Vitorino Nemesio and the Azores

Equating Vitorino Nem sio to "Azoreanity," Universality, Iridescence, Confluence, and Eroticism, draws inspiration from the content of the essays herein included and will not surprise anyone familiar with Nem sio's non-posthumous works, with the possible exception of the very last of the lexemes, "eroticism." Nem sio's oeuvre, starting with the collections of short stories Pa o do Milhafre (1924) and Mist rio do Pa o 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 Cors rio 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 Nem sio'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.