José Gomes Ferreira
(1900-1985)

He was a poet of romantic impulses, as was clearly shown by the impetuous civic pride with which he dedicated himself to the social cause both during the period of Salazar’s dictatorship and after the revolution of 25 April. He displayed not only a vibrant love for human nature and its conflictual weaknesses, but also an equal commitment to the poetic word and the meaning of its expressive fragmentation.

He wrote several volumes of poetry - Poesia (I-VI), 1948-1976 - and various fictional texts, tending towards autobiography (Tempo Escandinavo, 1969), diary-writing (A Memória das Palavras, 1965) or allegory (Aventuras Maravilhosas de João Sem Medo, 1963), which earned him fully justified prestige as a guardian and protector of the everyday literary world of his time.

Poet, don’t shout.
Don’t uproot the men from the ground of their own shadows.
These men - see - for whom words are limits
and not bars through which doves escape.

© Instituto Camões, 2001