Mário de Sá-Carneiro
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Mário de Sá-Carneiro (19 May 1890 – 26 April 1916) was a Portuguese poet and novelist.
Born in Lisbon into a military family, he lost his mother at the age of two and his grandmother at the age of nine and was cared for in his childhood by an apprehensive nanny. His father was often detatched from his son's life frequently traveling the world.
During his teenage years, a close friend (who had also lost his mother at an early age) committed suicide in front of his classmates and teacher. Profoundly affected by the theatricality surrounding the death of his friend, he praised the courage of his companion while chastising himself for lacking the necessary resolve to end his own life.
He studied Law for a brief period (1911-1912) but soon concentrated on literary work. He knew Fernando Pessoa and Almada Negreiros, among other writers, who would form a literary magazine named Orpheu that made scandal for its radical approach to modernism. In 1912 he travelled to Paris where he intended to study in Sorbonne. Once he was admitted he continued to write in the most vanguard style of his time. He had a brief ill-fated affair with a female prostitute. Soon after he would enter a deep depression due to sexuality issues (signs in his work and the testimonies of his contemporaries sharply indicate that probably he was an egodistonic homosexual), lack of life direction, economical difficulties and the bad relation he had with his aloof and uncaring father (perhaps increased by the abuse of opium and alcohol) with a tragic end: he committed suicide by taking five bottles of strychnine at the age of 25 in Paris.
His works include the novel Lúcio's Confession and the short story collection The Great Shadow. Sá-Carneiro's work deals extensively with the issues of self-hate, obsession, insanity, gender confusion and solitude.
Sá-Carneiro was a very close friend of fellow Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa with whom he exchanged many letters. Despite such a brief life, Sá Carneiro is usually considered one of the most important and influential Portuguese language poets of the 20th century, which works such as Dispersão (1913) and Indícios de Oiro, which were published posthumously in 1937.[citation needed]
