U.Porto Memory
University of Porto Famous Alumni
Agostinho da Silva
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Agostinho da Silva 1906-1994 Lecturer, pedagogue, philologist and philosopher |
George Agostinho da Silva was born in Porto, in 67 Travessa Barão de Nova Sintra (at present no. 126), in the Bonfim parish, on 13 February 1906, to a middle-class family from the south of Portugal. He was the first son of Francisco José Agostinho da Silva, 3rd class officer in the Porto Customs House, and Georgina do Carmo Baptista da Silva, a housewife, both from Lisbon.
His family moved to Barca d’Alva, in Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo before he turned one, as his father was transferred to this border outpost. Agostinho da Silva spent his childhood and studied here. His sister Estefânia was born here in 1909, and died at 18 months old; his sister Mara Cecília was born the following year.
Between 1912 and 1913, he returned to Porto, after his father was promoted, and lived first in S. João Novo Square and later in Comércio do Porto Street. In the meantime, he enrolled in the S. Nicolau School. In 1913, he sat his Grade 1 exams and got a distinction. The following year, he sat his Grade 4 exams and was admitted to the Mouzinho da Silveira Industrial School.
Between 1916 and 1924, he began his secondary studies in the Rodrigues de Freitas High School, which he completed with full marks.
During this period, of which he had very fond memories, he received excellent training in Literature, Portuguese and French Cultures, History, Geography and Languages. Some of his teachers were Carlos Santos, Augusto César Pires de Lima, Francisco Torrinha, Father Júlio Ferreira, Luís Carlos and the Rector Simões Pina. This training enabled him to teach Portuguese, when he was about 16 or 17, to the English members of the Porto society involved in the Port wine trade.
After he completed his Complementary Course in Arts, in 1924, he enrolled in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto Porto in Quinta Amarela, a faculty which had strong links with the cultural movement "Renascença Portuguesa". At first, he attended the Roman Philology course and later Classical Philology, which he concluded on 15 July 1928 with full marks. His end of course thesis was a commented edition of Cato’s poetry.
He was taught by several great masters, such as Teixeira Rego, Hernâni Cidade, Urbano Canuto Soares, Francisco Torrinha, Damião Peres, Aarão de Lacerda, Mendes Correia, Artur de Magalhães Basto, Newton de Macedo and Leonardo Coimbra. He was a fellow colleague of António Salgado Júnior, José Marinho, Eugénio Aresta, Álvaro Ribeiro, Sant’Anna Dionísio, Delfim dos Santos, Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Joaquim Magalhães, Guedes de Oliveira, Fernanda Cunha and Judite Natália.
During his University years at the Faculty of Arts, he participated in and organized the A Acção Académica, a monarchic publication of the Student’s Union (1925), collaborated in the magazine Revista Águia (1926-1929) with articles on Philosophy and Literature. He also had a column in Seara Nova (1928-1938), published some of his work in Porto Académico (1925-1926), Ideia Nacional e Comércio, presented conferences and was a student leader.
In 1929, he got his PhD in Classical Philology with a thesis on Sentido Histórico das Civilizações Clássicas [The historical sense of classical civilizations] for which he received full marks. He therefore became the first PhD in the Faculty of Arts created in 1919. In 1929, he published his PhD thesis and the work entitled Breve Ensaio sobre Pérsio [A brief essay on Persio], in Lisbon, and taught at the Alexandre Herculano High School, where he was appointed Provisional Teacher.
Since he was unable to continue his university career at the Faculty of Arts, which, in the meantime, had been extinct in 1928, he left for Lisbon where he trained to become for Effective Teacher at the Escola Normal Superior (1930-1931), which he completed with full marks.
He never took up the posts in the Angra do Heroísmo High School nor in the Portalegre one, as he received a scholarship from the National Education Board, in Paris, where he studied History and Literature at the Sorbonne and in the Collège de France (1931-1933).
Upon his return to Portugal, he was appointed teacher at the José Estêvão High School, in Aveiro.
In the meantime, in 1932, he had founded the Centre for Philological Studies of the Classical University of Lisbon.
In 1935, he was dismissed from Public Service because he did not sign the Lei Cabral (Decree 27. 003), a law according to which all public servants had to declare that they did not belong to any secret society. In that same year, with the help of Joaquim de Carvalho, he obtained a scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and worked on A Mística Espanhola [The Spanish Mystic]. In 1936, he was forced to leave Spain due to conflicts with Américo de Castro and the beginning of the Civil War.
He started teaching again when he returned to Lisbon, this time in the private sector, namely in the Colégio Infante Sagres where he was a fellow colleague of Orlando Vitorino. He then participated in the Seara Nova movement (1935-1938), where he presented the project on pedagogical biographies, and took part in the literary assembly organized by António Sérgio.
Following the major concerns on the renewal of the School ("Educação Nova" - New Education), he founded the Núcleo Pedagógico de Antero de Quental (1939) [a pedagogical nucleus] with the members of the literary assembly entitled "Sábados de António Sérgio" and Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, implemented the cooperative system in the Colégio Infante Sagres and set up the Escola Nova de S. Domingos de Benfica.
Between 1937 and 1943, he started an ambitious programme aiming to spread education and culture to the entire country, with the help of Fernando Rau. This project went against the educational programme imposed by the Estado Novo, for which he wrote, edited and distributed about 130 Cadernos de Informação Cultural (1943) specially prepared for this project.
He was imprisoned on 24 July 1943 at Aljube, where he remained in solitary confinement for 18 days. After he was released, he was sanctioned to home imprisonment. He remained in his house in Praia da Rocha, in Portimão [the south of Portugal].
In the Algarve, he published philosophical essays (Conversação com Diotima e Considerações), but the situation was unbearable. In 1944, he left with his wife Berta David and his children Pedro Manuel and Maria Gabriela into exile, to Latin America.
In Brazil, he found a whole new and plural world, to which he had to adapt his educational model, which, after being implemented, helped create a Lusophone cultural space (Luso-African-Brazilian).
The first contact with this new context in Rio de Janeiro and S. Paulo was not very promising, since the political context was hardly favourable. So he left for Uruguay in 1945, where he taught History and Philosophy in schools in Montevideu. In Argentina, in 1946, he organized the Modern Pedagogy courses for the Institute of Higher Studies in Buenos Aires.
He returned to Brazil in 1947, first to S. Paulo and later to the Serra de Itatiaia, where he lived with his second wife Judith Cortesão and their six sons. He came into close contact with Dora and Vicente Ferreira da Silva and the Brazilian modernists.
Between 1948 and 1952, he settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he worked at the Biology Institute Oswaldo Cruz, and dedicated himself to research in the field of Zoology, Entomology of Parasitology, taught Philosophy of Education at the Fluminense Faculty of Philosophy in Rio de Janeiro and joined other Portuguese exiles, among which Jaime Cortesão, with whom he collaborated in the National Library (on the study of the works by Alexandre Gusmão).
He travelled to the State of Paraíba in 1952 to help found the Universidade Federal de Paraíba (João Pessoa), where he worked and taught Ancient History and Physical Geography (1952-1955).
In 1954, he helped Jaime Cortesão organize the Exhibition to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the city of S. Paulo.
He left Paraíba and moved to Santa Catarina, with a referral from Hernani Cidade, to found the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Here, further to teaching Portuguese Literature and Roman Philology, he also worked as Head of the State Culture Department and worked in the General Directorate for Higher Education, of the Ministry of Education. He published Um Fernando Pessoa (1955), Ensaio para uma Teoria do Brasil (1956) and Reflexão à Margem da Literatura Portuguesa (1957).
In 1959, he joined Eduardo Lourenço at the University of Baía, where he taught Philosophy of the Theatre and started off the project on the knowledge of Black Africa by Brazil, and founded the Centre for Afro-Oriental Studies (CEAO) in the Federal University of Baía.
In 1961, he worked in Rio de Janeiro and Santa Catarina and then moved to Brasília.
In 1962, he dedicated his time to founding the University of Brasília and setting up the Centre for Portuguese Studies in that same institution.
In 1963, now with a scholarship from UNESCO, he travelled to Tokyo, Japan, where he taught Portuguese. He visited Macau, Timor, the United States and Senegal.
The following year he lived in both Salvador da Baía and Cachoeira, where he set up the Casa Paulo Dias Adorno, a school and study centre.
He left Brazil in 1969 to return to Portugal.
After the 25th April 1974, he returned to university teaching and the Brazilian government retired him from (teaching) service. He later headed the Centre for Latin-American Studies. He travelled, wrote and received many tributes and honours, much due to his contributions and interventions in national television. He died in Lisbon on 3 April 1994, at the age of 88.
(Universidade Digital / Gestão de Informação, 2010)
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