Professor Sérvulo Correia delivers his last lecture of Law
NEWS AND EVENTS 10 May 2008
On the 9th of May, at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, Professor Sérvulo Correia delivered his last lecture of Law.
As the journalist Luís Naves, of the newspaper «Diário de Notícias» describes it, the academic farewell of Professor Sérvulo Correia “was a nostalgic narrative of his own path. Several people were evoked: his masters, his family, the colonial war and the death of his best friend. And everything was said with a deep wisdom, sometimes emotively. The last lecture of Professor Sérvulo Correia was also the portrait of a generation, of a group of freshmen who arrived to the Faculty in Campo de Santana in October 1954 with plenty of illusions and who were respectfully treated by the neighbouring cafes. There were no «praxes» as these were only a tradition in Coimbra at that time.
«The system of exams was utterly violent», explained Professor Sérvulo Correia, while describing the harness of the tests, the severity and criteria of his own Professors, the vast culture of both students and Professors. Primary school was central in structuring the reasoning and students were self-demanding. Professor Sérvulo Correia still recalled his literary preferences, the primary school and the soldiers he commanded in Guinea Bissau, where he fought from December 1960. He was sent to the war by mistake (a detail omitted in the lecture). Professor Sérvulo Correia could have postponed it to conclude his masters, but chose not to. During the three years of war, he witnessed the death of his friend José Carlos Ferreira de Almeida, who had been another brilliant Law student, in a jeep crash. The soldiers and his friend’s death were the only references made to the war. Professor Sérvulo Correia did not talk about him, but about the urge of the Faculty of Law to render homage to its former students who died in combat during the colonial war.
[…] The summary of the last lecture of Professor Sérvulo Correia is, in the end, that of the «tragic greatness» of a generation which, as all the others, had to loose its innocence somehow”.