‘Fado da Censura’ by Fernando Pessoa: rare example of political intervention poem destined for singing

Abstract

'Fado da Censura' is an undated poem by Fernando Pessoa (signed as orthonym) that, by style and theme, belongs to the last phase of his life, at a time when the poet finds himself on a collision course with the ideology emerging from the 1926 military coup, one which implements a dictatorial regime in the country. The curious thing about this text by Pessoa, besides the theme of political satire that the title denounces, is that it is the only poem, which Pessoa bequeathed to us, composed in the format of stanza called “décimas”, from the popular poetic tradition (“décimas” is composed of a quatrain as motto, followed by forty heptasyllabic verses, spread over four stanzas of ten verses, each ending, in sequence, with one of the verses of the initial quatrain) and which is assumed, moreover, as a lyric designed to be sung in melodies of traditional Lisbon fado. It is important to analyze in this poem, really so unique among Pessoa’s work, the intersection between literary creation - inspired by the forms of popular tradition based on oral transmission - and the musical expression of singing as a political intervention, which is part of the History of fado, especially since the end of the XIXth century til the first two decades of the twentieth century.