Vitorino Nemesio and the Azores

Equating Vitorino Nemésio to "Azoreanity," Universality, Iridescence, Confluence, and Eroticism, draws inspiration from the content of the essays herein included and will not surprise anyone familiar with Nemésio's non-posthumous works, with the possible exception of the very last of the lexemes, "eroticism." Nemésio's oeuvre, starting with the collections of short stories Paço do Milhafre (1924) and Mistério do Paço do Milhafre (1949), and extending to the poetical collections La Voyelle Promise (1935) and Festa Redonda (1950), to the novel Mau Tempo no Canal (1944) and the travelogue Corsário das Ilhas (1956), encompasses a range of subjects profoundly rooted in the Azorean archipelago. At the same time -- and here, besides Mau Tempo no Canal, we must emphasize the poems of Nem Toda a Noite a Vida (1952) and O Verbo e a Morte (1959) -- the thematic and formal scope of Nemésio's oeuvre does in no way distance itself from the totality (and, to the extent that the word is valid, centrality) of Portugese culture and, as well, from the western Great Tradition of which it is an inextricable part.

FRANCISCO COTA FAGUNDES is Professor of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he has taught Portuguese and Spanish since 1976. In addition to his research on contemporary Portuguese literature, he has translated several works and produced an autobiography. His most recent publications include, Metamorfoses do Amor: Estudos sobre a ficcao breve de Jorge de Sena (1999), Desta e da Outra Margem do Atlantico: Estudos de literatura Acoriana e da diaspora (2004), and Um Passo Mais no Portugues Moderno: Gramatica Avancada, Leituras, Composicao e Conversacao (2004). Among his translations is Stormy Isles: An Azorean Tale (1998), a translation of Vitorino Nemesio's Mau Tempo no Canal. In 2001 Francisco Cota Fagundes was awarded the rank of Grande-Oficial da Ordem do Infante Dom Henrique by the president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio.