#portuguese literature

[flowerytale]

Fernando Pessoa, from "The Book of Disquiet"

[theoptia]

João Guimarães Rosa, from Grande Sertão: Varedas

Text ID: The human heart—dark, dark.

[beljar]

If I write what I feel, it's to reduce the fever of feeling.

Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet, 1982

[nofatclips]

💬 TED-Ed on Fernando Pessoa - Lesson by Ilan Stavans 🎥 Directed by Héloïse Dorsan Rachet

[soircieres]

Mario de Sá-Carneiro, ‘Madness’ (Loucura…), 1912.

[ssuzii]

Which part of woman’s nature is demonic and which divine and what kind of humanity they have… I was talking about women, who generate beings such as ourselves and who may be responsible, perhaps unknowingly, for this duality in our nature, which is base and yet so noble, virtuous and yet so wicked, tranquil and yet so troubled, meek and yet so rebellious.

(José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ)

[jareckiworld]

César Azevedo — Fernando Pessoa  (acrylic on canvas, 2020)

[arsanimarum]

Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa’s soul XXXVI

[dark-longings]

"I lost my ancient castle before I was born. The tapestries of my ancestral palace were sold before I existed. My manor house from before I had life fell into ruins, and only in certain moments, when the moon shines in me over the river’s reeds, do I shiver with nostalgia for the place where the toothless remains of the walls blackly stand out against the dark-blue sky made less dark by a milky yellow tinge.

I sphinxly discern myself. And from the lap of the queen I’m missing falls the forgotten ball of thread that’s my soul – a little mishap of her useless embroidery. It rolls under the inlaid chest of drawers, where part of me follows it like a pair of eyes, until it vanishes in a nameless, mortuary horror." (Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet).

[disgustingposer]

"[...] I have no really intimate friends, and even were there one intimate, in world's way, yet he were not intimate in the way I understand intimacy. I am shy and unwilling to make known my woes. An intimate friend is one of my ideal things, one of my day-dreams yet an intimate friend is a thing I never shall have. No temperament fits me; there is no character in this world which shows a chance of approaching to that I dream in an intimate friend. No more of this. - Mistress or sweetheart I have none; it is another of my ideals and one fraught, into the soul of it, with a real nothingness. It cannot be, as I dream. [...]" - Fernando Pessoa

[linguisticty]

can you recommend some portuguese literature, not just in portuguese but from Portugal? I've saved your post on brazilian literature and appreaciated it a lot 🧡

sorry it took so long, anon. i always forget to check if someone asked something!

thank you so much for your request! i would love to do that. i might not be the hugest fan of portuguese literature, but i did major in it too... i'll start planning it and working on it. it will probably take a while, since i always make an effort to find any available translations and interesting info to bring to the table. i will make it clear i will only mention well known (as in, well known world-wide) portuguese authors because my idea is to bring light to more authors who deserve recognition.

i think i'll take advantage of this request and work on some portuguese language african literature masterpost as well, and even get back to some of my other masterposts ideas!

[flowerytale]

Fernando Pessoa, from "The Book of Disquiet"

[theoptia]

Adélia Prado, from The Mystical Rose: Selected Poems translated by Ellen Doré Watson; "The Third Way"

Text ID: My spirit — the breath of God in me — / desires you,

[beljar]

She was pretty, possibly not the prettiest woman in the audience, but pretty in a very particular, indefinable way that couldn't be put into words, like a line of poetry whose ultimate meaning, if such a thing exists in a line of poetry, continually escapes the translator.

José Saramago, from Death with Interruptions

[universoausteniano]

"Não és sequer a razão do meu viver

Pois que tu és já toda minha vida".

- Fanatismo (Sobre o Poema de Florbela Espanca) - Fagner e Zé Ramalho 🎵

[lionofchaeronea]

Current reading is The Lusíads by Luis Vaz de Camões, the 1572 Portuguese epic poem about Vasco da Gama and the beginnings of the Age of Exploration. Wonderful both in its own right and for its complex intertextual relationship with Vergil's Aeneid.