Marcelo remembers Fernando Guimarães: "Seriousness of intellectual work"

In a note published on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa "presents his condolences to the family, recalling the seriousness of his intellectual work and his generous affability."

Fernando Guimarães died on Friday, publisher Afrontamento announced on its Facebook page.

Born on February 3, 1928, Fernando de Oliveira Guimarães graduated in Historical-Philosophical Sciences from the University of Coimbra, having been a secondary school teacher and researcher at the Center for Studies of Portuguese Thought at the Catholic University.

He published his first book of poetry in 1956 and, since then, has built a literary body of work that has established him as one of the greatest Portuguese poets of recent generations, highlights the publisher, which has been publishing his work for decades.

"Fernando Guimarães was the dean of Portuguese poets", highlighted Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and "he always maintained a strong reflective dimension, which ranged from the 'poem about the poem' to meditations, in the Romantic style, based on objects or historical figures".

Guimarães published dozens of essays on literary theory and criticism, in which he addresses the evolution of Portuguese poetry from the late 18th century to the present day.

As a translator, he translated works by Byron, Shelley, Keats, Dylan Thomas, and DH Lawrence, among other great poets and renowned writers, into Portuguese.

"And for both activities he received the main Portuguese literary awards", highlighted Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa.

Throughout his life, Fernando Guimarães was distinguished with several literary awards, both for specific works and for his translations and also for his work as a whole, namely from the Portuguese Writers' Association, the International Association of Literary Critics, the PEN Club, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Casa de Mateus Foundation, the Luís Miguel Nava Foundation, the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra and the University of Évora.

Throughout his life, he collaborated with several newspapers and magazines, such as O Comércio do Porto, Árvore, Estrada Larga, Eros (which he co-directed between 1951 and 1958), Bandarra, Colóquio-Letras, Persona, Sema and Jornal de Letras.

On June 9, 1995, he was appointed Commander of the Military Order of Sant'Iago da Espada, and this year, in April, he received the Vítor Aguiar e Silva Literary Life Award, a distinction established by the Portuguese Writers' Association with the support of the Municipality of Braga, "for the rigor and coherence of his essayistic reflection and poetic work".

Among his main published works of poetry and literary essays are titles such as 'The Weak Ring' (1992); 'A Tribute to Guilherme de Castilho' (1994, with Isabel Pires de Lima); 'Limits for a Tree' (2000); 'The Inhabited Paths' (2013); 'The Earth Is Light' (2017); 'Next to the Stone' (2019); 'The Other Literary Movements. Encounters and Ruptures from the 19th Century onwards' (2020); 'Poetics of Modernism. Between Modernity and Post-Modernity' (2023); 'From the Same Sources' (2023); 'About the Voice (2024)', among others.

Read Also: Poet and essayist Fernando Guimarães dies at 97