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Carta ao Jovem Poeta
«Este pequeno volume, Carta ao Jovem Poeta, de Jorge de Sena (Lisboa, 1919-Santa Bárbara, Califórnia, EUA, 1978), acolhe nas suas páginas uma soma de textos onde a inquiridora e especulativa meditação sobre a própria criação poética e a contingência do lugar pelo poeta ocupado na sociedade (sempre dela «um exilado», no mais lato sentido da palavra) são a sua pedra-de-toque - unívoca, irradiante. [...]
"Carta ao jovem poeta" - texto que abre e dá título a este livro - é, pela sua clarividência especulativa, limpidez encantatória e sage da linguagem, inteligência sensível e fulgurante (características de toda a obra ensaística de Jorge de Sena), um texto ímpar e uma jóia muito rara no panorama da literatura portuguesa.» [Introdução, de Zetho Cunha Gonçalves]
"Carta ao jovem poeta" - texto que abre e dá título a este livro - é, pela sua clarividência especulativa, limpidez encantatória e sage da linguagem, inteligência sensível e fulgurante (características de toda a obra ensaística de Jorge de Sena), um texto ímpar e uma jóia muito rara no panorama da literatura portuguesa.» [Introdução, de Zetho Cunha Gonçalves]
124 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2021
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About the author
Jorge de Sena
167 books84 followersJorge de Sena is one of the most important Portuguese poets of the second half of the 20th century, but he was also an outstanding essayist, a fiction writer of indubitable talent, a significant playwright and a tireless translator of the poetry and prose of writers from a variety of languages and periods. His published works extend to more than a hundred titles. It is difficult to understand how a single person could accomplish so much in one lifetime, and not a long one at that, especially if we consider that he worked under the demands of a professional life and raised nine children.
In 1959, fearing that he would be persecuted for his involvement in a failed coup attempt against the dictatorship of Salazar, Sena went into exile in Brazil, and later adopted Brazilian nationality. There he added a doctorate in the humanities to his degree in civil engineering. In 1965 he left Brazil with his large family for the United States, where he remained until his death. There is a Portuguese Studies Center named after him at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he held his last teaching post.
The innovative character and the excellence of his vast body of work are broadly recognized today, but this was not always the case. Sena himself believed that he was under-appreciated in Portugal and, from the vantage of his American exile, he took his revenge in a series of acid attacks against the mediocrity and provincialism of the Portuguese cultural scene. It is no wonder that his poetry provoked a certain resistance. Though he was a ferociously critical poet, he would nevertheless dispense with the primer of social realism, and occasionally display the outer signs of surrealism. However, he was much too cerebral to submit himself to the dictates of the unconscious, or to practice automatic writing. And though he would give voice to personal circumstances, his practice as a poet of witness, both of his own life and the world around him, had nothing in common with the subjectivity and the immersion in psychology so typical of the generation of writers grouped around the influential literary magazine Presença, launched in the city of Coimbra in 1927.
With the appearance in Portugal, at the beginning of the 1960s, of a poetry dedicated to creating a new autonomy for poetic language, one which would favor control, prosodic rigor and metaphoric density, it was natural that certain characteristics of Sena’s poetry, such as his frequent use of registers more typical of prose, were seen as symptoms of weak technique. But it is curious to note that what tended to alienate him from the successive poetic currents of his times is exactly what the young and influential Portuguese poets of today find so attractive in him.
As an essayist, Sena is an important reference, both when it comes to Luís de Camões and to Fernando Pessoa. He also wrote a novella, dozens of short stories and one powerful novel, Signs of Fire, which presents at once a fresco of Portuguese society during the period of the Spanish Civil War and a detailed portrait of the education of a poet. He will also be remembered as the translator of hundreds of poems by a variety of poets, and of the novels and plays of such authors as Molière, Lautréamont, Poe, Chestov, Brecht, Faulkner, Hemingway, Graham Greene, Malraux and Eugene O’Neill, among many others.
Miguel Queirós (Translated by Martin Earl)
In 1959, fearing that he would be persecuted for his involvement in a failed coup attempt against the dictatorship of Salazar, Sena went into exile in Brazil, and later adopted Brazilian nationality. There he added a doctorate in the humanities to his degree in civil engineering. In 1965 he left Brazil with his large family for the United States, where he remained until his death. There is a Portuguese Studies Center named after him at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he held his last teaching post.
The innovative character and the excellence of his vast body of work are broadly recognized today, but this was not always the case. Sena himself believed that he was under-appreciated in Portugal and, from the vantage of his American exile, he took his revenge in a series of acid attacks against the mediocrity and provincialism of the Portuguese cultural scene. It is no wonder that his poetry provoked a certain resistance. Though he was a ferociously critical poet, he would nevertheless dispense with the primer of social realism, and occasionally display the outer signs of surrealism. However, he was much too cerebral to submit himself to the dictates of the unconscious, or to practice automatic writing. And though he would give voice to personal circumstances, his practice as a poet of witness, both of his own life and the world around him, had nothing in common with the subjectivity and the immersion in psychology so typical of the generation of writers grouped around the influential literary magazine Presença, launched in the city of Coimbra in 1927.
With the appearance in Portugal, at the beginning of the 1960s, of a poetry dedicated to creating a new autonomy for poetic language, one which would favor control, prosodic rigor and metaphoric density, it was natural that certain characteristics of Sena’s poetry, such as his frequent use of registers more typical of prose, were seen as symptoms of weak technique. But it is curious to note that what tended to alienate him from the successive poetic currents of his times is exactly what the young and influential Portuguese poets of today find so attractive in him.
As an essayist, Sena is an important reference, both when it comes to Luís de Camões and to Fernando Pessoa. He also wrote a novella, dozens of short stories and one powerful novel, Signs of Fire, which presents at once a fresco of Portuguese society during the period of the Spanish Civil War and a detailed portrait of the education of a poet. He will also be remembered as the translator of hundreds of poems by a variety of poets, and of the novels and plays of such authors as Molière, Lautréamont, Poe, Chestov, Brecht, Faulkner, Hemingway, Graham Greene, Malraux and Eugene O’Neill, among many others.
Miguel Queirós (Translated by Martin Earl)
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 29, 2023
Uma edição, algo estranha, de textos diversos de Jorge de Sena sobre poesia.
A escrita e o saber de Sena são interessantes mas estes textos são algo desiguais.
O volume vale pelo texto "Carta ao jovem poeta" e o "Discurso da Guarda, 10 de Junho de 1978". Este último texto é um culto e instigante texto sobre Luís de Camões.
A escrita e o saber de Sena são interessantes mas estes textos são algo desiguais.
O volume vale pelo texto "Carta ao jovem poeta" e o "Discurso da Guarda, 10 de Junho de 1978". Este último texto é um culto e instigante texto sobre Luís de Camões.
January 30, 2022
Conjunto de ensaios luminoso, dos quais avulta aquele que dá título ao volume. Foi escrito originalmente para figurar numa reunião de cartas a jovens poetas por escritores brasileiros e portugueses, que não chegou a acontecer.
Jorge de Sena afirma o carácter testemunhal e activo da poesia, em palavras desassombradas. Deixo esta citação, especialmente significativa em dia de eleição:
«Antes de mais, neste país há que pôr um basta não só ao fascismo ele mesmo, mas à mania de atribuir tudo ao fascismo, até as ideias. Porque, por esse caminho, ficamos todos sem ideias de que precisamos muito, e os fascistas ou os saudosistas deles acabam convencidos de que tinham ideias, quando ter ideias e ser fascista é uma absoluta impossibilidade intelectual e moral.» P.101
Jorge de Sena afirma o carácter testemunhal e activo da poesia, em palavras desassombradas. Deixo esta citação, especialmente significativa em dia de eleição:
«Antes de mais, neste país há que pôr um basta não só ao fascismo ele mesmo, mas à mania de atribuir tudo ao fascismo, até as ideias. Porque, por esse caminho, ficamos todos sem ideias de que precisamos muito, e os fascistas ou os saudosistas deles acabam convencidos de que tinham ideias, quando ter ideias e ser fascista é uma absoluta impossibilidade intelectual e moral.» P.101
July 17, 2022
Sabe bem ler boa escrita, ainda mais quando o conteúdo é bom!
August 17, 2025
Deliciosamente mordaz.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews