José Miranda Justo, Germanist, translator and artist, comments here on a sentence taken from Letters to a Young Poet, by Rilke, which deals with the complex relationship between the work of art and criticism.

Familiar and ambiguous term, originally referring to the realm of things (from the Latin res, realis) or that which concerns them. In recent years, however, this general definition has acquired a new scope. Whereas the 20th century was the age of ideology, the last decades have brought with them a new fondness for reality. It has become a habit to appeal to common sense, to the power of things, to the weight of facts and circumstances. The great doctrines of the past, deemed too abstract, have given way to concrete principles. Thinkers and politicians have settled down, planted their feet on the ground, and learned to see the world as it really is.

Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas questions the meaning of an ancient and persistent opposition between the city and the countryside (two territories delimited by the walls of the ancient city). Modern society has seen a total urbanisation process unfold, in such a way that the countryside, having been erased, appears today as a reality to be rediscovered.

A contemporary city is usually seen as a civil, secular and profane space that contrasts with its religious and ritualised rural counterpart. However, the bonds between urban space and the phenomenon of religion were of great importance historically, and still today remain active in our ways of living city life. In the text that follows, Jörg Rüpke, a German university lecturer, vice-director of the Max Weber Centre, a religious studies specialist, and author of various publications on these topics, explains that ‘the relationship between city and religion is one full of tension’.

The map of media land has been redrawn by online providers. Immediate response is now the rule, and the consequences have been profound. Jacinto Godinho, investigative journalist, in-depth reporter for Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP) and lecturer in journalism, writes about the necessary relationship between journalism and fiction, and the many pitfalls this can create.

Once in circulation, there are certain words can seem strange to anyone who is literate. Some come to stay and settle. Others flit about but never roost, and sooner or later take flight and are gone. When it comes to words borrowed from other languages, there are those that invoke the mysterious nemesis we call ‘the nature of the language’ – its identity. Perhaps the best approach is to be practical. Such words can come in handy; that is all. It is even possible that the ‘nature of the language’ may have something to do with it.

Calls for the restitution of artworks and ‘important pieces’ to their countries or communities of origin are extremely complex as the terms of the issue itself are problematic. I do not believe it is possible to formulate a universally valid general principle. Only a subtle case-by-case analysis is possible.

The first question is: what is to be returned?

Robert Musil’s essays, recently translated into Portuguese under the title Ensaios [Essays], are the perfect embodiment of an era of which we have only recently perhaps been able to make sense. Nélio Conceição, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy at NOVA University Lisbon, sheds light on their wide scope.

With his book At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, published in 2005, the American historian Roger Ekirch changed many ideas about past and present sleeping habits. He showed, for example, how the Industrial Revolution radically transformed both the time and the way in which people slept, especially in the cities, passing from a biphasic sleep to a consolidated eight-hour sleep, which he classifies as ‘a modern invention’. Sleep and insomnia are matters of growing concern in contemporary societies. All these topics are addressed by the professor of the University of Virginia Tech in an interview conducted by Diogo Vaz Pinto.

Éric Marty, the editor of the complete works of Roland Barthes, traces in this essay the history, effect and declinations of that famous text entitled The Death of the Author. He shows how this was inscribed in an ideological puritanism of the time and a theoretical position in favour of the maximum autonomy of the work, thus demanding the invisibility of the author's image. It was Roland Barthes himself who, in a sophisticated way, dismantled this dogma.