Amália rediscovered

After a long time without writing, I am finally back to bring the good news: the movie about Amália´s life will premiere on December 4th. This is perhaps the most intimate and charming movie made about the life of our beloved diva. It portraits Amália not only as a terrific fado singer, not only her career, but most importantly, it shows Amália the woman, the amazing woman behind the singer. Flirtatious, kind, passionate, sensitive, strong, romantic, faithful,…a heart full of emotions!!! I post here the trailer of the movie (starring the talented Sandra Barata Belo) and I also leave here the promo trailer of a documentary (The Art of Amalia), in English, that was made by Bruno Almeida and was released a long time ago, in December 2000 (only recently I found it).

Can´t wait for December 4th (with a little bit luck I might even watch it in Lisbon, surrounded with some friends who are also great fans of Amália! Oxalá!).

The Art of Amalia, Documentary, December 2000


Amália, the movie, December 4th 2008

"Lady of the Sea"

This was the title of the song yesterday interpreted by Vânia Fernandes at the Eurovision song contest. And what a magnificent interpretation it was...Portugal won yesterday! It won a beautiful song to his already dense repertoire of songs, full of heart and passion with a theme that totally speaks to our soul: a song about the sea and its mystical force; a song with the warm sound of the guitar on the background, the romantic lyrics and the powerful voice of Vania, sometimes resembling Dulce Pontes. The almost sacred and somewhat solemn way the dancers stood along with her also pleased me. This is the kind of music WE like and the kind of songs our soul needs- cherishes it! I don´t even understand why we waist our time in these kind of contests (I must confess I don´t like it, never did and never will- no matter what happens, even If one day Portugal wins I will still not like it!! It´s a complete joke....). We don´t need to prove or show anything: why should something so precious be shared with people who prefer butt-shaking-american-inspired crap? Beautiful faces, empty songs... I am proud we stood loyal to our culture, to our language, to our feelings and to our authenticity! That´s the way to go! This same authenticity and faith on ourselves led us long time ago to explore the world through the unknown, mysterious, infinite sea! The poets romantically say that the Portuguese coastline resembles that of a human face looking to the sea, or in other words, having his back turned to Europe, like Fernando Pessoa brilliantly expresses on the following poem:

The Field of the Castles

Europe lies, reclining upon her elbows:

From East to West she stretches, staring,

And romantic tresses fall over

Greek eyes, reminding.

The left elbow is stepped back;

The other laid out at an angle.

The first says Italy where it leans;

This one England where, set afar,

The hand holds the resting face.

Enigmatic and fateful she stares

Out West, to the future of the past.

The staring face is Portugal.

in "Message"

I guess that´s a big true and after these "European assemblies" like the singing contest (where we expect to see the "friends" we have) we get the weird feeling we were always alone and that we don´t really belong to Europe. We belong instead to Africa (Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, S. Tomé e Principe...), to America (Brasil), to India (Goa, Damão, Dio...), we belong to east Timor and to Macau. Our connections, our roots are far way from Europe... our friends, the real ones, who share our culture, our music our language, who appreciate our traditions they live far from here and we are always "looking" to embrace them... For a long time we lost the discernment to see what really suits our character; we were pressured to adopt foreign cultural models and ways of living and we were "forced" to eventually adapting to them but we remained always unsatisfied with that, like a custom that never fits, we were tortured with this discomforting feeling of never being really a part of the clan! But I feel things are changing and we are starting to "see" again what suits us, what we really are and what we really need in this stupid massified society; I see a light on the end of the tunnel: may the music feed our starved soul so that we regain the courage to make it our own! And like the same Fernando Pessoa once said "Portugal must yet be fulfilled..."

Lady of the seas
Before you, I'm fallen
Who comes and takes half of life and peace
From this table, from this house, now lost?
Love, what's happened with you?

Lady of the sea
Before you, my soul is empty
Who comes and takes what is mine?
Oh high sea, bring me
My endless love

CHORUS

Ah, black waters, waves of sorrow
They froze the fire in my eyes
He's not sailing anymore
And nobody sees you crying
Lady of the sea

"O mare e tu" (The Sea and You)

I´ve been having a lot of work recently and very little time to write on my blogs.
To overcome the
tiresomeness I listen to music.
Here I leave you with one of the most surprising and
beautiful duets I´ve ever heard: Dulce Pontes and Giorgios Dalaras.
It surely helps you to forget the worries of a long day...hope you like it!

The Aesthetics of Saudade

I post here a philosophy work by Leandro Feldmann ; although it is a bit "dense" I decided not to cut any parts because I find the whole document precious!
...........................................

1 - Introduction

Along the centuries, and today still, the word saudade became one of the most recurrent expressions concerning Portugal, and of an enormous value to its literature and cultural history. Since the Portuguese King Dom Duarte, the first to theorize about saudade, until the Saudosismo , when the saudade reached the peak of its importance, a great value was given to the subject, which caused more and more an increase of the meanings attributed to it.

The fact that the first attempt of defining saudade was made precisely by a king must certainly have influenced so many other Portuguese to gain interest about the theme, not so much because of his somewhat clumsy definition (“Ssuydade precisely is the feeling that the heart fails because it is apart from the presence of someone or some persons whom it loves very much by affection” – Dom Duarte, 1973, p. 16) , but primarily because he promotes the creation of a nationalist feeling concerning the expression, by saying that there wasn’t any equivalent word to “ssuydade” in Latin and other languages.

In the beginning of the XX century the Portuguese Renaissance emerged, a cultural movement with a nationalist character aiming to stimulate a regeneration of the Portuguese culture. The movement, whose most important mentor was Teixeira de Pascoaes, appropriated the expression saudade as a symbol of its ideal that the Portuguese Culture has an universal dimension and, only disclosing the Portuguese language, it would be possible to understand what it means to be Portuguese.

The treatment of saudade as a symbol of the Portuguese culture culminates in the aesthetic movement emerged during the Second War, the Saudosismo, which declared the incrustation of philosophy in the history, language and culture, and the expression was also a symbol of this thought, to the point of being declared that "in Saudade existed the secret of their race". (1976)

This identification of saudade with the Lusitanian spirit is divided between the serious development of the theme by the Saudosismo and the exaggerated treatment related to a vain Portuguese nationalism. The claiming of the untranslatability of saudade is also divided between these two sides. On the nationalist side the claiming makes no sense, because there are equivalents to the general meaning of the word in other languages; what is really untranslatable is the meaning of it specifically when approached by the Saudosismo, which have indeed elaborated an intense philosophy of saudade. That is what shall be demonstrated from now on.

2 - Saudade: feeling caused by missing someone or something

According to what Ludwig Wittgenstein explains in his Philosophical Investigations, it isn’t possible to express truth through discourse, because language can only deal significantly with a small parcel of reality. But this doesn’t mean that the inexpressible is inexistent: With the simple question “how a clarinet sounds?”(Wittgenstein, 1986, p. 36), Wittgenstein shows to be perfectly possible knowing what something is, but being unable to express it.

Since it is possible to know something inexpressible, it seems unnecessary to try to establish a relation of perfect synonymy between the term saudade and other terms from other languages, but considering saudade in its common daily used meaning, the fact is that their equivalents have practically the same significance.

By comparing the definitions of some of the equivalents this will be clearer: the Portuguese definition states that saudade is a “Nostalgic remembrance and, at the same time, smooth, from distant or extinct people or things, accompanied by the desire either of seeing or possessing them again”; the French definition of “regret” is a “Painful state of conscience caused by the separation from a good”; the Spanish defines “añoranza” as the “act of añorar” and defines “añorar” as “recollect with pity the absence, privation or loss of a beloved person or thing”; the German defines “Sehnsucht” as “the yearn for someone or something” and the definition of “Sehnen” is “To desire with a strong, painful feeling that someone, who isn’t present, would be so; to have something that is missing”; finally, the English definition of the noun longing is “yearning; missing someone or something”. Apart of controversies or translators difficulties, this last English definition is an accurate one for the general meaning of saudade, the same meaning that Portuguese speakers like to say there are no equivalents for in other languages.

3 - The Aesthetics of Saudade

There are, therefore, equivalent words to saudade in other languages; what differs between them is, according to Carolina Michaelis, “the importance and the frequency of saudade in the Portuguese language (…), this je ne sais quoi of mystery that adheres to it”(Michaelis, 1986, p. 145) According to Moreira de Sá, “some people have tried to justify (this jene sais quois), whether by saying it is an ethnic substrate, or by historical reasons which allowed to emphasize and improve this feeling in the Portuguese people’s soul.” (1992. P. 88) In reality, this je ne sais quoi is also divided between the nationalist feeling and the philosophical meanings elaborated by the Saudosismo.

From the first one derives only the futile claiming of the inexistence of the word in other languages, which was already analyzed and dismantled above. Following, ultimately, the most important meanings attached to saudade will be analyzed. These main secondary significances of saudade are: melancholy, androgyny, childhood and recollection of God.

E Marânus, olhando a clara névoa,

Sonho doce do mar, ali pousado,

Meditava: aonde vai o sonho humano,

Quando de nós se afasta, já sonhado?

E ficamos mais tristes e sozinhos,

A cada sonho que findou, no mundo.

E, a cada etérea nuvem que se forma,

Torna-se mais salgado o mar profundo.

And Marânus, looking at the bright mist,

Sweet dream of the sea, standing there,

Meditated: whiter goes the human dream,

When smoothed away from us, already dreamed?

And we become sadder and more alone,

Every dream that finishes, in the world.

And, every ethereal cloud that is shaped,

It becomes saltier the deep sea.

(Pascoaes, 1920, p.219)

The melancholy, described by Leopardi as "the most sublime of human feelings" (Leopardi. Apud Ginzburg, 1995, p. 106-107), is caused by the acknowledgement of the earthen world as something transitional and limited. This world-view underlines the individual self-criticism, allowing him to think and feel in a different manner, granting him a contemplative capacity required for philosophy and literature.

Melancholy is usually created by the absence of something, may it be a person, a place, one’s health, etc. Marânus, the character symbol of the Saudosismo, from the book Marânus, by Teixeira de Pascoaes, lives indeed in a melancholic condition, and in his case, it happens due to the saudade he feels of Eleonor.

Ítalo Calvino proposes in Six Memos for the Next Millenium a theory that in a diffuse manner literature results from the melancholy (Calvino, 1990, ps. 32 e 64-5). Thus, Leonardo Coimbra is not wrong when he identifies saudade as being the “Portuguese form of creation” (Coimbra, Apud. Costa e Gomes, 1976, p. 64). In this and in many other cases, the Saudade could really be considered the Portuguese form of creating melancholy, which in its turn is the basic form of creation.

“Gostava de sofrer a etérea mágoa,

Que nos prende ao passado.”

“He liked to suffer the ethereal grievance,

That attach us to the past.” (Pascoaes, 1920, p. 193)

4 - Everything is Translatable

What is really important here is not to overvalue what is nothing more than a translation difficulty, that is, not to overvalue the word in detriment of the significance. The best thing to do before setting a general translation rule is to remember Faust’s words while translating the bible:

Geschrieben steht:

»Im Anfang war das Wort!«

Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?

Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen,

Ich muß es anders übersetzen,

Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.

Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn.

Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,

Daß deine Feder sich nicht übereile!

Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft?

Es sollte stehn: Im Anfang war die Kraft!

Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,

Schon warnt mich was, daß ich dabei nicht bleibe.

Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat!

It is written:

"In the beginning was the Word!"

Here I’m already stuck! Who’ll help me going further?

I cannot possibly prize the Word so high,

I must translate it otherwise

If I am correctly enlightened by the spirit.

It is written:

“In the beginning was the Meaning”.

Consider well the first line,

So your pen will not be precipitated!

Is the meaning, what produces and creates everything?

It should be:

In the beginning was the Force!

Yet, even while I write this down

Something warns me already, that I won’t stick with it.

The spirit helps me! Finally I find advice

And confident I write:

In the beginning was the Action.

The chief concerning while translating shouldn’t be fidelity merely to the word. The word is produced based on a Meaning, a Force, an Action or whatever, no doubt, comes first. Naturally these concepts may seem too blurred, but it’s perfectly possible to understand their relevance. Thus, it is necessary to mainly concern about what significance was given to a word based on, according to Faust’s four attempts, what was there in the beginning. One must consider a word’s meaning and background, then find the equivalent word based not simply on it, but on its significance. There may exist indeed words without equivalents in other languages; what is always translatable is the significance of the words, which can always be explained and incorporated. The difficulty is usually to understand the proper significance of each word, and not so much in finding equivalents.

In the specific case of saudade, this matter about existing or not equivalents to the word only deviates the attention from the feeling’s significance, which should be the central point.

Saudade is, therefore, one of the deepest human feelings, and the greatness of its power is exactly that it transcends itself, creating other feelings, which, by their turn, stimulate men. And that’s certainly one of the difficulties of translating or even grasping the philosophical significance of saudade: saudade becomes greater and deeper while illuminating other feelings, but it also becomes more difficult to understand it. If this is not enough, we can quote Marânus for a last time:

Eu não sou a alegria, mas apenas

A trágica matéria que a produz.

Na grande escuridão, sou facho a arder

E não avisto minha própria luz!

I am not happiness, but only

The tragic substance that produces it.

In the great darkness, I am a burning flambeau

And I don’t see my own light.

(Pascoaes, 1920, p.216)

A book about Fado

Fado Portugues: Songs from the soul of Portugal

Compiled and edited by Donald Cohen

with Music arranged for voice and guitar.

Includes CD with 26 classic recordings.

Donald Cohen, a retired Los Angeles attorney and fado expert, says that although fado in its current form is about 200 years old, its roots go back to the 12th century to traditions of song and poetry brought by Provencal troubadours, the Moors who lived in Portugal, and the Jews.

But it’s sad, longing spirit was defined by Portugal’s days as a great colonial power in the 16th century, when it sent generations of men overseas. It’s called saudade, a complex combination of nostalgia, sadness and a profound connection with fate.

“The Portuguese were the great explorers of the era…and that’s where this idea of saudade came – these men were out of the country for years at a time,” said Cohen, who will publish a book on fado this fall. “Saudade comes from the Latin word that became soledad – loneliness in Spanish. But saudade means more than that: it’s nostalgic soulful yearning for what may or may never have been. It could be for your husband who is gone, who may never come back. It’s consumed by fate.”

Fado is one of the most rewarding and least known genres in the world music spectrum. “Fado is very rich in history musically and lyrically. It’s also still kind of a secret,” said Tom Schnabel, a producer at KCRW, a Los Angeles public radio station known for its world-music programming.

“Like other things in Portuguese culture, it has been untouched. Everybody knows flamenco, about tango, about bossa nova. But when you say, ‘What about fado?’ they say, ‘Huh?’ While I want to see that change, it also makes it an undiscovered musical treasure.”

Excerpted from the Miami Herald,

The Sweet Sigh of Sadness,

May 7, 2003

Buy it here! ;)

Easter Traditions: a scent of Minho!

Fortunately I was born in the northern Portuguese region of Minho where traditions are still very alive! Here some photos of Easter in my place with the typical food dishes: the roasted lamb with potatoes, rice, vegetables and wonderful bread and wine, of course!

and the sweets, "pastry temptations" where the "yellow" is the king! (my cholesterol! ouch! :P)

We also eat lots of chocolates, mostly chocolate eggs and the chocolate almonds with different colours and flavours. My favourites are those powdered with icing sugar and cinnamon: we call them "Ceilão"(Ceylon) almonds, which is the former name for Sri Lanka (you can guess why we call them Ceilão...)

It´s also very typical to boil eggs with onion peel so they get a auburn colour; these eggs are mostly to decorate the table!. The flowers are also very important and we buy some fresh flowers to put around the house: Easter is the celebration of Spring!

And of course, last but not the least, as Christians we "open the door" to the priest who starts by saying "Jesus Christ resurrected!Alleluia! Alleluia!" and sprinkles holly water at the people (sometimes you really take a bath! :P) and then gives us the crucified Christ so that we can kiss His feet or His face (you choose! :P).

Of course you pay for this short "visit": we gave the priest a sealed envelope with our family name written outside and with 60 euros inside, because the Church would never EVER do anything for his followers without charging them ("you give what you want, but usually people give us not less than 20 euros"---HYPOCRITES! ( my critics to the Catholic Church are endless...I´ll leave them for some other time and space...the only good thing about the Church is that she preaches God´s word, His teachings and keeps the memory of Christ alive. The Institution itself is...I don´t even know what to call it!)

Wonders of Portugal: monuments, places, music, poetry, unique cultural heritage! The Past and Future of bright Nation...

I was watching videos of Dulce Pontes searching for duets (by the way...do you know that Dulce sings in greek? here!!) and I found this video. It´s a compilation of pictures of some of the most beautiful Portuguese pieces of architecture (and many are not shown!). The background songs are sang by Dulce and are called: "Fado Português" and "O Infante"- beautiful, beautiful, beauuuuutiful songs, I got tears in my eyes! I´ll leave here the translation of the 2nd because it´s a poem I like very much...can you guess why? ;)

THE PRINCE (O INFANTE)

"God will, Man dreams, the work is born.

God willed that all the earth be one,

That seas unite and never separate.

You He blessed, and you went forth to read the foam.

And the white shore lit up, isle to continent,

And flowed, even to the world's end,

and suddenly the earth was seen complete,

Upsurging, round, from blue profundity.

Who blessed you made you Portuguese.

Us He gave a sign: the sea's and our part in you.

The Sea fulfilled, the Empire fell apart.

Lord, Portugal must yet fulfil itself!"

Fernando Pessoa,
"Mensagem"

This book, "Message", is the most mystical of all Pessoa´s work. Here he reinforces the everlasting theory of the 5th Empire. I won´t tell much more about this, by now; It is a fascinating theory about which I´ll write soon. For now get the idea that "Portugal must yet fulfil itself!" ;)

Detail of the nose of NRP Sagres sail training ship, where you can see a representation of Infante D. Henrique to whom the poem is dedicated.

“After his return from Ceuta, Henry the navigator founded a school of navigation in Sagres, which was a place to discuss the art of navigation. The vessel employed in the beginning of the Discoveries was the caravel, varying from 50 to 160 tons. The first results came soon and Gonçalves Zarco discovers Porto Santo Island in 1419 and Madeira Island in 1420, Diogo de Silves discovers the azorean island of Santa Maria in 1427. In 1424 Gil Eanes crosses the Cape Bojador. Diogo Cão and Bartolomeu Dias arrived to the mouth of Zaire River in 1482 and the second crosses the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. The greatest achievement of these exploration voyages was attained by Vasco da Gama, whom between 1497 and 1499 discovers the sea route to India.” on wiki

Carlos do Carmo wins Goya Award

The Goya Awards, known in Spanish as Los Premios Goya, are Spain's main national film awards, considered the Spanish equivalent to the American Academy Awards.

The awards were established in 1987, a year after the founding of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España, and the first awards ceremony took place on March 16, 1987 at the Teatro Lope de Vega, Madrid. The ceremony continues to take place annually around the end of January, and awards are given to films produced during the previous year. For the first time in the history of this ceremony an award was given to a Portuguese : Carlos do Carmo. He won the prize for best original song with "Fado da Saudade" which was performed in Saura´s movie "Fados". It is wonderful to see Carmo being recognized for his work specially because he has been dedicating his life to singing and promoting fado; a 45 year-old career! He surely deserves all the awards he is nominated for! :)

Monk Rider: the journey through the Self

"From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through houses, through meadows, Through gardens, through fountains, In alliance you walk. From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through black cliffs, Behind and ahead, In secrecy you walk. From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through desert meadows, Without horizons, In freedom you walk.

From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through trackless ways, Through rivers without bridges, In solitude you walk. From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. For it is endless And accounted by no one, In me you walk. Through black cliffs, Through rivers without bridges, In me you walk."

Every fado is beautiful and has a deep meaning. But of course some have a more spiritual meaning than others. “Monk rider” is an example. It was written by Fernando Pessoa and every word goes far beyond its material meaning: every single word is a symbol in this poem. This fado tells about a monk (a reflexive, introspective,lonely, spiritual human being) that rides his horse, a “horse of shadow” I dare to say our fears, our desires, the beast within us, the “shadowed” beast (the Minotaur in the centre of our own psychological labyrinth), our Self, our Soul after all... and he rides this dark animal “Through houses” (shelters, places of quietude, human warmth,) “through meadows” (places of action) “Through gardens” (pureness of feelings, the contemplation, meditation), “through fountains” (the fluidity of time, the purification) ” Through trackless ways, Through rivers without bridges,” “Through black cliffs”…through the hardest and most sinuous ways, in the most difficult and lonely journey, this monk rider keeps on walking “From the valley, to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill” meaning with this going from the darkest side of oneself to the brightest! From the Shadow to the Light. This is a lonely, constant, endless, “without horizons” way to go.

This is the journey of self discovery. “Know yourself, defy your limits” was Socrates motto meaning with this that if you want to value the light, the perfection you first have to go deeper, and experience the darkness.

For this video, Mariza (of course, who else?) chose for scenario the “Quinta da Regaleira” in Sintra* one of the most mystical places of Portugal. And she brilliantly transformed this poem into a Fado. A Fado for life. A lesson for Humans. In a world of “busy people” a poem made song tells how to conquer ourselves. How lucky are we?

*The name “Sintra” has its origin in the word “Cynthia“, symbol of the moon in the celtic mythology. The Romans called it “Mons Lunae“, meaning “the hill of the moon“, and there were deeds sacrifices in its honour. This mystical stigma has been maintained until our times.
Sintra is a romantic getaway for people from all around the world, and has always been a place of election by kings and nobles as a country resort, and praised by writers and poets.

Teixeira de Pascoaes: the poet (philosopher?) of Saudosism

My favourite poet of all times is the great Fernando Pessoa and about him you can find an "ocean" of information in the web including translated texts, poems, a little bit of everything (he also wrote many poems originally in English and that made him even more well-known). He was the writer of the beautiful fado "There is a song of people", stunningly sung recently by Mariza, among others. But the very essence of fado is "saudade" and Teixeira de Pascoaes theorized about it. He is the most profound and complete philosopher on this "issue" of the portuguese Alma.

So, who was Teixeira de Pascoaes ?

A mystic poet who felt profoundly connected to the humblest things and to the brightest stars, Teixeira de Pascoaes was born and died in the small town of Amarante, in northern Portugal, and led a relatively uneventful life. In 1896 he went to Coimbra to study law, though poetry and contemplation were his favorite endeavors. University life was, at the time, a rather boisterous affair, but Pascoaes kept out of student brawls and political rows, devoting himself to study and writing. He published his first three books of poems while at university (not counting the book, later repudiated, that he had published a year before arriving at Coimbra), and these already show his attraction to an idealized nature, to the darkly mysterious, to the vague and ethereal. He worked for a few years as a lawyer and a judge, but then retreated, as it were, into his inner life. He was by no means a recluse, however. His religiosity had a missionary side: Pascoaes became the chief apostle and theoretician of saudosismo.

Saudosismo was a movement that promulgated saudade as a national spiritual value that could have transformational power. Saudade means “longing, nostalgia, yearning” for something absent, but it is a feeling fraught with more emotional weight and affective intensity than corresponding words from English and other languages convey. Pascoaes gave this unique Portuguese word a philosophical and spiritual twist. In an article published in 1913, he wrote that “saudade is creation, a perpetual and fruitful marriage of Remembrance with Desire, of Evil with God, of Life with Death . . .”. And in a conference delivered that same year, he spoke of “the action of desire on remembrance and of remembrance on desire, the two intimate elements of saudade”, described elsewhere in the conference as “the perfect and living fusion of Nature and the Spirit”. Saudade was, in Pascoaes’ conception, a species of élan vital.

From 1910 to 1916, Pascoaes was editor of A Águia, an Oporto-based magazine that became the mouthpiece for the Renascença Portuguesa (Portuguese Renaissance), a movement of which saudosismo was part and parcel. It was by cultivating saudade, considered to be the defining characteristic of the ‘Portuguese soul’, that a national renaissance was supposed to take place. This signified not “a simple return to the Past” (wrote Pascoaes in A Águia in 1912) but a “return to the original wellsprings of life in order to create a new life”. To achieve this Renaissance he advocated, among other things, the establishment of a Portuguese Church, which could better accommodate the original spirit of the nation, part Christian but also part pagan.

The nationalist program of saudosismo is only latently felt in most of Pascoaes’ poetry, for his bent was predominantly spiritual, and in a lecture delivered in the last year of his life, he remarked: “Man does not belong only to society; he belongs, first and foremost, to the Cosmos. Society is not an end but a means for facilitating man’s mission on earth, which is to be the consciousness of the Universe." This point of view informs virtually all of his poetry, which is, in large measure, a pantheistic celebration of life – not just life on earth, but also the life of the imagination and the universe. In the early poem ‘Poet’, he states that “I am, in the future, time past” – the embodiment, in effect, of saudade. He claims to be “a mountain cliff”, “an astral mist”, “a living mystery”, “God’s delirium”, and so on, which is why he also says, “I’m man fleeing from himself”. Not limited to his own body, he connects with the rest of reality, to the point of interpenetrating and becoming its other manifestations.

Pascoaes’ universe is one of correspondences between seeming opposites: the past with the future, nostalgia with hope, sorrow with joy, the material with the spiritual. The dynamic nature of this unity of opposites is well expressed by two verses greatly admired by Fernando Pessoa: “The leaf that fell /Was a soul that ascended” (from a poem titled ‘Elegy of Love’). Far from being a fixed machine of integrated moving parts, Pascoaes’ universe is in continual expansion, through the creative energy of hope, sorrow, desire, saudade. Just as poetic inspiration leaves “the splendor of a verse” on the printed page, “so too hope, endlessly burning, (…) / Leaves in space the forms of the Universe, (…) / Mortal recollections of its divine being” (in ‘Indefinite Song XXII’). And man, through his “living encounter” with the things of Nature “gives birth to souls, / Divine apparitions” (in ‘Encounter’).

Profoundly religious in spirit, Pascoaes did not seem to have or to need any clear notion of God. His poetry is an ongoing hymn to a Nature made divine, in which man’s role is to see and sing it.