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PONTO DE REFÚGIO E INSPIRAÇÃO: MACAU NA OBRA DO ESCRITOR NEERLANDÊS JAN JACOB SLAUERHOFF (1898-1936)

This article analyzes the function of Macau in the work of the Dutch writer Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936), arguing that the city serves as a point of refuge and inspiration within an aesthetic of the decline of Western culture between the two world wars. The approach is historical-literary and bi...

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Published in:Review of Culture
Main Author: Arie Pos
Format: Articles
Published: Instituto Cultural de Macau July 2003
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Articles
Online Access:https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40007/3896
Summary:This article analyzes the function of Macau in the work of the Dutch writer Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936), arguing that the city serves as a point of refuge and inspiration within an aesthetic of the decline of Western culture between the two world wars. The approach is historical-literary and biographical: it reads Slauerhoff’s itinerary—from his contact with Macau in 1927–1930 to the incorporation of the city into the genesis of *Het verboden rijk* (*The Forbidden Kingdom*, 1932), including the dedication and prologue of the novel—in relation to Portuguese sources on Macau (*Historic Macao*) and to the biography of Camões as a repertoire of historical images. The analysis situates the work within a current of interwar cultural thought that, influenced by Oswald Spengler, reads Western history as an organism subject to birth, peak, decline, and death; and that, through Reinhold Schneider (*Das Leiden des Camões*), associates Camões with the figure of an empire in decay. Slauerhoff invokes Camões, the great explorers, and the geography of Macau to sustain a literary identity that resists civilizational dissolution. Macau thus emerges as a locus for reflection on the Orientalization of Portuguese culture and, at the same time, as a source of poetic identities and fictional plots. The article concludes that the refuge/inspiration of Macau makes it possible to understand the interface between historical critique, imperial memory, and aesthetic creation in the author’s work.
ISSN:1682-1106

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