THE POET Eugénio de Andrade shunned the glare of public places, reserving the lyricism which he discovered in nature for his writing. He was, according to his fellow countryman and writer Antonio Lobo Antunes, “the greatest poet of the Portuguese language”.
His surroundings had a profound impact on his writing. Light and water, the sun and the senses all are recurring motifs in his work.
Eugénio de Andrade was the pen-name of José Fontainhas, who was born in the village of Póvoa de Atalaia, on the frontier with Cáceres, Spain, in 1923. His parents separated when he was very young, and his mother, with whom he developed a passionately close relationship,raised him, taking him to Lisbon at the age of 8.
De Andrade confided late in life that the image of his late mother was still so strong that he could not even approach a woman unless she bore a strong resemblance to her.
From his earliest years he also learnt the value of a life without luxury. For 36 years he supported his writing by working as a civil servant in the health ministry, first in the capital, later in Coimbra and finally in Oporto.
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De Andrade wrote his first poem, Narcissus, at 13 and published his first book, Adolescent, before turning 20. He then adopted the pen name under which he went on to become Portugal’s best-known contemporary poet. His work was translated into at least 20 languages. He won all of Portugal’s major literary awards, including the Camões Prize, as well as the Prix Jean Malrieu (1989) and the European Prize for Poetry (1996).
The Spanish critic and poet Ángel Crespo, who translated him into Castilian, wrote that “His voice was born to baptise the world”. José Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel laureate, said that while De Andrade’s poetry was physical, “it ascends to the light” — and others have praised it for its pared-back simplicity. De Andrade said that this “purity, of which so many have spoken, is simply passion, passion for the things of the land, in their most burning and unconsummated form”.
He was often compared with the poets of the “Generation of ‘27” in Spain: Luis Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre and, in particular, Federico García Lorca, whom he translated in his youth.
An avid reader, he developed a deep knowledge of the poetry of Greek antiquity and an affinity for Chinese and Japanese poetry. He admired Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot.
Distrustful of abstractions, he always sought to convey what he called “the rough or sweet skin of things”, using as his base material “words smooth as pebbles, rough as rye bread, words that smell of clover and dust, loam and lemon, resin and sun”.
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An erotic awareness of the human body often lay at the heart of his work, especially the collection Dark Domain. This includes the poem Inhabited Body, whose first stanza is:
Body on a horizon of water, body open to the slow intoxication of fingers, body defended by the splendour of apples, surrendered hill by hill, body lovingly made moist by the tongue’s pliant sun
(translated by Alexis Levitin in Forbidden Words: Selected Poetry of Eugénio de Andrade (New Directions Publishing, 2003).
In 1990 De Andrade took up residence in a foundation that bears his name in Oporto. He gave interviews only rarely and avoided all social gatherings, declaring that his greatest fascination was silence. He did not marry.
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Eugénio de Andrade, poet, was born on January 19, 1923. He died on June 13, 2005, aged 82.