English Version | Icon O'Clast

It would be a bad thing if you had to be a martyr to be an icon. Of course, it makes it easier to be a Joan of Arc, who also died at the hands of the Inquisition just as the icon she adored perished at the hands of the Romans. Or a Che Guevara and Salvador Allende, both killed by the intelligence agency of the country they considered the cradle of all their and the world's evils. But if we weren't so posthumous, given to post-mortem tributes and eulogies, as if you had to die to be consecrated - which happens the very moment the death is announced, with thousands of RIPs on social media playing the role of the newspaper's old obituary section - it might even be worth being a Portuguese with a gift or mere talent. And stand out from the rest because of it. To the point of becoming a symbol. Mentioned ad aeternum. And finally revered by the general public. Yes, I know who you're thinking of. And I'm starting in the least consensual and even imaginary way possible, which may mean that there's at least one person who won't read another line from here on, which on the one hand will prove that this world is as polarized as a AAA battery, with the crime of opinion has become not only a crime against humanity but also a crime under international law (which, in the light of recent terrible events, is tantamount to saying that it will go unpunished), and on the other hand will attest to the fact that all of the above is true... I'm one of those who think that if Cristiano Ronaldo hadn't gone off injured in the 25th minute, as a result of Payet's intentional aggression, we would never have been European Champions. It's one thing to give all the credit to the man who is undoubtedly the best ever (sorry, Maradona), but it's another to let the national heat blind us to the point where we don't get annoyed when we see a whole team full of stars who shine at the biggest European clubs playing for a foosball player who spends practically the entire game with his arm raised in front of the goal, asking for the ball without fetching it (in my day, this was “playing for the breast”, today it's called “winger”), in a gesture that reminds us of that annoying customer who, in the restaurant, calls the waiter with an irritating “psst pssst oh boss” - and it's not to say “Manager, this milk is sour”, like Mário Cesariny in the poem Pastelaria, which happens to have “Isn't that right, boy? And tomorrow there's a ball before there's a movie, madame blanche and parola”, two stanzas before because everyone has their own icon. Of course, Cris- tiano Ronaldo is much more than just a footballer who will forever go down in sporting history (although knowing how to retire in style is also an art that, unfortunately, not everyone has mastered). He's a self-made man who carries on his back the age-old and always-moving fable about the kid who came from a disadvantaged background and, through hard work and perseverance, made it to the top. It's an Oliver Twist without the story of a brilliant Charles Dickens, but it's on the covers of the sports press all over the world and that fills us with pride. But couldn't we see him “catching on” about something other than someone's incredible sporting achievements? Isn't there someone in our vast history who has excelled in the air or in science, now that CR7 has made us forget, swept away by the mists of time, the great Eusébio, who also came from such a disadvantaged background to the “metropolis”? Of course! The problem is what we, as a people, tend to value. And when culture is limited to Football, Fátima and Fado, something is very wrong in this country. Even if we think that the shadow of fascism, creator of the Three Fs, is a thing of the past. No, it's not. It's even better, and increasingly so, to look back from time to time, lest the devil weave them or, even if he doesn't know anything about weaving, shoulder us on a daily basis.

When Amália was a girl, just around the corner from adolescence (and yes, in those days this stage of a woman's growth was culturally relative, due to male impunity), she sold oranges on the Cais da Rocha Conde d'Óbidos. Now, since this, like Cais do Sodré, was a place where sailors from here and abroad came ashore, “Amália sold her oranges” was an ordinary laracha, with an obvious connotation, scattered around taverns and pasture houses, but which still exists wherever there is a Lisbon castiço, which, by the way, is already scarce. It should not be forgotten that Amália, the ultimate symbol of this Portugal, was so because she mastered an art that was closely related to the bohemian spirit of the capital. A “fado singer” was not just an interpreter of the Canção Maior. It was an epithet commonly attributed to men who were not very serious, well beyond the point of fidelity, and who lived a very drunken life late into the night, in the warm light of the lamps in the alleys of Olissipon, fueled by Azorean whale oil. Now, in a city where art and culture have always been closely linked to bohemia, I myself heard about the “story of the oranges”, this rumor, from a book dealer friend who knew our diva, who was a close friend of Herberto Hélder and a regular at the parties that, in the early 1980s, preceded the boom that was to hit Bairro Alto, today a mere shadow inspired by Rua da Oura or Benidorm. Only someone like Amália (let's stand up, hand on chest, saying her name) could be impervious to this kind of intriguing gossip, which was also so Lisbon, God bless her, because she was taller. She was also considered Salazar's little girl and it turned out that, on more than one occasion, she went hand in hand with the PCP in tasks aimed at the underprivileged. She was also “drunk” and in the end she was just beautiful and sang to us all, because we all had her in our voices and we had, in her voice, the voice of all of us, as Variações sang, another icon we could mention at any time. Amália was (and is) our pride at a time when we had nothing to be proud of, apart from the Vasco da Gama and other discoverers crap that was instilled in our parents' school and ended up taking them to war to defend a land that was only ours because of a dictator's stubbornness. Amália Rodrigues made us cry, she didn't make us make others cry, for fuck's sake, as she herself would say. Because she was from the people. She was all the people. And it was, as it still is, all the respect we deserve out there. When Amália is spoken of anywhere in the world, there are two hands clasped around her waist and a head bowed slightly. It's the reverence due to a voice but also to a whole culture that that voice contains, because she sang to us all, not just when the words translated the untranslatable Saudade, that weight of countless mothers with their eyes fixed on the sea, waiting for the arrival of their sons who left for discoveries, for distant or nearby fishing, for a better life in a richer country, but also that unparalleled humor with Oiça lá ó Senhor Vinho (lyrics by Alberto Fialho Janes) or O Senhor Extraterrestre (lyrics and music by Carlos Paião): “And the alien gentleman found himself in a bit of a pickle, he wanted to speak but he said: Pi - I was badly tuned in. He fiddled with the little button and told me to get lost, because in the land he came from there's no smell of sardines, let alone cod.” And it's for all this and infinitely more that Amália is the only F, the one from “Fado”, that matters. Add to that Alfredo Marceneiro, Fernando Maurício, Carlos do Carmo, the whole new generation that continues the mission of taking this Intangible Heritage of Humanity to the four corners of the world, from Camané to Cuca Roseta, including Pedro da Silva Martins (from Deolinda) who writes many lyrics and songs for Ana Moura, António Zambujo and the incredible return of Lena d'Água with the same girlish voice - we're not in O Fado anymore, but that's okay because from now on only Culture matters, soccer and saints are to distract us from what weighs us down, despite the fact that, without Culture, we could become a bunch of enslaved people that we have been throughout our history. 

Fernando Pessoa is not just one poet. Or four. Or even more, and the procession is still in the churchyard, with specialized people still trying to decipher unpublished writings. Nor is he just a brilliant prose writer with his The Anarchist Banker. Nor is he just a writer. He's a statue in Chiado, he's t-shirts, tote bags, fridge magnets and bookmarks, all on sale in tourist stores, almost to the point where there's a start-up that created the very original “My brother went to Lisbon and all I got was this lousy Fernando Pessoa t-shirt”. Pessoa is to Lisbon as Kafka is to Prague and, let's face it, his friend Franz didn't have enough heteronyms to give him all that freedom and, to us, so much pleasure. Despite all the folklore surrounding the figure, with his round glasses, characteristic hat and the neat air he was forced to wear in the accounting office where he worked, which today is no more than a print on a deck of cards that tourists buy to give to someone in their home country, there is something exalted and extremely beautiful when the icon of a city belongs to the creative quadrant. Returning to the subject from which I want to depart here, it's one thing to have a Saint as a tourist attraction, it's another to have a sportsman and all the hero worship that we can't match because we don't have that capacity for sacrifice or the philosophy of self-overcoming... On another level, it's having art as a standard-bearer. “I went to Lisbon, the city of the Belém Tower” is nice. “I went to Lisbon, the city of Fernando Pessoa” is to venerate what, with the arrival of Artificial Intelligence, will die with man: creativity. Creative ingenuity. Whatever the art. Whatever the language among the dozens into which Pessoa's works are translated so that we can proudly say: “But there is no musicality that comes close to being able to read him in the original language, so complex and so beautiful”. Because, to the tourist who comes to see the house where Pessoa lived, we can also suggest the poetry of Sophia, of

Al Berto, Adília, Maria Teresa Horta, Nuno Júdice, Torga and O'Neill, or the prose of Lobo Antunes, Agustina, Vergílio Ferreira, Urbano, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Lídia Jorge and, of course, José de Sousa Saramago. What makes the only Nobel Prize winner for Portuguese-language literature, who has been translated into more than 40 languages, whose works have been widely adapted for film and theater, and who always curates the human condition, not a Portuguese icon by consensus? His political convictions? The lie repeated to the point of becoming a myth that he “doesn't punctuate”, which serves to detect those who have never even read a line by the author? The fact that he empowers women, the eternally wise, temperate, pacifist and capable in all his works? Is it Blimunda who has the gift of seeing people's “wills” in Memorial do Convento? Is it Margarida Mau Tempo who, in Levantado do Chão, represents the absolute strength and resistance of an entire oppressed people? Is it the Doctor's Wife in Essay on Blindness, the only one who is not affected by the evil that disintegrates the world and, under the condition of being forced to see the disintegration of society, manages to lead? Is Mary of Magdala in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ the voice of reason of a man revered the world over? Is it our inability to recognize greatness when we have it right in front of us and this propensity to disdain what is ours?

Grândola Vila Morena is, like Bella Ciao, sung in unison all over the world whenever there are demonstrations against repression. This, in itself, should touch us at the point where pride shines through. When José Afonso gave his arms to Adriano Correia de Oliveira and José Mário Branco to step on the gravel together and record the sound of their footsteps, he couldn't have imagined that this theme would give the order to start the revolution, let alone that it would become an anthem (much better than marching against cannons) or that Cante Alentejano would one day become Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Not only that, but no matter what it takes, Zeca Afonso is an icon. For only a few, but he should be for everyone. Because his work was to travel the length and breadth of this country in search of the deepest musical roots that he mirrored in each portentous album. There's nothing political about it. It's just that being open to it requires sensitivity. Like the work of Maria João Pires, revered in international music circles to the point of being a true world piano icon, but forgotten by the overwhelming majority of Portuguese. Like Mozart, she gave her first recital at the age of five. In 1970, she won the legendary international competition celebrating Beethoven's bicentenary in Brussels. She has mastered Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert, Mozart, Brahms and Chopin and is considered one of the world's greatest musicians, so much so that she is frequently invited by the world's greatest orchestras, with whom she tours all over the world. She was awarded the Gramophone Prize (the world's most important musical award) in 2015 and, in 2023, received honorary membership of the Royal Academy of Music. Isn't she an icon?

Translated from the original in Vogue Portugal's The Icons Issue, published November 2024. Full story and credits in the print issue.