Editorial data

By presenting themselves as “separate volumes, with complete independence from one other and without promise of regular periodicity”, Cadernos da Juventude appear to evade the canonical requirements of the magazine format, which is based on an explicit editorial line and a defined periodicity.

However, analysing the content of this title’s single issue reveals a clear affinity with the formal and material structure of cultural periodicals, both in its introduction and in the intent of serial publication, as well as, above all, in the miscellany of essays, narratives, poems, and illustrations by authors who are simultaneously different and complementary to each other.

Thus, the inclusion of Cadernos da Juventude in the Revistas de Ideias e Cultura portal is based not only on the acknowledgment of these similarities but also on the observation that its authors favoured publication, throughout their lives, in some cases since they were high school students, in periodicals with generally similar formats.

Another unusual problem raised by this title concerns the attribution of its publishing house. Apparently, the question is answered on the volume’s front cover and cover page, which should be taken as trustworthy, where Arménio Amado, Editor, is mentioned. However, Fernando Namora, author of one of the published drawings and an early memorialist of his generation, attributed the editorial initiative “to the hand of Augusto dos Santos Abranches”, owner of the Portugália bookstore and publishing house, in Coimbra. Ilídio Rocha confirmed this and Arnaldo Saraiva returned to the same information in three studies, from 2013 and 2014, which were published on the 100th anniversary of Santos Abranches’ birth. However, none of these three authors provides any clarification for this discrepancy that is as conspicuous as it is exceptional.

The choice of Tipografia Lousalense, owned by Hortênsio Ribeiro dos Santos, as a printing house may have had much more obvious causes, associated with the discreet profile of a company removed from everyday life in Coimbra and the republican and masonic memory of its founders and previous directors.

However, neither caution nor collusion succeeded in saving the edition, which was officially banned on December 27, 1937, after having been seized a month earlier, according to the colophon that places the printing date on November 18, 1937.

If the option of publishing single booklets was due to the intention of circumventing the administrative obstacles to the creation of new periodicals and to avoid the prior authorization of published texts, which did not apply to brochures or books, it can only be said these purposes were entirely frustrated.

The police raid was so relentless that the trail of the two surviving copies led us to public institutions: the Serviços de Censura à Imprensa and the Coimbra Public Library, headed at the time by José Pinto Loureiro.

It was this last specimen that Carlos Santarém de Andrade, the library’s director half a century later, used to ensure that the Cadernos da Juventude were finally available to the public.

With the incorporation of the Secretariado Nacional de Informação archive in the National Library, which took place this century, also came the censored copy that we now reproduce.

Through it, we are presented with the front and reverse of the same source. On the one hand, we gain access to the content of a publication that became emblematic. On the other hand, we find, with the exuberance of a full-bodied red pencil, the authorities’ hate focused on monitoring the diffusion of progressive cultural beliefs.

Luís Andrade