by Daniel Melo
published in: Portuguese Studies, Volume 27, Number 2, 15 September 2011, pp. 159-174(16)
One of the fiercest and most important debates in the West in the twentieth century was over the relationship of... more
One of the fiercest and most important debates in the West in the twentieth century was over the relationship of intellectuals, the arts, and culture to society and politics. It created lasting misrepresentations, such as the distinction between modernist currents, on the one hand, who allegedly proclaimed `art for art's sake', and other currents that defended a social, interventionist art. In Portugal, neo-realists launched a polemic against supporters of Presença, who were accused of navel-gazing, and thus compromising their position as public intellectuals.
This article, however, attempts to shed new light on the convergences and affinities between intellectuals and movements of distinct aesthetic and ideological heritage in twentieth-century Portugal, particularly with regard to a broad concern with social and sociocultural issues. In order to identify such convergences we examine the social intervention of representative intellectuals and institutions in different fields, namely: the dissemination and popularization of culture; sociocultural activity; the debate over ideas; and the creation of libraries and the support for books and reading, as promulgated by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.
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