CULTURAL LINK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1939, Page 9

CULTURAL LINK

GREAT BRITAIN & PORTUGAL TREATIES OF AMITY & ALLIANCE. RECENT GERMAN ACTIVITIES. With the opening in Lisbon of the British Institute in Portugal, cultural relations between the two countries are at last put on a footing worthy of a connection in less learned spheres extending back to 1147, wrote the Lisbon correspondent of “The Times.” In that year the fortuitous arrival in the Tagus of English crusaders, among others, helped the Portuguese to capture Lisbon from the Moors, ■ and certain English survivors settled in the land which later was to be allied for centuries to their country. From 1373 on treaties of amity and alliance have, with slight variations existed; today, as Dr Salzar, the Prime Minister, recently observed, the AngloPortuguese alliance is in full force and acquires fresh lustre from a better understanding between the two Governments. Yet knowledge of each othei' is strangely lacking among the two peoples. It would be difficult to find two nations more disparate in mentality, more different in temperament, and with cultural relations less devoloped in comparison to their long political and colonial association.

True it is that the epic of .Portugal’s golden age, the “Lusiads” of Camoens, has its translators into English, including William Julius Mickle and Sir Richard Fanshawe, the English Ambassador responsible for the early arrangements of the treaty which brought Charles 11. a Portuguese bride and his country, among other things, Bombay. SMALL EXCHANGES. Learned works, translated from one language to the other, appear occasionally down the years, but in general the exchange of cultured thought is small, even minute when compared with that of Portugal with France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Even today the seeker after English books in Lisbon will be seriously circumscribed in his search. , Although the University of Coimbra has in the past had its associations with Britain —its George and Patrick Buchanan, its Simon Gould, who professed medicine there in 1772, its Birmingham, and, more recently, its John Opie, George West, and Leonard Downes —it was not until 1936 that the poorly equipped and furnished “English Room” in the Faculty of Letters was raised to a status worthy of its aims and the university in which it was housed. In June of that year, after three unavoidable postponements, the British Institute in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra was inaugurated. Attractively furnished, and probably the best equipped of all foreign institutes in Coimbra, thanks largely to the generous aid of some 25 British firms and the British Council, it gave at long last worthy representation to Portugal’s ancient ally in that Oxford of Portugal overlooking the Mondego. BRITAIN LAGS BEHIND. In the more extended cultural sphere Britain has lagged behind other nations. French culture in Portugal is of long standing, and the ethnological similarities of past centuries have had a lasting, if now perhaps diminishing, influence on Portuguese educated thought. French writers, professors, and doctors visit and lecture in Portugal. Italian centres of culture in Lisbon, Cdimbra, and Oporto have flourished, although Italian is not a class subject in Portuguese lyceums. Germany has been unremitting in cultural effort in Portugal since 1924. Not only has the number of her nationals resident in Portugal increased from 454 to 1,885 in the 18 years since 1920 —her community probably now equals in numbers that of the British — but the Luso-German cultural link has been steadily and meticulously forged, with close attention to psychological detail. Centres of Portuguese culture exist in Hamburg, Cologne, and Berlin. The Portuguese language has been introduced as an optional Romance language in German schools, presumably with a view to the possibility of increased usage in Portugal and Brazil. Frequent lectures in Portugal, usually in the Portuguese language, by visiting German professors and doctors and general cultural exchanges take place; and the Gremio Luso-Alemao in Lisbon has provided since 1925 free information services and has organised free lectures, concerts, and film demonstrations. ANNUAL SCHOLARSHIPS. Scholarships in a German university are awarded annually to some 15 Portuguese students. The reintroduction of German as a school subject in Portuguese secondary schools and its teaching jointly with English in Portuguese universities have served to increase cultural approximation. On the other hand, the cultural efforts in Portugal of her old ally have been so woefully small as to excite remark and invidious comparison. The British Room of the Higher Institute of Economics and Finance in the Technical University of Lisbon has, in its particular sphere, played its part since its inception in the capital in 1935. Its range was, however, limited, and not until today has the lack in the wider sense been made good. Recent encouragement by the British Council has provided for three bursaries tenable for one year at a British univercity. These bursaries have already been taken up by Portuguese’students. Further, two Portuguese students destined for the colonial services have taken up residence at Cambridge to attend the Colonial Administrative Service Course under a scheme financed jointly by the Portuguese Government and the British Council. Two students will similarly attend Oxford next year, and two every year at each university alternately. Two annual research scholarships at a British university have been awarded, and book prizes allotted to secondary schools in Portugal where English is taught as a subject.