Rediscovering Atlantida

"A Portuguese writer, João de Barros, and a Brazilian writer, Paulo Barreto, after having crafted many pages of wondrous literature, came across a geographic finding: they found mysterious Atlantida, never marked in sailors’ charts, but always dreamed of and vaguely referred to by historians and cosmographers with burning imaginations." (Olavo Bilac, 1916)

A century ago, more precisely on the 15th of November 1915, the mysterious Atlantida mentioned by the poet Olavo Bilac appeared in Lisbon. This was a magazine whose name – Atlantida. Mensário Artístico, Literário e Social para Portugal e Brasil – drew inspiration from the lost continent’s legend for semantically naming the editorial project, one that sought to (re)establish the connection between two parts of the world separated by the ocean’s waters. The subtitle informed of its periodicity, programmatic contents, and emphasized the binational nature of the publication, doubly directed by João de Barros, in Portugal, and, Paulo Barreto, the well-known João do Rio, one of last century’s most noteworthy proponents of luso-brazilian rapprochement, in Brazil (Ribeiro Couto, 1961-1962).

Atlantida displayed a good graphic configuration. The recurring pattern in the magazine’s collection was that of displaying the title alone, framed by artistic drawings, on the paperback cover. The matte-paper pages featured single-column texts, sometimes decorated with artistic vignettes or illustrated with drawings, portraits, photographs, and caricatures. The content’s organization produced two distinct blocks: the first gathered literary contributions, articles, essays, and interviews on contemporary issues, interspersed with reproductions of famous painters’ prints and other works of art. The second was made up of three regular sections: "Revista do Mês" – a review of the main political and cultural events of the period, including critical appreciations of art exhibitions, theatre plays, musical concerts, and ballet recitals; "Livros" – a repository of new publications and literary reviews; "Notícias e Comentários" – a segment dedicated to brief news on international politics, as well as errata and similar observations. From No. 18 onward, two new sections, "Portugal na Grande Guerra" and "Revista das revistas", were incorporated in the second block. These dealt, respectively, with the Portuguese participation in the Great War and the summaries of other like-minded periodicals mailed to the editors. It’s important to remember that Atlantida was built on the collaboration of the writers, politicians, diplomats, and military men that formed the intellectual elite which moved along the Lisbon-Rio de Janeiro axis during the first two decades of the 20th century.

Most magazines of ideas and culture are short-lived, nearly always because of scarce resources. Atlantida was an exception. It was published, with considerable regularity, for almost five years. Up until No. 36, the issue of March 1919, the coming together of Portuguese and Brazilian relations remained the main editorial focus. After that, the monthly periodical expanded its thematic spectrum by championing the "latin soul", more specifically the communion of Portugal, Brazil, and France. At that moment, two new directors were added to the management of the magazine, besides the founders: Nuno Simões, in Lisbon, and Graça Aranha, based in Paris.

The magazine’s publication was suspended in April 1920. However, this disappearance, followed closely by the untimely death of João do Rio, was not the end of the project laid out by its creators. João de Barros and the network of intellectuals that had developed around the periodical outlived it and carried on spreading its ideas, influencing new generations. The proposal for an economic and political alliance with Portugal was unsuccessful, but, in a certain way, the cultural aspirations fanned by the two Joões were contemplated, and even expanded, with the creation of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, that took place on the 17th of July 1996.

For its centennial, Atlantida enters the digital world. This means making it accessible to a wider readership, whose interests certainly go beyond the scope of academia. In this manner, along with the digitized edition of the 48 published issues, the website includes a trove of relevant information about the magazine, such as the editorial data and thematic programmes contained in the launch prospectus, complemented by the directors’ explanations. The opening editorial of No. 37, when Atlantida changed its subtitle to "Órgão do Pensamento Latino para Brasil e Portugal", can also be found.

In addition, other documents that aid the reader to contextualize the publication, by better knowing their founders and the periodical’s main initiatives toward strengthening the bonds between Brazil and Portugal, are also made available. In this regard, I suggest perusing the selection of letters written by João do Rio to João de Barros, to read Atlantida’s homage to the writer Olavo Bilac, and to examine the handwritten message offered by president Epitácio Pessoa to the magazine, apropos of his visit to Lisbon. These testimonies are complemented and enriched by iconographic sources and maps that further enhance a panorama of the period.

Alongside these contents, the reader can also find recent studies on Atlantida, as well as bibliographical references of articles, monographs, theses, and dissertations that take on the Mensário as their object of study. Another possibility now offered to researchers is the access to a collection of databases created by indexing all texts published in the magazine, a feature that allows direct searches for several types of analytics, such as authors, subjects, concepts, quoted authors, mentioned works, and geographic references.

In view of its greater flexibility, in comparison to traditional media, this digital edition allows an ongoing expansion of the website’s sections, despite the impossibility of replacing the quaintness of leafing through the pages of a magazine printed at the last century’s dawn. Our intention is to add further collaborations to what is now presented, insofar as it sparks the interest of researchers, curious readers and the internet public, in general. The website will remain in a state of permanent work in progress; as such, we invite our visitor-readers to let themselves be carried away by this mysterious Atlantida, and, who knows, perhaps provide new contributions to its history.

Finally, it should be mentioned that this project, which is a part of the Magazines of Ideas and Culture Collection, was the result of the scientific collaboration agreement signed in 2008 between the Laboratório Redes de Poder e Relações Culturais, of the University of Rio de Janeiro, and the Seminário Livre de História das Idéias, of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. This very fruitful academic partnership has already enabled several events in both Brazil and Portugal, as well as the publication of two books, all the while continuing the tradition of luso-brazilian studies.

Lucia Maria Paschoal Guimarães