Natália Correia was one of the "great thinkers of the 20th century”

Is Natália Correia's work as relevant today as it was in her time?Natália Correia is ever more relevant. Her work is exactly a commitment to humanity, based on the postulate of a new paradigm for humanity, based on the complete dissolution of the antinomies existing in our world today and the creation of a world without discrimination, without any form of inequality, where religions may not occupy the supremacy they have today in the world, where the color of the skin and all forms of difference can be framed as the diverse beauty of the human being.All current issues, which corroborates the idea that Natália Correia was a woman ahead of her time?Very much ahead of her time. You have to see that, in her life cycle, she lived 40 years under the dictatorship. Which was terrible: she got the 1933 Constitution, which "hit" women with legislation that repressed them; she got two world wars, the emergence of fascisms and the Holocaust, the emergence of the 3rd World, the Cold War, terrorism, the slaughter of the planet, all that. And it was exactly this awareness that made her fight and raise a flag to free humanity from all these constraints, always with a wonderful subtextual universe, which was the native island where she was born and where she drank the strength, the spirit to continue. All her work, all her thinking, is a journey from the island to the world and from the world to the island, to be able to return to the world and raise that flag again.She was a deep devotee and a fierce defender of human rights and their full observance.Which is not easy, given all the conditions you mentioned.It wasn't, exactly because she was violently persecuted by PIDE. They drew meticulous, exhaustive reports on her entire life: they probed her home, the places she went to, from north to south, they violated her correspondence, they prohibited the circulation of eight books. And yet, she didn't stop and didn't shut up. It had exactly the opposite consequence.Did it amplify her voice?Exactly. And catapulted her to a postulate on the level of humanity.Has everything been discovered about Natália Correia or are there still new aspects to be found?There still are. There is a colossal unpublished work, very deep, very extensive, and that introduce us to a very important thinker, on the level of Eduardo Lourenço or Agostinho da Silva. In fact, the Ponta Delgada City Council, through its president, has already shown interest in publishing these works, which show how much she studied. Natália turned over all historical times, studied all aesthetic and thought currents, all literary periods and genres, to create a single voice, as she used to say: "Writing is causal, it is the cause of Man" and "I have only one religion, it is Man.”As a Natália Correia scholar, what aspect of her multifaceted life fascinates you most?Her irreverence, her capacity to kill fear, and the way she emphasized her courage over enormous fragility, enormous disenchantment, and enormous sadness. You have to understand Natália's hyperbolic speech: all those exaggerations are a baroque way she found to call attention to the reality of the country and the world.Do you feel that Natália Correia, as a cultural figure, is getting the projection she deserves?Outside the region, yes. Outside the region, she is being studied in some universities, she is getting the projection and even by young people, who are discovering her work and her thoughts. And this is remarkable.Outside the Region... and inside?Inside, no. Within the Region, no, not yet. At the level of the University [of the Azores], there is one or another of her books that are part of a program on Azorean literature, but it is very little. This university should have Natália Correia as a subject, just like other universities.We have to see that Natália Correia was one of the great thinkers of the second half of the 20th century, on a European level, along with a Marguerite Yourcernar, a Simone Beauvoir; and even on a world level, along with a Nadine Gordimer, a Doris Lessing. And if we read them and study them and absorb their thoughts, how is it possible that we don't do the same with Natália Correia?What could be justify this?The immensity of her knowledge, which frightens, which intimidates, which puts us on the level of humility that we should have, before the greatness of her thought. I think there is a greater interest in Natália Correia's personal tics, which distort and have absolutely no interest in her knowledge. We have to read Natália's work as we read the work of other authors with the same scope.If Natália Correia were alive today, what would she say?She would be very happy, because before she died she would call incessantly and say "I’ll never see the day when people will come to my town to talk about my work". It was her work that she liked people to talk about, and it is about her work that it is important to talk when you study an author.