Sociedade Partenon Literário

[15] The Parthenon propagated republican ideals and also promoted soirées, regular conferences, and debates on various themes, such as the Ragamuffin War, marriage, religion, education, morality, civic virtue, death penalty, and feminism,[16][17] intervening, as Athos Damasceno said, "in all sectors of social life, in whose development the most advanced postulations of the time would heat up.

[...] In the heat of the debates, through the pen and the word, public opinion becomes aware and clarifies itself, in fact, and opportunely, of the problems that most affect it – the abolition of slavery, freedom of worship, the emancipation of women, the urgencies of popular instruction, political franchises.

"[16]The Parthenon was also a form of decisive importance for the articulation, within a romantic framework, of the regionalist aesthetic, and for beginning the consolidation of the image of the gaucho, a character associated with championing activities, as a symbol of the people of the entire state and as a synthesis of their ideal moral, spiritual, and civic virtues.

[18][19] Múcio Teixeira left a succinct account of his activities: "Besides the punctual publication of this magazine [the Revista Mensal], the Parthenon held bi-weekly sessions (one private to the members, the other open to their families), the dancing part beginning as soon as the literary soirée was over, which began with a lecture on a philosophical, artistic, historical or current affairs subject.

According to Sérgio da Costa Franco, shortly after its foundation, the society lent its name to a real estate development in a suburb organized by Fernando dos Santos Pereira, who, in return, gave the Parthenon two plots of land for the construction of its headquarters.

In November 1873, in a ceremony attended by João Pedro Carvalho de Morais, president of the province, and Dom Sebastião Dias Laranjeira, bishop of Porto Alegre, the cornerstone of the building was laid which, however, was never built, but was enough to baptize one of the city's current neighborhoods, the Parthenon.

[23] Meanwhile, since November of the previous year, the Parthenon had moved to a palace at Rua Sete de Setembro 49,[26] reopening the People's School, which offered at the time the subjects of reading and analysis of the Portuguese language, calligraphy, geography, French, and linear drawing.

[2][14][35] Authors such as Riopardense de Macedo, Cássia Silveira, and Carlos Baumgarten believe that dissent, depletion of financial resources, and the sheer aging of their proposal were major factors;[2][36] for Guilhermino César the acidity of the criticism of the bourgeois, the nobility and the conservatives made by some members, ended up driving away those who were traditionalists and monarchists, causing fissures even among the republicans.

In these studies, there was a constant reference to authors of Greco-Roman antiquity, considered to be models, and for this reason, the literary production of the Parthenonists is rich in allusions to Classicism and is influenced by their oratory, literature, mythology, and their ethical and educational principles.

[55] This opinion was still current at the end of the century, as exemplified by the words of the reputed writer, Gonçalves de Magalhães, one of the founders of national Romanticism, who stated in 1865: "The literature of a people is the development of what it has of the most sublime in ideas, of most philosophical in thought, of most heroic in morals, and most beautiful in nature.

[59] Even though within the Parthenon's program there was a strong concern to establish aesthetic refinement as a central element of good literature, better delimiting its field of action and its character, to perform its task, the literate could not only know how to write well but should follow a strict code of ethics, assuming a "mission" that was often compared to the priesthood or the career of arms, and should be a polymath, mastering broad knowledge in a variety of subjects, keeping in force many of the ideals of the "man of letters" that had been formulated since the previous century.

In each issue one of the members of the commission took on the role of editor-in-chief, and was responsible for organizing the volume and writing an editorial, the "Monthly Chronicle", which presented a report of the society's activities or brought relevant news from the province and beyond, being valuable historical documents.

Athos Damasceno agreed, analyzing that "really, although of little or no value for letters, these pages, however, vividly translate the aspirations of the time and attest to the warmth, the commitment with which here was then trying to respond to the appeals of the historical moment, expressively in tune with the spirit of renewal of customs, institutions, and ideas already in full bloom in other cultural areas of Brazil.

According to Alexandre Lazzari, "in their majority, the writers who contributed to the Parthenon magazine preferred to write short stories and poems about the feelings and customs of the urban society, with special concern for the moral education of the family girls.

"[66]It was a publication that reflected the heterogeneous composition of society and the different degrees of preparation of its members, in which there were conservatives and liberals, monarchists and republicans, Catholics and Masons, romanticists and classicists, spiritualists and materialists, rationalists, evolutionists, scholastics and free thinkers.

[71] In Vinícius Estima's synthesis: "Continuing the task initiated by its predecessors O Guayba (1856) and Arcádia (1867), the magazine not only expanded the field of action of the literary press in the south but also began to promote the decentralization and unification of literature, to the extent that its circulation reached the various localities of the province.

In the 1870s, the Republican movement had gained much momentum in Brazil, and in Rio Grande do Sul the revolution began to undergo positive re-readings, praising the courage of its promoters, now seen as heroes of the cause of freedom, in opposition to the monarchy, understood as a source of oppression.

[79] In this way, the context was established for the definition of the state's sociocultural identity, still embryonic and disarticulated,[80] and for the formation of a literature of regionalist character, called gauchesca, whose first exponents are found among the members of the Parthenon, who divulge their writings in the Revista Mensal and publish independent works.

[19][81][82] In this process, the image of the native to Rio Grande do Sul (gaúcho), was mythified as a synthesis of ideal values collected from the Ragamuffin imaginary and the folklore surrounding the Indians and the first settlers: independence, bravery, virility, honesty,[19][77] and the alleged warrior and heroic character of the people was revered and emphasized to place them as the natural defender of the southern frontier of the Empire.

[...] The imagination of Apolinário, Taveira Júnior, Múcio Teixeira, Caldre and Fião, Lobo da Costa, all those who had something to say about the people of the Pampeña, their sorrows, and joys, was directed to the frontier region, to its territory bathed in blood and heroic deeds.

[19] However, critics like Athos Damasceno, Moysés Vellinho, Augusto Meyer, and Flávio Loureiro Chaves consider that in this phase the authors superficially appropriated a scenario and its characteristic types, undoubtedly giving a strong local flavor to their writings, but without transforming in depth the framework of literary forms and aesthetics of the period, still very dependent on imported models, being in this sense more traditionalist than revolutionary.

[49][88][89] In Juarez Fuão's interpretation, the literary romanticization of the gauchesca theme also had the advantage of broadening the scope of the primitive representations of the gaucho found among the first local historians, such as Cezimbra Jacques and Alfredo Varela, which had focused on scientific and historical aspects.

[97][98] Despite this concern, directed mainly at youth, in the ideology propagandized by the Parthenon and supported by the political and economic elites, Rio Grande do Sul was considered to be a granary of virtue and honor, and it was up to the young to imitate the example of the elders and the heroes.

According to Schnorr & Rosa, "relating a literary association to a divinity recognized for its wisdom, intelligence, and prudence seems to do justice to the Parthenonists' project of fighting against the ignorance of the Rio Grande do Sul population, mostly composed of illiterate individuals.

To remedy this situation, following the position of other thinkers of the time, they proposed that an improved education would "refine their spirits" and direct their attention to moral and elevated themes, and would give them more conditions to assist their husbands, better prepare their children and form patriotic citizens dedicated to public interests.

[117][118] Some members of the Parthenon, such as Alberto Coelho da Cunha and Apolinário Porto-Alegre, had a clear view on the matter, denouncing the prejudice and the cruel treatment blacks received,[59] but in that context, the dominant tendency was to create a mechanism of conditional freedom, where freedmen would be obliged to render services to their former masters for up to seven years, although they were nominally free, because, as the province president Rodrigo de Azambuja Vilanova stated, "the great majority of freedmen will prefer to accompany their former benefactors, as in Rio Grande do Sul slavery was always a family institution, with the slave participating in all the advantages of the masters, to whom they must be tied today by the bonds of gratitude, and whose intelligence and experience they cannot do without.

And there we find the first signs of this new phase of our history";[16] "and not only will it act strongly in our midst, intervening in all spheres of the state's life, as it will be the starting point, the origin of new literary societies that, during the last thirty years of the century will be built, transmitting to each other the responsibilities of processing our culture, its meaning and its objectives".

"[120] In Maria Eunice Moreira's synthesis, "The proposition of effective mechanisms to achieve its goals, the discovery and dissemination of authors and works, the formation of a reading public not only in the capital, but also in the interior, associated with its long duration, gave the society a mythical role in the history of the Rio Grande do Sul literature.

United by the republican ideals and agglutinated by common political principles, namely the republic and the abolition of slavery, the generation of the Literary Partenon, as this group of intellectuals became known, provoked a true revolution in a Province generally more shaken by war than by letters.

[129] In 2010, the City Council of Porto Alegre awarded it the Diploma Honra ao Mérito, honoring its role as a pioneering institution of Rio Grande do Sul literature and a landmark of the state's cultural formation.