Paper short abstract:

In A Arca (1971) and O Povo é Nós (1979), António Quadros, through his Luso-Mozambican alter ego Grabato Dias, respectively critiques the colonial regime and Frelimo's government. The collections raise questions about the role of poetry in the colonial and post-colonial Mozambican context.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1971 ode A Arca, Grabato Dias — the Luso-Mozambican alter ego of António Quadros — describes his position as a duplicitous intermediary between a power apparatus that he opposes and a subjugated people unaware of their bondage. Grabato Dias is a privileged member of a colonised people who takes advantage of his proximity to the colonial authorities to sing a 'double song' that 'flatters' his master, at the same time that it encodes 'a sarrazina clandestina / Da verdade'. Quadros cryptically interpolates the settler community in Lourenço Marques, of which he was a member, to stage a rebellion against the colonial state. However, he sets strict parameters for the impact of his anti-authoritarian ode: he fears that his contemporaries will not understand his impenetrable verse.

In O Povo é Nós (1979), published in the post-independence period, Quadros critiques a post-Third Party Congress Frelimo. Quadros's poetic strategies in the post-independence collection are similar to those deployed in the anti-colonial ode: ambiguous subject positions and a doubled and re-doubled poetic discourse that speaks to multiple audiences.

Through my readings of these collections, I will address the following questions. How effective are Quadros's poems in interpolating his readers? To what extent does he buy into the discourse elaborated by Amilcar Cabral and later assimilated by Frelimo that poetry is a 'weapon' in the anti-colonial struggle and the nationalist project? In a Manichean political context, is there space for independent writers and thinkers, who refuse to identify with one side or the other?