Natália Correia

Natália Correia by Bottelho.

Natália de Oliveira Correia, GOSE, GOL (13 September 1923 in Fajã de Baixo (Ponta Delgada), São Miguel, Azores – 16 March 1993 in Lisbon) was an intellectual, poet and social activist, as well as author of the official lyrics of the "Hino dos Açores", the regional anthem of Autonomous Region of the Azores. Her work crossed various genres of Portuguese media, and collaborated with many Portuguese and international publications. A member of the Portuguese National Assembly (1980–1991), she regularly intervened politically on the side of arts and culture, in the defense of human rights and rights of women. Along with José Saramago, Armindo Magalhães, Manuel da Fonseca and Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, she helped to create the FNDC, Frente Nacional para a Defesa da Cultura (the National Front for the Defense of Culture). She was a central figure in the artistic scene, who met with peoples central to Portuguese culture and literature in the 1950s and 1960s. Her works have been translated into various languages.

Biography

Natália Correia was the daughter of Maria José de Oliveira (born in Capelas, São Miguel, a primary school teacher who had a small success with writing romances, during the 1940s) and Manuel de Medeiros Correia, married in 1918. At the age of eleven, the young Natália, her older sister (Carmen de Oliveira Correia) and mother moved to Lisbon, while their father emigrated to Brazil. She began her studies in Lisbon, and quickly found her interest in literature (publishing her first work, for children: A Grande Aventura de Um Pequeno Herói), and specifically poetry.

She continued her Arts career in drama, romance, translation, journalism, and editing, becoming familiar with the media in all its forms, as well as television. It was during her work on the program Mátria that she advocated her own special form of feminism, which flowed counter to the politically correct format of the movement. She called it matricismo, where she showed the woman as an archetype of liberal eroticism: passionate and feminine; later her literary notions of Patria' (the nation or fatherland) and Mátria (the woman) would be extended to Fratria (fraternity).

Correia's deep affection for her native island's native beauty is demonstrated profoundly in the themes, images and symbols portrayed in her works, as well as by her affinity for the contemporary authors Antero de Quental and Vitorino Nemésio. She was much influenced by surrealism, Galician-Portuguese poetry, and mysticism, and her works span the spectrum from poetic romanticism to satire. She worked in many different genres: poetry, essays, theater, and anthologies.

With a talent for oratory and a combative nature, she became active in the movements in opposition to the Estado Novo regime of António Oliveira Salazar, participating in the Movimento de Unidade Democrática (Movement for Democratic Unity) in 1945, and supporting the Presidential candidacies of Generals Norton de Matos (1949) and Humberto Delgado (1958), as well as joining the Comissão Eleitoral de Unidade Democrática (Electoral Commission of the Democratic Unity), 1969. For her activism she was condemned to three years in prison, with a suspended sentence, for the publication of her work Antologia da Poesia Portuguesa Erótica e Satírica (Anthology of Portuguese Erotic Poetry and Satire), considered offensive by the authorities in 1966. She was also tried for editorial responsibility for Novas Cartas Portuguesas (New Portuguese Letters) written by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Velho da Costa and Maria Teresa Horta. Natália was responsible for coordinating the publications of Editora Arcádia, one of the important Portuguese editors at the time.

In 1971, with colleagues Isabel Meireles, Júlia Marenha and Helena Roseta, she started the Bar Botequim, where during the decades between 1970 and 1980 she met with a great part of the Portuguese intellectual community.

In 1980, she was elected to Parliament as a member of the PPD (Partido Popular Democrático).

She was a friend of António Sérgio, associated with Movimento da Filosofia Portuguesa (Movement of Portuguese Philosophy), David Mourão-Ferreira, José-Augusto França, Luiz Pacheco, Almada Negreiros, Mário Cesariny, Ary dos Santos, Amália Rodrigues, Fernando Dacosta, just to name a few. An enthusiast of the café-concert scene in Portugal, she supported her friend the cross-dresser Guida Scarllaty (the actor Carlos Ferreira). Her home was also a stage for famous writers such as Henry Miller, Graham Greene and Ionesco.

In 1991, Correia received the Grand Prize in Poetry from the Associação Portuguesa de Escritores (Association of Portuguese Writers), for his book Sonetos Românticos (Romantic Sonnets). In the same year, she was conferred the Ordem da Liberdade (Order of Liberty); she was already the holder of the Ordem de Santiago (Order of St. James).

She was married four times: in 1942, to Álvaro Pereira, in 1949, to William Creighton Hyler, in 1950, to Alfredo Machado and in March 1990, to Dórdio Leal Guimarães. It was Alfredo Luiz Machado (1904–1989), her "great passion", much older and a widower that marked her personal life (the love letters from the youthful Carreira to the much older Machado are themselves literary). Her 1990 marriage to Dórdio Guimarães, at 67 years of age, was much more a marriage of convenience with a collaborator and friend.

Natália Correia died in the early morning of 16 March 1993 in Lisbon, of a heart-attack, after returning from the Bar Botequim. In her will, the Azorean bequeathed many of her possessions to the Autonomous Region of the Azores; a permanent exposition in the Public Library and Regional Archive in Ponta Delgada celebrates her literary history. The institution holds many of her literary works (which it shares with the National Library of Lisbon), including many unedited volumes, biographical documents, iconography and correspondence, as well as many works of art her private library.

Literature

References

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