The Angel of History in Cabral do Nascimento. Part I: Historical Dualities and the Time of the Foundation, Directorship and Resignation from the District Archive of Funchal

Abstract

In a letter dated 13 October 1962 and addressed to João Gaspar Simões, João Cabral do Nascimento outlines his own curricular pathway. There, he highlights both the facts of having accepted «the director function at the District Archive of Funchal, whose establishment he himself had proposed […] and set up from head to toe», and of having been dedicated, «whereas archivist» and «malgré moi», to historiographical works, as well as having published «a specialized journal» and having been «appointed Corresponding Member of the Portuguese Academia of History». With these words, Cabral do Nascimento unambiguously identifies himself (de facto e de iure) as an archivist. The same cannot be said about his own identification as an historian. Starting forthwith because he employs the Gallicism «malgré moi», when he refers to the numerous texts on both Madeiran historical figures and cultural phenomena that he dispersedly published in periodicals and in books, mainly in the period when he was following the District Archive of Funchal (DAF) foundation and was the director of the journal Historical Archive of Madeira (HAM).
We selected as our foci of analysis the DAF documental fund preserved at the Archive and Library of Madeira, as well as the nine volumes of HAM, directed by Cabral do Nascimento between 1931 and 1951. Our aim is to confront some of these documents with other literary and non-literary texts signed by Nascimento and thematically related to the experience of time and Madeiran historical issues. By doing so, we will be looking for a possible meaning to the reservations we have read in his words when he refers to his historical work. Could they be read as a sign of his doubts about the quality and relevance of his own historiographical work? Or could they be read, in line with Walter Benjamin’s Philosophy of History (a contemporary author of Cabral do Nascimento and, like himself, an intellectual of Jewish ascendance), as an echo of the epistemological questions and doubts of a human subject fascinated with the past, but also very aware of both the historicity of the Historiography, and the fragilities and limitations of History, as a discipline and a scientific discourse trying to recover the past to the present.

Keywords

Theory of History; Cabral do Nascimento; Angel of History; Archive; Ruins; History of Madeira; District Archive of Funchal.