Nonconformists and dissidents

If we understand orthodoxy as the reciprocal legitimation between authority and the truth that underlies it, the years of passage from the 1950s to the 60s were times of rebelliousness and non-alignment.

Difference and change infiltrated the new waves of the world’s political order, as well as the condition of men of letters, the artistic languages, mass culture, and customs in general.

Even though many inflections proved to be incipient and limited in scope, even anecdotal, they were nonetheless sufficiently decisive to dismiss ancestral conventions and to provide unsuspected meanings.

While never relenting in autocratic and conservative rigidity, even Salazarism experienced its critical days. On a strictly political level, with General Humberto Delgado’s campaign, the expulsion from Goa, and the beginning of the armed conflict in Angola. Within the Church, with the letter and exile of the Bishop of Porto, among other unexpected disputes. With regard to previous supporters turned hostile, with the academic crisis of 1962.

The publication of O Tempo e o Modo, in January 1963, marks the occasion in which a new generation of Catholics interpreted the novel aspects of its moment and gave it a cultured expression. As is often the case when intellectuals are convinced of following the spirit of the times and its fruits can be foreseen, their attitude was open and plural, foregoing confessional and doctrinarian obligations.

In turn, dialogue appeared as a programme and as a talisman. In the name of the necessary dialectic and the debate surrounding a round table, a subtle general orientation was proposed, since conversation denies the argument of authority, while simultaneously claiming shared rationality, equality among peers, openness to difference, and acknowledgment of one’s fallibility.

In the closed and antithetical cultural and political Portuguese context, this dialogic intention defined a third political and cultural route by itself. The openness brought about by the magazine of thought and action allowed the suggestion of a new political pulse that was frontally opposed to the regime, but also distant from antifascism rooted in a matrix of Communist and Soviet sympathy. In fact, the highlight given to Alçada Baptista, Mário Soares, and Jorge Sampaio’s articles on the cover of the first issue was shown, over the years, to be on the level of a symbolic premonition. With regard to cultural life, the contribution of the monthly publication was not limited to presenting the proposal of a new cycle but also greatly contributed to the definition of a distinct intellectual panorama, by providing a stable and far-reaching tribune for important poets, essayists, and historians who were previously subjected to limited circulation and reduced public attention. Still on the emblematic level, Ruy Belo’s essay on Herberto Helder, also found in the first issue, illustrates this inflection, further consolidated by the thematic issue ‘Arte deverá ter por fim a verdade prática?’ (Should practical truth be the purpose of art?), which was motivated by the polemic between Alexandre Pinheiro Torres and Vergílio Ferreira. Concurrently, the latitude of international references was broadened, namely through the translations of thinkers who were uncommon in those days’ press, the first of which was Paul Ricoeur’s article, also found on the January 1963 cover. Without losing a combative attitude towards the foul Portuguese political and social situation, but riding the ideological dichotomy that accompanied it, the pages of O Tempo e o Modo were where men and women went from peripheral presences to major figures in Portuguese culture, creating a new intellectual environment.

The initial reference for the founders of O Tempo e o Modo resided in the catholic mode inspired by the magazine Esprit, created by Emmanuel Mounier, as well as the expectations placed on the Second Vatican Council, which had begun in October 1962. It should be noted that the French periodical, responsible for the definition and doctrinarian affirmation of Personalism, always opposed conservative attitudes, as it considered itself an organ for confronting the established disorder, a motto shared with the Portuguese magazine, which intended to subject everything to a criticism of the current civilizational order. On the other hand, the Council convened by John XXIII represented a vigorous effort by the Church to understand the contemporary world and an attempt to reply to it, within the bounds of a sincere debate. Consequently, the liturgy embraced vernacular languages, the Third World came to the forefront, hierarchic and dogmatic rigidity was somewhat moderated, bishops and laypeople became more relevant, ecumenism reached new expressions. The Portuguese edition of Concilium. International Journal of Theology, promoted by left-wing Catholics, stands witness to the enthusiasm and hope brought about by the Council.

After five years of publishing, the clamour of dispute and dissent reached the heart of the periodical itself. When the generation of university students from the latter half of the 60s took over producing the magazine from the earlier staff, O Tempo e o Modo lost its confessional references and took on political perspectives defined by French gauchisme, the Italian left, the American New Left, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Although there was renewed opposition to the regime, to traditional republicanism, and to soviet Marxism, besides maintaining a number of interests that had defined the magazine’s path, such as a special attention to North American politics and culture, the new general line was particularly watchful with regard to the ongoing cultural confrontation, to the criticism of everyday life, to the Chinese-Soviet conflict, and to the international theoretical revolutionary debate. The shift to the Nova Série, and a more appealing editorial model with short articles and cartoonish graphic language, led to the convergence of content, form, and purpose.

The third stage of O Tempo e o Modo’s pragmatic evolution was not caused by a rift with the past, but rather resulted from the exclusive domination of one of its recent tendencies, one that was both Maoist and partisan. This was made clear in the opening pages of the January 1973 issue, in which the editors – and the supposed reader who supervised them – conducted a critical review of the publication’s ten years, while simultaneously stating, in the name of the progressive ideology it considered inevitable, a break with the ambiguity and eclecticism of the Nova Série’s early issues. The magazine was then converted into an organ for political and ideological combat, in which arguments and watchwords meshed together against the so-called revisionist reformism, Seara Nova’s old and new figures, the participation in the Marcelista elections, and, internationally, in defence of Chinese literature and foreign politics.

After the 25th of April 1974, the perception that revolution was close at hand and the premise that the creation of a new proletarian party would be indispensable to its success led O Tempo e o Modo to the propaganda of what was then referred to as the popular democratic revolution, and to a clear support for its supposed conscious organizational expression.

After the general uncertainty subsided and the political movement was transferred to the party sphere, the final issue, 126, was published in September 1977.

O Tempo e o Modo followed the model of most periodicals with a relatively long lifespan: under the same title – and, in this case, with continuous issue numbering – we find different magazines, with distinct programmes and editorials staffs.

In a situation where a title acquires prestige in its early years and the conditions for creating new periodicals are adverse – as they were during the Salazar and Caetano years – the possibility of internal takeover and programmatic transformation is necessarily high.

Consequently, to limit O Tempo e o Modo’s history to one of its cycles would be to conduct a kind of mutilation, and, also, to impoverish it, given that the magazine is a fundamental testimony of the irreverence of its time, both in its Catholic, essayistic, and literary phase and the periods that followed it; the latter stood out for the richness and complexity of the cultural and political transformations of the late 60s and for the political radicalization that preceded and, most of all, accompanied the reinstatement of democracy. In each of these three moments, so close yet so distant, the magazine’s pages crystallized their circumstance with eloquence, on a national scale.

Note: O Tempo e o Modo magazine published three specials: ‘O Tempo e o Modo do Brasil’, in June 1967, with the local collaboration of Adolfo Casais Monteiro and Jorge de Sena; ‘O Casamento’, in March 1968, that was apprehended by the censors; ‘Deus o que é?’, in September 1968, with title and coordination by Helena Vaz da Silva. With regard to general content, these special issues followed the model of regular publications, as they represented a ploy to avoid prior censorship. Because of this, these three autonomous publications were subjected to the same treatment as the information contained in the rest of the magazine, and were thus included in the descriptor indexes.

Luís Andrade