Poetry
As Mãos e os Frutos
Not translated into English
Eugénio de Andrade · 1948
Synopsis
Short love poems in which desire is expressed with restraint through images of nature: hands and fruit, pines and sap, birds, the freshness of mornings, the ardour of summer and the silent nights between sky and earth. The beloved body merges with stones, seasons and light, and a quiet melancholy accompanies what is lost. The collection opens with an epigraph from Shakespeare.
Context
The collection appeared in 1948, when its author was twenty-five, and was praised by Vitorino Nemésio, Jorge de Sena and Eduardo Lourenço. It was his fourth book of verse, but the author disowned the earlier ones, so that it has since opened the list of his works. It was reissued in 1960, then included in the volume Poemas by Portugália from 1966; Sena wrote the preface to the fifth edition. The poet always kept his distance from the schools of his time, neorealism and surrealism included.
Who it is for
A short collection of love poems, which can be read without critical apparatus; no French translation of this volume.
Prizes and reception
The book of his consecration and the most frequently reissued of all his work, with more than twenty editions since 1948.
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