“Ela canta, Pobre ceifeira”

TERRITORY, LANDSCAPE, PLACE AND THE CRITIQUE OF MODERNITY

Abstract

This article aims at a geo-literary analysis of Fernando Pessoa's poem “Ela canta, pobre Ceifeira”, to show how, in this text, the poet makes a representation of modernity in the Portuguese space in the early years of the 20th century. The poem is the poet's gaze in the interstices of a peasant landscape that is at the margin of the ideals of progress. The theoretical assumptions that underlie our analysis consist of studies of humanist Geography. The landscape and the place are the two categories that helped us to explore the scene raised by the poem. Geo-literary analysis allows, through poetry, to perceive the incongruities of a project of modernity reigning in Europe, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Fernando Pessoa's work allows us to understand spaces in terms of detail.