História Autêntica do Planeta Marte: uma leitura física, metafórica e metafísica da pandemia de 1918

Abstract

José Nunes da Mata wrote the utopia História Autêntica do Planeta Marte (1921) in a complex political context. Europe was then worn out by the violence of World War I (1914-1918), and the unstable political climate after the Russian Revolution (1917) led to the emergence of new ideologies, both in democratic and dictatorial formulations. In Portugal, the (in)definition of a republican political program, after the deposition of the King in 1910, was combined with a great economic crisis. The general spread, from the French territory, of the so-called "Spanish Flu" (1918-1919) became, after the "Great War", a metaphor of disease, not only of physical diseases, but also of political, economic, social diseases. More than one hundred years later, this Portuguese utopia is still a very pertinent "metaphysis" on the old apocalyptic tetralogy: Plague, War, Hunger and Death. And also a premonition of "The Turning Point".