A CULTURAL LINK

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 96, 26 April 1939, Page 13

A CULTURAL LINK

Portugal and Great Britain

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

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, professor* and doctors visit and lecture in Portugal. Italian centres of culture in Liabon f Coimbra, and Oporto have flour* ished, although Italian is not a clasisubject in Portuguese lyceums.

spheres extending back to 1147, wrote the Lisbon correspondent of The Times on November 23. In that year the fortuitious 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; to-day, as Dr. Salzar, the Prime Minister recently observed, the Anglo-Portuguese alliance is in full force and acquires fresh lustre from a better understanding between the two Governments. Yet knowledge of each other 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 developed 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 Portugual 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

Germany has been unremitting la cultural effort in Portugal since 1924. Not only has the number of her nationals resident in Portugal increased from 454 to 1885 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, Cologn* end Berlin. The Portuguese language has been introduced as an optional Romance language in German school* presumably with a view to the possfc bility of increased usage in Portugal and Brazil. Frequent lectures in Portugal, usually in the Portuguese language, by visiting German professors and doctor* and general cultural exchanges tak* place; and the Gremio Luso-Alemao fc( Lisbon has provided since 1925 free information services and has free lectures, concerts, and film demonstrations. Annual Scholarships. Scholarships in a German university arc awarded annually to some 15 Por« tuguese students. The reintroductioa of German as a school subject in Portuguese secondary schools and it* teaching jointly with English in Por* tuguese universities have served t* increase cultural approximation.

On the other hand, the cultural efforts in Portugal of her old ally hav* been so woefully small as to excit* remark and invidious comparison. Th* British Room of the Higher Institut* ol Economics and Finance in the Technical University of Lisbon has, in it* particular sphere, played its part sine* its inception in the capital in 1935. Its range was, however, limited, and not until to-day has the lack in th* wider sense been made good. Recent encouragement by the British Council has provided for three bursaries tenable for one year at a British university. These bursaries have already been taken up by Portuguese student* Further, two Portuguese students destined for the colonial services hav* taken up residence at Cambridge to attend the Colonial Administrative Service Course under a scheme financed jcintly by the Portuguese Government and the British Council. Two student* 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 prize* allotted to secondary schools in Portugal where English is taught as * subject.

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 twenty-five 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