| Vitorino Nemésio | |
|---|---|
Bust of the author Vitorino Nemésio |
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| Born | Vitorino Nemésio Mendes Pinheiro da Silva December 19, 1901 Praia da Vitória, Terceira |
| Died | February 20, 1978 (aged 76) Lisbon |
| Resting place | Lisbon |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Nationality | Portuguese |
| Ethnicity | Portuguese |
| Citizenship | Portugal |
| Education | Post-Secondary |
| Alma mater | University of Coimbra, University of Lisbon |
| Period | 1921-25, 1930-34 |
| Genres | Fiction, Romance, Poetry, Biography |
| Subjects | Existensialism, Revolutionary Humanism, Neo-Realism |
| Literary movement | Republican |
| Notable work(s) | Canto Matinal (1916), PaçO de Milhafre (1924), Varanda de Pilatos (1926), Sob Os Signos de Agora (1932), A Mocidade de Herculano (1934), RelaçõEs Francesas do Romantismo PortuguêS (1936), O Bicho Harmonioso (1938), Eu, Comovido a Oeste (1940), Mau Tempo No Canal (1944), Ondas Médias (1945), Festa Redonda (1950), Nem Toda a Noite a Vida (1953), O Segredo de Ouro Preto (1954), O PãO e a Culpa (1955), Corsário das Ilhas (1956), Conhecimento de Poesia (1958), O Verbo e a Morte (1959), Canto de Véspera (1966), Jornal do Observador (1974), Sapateia Açoriana, Andamento HolandêS e Outros Poemas (1976) |
| Notable award(s) | Ricardo Malheiros Literary Prize (1944), National Literary Prize (1965), Montaigne Prize (1974) |
| Children | Georgina (Novembro 1926), Jorge (April 1929), Manuel (July 1930) and Ana Paula (At the end of 1931). |
Vitorino Nemésio Mendes Pinheiro da Silva (Praia da Vitória, December 19, 1901 – Lisbon, February 20, 1978) was a poet, author and intellectual from Terceira, Azores, best known for his romance Mau Tempo No Canal, as well as being a professor in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Lisbon and member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. He was a grandparent of Maria Luísa Nemésio, the wife of Fernando Nobre.
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Vitorino Nemesio was the son of Vitorino Gomes da Silva and Maria da Glória Mendes Pinheiro, and born in Praia da Vitória, on the island of Terceira (1901).
His early education did not reflect the academic career that he would have; he encountered many problems as a student and was expelled from secondary school, repeating his fifth year of studies. Of his time in the secondary school in Angra do Heroísmo, Nemésio indicated his fondness for history classes, and attributed this interest to Manuel António Ferreira Deusdado (his history teacher), who introduced him to the social sciences. At 16 years of age, for the first time, Nemésio travelled to the district capital of Horta, to complete his entry exams for the National School: he was barely able to accomplish a passing mark. He did complete the entry exams in the General Course on July 16, 1918. His stayed in Horta from May to August 1918. On August 13, the newspaper O Telégrafo (although disparagingly reporting to Nemésio as a "provincial") published a notice about the young author'S first book of poetry, Canto Matinal, which was sent to the editor Manuel Emídio (it would later be publish in 1916). While at the school, he collaborated with other students in Eco Académico: Semanário dos Alunos do Liceu de Angra and help found the magazine Estrela d'Alva: Revista Literária Ilustrada e Noticiosa while completing his studies in Angra. Although relatively young, Nemesio had already developed republican ideals, having participated in literary, republican, and anarchist-unionist meetings while living in Angra. He was influenced primarily by his friend, Jaime Brasil, five-years his senior (the first intellectual mentor he knew), as well as others, such as the lawyer Luís da Silva Ribeiro and the author-librarian, Gervásio Lima.
In 1918 on the eve of the end of the First World War, Horta was the center of maritime commerce (with a vibrant night life), an obligatory port-of-call, a sight of fleet replenishment and crew liberty; the trans-Atlantic telegraph cable companies had installed themselves in Horta, contributing to a cosmopolitan environment, that would later motivate him to write Mau Tempo No Canal (which he began to work on after 1939). But, in 1919, he volunteered for military service in the infantry, allowing him to travel outside the Azores for the first time.
In Lisbon, he worked as a coordinator for A Pátria, A Imprensa de Lisboa and Última Hora, while completing his secondary school studies in Coimbra (in 1921). He eventually enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Coimbra, where he worked as an editor in the student newspaper. By 1923, he joined the Coimbra Revolta Lodge of the Grand Order of Lusitania, a masonic group. While working for the magazine Bizâncio, he learns of his father'S death. Three years later (1925), Nemésio switches from Law to Social and Applied Sciences in the Faculty of Letters to concentrate on the Histo-Geographic Sciences. During his first trip to Spain (Salamanca, specifically), with the Academic Choir in 1923, he meets the Spanish writer, philosopher and republican Miguel Unamuno (1864–1936), a leader in revolutionary humanist theory, and staunch Anti-Francist, whom he would continue to correspond for years. With Afonso Duarte, António de Sousa, Branquinho da Fonseca, Gaspar Simões, among others, he founded the magazine Tríptico. His studies turn to Roman Languages by 1925; at the time, he collaborated with José Régio, João Gaspar Simões and António de Sousa on the journal Humanidade: Quinzenário de Estudantes de Coimbra.
On February 12, 1926, Nemésio married Gabriela Monjardino de Azevedo Gomes (in Coimbra), with whom he would have four children: Georgina (Novembro 1926), Jorge (April 1929), Manuel (July 1930) and Ana Paula (at the end of 1931).
In 1930, Nemésio transferred to the Faculty of Letters at the University of Lisbon, where, a year later, He would conclude his course in Roman Languages to begin offering classes in Italian Literature, and later, Spanish Literature (after 1931). He achieved his Doctorate in 1934, from the University of Lisbon, with his thesis A Mocidade de Herculano Até à Volta do Exílio (English: The Youth of Herculano Until Around the Exile). Between 1937 and 1939, he lectured At the Université Libre de Bruxelles, returning in the last year to the Faculty of Letters in Lisbon.
His most complex, dense and subtle romance, Mau Tempo No Canal, remains one of the primary examples of contemporary Portuguese literature, which he would finally publish in 1944. Encomposing the islands of Faial, Pico, São Jorge and Terceira, the romance evokes the period of 1917-1919, when the author lived in Horta and where people such as Dr. José Machado de Serpa (republicana senator), Father Nunes da Rosa (professor at the secondary school) and Osório Goulart (poet) were contemporaries. After his semenal work, Nemésis never returned to romance literature; in an unpublished epilogue to his romances, titled Morro autor de um romance único (English: I will die author of a unique romance), he affirmed that Mau Tempo No Canal was the high-point in his long literary career.
On visiting Horta for a second time, in 1946, he wrote Corsário das Ilhas (English: The Islands Corsair), where he reflected on his schooling:
Thirty years later Nemésio continued to remember the village of Horta as his "first refuge, of patriarchal hospitality and gentility in everything, or for everything".
In 1958, he lectured in Brazil. On September 12, 1971, when he reached the public service age-limit, he completed his final lecture at the Faculty in Lisbon; a period of 40 years of service.
He authored and presented the television program Se bem Me lembro, which contributed to popularizing his literary importance, while at the same time directing the newspaper O Dia between December 11, 1975 and October 25, 1976.
He died on February 20, 1978, in Lisbon, at the CUF Hospital, and was laid to rest in his adopted home, Coimbra. Before his death, the author asked his son to bury him in the cemetery of Santo António dos Olivais, and that the bells play the Alleluia.
His early literary passages were inspired by the Azores. Afonso Lopes Vireira would later note the presence of "infantile memories, and loves, pains and figures of humility, who in these pages, are alive and obsessed with the sea". Vitorino Nemésio's personal experiences are generally present in his published works, beginning with his volume of stories in Paço do Milhafre (English: Path of the Eagle), in 1924. Prefaced by Afonso Lopes Vieira, and later Re−titled O Mistério do Paço do Milhafre (English: The Mystery of the Path of the Eagle), the work has been in publication since 1949. During his long literary career, the author has never stopped surprising readers. In his romances, for example, he transmitted a sense of originality, in particular, with his descriptions of places and complex characters, in which he was generously human (such as in Varanda de Pilatos, published in 1927, or his volume of novels A Casa Fechada (English: The Closed House), comprising three stories: O Tubarão (English: The Shark), Negócio de Pomba (English: The Doves Business) and A Casa Fechada).
Vitorino Nemésio was one of the great writers of contemporary Portuguese literature, receiving in 1965, the Prémio Nacional da Literatura (English: National Literary Prize), as well as the 1974 Montaigne Prize. He was a writer of fiction and poetry, a chronicler, a biographer, a historian of literature, a journalist, a philosopher, an epistolograph, a language expert and a television writer: ironic, owing to his terrible beginnings in the secondary school on Terceira.
Generally regional in his perspectives, his works elaborated on Azorean life, along with sentimental memories of his infancy, revealing a populist preoccupation with simple peoples who were profoundly human and living through aspects of human suffering. He published biographies, including his doctoral dissertation on Alexandre Herculano, and his biography of Elizabeth of Portugal, the saintly Queen. He also wrote of his trips to Brazil, the Azores and Madeira, in which he contemplated diverse subjects associated with Portuguese and Brazilian history, including a dissertation on Gil Vicente, as well as a critic of poetry.
Ironically, Nemésio was also a poet, which he eagerly affirmed and continued to publish uninterruptedly since 1916 (from Canto Matinal) until 1976 (Era do Átomo Crise do Homem). Óscar Lopes, writing on Nemésian poetry, noted two currents of verse in his work Nem toda a Noite a Vida (English: Not Every Night is there Life). The first thematic current is mostly regional; in particular, the nostalagia of island life, infancy, adolescences, his father and first prohibited love, which are obvious in O Bicho Harmonioso (English: The Harmonious Beast) and Eu, Comovido a Oeste. In his latter works there is a transformation, his themes are more metphysical and religious in tone; he debated themes of life and death, of being and the search for the meaning of life: purely existentialist philosophy. In addition, the writer cultivates a populist poetry marked by Azorean symbolism, in which he was regularly accused of being a regionalist literary.