World War I: Europe, Africa, and “O Menino da sua mãe”

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Written in the midst of World War I, the over-psychologized poem “O Menino da sua mãe” ("His Mother’s Child") can be best read as Fernando Pessoa’s most efficient antiwar poem. Among its antecedents is the antimilitary poetry of the English poet A. E. Housman, whose A Shropshire Lad, though first published in 1896, achieved its first great dissemination and popularity during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), an event that took place during Pessoa’s long stay in South Africa. Important to the overall argument of this essay, also, is the large-scale public reaction to the unsettling death of the young “war” poet Rupert Brooke, a death that occurred, ironically, while he was aboard a ship transporting British forces to Gallipoli.

KEYWORDS: A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad, “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries,” “O Menino da sua mãe,” Rupert Brooke, Emma Lazarus, “1879” (sonnet), “Ultimatum,” Henry James, Homer, Iliad, Anglo-Boer War