Article
Welcome to Portuguese poetry - October 2004
January 18, 2006
Though the work of these two poets is markedly different, they do share a common concern: paradise. But whereas Eugénio de Andrade’s paradise is earthly – consisting of smells, colours, fruit, the basic elements, and the pure sensuality of human bodies – Daniel Faria navigates in the realm of the spirit, using words as symbols that seek to elevate us to sublime territories. For the older poet, words are their own end, as sensual as the earthly things they name.
Original in his own right, Eugénio de Andrade may nonetheless be regarded as a Portuguese descendent of the 1927 Generation of Spanish poets: Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, Rafael Alberti and, most especially, Federico García Lorca, whom he translated into Portuguese. His lyrical purity is also, in a certain way, reminiscent of the work of Sophia de Mello Breyner (1919-2004), one of the Portuguese poets featured last quarter. She, incidentally, was born and raised in Oporto but spent almost all of her adult life in Lisbon.
Daniel Faria, a great admirer of Rilke, has poetic affinities with Herberto Helder (b. 1930), some of whose work can be found in the poets’ archive. He also has a point of contact with Sophia de Mello Breyner, whose poetry is in one respect a pagan celebration of life (à la Eugénio de Andrade), but is in another way an attempt to recover a unity that was lost with the spiritual fall of man. She praised the young poet’s work, saying that it was made "not just of verses that are mysterious but of verses that cause mystery to resound all around us".
Our next issue will be published on January 1.
For the Fall quarter we are presenting two poets from Oporto, the ‘other’ major hub of Portuguese literature, after Lisbon. The nation’s capital is where most of the publishers and cultural institutions are located, it’s where "things are happening", and so the rest of the country tends to be ignored. Oporto, conservative but energetic and artistically innovative, puts up a good fight against Lisbon’s hegemony, and its writers and artists often feel a special allegiance to their town.
It is the case of Eugénio de Andrade, the best-known and most widely translated poet of Portugal. ‘Eugénio’, as he is usually called, was born in the Beira region in 1923, but he has lived in Oporto since 1950. The much younger poet herein presented, Daniel Faria, was born and died not far from Oporto, where he studied Theology and Portuguese Literature. He lived to be only 28. Though the work of these two poets is markedly different, they do share a common concern: paradise. But whereas Eugénio de Andrade’s paradise is earthly – consisting of smells, colours, fruit, the basic elements, and the pure sensuality of human bodies – Daniel Faria navigates in the realm of the spirit, using words as symbols that seek to elevate us to sublime territories. For the older poet, words are their own end, as sensual as the earthly things they name.
Original in his own right, Eugénio de Andrade may nonetheless be regarded as a Portuguese descendent of the 1927 Generation of Spanish poets: Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre, Rafael Alberti and, most especially, Federico García Lorca, whom he translated into Portuguese. His lyrical purity is also, in a certain way, reminiscent of the work of Sophia de Mello Breyner (1919-2004), one of the Portuguese poets featured last quarter. She, incidentally, was born and raised in Oporto but spent almost all of her adult life in Lisbon.
Daniel Faria, a great admirer of Rilke, has poetic affinities with Herberto Helder (b. 1930), some of whose work can be found in the poets’ archive. He also has a point of contact with Sophia de Mello Breyner, whose poetry is in one respect a pagan celebration of life (à la Eugénio de Andrade), but is in another way an attempt to recover a unity that was lost with the spiritual fall of man. She praised the young poet’s work, saying that it was made "not just of verses that are mysterious but of verses that cause mystery to resound all around us".
Our next issue will be published on January 1.
© Richard Zenith
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