It is difficult for the mystery of what was the life of Herbert Helder is esfume completely. Did not cooperate with the biographical attempts, not corrected, not amended, gave no clue, did not speak to reporters, refused meetings with readers, awards, mundanities. Almost unanimously considered the greatest poet of the second half of the twentieth century – and by some the greatest poet of the twentieth century, person included – Herbert Helder died last Monday, getting involved by a respectful silence. A private funeral, the family without paying testimonials and the very Porto Editora – group acquired the Assyrian & amp; Alvim, where the poet published for decades – sent a statement to the newspapers and said it would not speak beyond that
It remains his great work. – Modified each time Herbert Helder remade his anthology – the voice on the CD he read five poems of Death without Master and the last picture taken by Alfredo Cunha, at the request of the editor Manuel Alberto Valente, on 19 February. Even the original books, the author’s request, were printed in very limited editions, not satisfying the demand for a work that has become mythical, especially since 1994, when the poet refused to receive the prize person, one assigned consecration title by Expresso newspaper and the Unisys. “Do not tell anyone and give it to the other,” he once said.
His last interview was in 1968 and all subsequent attempts to approach by journalists would be rejected. José Quitério for many food critic Expresso years, says he met him at a get-together in a café in Largo da Misericordia in Lisbon. In 1992 (two years before denies Pessoa Prize) at the request of Procopio bar – one lander journalists annually organized a delivery of prizes to the field of culture personalities – Quitério commissioned by the owner, Alice Pinto Coelho, go to Coffee deliver Herbert Helder distinction in poetry category. “There caught in said figurine, very heavy, and I went with him, knowing that he did not like prizes. I told him that was one thing to take a joke, but even so, he refused, nor wanted to see. So I went carrier Procopio the premium for Espresso and back, “says Quitério.
José Quitério, now 72, recalls having met the poet, by then a well respected figure, more old, as the mentor of the informal get-together that aggregated from 16h at Café Express, in the Misericordia Square. “He came from the Assyrian & amp; Alvim, where would talk to Manuel Herminio Monteiro, the editor who has since died, and stood there talking until about 19h. From there down the walk to the Cais do Sodré and caught the train to Cascais, where he lived. ” Many of them draw a picture of a dour figure. Quitério, who accompanied him, not part of the inner circle, for ten years between 1984 and 1994, prefers to define it as “airtight in writing but very friendly and very sense of humor.” Recalls that for the Anthology of English Poetry – Edoi Lelia Doura, commissioned by Herminio Monteiro, Herbert Helder included the poet Antonio Hook, “a type that was truly crazy and to many, the craziness, invented the Herbert Helder you stole the poems . And there he put up with it to laugh, “he says.
Moreover, Quitério, former archivist who keeps records and clippings about writers he admires, and autographed books by the poet states that Helder is much quoted” but maybe little read. ” “One begins to scrutinize, as they say Stinky Cat, and people only know a line or two. Because it’s not an easy poetry. Many people know the ‘If I wanted to go crazy’ and ready, “quips. “I can not believe he wanted to be damned writer. It was not a Luiz Pacheco. “
Luís Oliveira, editor and owner of Antigone, met Herbert Helder in the early 60s, when the poet worked in the service of mobile libraries of the Gulbenkian. Later, accompany you would at Café Monte Carlo, in the Saldanha area, a meeting of a group that included the poet António José Fort, Carlos Oliveira, Augusto Abelaira, José Gomes Ferreira, José Cardoso Pires.
Luís Oliveira, founder in 1979 of Antigone, a profile anarchist publisher, has since been friend of the poet. And maintains that although Herbert escape “the noise, spectacle and not waste time with banalities,” did not live isolated from the outside. “It was very informed. In our conversations spoke a lot of books, but also the state of the world. “
Recalls nevertheless that” it was always an anxiety about death that was managing. And sometimes had deep depressions. ” Not surprisingly, much of his work is marked by death. And the last book of original, Death Without Master, published in 2014, a farewell and a swing, it’s about the inevitable end.
Carlos Ferreira da Veiga, Theorem editor, crossed the life of the poet when he returned from Angola in the early 70s What about depression facet recalls that the poet “did psychoanalysis for a long time.
First with Fernando Medina, doctor Miguel Bombard, who committed suicide, leaving many orphans writers, and then with Eduardo Luis Courtier. ” The comings far between the office of Eduardo Courtier, which could be from month to month, they balanced it, but not a departure from “obsessive idea of death which, incidentally, goes through in his work.”
Alongside this dark side, closer, which, it is said, have been motivated by his mother’s death when he was eight, a loss ever noticed, Herbert Helder could be a great conversationalist. “Very austere era. Booked with friends, no. Was to talk a whole afternoon. I remember that when I met him we were hours talking about a work of Mario Vargas Llosa, “says Carlos da Veiga Ferreira, one of the occupants of the Herbert Helder coffee table.
It was in Monte Carlo Herbert Helder found landlord after returning from Angola, where he was a reporter in news magazine in the early 70s was an Indian, Miranda name, coffee goer and rented a part of your home, a huge apartment in Street Victoria Beach, nearby, where the poet and the woman would live. “The negotiations were so complicated that the Miranda asked, ‘O Herbert, you do not want to kill me, do you?’. . And never gave him the key to the mail to be able to intercept possible letters of conspiratorial content “
Spartan spending, frugal in food, sedentary habits, had only a compulsive addiction: buy books. “Very frequented the French Library and followed everything that was published.” Traveled almost nothing in recent decades and Madeira was once, at the insistence of Herminio Monteiro. “It was a day and returned the other,” says Veiga Ferreira.
The available biographical reviews give you sometimes Romanesque details, especially between 1958 and 1960, years that have lived in Belgium, France and the Netherlands having allegedly been vegetable cutter, workers in the cooling ingots, packer scrap of paper and most extravagant of all, in Antwerp, sailors guide to the brothels. “I do not know if many of these jobs will not be invented,” said Carlos Ferreira da Veiga.
Perfectly established is born in Funchal on November 23, 1930 and attended the 1st year of law in Coimbra, having changed between 1949 and 1952 for Romance Philology. Both in Portugal and abroad had several jobs – many were never professions. In Angola worked in news magazine and report suffered a major accident traffic accident which left him between life and death. In Portugal, the news editor of the National Radio, worked at RTP. Was editorial director of Print, where, according to Carlos da Veiga Ferreira, directed the Book B collection (some booklets today of worship, small, black cloak, austere, without illustrations), where fantasy literature titles were published, including Edgar Allan Poe Oscar Wilde, Ambrose Bierce.
Veiga Ferreira recalls that the poet also worked in the studio of the renowned architect Conceição e Silva, accepting print a poem of his on the wall of a record store in Cascais, the Valentine’s oak, “which earned him the then large sum of 30 tales [equivalent to 150 euros].”
Over the past four years has lost the habit of cafes, hardly left the house and the books were you delivered at home, in Cascais, where he lived and where he died on Monday 23 March, aged 84, of causes that were not disclosed. After the Espresso, the last resting place off the Galician Tasca, in Escadinhas the Duke, leading the Largo da Misericordia Rossio. “I left to see it. Left to leave home. We spoke only on the phone, “says Carlos da Veiga Ferreira, who considers” to great scandal of many people, as the greatest poet of the twentieth century, even with the person “.
The poet and professor Nuno Judice recalls having lived with Helder in the 70s, at Café Monte Carlo: “He has an established figure, I much younger. I and a group of students were accepted into the group because Herbert was very curious in our anti-regime activities, though not militant of any movement. Had an anarchic relation to politics. “
In 1972, with the publication of The Poem Notion, Júdice is replaced by poet status, belonging both to the direction of the Portuguese Writers Association, of which José Gomes Ferreira was president. Herbert was still a “tutelary figure” to the younger generations, both for its “imposing figure, with a beard and a voice that was necessary” as its literary production. Steps in Volta (1964), considers Júdice, “was the book which he left the transformation of literature. It was a completely unprejudiced book, made with immense freedom. “
In recent years, Judice says the poet won a mythical dimension, by refusing premiums and cultural role. And, “as Rimbaud, who fled to Ethiopia”, also having insulated to “live solely for writing”. Completed his work, “it was only without master, who did not come from a school”, also leaves no disciples, in the opinion of Júdice. “I can not say that it is ‘the greatest poet’, because the twentieth century Portuguese is full of big names. But Herbert Helder has a distinct status and is not copyable. His world is very complex, with a metaphorical hand that is not easy to imitate. And the poetry that now arises is very shallow in this regard. “
The author of a doctoral thesis on the poet defended in 1979 at the University of Sao Paulo and would be published in 1986 in the Portuguese National Press / House Currency titled Alchemy Language: Study of Cosmology of Herbert Helder Poetics, Brazilian Maria Lucia Dal Farra considers: “The work of Herbert is, for me, what’s more unique, devastating and giddy in Portuguese literature after Person. After Herbert, poetry is something else: no one goes unscathed by it. It is both a work so lovely as slippery, a ceaseless stream poetic because it never ceases to happen and to renew itself and to transmute every reading. The best word for it is hypnotic. The amazing thing is that she does not wear out, fueled by a very own internal fuel pure genius and talent. It is striking how a tractor mat and at the same time delicate, captivating and as startling as a field of lavenders and silent desert. “
While in Brazil Herbert’s work is, according to Dal Farra, well known and admired for a long time, only in 2000 was there published the first book of the author:. the anthology The Body The Luxury The Work, in which Dal Farra signed the postscript
The publication came about thanks to a contact Brazilian journalist Jorge Henrique Bastos, who lived in Portugal for 16 years and suggested to the publisher Illuminations project to do an anthology of Portuguese poet. “Although it was known, no publisher or even the so-called ‘Lusitanists’ Brazilians had dared to publish,” says Jorge Henrique Bastos in response to an email SUN. At the time, the Brazilian journalist still lived in Lisbon and made the bridge. “The Herbert gave me the freedom to choose the poems, and the final selection had endorsed him,” says Jorge Henrique Bastos. The book would have two editions of two thousand copies and obtained an “extraordinary reception,” according to its coordinator: “All supplements gave wide coverage. I remember the Folha de São Paulo, State of São Paulo, CULT, Bravo made whimsical issues highlighting the launch. The most beautiful tribute was made in the Globe, gave cover of Prose & amp supplement; Verse. “
While the tributes that did not need the poet’s collaboration were possible, those requiring their agreement ended vetoed. Even in Brazil. Dal Farra recalls that she and the director of the Journal Camonina the University of São Paulo, Maria Helena Cunha, tried to create a new magazine in Portuguese poetry section. The name would be ‘Camões From the Herbert Helder’. “But we could not do it without asking your permission,” says Dal Farra. “He answered quickly and very mad at me for daring to put him to Camões high – and dismissed the idea, asking me to stop nonsense and forget about it. So I did not contradict him. ”
telma.miguel@sol.pt
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