Luanda - António Agostinho Neto denounced, in his poetry, the segregation of Africans in their own land, said the Chairman of the Angolan Academy of Letters, Paulo de Carvalho, during the third conference held Thursday on the occasion of the Centennial celebration of the birthday of the first President of Angola.
At the conference, part of the “Academy Conversations on Thursdays”, Paulo de Carvalho said that colonization led to the looting of the continent, whose people could not decide on their own destiny.
Paulo de Carvalho, also a sociologist, gave a lecture via Zoom on the “Liberating speech in the poetry of Agostinho Neto”, whch was attended by academics from Angola, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Italy and Portugal, under the moderation of Professor Mário César Lugarinho, from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.
The sociologist highlighted the dimension of António
Agostinho Neto, taking into account the context and the time, which allowed him to acquire an awareness of struggle, since adolescence.
For this reason, the poet “demanded the liberation of the suffering people of Angola, the same people where he would seek the strength and courage for the fight”, stressed Paulo de Carvalho. “There are, for example, poems in which Neto makes it clear that the liberation struggle needed a helmsman, and he himself was later chosen to lead the struggle, culminating in the proclamation of independence”, he pointed out.
According to the lecturer, the founding father of the
Angolan homeland has stressed the desire for freedom in his poetry and in his work it is also present the philosophical question that accounts for the correctness of the principles of the liberating struggle management.
However, “not only about the fight the poet sang; he also sang of love”, he recalled, mentioning also the colonial repression portrayed in several poems by Agostinho Neto.
“Colonization radically repressed the populations, forcing them to assimilate the culture of the colonizer, which caused a feeling of revolt among the colonized people. It was during this period that Neto grew up, a period marked by the feeling of Angolanness and the desire to wake up to a tomorrow that was intended to be of freedom and harmony among people”, highlighted the sociologist.
António Agostinho Neto was born on September 17, 1922, in Kaxicane village (Icolo e Bengo area in the outskirts iof Luanda, then a part of Bengo), and died on September 10, 1979.
Neto proclaimed the country's independence from Portuguese colonial rule on November 11, 1975, and became its first head of State. His works have
been translated into several languages, especially “Quatro Poemas de Agostinho Neto”, from 1957, “Sagrada Esperança”, 1974, and “A Reúncia Impossível”, in 1982.
At the next Academia Conversation on Thursday,
scheduled for the 22nd September, under the moderation of literary critic Mário César Lugarinho, the writer Inocência Mata will be the lecturer, who will speak about “Fictions of memory in the poetry of Agostinho Neto”.
