “João António Teixeira de Souza”, owner’s handstamp of ‘J.A.T. de Sousa’ to front cover and title (Very Good, internally quite clean, just the odd minor spot or light stain, covers a touch stained and chipped at edges, spine quite worn).

 

The indigenous nations of Mozambique had a long, and venerable tradition of music and verse going back centuries, some of which could certainly be termed poetry.  However, this rich culture remained in oral form and was only extensively recorded in print beginning in the early 20th century.

The birth of poetry in Mozambique, in the European sense, occurred in the small literary salons that developed in the colony’s major cities and towns from the 1860s.  Here, the works that were produced and recited were primarily of European style and content, and it took some years before the stories and poems included African subjects.

The 1880s and ’90s saw the rise of a sophisticated print media and literary culture in Mozambique.  While the first press in the colony, the Imprensa Nacional, had operated in Moçambique Town (the Ilha de Moçambique) since 1854, for decades it focussed on governmental publications, often of a dry technical (and heavily censured) nature.  It was only in this latter period that many private presses sprang up, issuing their own newspapers and magazines, in the Ilha de Moçambique (the capital), Inhambane, Quelimane and Lourenço Marques (Maputo), the fast-growing industrial-transport hub that would become Mozambique’s capital in 1898.  These publications fostered a great flowering of literary art, espousing a diverse array of political views, as well as liberating black and East Indian voices.  Moreover, by this time, the Imprensa Nacional came to issue a more diverse repertoire of publications, reflecting the colony’s more liberal social attitude and a desire to be relevant and profitable in what was an increasingly competitive market.  For a time, publications kept ahead of the colonial censors, ensuring that the print culture in Mozambique was rich and authentic.

A product of, and a major driver of Mozambique’s vigorous print culture was José da Silva Campos de Oliveira (1847 -1911), the first published Mozambican poet and the initiator of African themes into the colony’s literary salons.  Half-Goan in ancestry, Campos de Oliveira was one of Mozambique’s leading early journalists and the founder of the Revista Africana (published in the Ilha de Moçambique, 1881, 1885- 1887), the colony’s first literary magazine, which was an important incubator of poetry and short stories in the colony.  Of note, Campos de Oliveira’s O Pescador de Moçambique, which features a black Mozambican fisherman as its protagonist, is considered the first published Mozambican poem to have a distinctly African theme.

 

Enter Arthur Serrano: Pioneering Journalist and Poet in Mozambique

 

Artur António Mateus Serrano (fl. 1884 – 1906), best known as ‘Arthur Serrano’ was a pioneering journalist and poet in Mozambique, as well as a diplomat and politician.  Despite his prominence, relatively little is known of his biography, although it is recorded that he came to Mozambique from Portugal in the early 1880s to serve in the colonial civil service.  Importantly, he served as part of the diplomatic mission to the court of Ngungunyane (Gungunhana), the legendary ruler of the Gaza Empire, which controlled a large and strategically critical territory south of the Zambezi River.  The mission was the centrepiece of an effort to placate the potent warlord, an endeavour that would prove unsuccessful, as, in 1895, the Portuguese would be compelled to depose and exile the ‘Lion of Gaza’.  Serrano subsequently served as the ‘vice-presidente da Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques’ (1889-90), essentially the Deputy Mayor of Mozambique’s largest city.

Leaving crown employ, Serrano concentrated upon his journalistic and literary career.  In 1890, he became the editor of O Distrito de Lourenço Marques, the first newspaper issued in Lourenço Marques (est. 1888) and, in 1892, became the editor of the weekly Comércio de Lourenço Marques.

However, Serrano’s true passion was poetry.  A protégé of José Pedro da Silva Campos e Oliveira, beginning in 1884, Serrano, usually under the nom de plume “S. Rano”, published several poems in periodicals such as the Novo almanach de lembranças luso-brasileiro (issued in Lisbon), which had huge readership throughout the Portuguese-speaking world.

 

The Present Work in Focus

Arthur Serrano’s magnum opus was Sons Orientais [‘Oriental Sounds’], referring to the fact that Mozambique was commonly termed as Portuguese East Africa.  It has the distinction of being the first book of poetry published in Mozambique.  Issued in 1891 in the Ilha de Moçambique by the Imprensa Nacional, it is an anthology that includes some of Serrano’s works that previously appeared in periodicals, as well as some pieces printed here for the first time.

In the postscript to the work, Serrano asserts that “We wanted to make a purely African book” with “Verses solely made in Africa and printed in African typography”.  While that was accomplished, he regretted that “we could not achieve it as absolutely as we wished” as he failed to have the introduction to the work written by “an Africa poet” and the “only poet we have”, José da Silva Campos de Oliveira.  Apparently, Campos de Oliveira was willing to write said introduction but was temporarily incapacitated by illness.

Serrano’s poems are deeply emotive, with titles that include ‘That Fatal Love’, ‘Rubble’, ‘Yesterday and today’, ‘Passages’, ‘The Wild’, and ‘Over the Grave’.  He explores many universal aspects of humanity, such as love and passion, life, death and memory.

However, by far and away Serrano’s most historically and artistically important poem is the final work in the anthology, the ‘Canto de Guerra Vatua (Assibinheia)’ [Vatua War Songs (Assibinheia)] (pp. 83 – 90).  The poem is inspired by Serrano’s time as a diplomat at the court of Ngungunyane (Gungunhana), where he witnessed the elaborate martial rituals that were regularly performed by thousands of warriors in the Lion of Gaza’s honour.  The poem is dedicated to Serrano’s chief on the diplomatic mission, José Joaquim de Almeida (1858 – 1922), who served as the Intendant-General of Indigenous Affairs in Gaza and the Interim Governor-General of Mozambique (in 1889).

The poem is divided into into three parts.  In the first, Ngungunyane’s warriors are summoned to serve their “invincible chief”, with the first stanza’s setting the dramatic tone of the work (as translated):

 

Warriors of my country,

Valient men of war, sound

The horns loudly,

From mountain to mountain,

 

Your invincible leader, trembling

With rage and pain, commands

You, the rebellious peoples, to drink

The blood of traitors.

 

The second part describes the warriors complying with their king’s commands “ten days later”, who group into “immense warrior hosts” and chant “the heroic song of the Vatuas, / the march of – ASSIBINHEIA – :”.

In third part, Ngungunyane issues a series of commands, such as “Awake, you who sleep, / arise, and see en masse; the war of Gungunhan, that passes so close to you”, to which each is replied by a chorus of warriors: “Enemies and cowards…”

 

A Note on Rarity

The present work is exceedingly rare, in line with many contemporary Mozambique imprints, which were issued in small quantities and have low survival rates.  We can trace only 2 institutional examples, held by the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and the

Universidade do Porto.  Moreover, we are not aware of any sales records for any other examples.

The present example of the work is inscribed by the author: “Ao seu amigo João António Teixeira de Souza / Offe. O auctor”.  João António Teixeira de Sousa was a senior colonial official in Mozambique, who during this period served as the Secretary of the Government (i.e., Chief of Staff) in the Quelimane District.

 

References: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal: L. 5017 V.; Universidade do Porto – Faculdade de Letras (Biblioteca Pedro Veiga): PV/3749; Debora Leite DAVID, ‘Ideais oposicionistas e manifestações literárias do século XIX nos países africanos de Língua Portuguesa, António Manuel Ferreira & Maria Fernanda Brasete (eds.), Pelos Mares da língua portuguesa 2 (Aveiro, 2015), pp. 81-92; Adilson Fernando FRANZIN, ‘O romance moçambicano : história e mito’, Ph.D. Thesis, Univer- sité Sorbonne Université / Universidade de São Paulo (2021), passim;  Ana Mafalda LEITE and Joana PASSOS,  ‘Literature in Transit between Goa and Mozambique: Campos Oliveira as a Pioneering Figure’ Portuguese Studies vol. 37 no. 2 (2021), 193–209; Ubiratã SOUZA,’ A tópica de Gaza na literatura moçambicana e Ualalapi, de Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa’, Revista Mulemba, vol. 14, núm. 27 (2022), pp. 97-120.