Agostinho Da Silva - Biography

Biography

(translated and adapted from: Romana Brázio Valente, "Agostinho da Silva: Síntese Biográfica")

George Agostinho Baptista da Silva was born in Oporto on 1906, and later in the same year moved to Barca D’Alva (Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo), where he lived until about 6 years old. From 1924 to 1928 he takes Classical Philology at the Faculdade de Letras of Universidade do Porto. After graduation he starts writing in the Seara Nova magazine (a collaboration that will continue until 1938).

By 1931, as a scholarship student, he attends Sorbonne and Collége de France (Paris). Since 1933 he works as a teacher in the Aveiro high school but in 1935 is discharged for refusing to sign a statement (then mandatory to all civil servants) declaring no participation in secret (thus subversive...) organizations.

He creates the Núcleo Pedagógico Antero de Quental in 1939 and in 1940 starts publishing Iniciação: cadernos de informação cultural. Arrested by the secret police in 1943, leaves the country the following year.

He lived in Brazil, from 1947 to 1969, due to his opposition to the authoritarian regime of the Estado Novo (New State) led by Salazar. In 1948 he starts working at Instituto Oswaldo Cruz in Rio de Janeiro studying entomology, teaches at Faculdade Fluminense de Filosofia and collaborates with Jaime Cortesão in a research about Alexandre de Gusmão (18th century Brazilian diplomat). From 1952 to 1954, he teaches at Universidade de Paraíba (João Pessoa) and also in Pernambuco.

In 1954, again with Jaime Cortesão, he helps organize the 4th Centennial Exhibition of São Paulo. He was one of the founders of Universidade de Santa Catarina, created the Centro de Estudos Afro-Orientais (Afro-Oriental Studies Center), taught Theater Philosophy at Universidade da Bahia, and, in 1961, became an external policy adviser to the Brazilian president Jânio Quadros. He helped to create the Universidade de Brasília and its Centro de Estudos Portugueses (Portuguese Studies Center), in 1962, and, two years later, he creates the Casa Paulo Dias Adorno in Cachoeira and idealizes the Museu do Atlântico Sul in Salvador.

He comes back to Portugal in 1969, after Salazar's illness and replacement by Marcello Caetano, which originated some political and cultural opening in the regime. From then on he, among many other things, continued to write, teach at Portuguese universities, direct the Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos (Latin-American Studies Center) at Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, and acted as a consultant to Instituto de Cultura e Língua Portuguesa (ICALP, Portuguese Culture and Language Institute).

In 1990, the Portuguese public television channel, RTP1 broadcast a series of thirteen interviews with him, called Conversas Vadias. He died, at the São Francisco de Xavier Hospital, in Lisbon, in 1994.

A documentary, named Agostinho da Silva: Um Pensamento Vivo, directed by João Rodrigues Mattos, was released by Alfândega Filmes, in 2004. There is an unreleased interview, by António Escudeiro, called Agostinho por Si Próprio, in which he talks about the worship of the Holy Spirit.

He's revered as one of the leading Portuguese intellectual personalities of the 20th century. Among the books he wrote, there are biographies of Michelangelo, Pasteur and St. Francis of Assisi, and his most influential book is, probably, Sete Cartas a Um Jovem Filósofo (Seven Letters to a Young Philosopher).

He was a vegetarian.