Poetry
No Reino da Dinamarca
Not translated into English
Alexandre O'Neill · 1958
Synopsis
Poems in which commonplaces and stock phrases are turned inside out, where sarcasm and wordplay seek to restore health to a sick language. They target the Portugal of the dictatorship, fear, poverty and conformism, sparing not even the poet himself, down to a poem of farewell to the woman he loves, who must not remain caught in the same wheel as he is. The title comes from Hamlet: something is rotten in this kingdom too.
Context
This is its author's second collection of poems, but Jorge de Sena called it almost a debut book: many pieces from the 1951 collection, including the best known, pass into it in modified form, and a few of the texts that will make his reputation are added. It is here that his manner settles. It appeared in 1958, ten years after the surrealist collages of his beginnings, and its title was later used for his collected poetic works, in 1967 and 1974.
Who it is for
A short collection, in Portuguese, with no French translation; the wordplay and the allusions to everyday life in the 1950s resist translation.
Prizes and reception
The book that established him as a poet, and the one most remembered from his work, along with Feira Cabisbaixa.
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