Precisa ter instalado o JavaAplet
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Theatre

  
Camilo Pessanha
(1867-1926)


Camilo Pessanha (postcard, 1915)



Macau: painting by Pedro Barreto de Resende in Livro das Plantas de Todas as Fortalezas do Estado da Índia Oriental (Book of the Plants at all the Fortresses of the State of East India) by António Bocarro (1635). Évora Public Library

In his poetry, he brought together various strands from symbolism and modernism, through his passion for unattainable ideas and the suggestion of indefinable atmospheres, expressed with careful musicality, on the one hand, whilst, on the other hand, he stressed the materiality of writing as an end in itself, fragmenting discourse and communication through the use of different levels that were interspersed at intervals and contained only a partial objective reference.

In Clepsidra (1920), these processes serve to introduce the theme of the flow of time that absorbs identity, making use of the symbology of the landscape and water as a nominal means of establishing change and exorcising melancholy. 


Autumn is already gone, it’s turning cold now...
- Autumn with its sad smile.
Algid Winter! The sun is oblique, frozen...
- The sun, and the clear waters of the river.

Clear waters of the river! Waters of the river,
Fleeing under my tired gaze,
Whither are you taking me my vain care?
Where are you going to, my empty heart?

















© Instituto Camões, 2001