Roll Over Beethoven

To promote the arrival of The Beatles, I Tunes is posting a video of their first live show in America (1964, Washington D.C.) No wonder the teenagers were hysterical, crying and screaming at the top of their heads: The Beatles were hot and rock was the wave of the future. Watching this film, 45 years later, one still feels the energy rush, the blood flowing to the head, a feeling of happiness, a great positive discharge of adolescent agression.

Keith Richard's Life (on drugs)

Keith Richard's memoirs are highly entertaining. One thing is clear: apart from music, there is nothing he likes better than drugs. His consumption is staggering: the carefully controlled doses of smack are mixed with gargantuan cocaine sniffs (the purest stuff, he emphasizes), a huge variety of pills (Tuinals, etc...) liberal doses of Jack Daniels, the whole taking place in a huge cloud of hash and spiff, not counting of course the cigarettes always dangling from his mouth and the occasional acid trip. How is this man alive? The music kept him going, the huge high of being on stage and playing these deeply satisfying, addictive, riffs which he describes in loving detail. The music: "what you are looking for is where the sounds just melt into one another and you've got that beat behind it, and the rest of it just has to squirm and roll its way through. What you are looking for is power and force - without volume". (Above, the Stones in their prime, blasting their way through Bitch in Australia:) For him "the chicks" come fourth or fifth. Had she not been intent on outdoing Keith on drug taking and outrageous behaviour, he would still be married to Anita Pallenberg, that "tough bitch". The book reads as if Richards just decided to let go and tell his life in a fit of absentmindness, which he now probably (but secretly) regrets.

A Religiosa Portuguesa

"A Religiosa Portuguesa", with its postcard perfect photography of Lisbon, its tongue in cheek hieratic dialogues, its strange mix of allusions to portuguese mythology, its superb performances of fado by Camané and Aldina Duarte, is cool, entrancing, almost moving at times. It sometimes feels like a Manuel de Oliveira movie made good, a kind of savant reinterpretation of the slow ponderous style of portuguese art cinema, enlivened by dry wit, songs, mystery and just the right amount of storytelling. Eugene Green makes it come aaaliiiive, like that, in slow motion.

Stunning

Browsing through a back issue of Vogue at the doctor, I stumbled upon an article about British photographer Sam Taylor-Wood: her John Lennon biopic "Nowhere Boy" is about to be released in Spain; she is married to the actor who plays Lennon, 23 years her junior; they just had a child, her third; she has survived two cancers, including a full mastectomy. I felt an immediate electric kinship and could not wait until I checked her out on the internet. So there she is, on these stunning series of photographs, the Bram Stocker Chair series. Stunning.

Why is Literature Important?

"Time that is intolerant

Of the brave and the innocent,

And indifferent in a week

To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives

Everyone by whom it lives;

Pardons cowardice, conceit

Lays its honours at their feet."

W.H.Auden

"In Memory of W.B. Yeats (d. Jan 1939)

Mario Vargas Llosa

For once, everyone agrees. Vargas Llosa's Nobel prize is richly deserved. He is supremely accomplished as a novelist, literary critic and journalist. He is respected, well liked, generous to a fault to his fellow writers. His politics may not be to everyone's liking, but at least he stays clear of compromising friendships with the likes of Fidel Castro. He is is every sense a cosmopolitan writer. Strictly wedded to the realist novel, as practiced by the great XIXth century masters - Tolstoy, Balzac, Flaubert, whom he worships - he is equally at home in Peru, in Paris or in the Congo, the scene of his latest novel, due in November. He writes a beautiful, limpid, compelling spanish. Once one starts reading, the precision and the musicality of his style, as well as his impeccable storytelling technique rarely fail to carry one through to the end. A literary genius? Perhaps not. But certainly a great writer and a highly respectable man.

Israeli novelists

On the strength of "The Liberated Bride", superbly translated into english, I would guess A. B. Yehoshua may be the best Israeli novelist on the market. Yes, better than Amos Oz - notwithstanding his wonderful memoir, "Tales of Love and Darkness" - not to mention David Grossman - whom I do not really know - or Aharon Appelfeld - who seems to write more about Europe than Israel. The hero of the book, Rivlin, is a fumbling orientalist deeply in love with his wife, a district court judge in Haifa. I do not recall a funnier, more perceptive account of a happy marriage as Yehoshua provides in this book. His dialogue is masterful, with a magnificent ability to convey subtle changes of mood and tone. Rivlin, the professor, is obsessed with piercing the secret of his son's divorce. This search drives the plot, but the book is really about relations between arabs and jews, love and marriage, life in the Holy Land circa 1999 and slight episodes of a humdrum middle class life which Yehoshua manages to capture through small details and to describe with a light touch and a great comical gift. Episode by episode, he manages to hold the reader's attention to a story which seems to be nothing at all. I wonder what an arab reader would make of his take on the arabs - mostly Israeli arabs, fluent in Hebrew. Would they find it patronizing or, on the contrary, humane?

The status of contemporary art

The buzz generated by contemporary art in the first decade of the XXIst century sometimes reminds me of the excitement generated by pop music in the 1960's. Something new is in the air — some new cultural trend, some new mass phenomenom of which everybody wants to be part of. Maybe what has happened is that there has been a profound change in the status of contemporary art: no longer an elitist pursuit, it has become part of popular culture. Just as happened with "classical" music, the cannon desintegrated — in the case of art, this desintegration meant the end of the idea of a "vanguard". In its place appeared a bewildering eclecticism, in which it is difficult, maybe even impossible, to distinguish"high" and "low" forms of art. Even though artistic schools produce every year an ever greater quantity of artists, it is no longer necessary to master every detail of the craft to qualify as an artist. You can be a visual artist without knowing how to draw, just as you can play lead guitar in a rock n' roll band without knowing how to read music.

Pietro Citati

Pietro Citati is a reader. He reads for us, voratiously, lovingly, attentively, and then recreates, in romantic and fluid prose, the great literary masterpieces of the western tradition, and the minor half forgotten pieces, the lives and temperament of their heroic authors, the cultural atmosphere in which they worked, their manias, obsessions and visions. He guides us through this labyrinth of words, through this mountain of pages, through this perpetually expanding literary universe and its innumerable bright stars: Daniel Defoe, Goethe, Jane Austen, Thomas De Quincey, Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Manzoni, Dickens, Dostoievsky, Poe, Stevenson, Henry James, Proust, Kafka, Fitzgerald... As we read on, we renew old loves, we reacquaint ourselves with friends we hadn't heard of in years and we discover infinite new reading possibilities. These are all the more alluring as most will never be more than that...

Antonio Pedro Vasconcelos

What little is known abroad about the cinema made in Portugal can be reduced to two names: Manuel de Oliveira, who nowadays seems to be celebrated more for the fact that he is 100 years old than for the films he is still making, and Pedro Costa, the new star of art cinema incensed by French critics. Maybe a little place should also be allotted to António Pedro Vasconcelos and his deliberately "commercial" cinema - filmmaking which is well crafted, fast paced, has good scripts and good actors, actually tells a story and even manages to be funny! If only for the sheer audacity of making a portuguese Hollywood style romantic comedy, and actually pulling it off in a very respectable manner ("A Bela e o Paparazzo", his latest movie) António Pedro Vasconcelos would deserve our gratitude. But that's not all: amazingly, his previous films, which always dealt with contemporary themes, actually stand the test of time. So when your hear about "Portuguese cinema" please bear in mind that this is not exactly the same as the cinema made in Portugal.

The joy of music

"The Making of West Side Story", which I picked up as a bargain offer at FNAC Lisbon, is a joyous and moving film of Bernstein's operatic recording of his great musical. Now I am caught: everyday I wake up singing those tunes in my head: "I feel pretty, oh so pretty...."; or "Maria.... Maria, Maria, Maria". Is West Side Story the great opera of the second half of the twentieth century? After all, when it was invented, opera was a popular genre. The day after Rigoletto's opening, people were whistling "La Donne e mobile" in the street. Here, as Bernstein himself remarks, everything still sounds fresh and bubbling. These tunes, sang with great gusto by Tatyana Troyanos, transformed into classical arias by Jose Carreras, or seamlessly delivered by Kiri te Kanawa, will remain with us forever.

Seu d'Urgell

Up in the Pyrenees, in a lush valley with the Segre flowing down from the high mountains, lays La Seu d'Urgell, a bishopric since the VIth century, with a magnificent romanesque cathedral dating from the XIIth century, solid, sober and imposing, the fourth to be built on the site. There, protected by these mountains, in these deep valleys, Christendom resisted the Arab onslaught. A string of romanesque churches, nestled in the mountain slopes, testify to the presence of these christian communities, who once belonged to the Carolingian empire. This is where modern Catalonia was born, close to France, far from Spain.

Enrique Vila Matas and Ian McEwan

Enrique Vila Matas and Ian McEwan's latest books – "Dublinesca" and "Solar" – are a joy to read. Both are stream of consciousness novels about men reaching 60. Vila Matas impersonates a retired editor from Barcelona, Samuel Ribas, who goes to Dublin to fulfill a literary fantasy, whereas Ian McEwan slides into the skin of Michael Beard, a womanizing London physicist who glides along on the strength of a Nobel prize won many years ago. Both books are suffused by a light dark humor – the kind that makes a smile hover permanently on your lips as you read – as they depict the disabused cogitations and fantasies of successful males as they watch their powers wane. Ian McEwan is a classic novelist - he tells a straight story with unmatchable fluency in an impeccable style– whereas Vila Matas is perhaps more modern, allowing himself to meander in a forest of literary allusions. In their different ways, however, both Vila Matas and McEwan are able to do something which is always deeply alluring in a novel: enter the mind of characters who are alive now, who think present day thoughts, play with present time toys, and carry on in the cities in which we live in.

Just kids

Patti Smith has just published a touching memoir about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe when - just kids - they were both struggling artists trying to make it in New York City. We are talking 1967 to 1975, the year when Patti Smith recorded her landmark album Horses and Mapplethorpe had his first exhibition at a serious art gallery. Patti Smith recreates their love story, their total commitment to Art, their fumbling beginnings, their bohemian life style, what the Chelsea hotel was like, the spirit of those years, how they slowly broke through , her encounters with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the circles around Andy Warhol, and how they found their respective ways, she as a poet and a rock'n roll star, he as a great photographer. I, who arrived in Manhattan in 1977, remember well her amazing concerts at CBGB's. She was a goddess of rock n' roll. We love you Patti!, we used to scream from the audience. It's still true.

The prestige of antiquity

For someone born in the XXth century, it is difficult to understand the immense prestige and influence of the antique world until the XIXth century. Only then, and only to a certain extent, did Europe achieve a level of sophistication and urbanization comparable to the Roman world. In its heyday, Rome had at least one million inhabitants. London, then the biggest city in the world, only achieved this population in the early 1800's. Latin and to a lesser extent Greek were the mainstays of a proper education: the classics were, by definition, the writers of antiquity. A visit to the ruins of Pompey, a provincial backwater home to only about 20 000 people when it was hit by the eruption of the Vesuvius in 72 AD makes this clear. The wealth of paintings, mosaics, and sculptures unearthed in that city, now preserved at the Naples archeological museum, makes one wonder about the incredible splendor which made Rome, for so many centuries, the capital of the world.

Naples

One gets the feeling that the people of Naples have been there forever. These teeming masses, which fill the space between the bay and the slopes of the Vesuvius, seem to be the direct descendants of the Roman "populus". They own the place and they live as they see fit - as they have always lived, with as few rules as possible. They have seen it all: Tiberius, Belisarius, the Ostrogoths, the Spanish, the French, the Habsburg, the Bourbons, Mussolini, the Americans sitting in their military base, Berlusconi. All these rulers come and go. They stay and go on in their immemorial ways. The family; the clan; the mafia. That's real. Those who don't like it leave: to the north, to America, to Argentina. Most stay. Not many newcomers arrive. Perhaps now, from Africa.

Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham's show at MACBA was a revelation. This canadian artist seems to embody, all by himself, the bewildering eclecticism of contemporary art. There is no style to speak of, just a collection of separate pieces in all genres - painting, video, installation, photography - and yet there seems to be a hidden coherence in his work. His pieces have an uncanny precision and force. Some highlights: the white shirt in hommage to Mallarmé, the two outstanding videos of the chandelier an the typing machine submerged by snow, the light boxes. Strange, haunting images, which resonate with references to the contemporary confusion laden with visual and cultural memories.

Fundació Tapiès

Fundació Tapiès has just reopened in Barcelona with a wonderful show of paintings by the great catalan artist and an amazing selection of his personal collection of books, drawings, ethnic sculpture and art. At 86, Tapiès is still going strong. His work shows no signs of aging. The paintings now on display were created in the last twenty years. Within the narrow confines of his style, they remain inventive, with a wonderful dexterity in the treatment of matter and a strong sensuous and spiritual appeal. Many of the paintings now exhibited approach the human body with tremendous evocative appeal. This seems to be a new departure for Tapiès. Like all great artists, he has created a style which makes us look at the world anew.

The great failed masterpiece

At the third attempt, I am finally making headway with "The Man Without Qualities", the much cited, seldom read, great novelistic project by Robert Musil. There are many flashes of brilliance, and the prose, at its best, has a hard edged dryness and elegance, but there are also many dull patches, full of philosophical digressions and a kind of all pervasive irony, which often feels heavy handed and obscure. It may possibly work in german but it is definitely lost in translation. "The Man Without Qualities" was written in the twenties and thirties when the novel, as a literary genre, was at its most ambitious. Musil seemingly wanted to fully capture a time - the Austria-Hungarian monarchy in 1913 - and its ethos, precariously perched between science and soul, and full of foreboding of the explosion to come . The action advances slowly, going nowhere. The characters think a lot but seldom act. Was this the situation of the empire, in a kind of stasis perpetuated by the figure of Francis Joseph, one of the longest serving rulers in the history of Europe? Still, you keep going: not entranced but intrigued by the mounting tension, afraid of missing out on something important.

Paris II

Paris I

Valencia

Milan

Sorolla

In Valencia, I finally managed to see the exhibition of Joaquin Sorolla, "Visions of Spain", the huge paintings depicting the various Spanish regions which he created for the Hispanic Society in New York circa 1911. This exhibition toured Spain the whole of last year, drawing huge enthusiastic crowds. It is easy to understand why. Sorolla was a virtuoso and he depicted Spain, in a blaze of color and sunlight, in a kind of late impressionist dash pompier style far removed from the modernist trends already current in Paris. Even then, he was a hugely popular painter, who accumulated a vast fortune. He may not have secured for himself a proeminent place in art history, but his paintings, always verging on - if not downright splashing in - kitsch can, nevertheless, be hugely attractive and enjoyable. What an amazing capacity he had to capture light and water - see his amazing painting on tuna fishing - and to draw characters with simple, fluid brushstrokes! As a painter friend of mine said, how is it possible to be so good and so bad at the same time!

Herberto Helder

Last but not least, Herberto Helder, probably the greatest portuguese poet after Pessoa in the twentieth century. Herberto Helder comes from the surrealist tradition but his voice is entirely original; his language is hallucinatory, of a convulsive, incantatory and obscure beauty. He is the prototype of the inspired poet, in touch with the Gods. He is also the author of an outstanding collection of short stories of an autobiographical nature, about the time he spent in Brussels in exile, called Os Passos em Volta. He had an enormous influence in the most recent generation of Portuguese poets. These are the first verses of a long erotic poem from his first collection of poetry, "O Amor em Visita", published in 1958

O AMOR EM VISITA

Dai-me uma jovem mulher com sua harpa de sombra

e seu arbusto de sangue. Com ela

encantarei a noite.

Dai-me uma folha viva de erva, uma mulher.

Seus ombros beijarei, a pedra pequena

do sorriso de um momento.

Mulher quase incriada, mas com a gravidade

de dois seios, com o peso lúbrico e triste

da boca. Seus ombros beijarei.

Cantar? Longamente cantar.

Uma mulher com quem beber e morrer.

Quando fora se abrir o instinto da noite e uma ave

o atravessar trespassada por um grito marítimo

e o pão for invadido pelas ondas -

seu corpo arderá mansamente sob os meus olhos palpitantes:

Ele - imagem vertiginosa e alta de um certo pensamento

de alegria e de impudor.

Seu corpo arderá para mim

sobre um lençol mordido por flores com água.

Em cada mulher existe uma morte silenciosa.

E enquanto o dorso imagina, sob os dedos,

os bordões da melodia,

a morte sobe pelos dedos, navega o sangue,

desfaz-se em embriaguez dentro do coração faminto.

- Oh cabra no vento e na urze, mulher nua sob

as mãos, mulher de ventre escarlate onde o sal põe o espírito,

mulher de pés no branco, transportadora da morte e da alegria.

Dai-me uma mulher tão nova como a resina

e o cheiro da terra:

Com uma flecha em meu flanco, cantarei.

E enquanto manar de minha carne uma videira de sangue,

cantarei seu sorriso ardendo,

suas mamas de pura substância,

a curva quente dos cabelos.

Beberei sua boca, para depois cantar a morte

e a alegria da morte.

Dai-me um torso dobrado pela música, um ligeiro

pescoço de planta,

onde uma chama comece a florir o espírito.

À tona da sua face se moverão as águas,

dentro da sua face estará a pedra da noite.

-Então cantarei a exaltante alegria da morte

(.....)

(O Amor em Visita, 1958)

Alexandre O'Neil

He was a caustic voice. He wrote a handful of poems which became instant classics, anthems for his generation. He had a gift for catchy formulas, which he put to good use in advertising, his trade. His 1965 take on Portugal, "questão que eu tenho comigo mesmo", offers a nice contrast with Sophia's.

PORTUGAL

Ó Portugal, se fosses só três sílabas,

linda vista para o mar,

Minho verde, Algarve de cal,

jerico rapando o espinhaço da terra,

surdo e miudinho,

moinho a braços com um vento

testarudo, mas embolado e, afinal, amigo,

se fosses só o sal, o sol, o sul

o ladino pardal,

o manso boi coloquial,

a rechinante sardinha,

a desancada varina,

o plumitivo ladrilhado de lindos adjectivos,

a muda queixa amendoada

duns olhos pestanítidos,

se fosses só a cegarrega do estio, dos estilos,

o ferrugento cão asmático das praias,

o grilo engaiolado, a grila no lábio,

o calendário na parede, o emblema na lapela,

ó Portugal, se fosses só três sílabas

de plástico, que era mais barato!

*

Doceiras de Amarante, barristas de Barcelos,

rendeiras de Viana, toureiros da Golegã,

não há "papo-de-anjo" que seja o meu derriço,

galo que cante a cores na minha prateleira,

alvura arrendada para o meu devaneio,

bandarilha que possa enfeitar-me o cachaço.

Portugal: questão que eu tenho comigo mesmo,

golpe até ao osso, fome sem entretém,

perdigueiro marrado e sem narizes, sem perdizes,

rocim engraxado,

feira cabisbaixa,

meu remorso,

meu remorso de todos nós...

(Feira Cabisbaixa, 1965)

Jorge de Sena

Poet, essayist, author of one the best novels published in Portugal in the twentieth century (Sinais de Fogo), Jorge de Sena lived most of his life in self-imposed exile, in the University of Santa Barbara in Southern California. His poetry is intellectual, sometimes difficult and demanding. His voice is at times harsh, resentful. He was very aware of his greatness and often thought others, specially in Portugal, not sufficiently so. This is one of his better known poems, "Carta a Meus Filhos sobre os Fuzilamentos de Goya", written in Lisbon in June 1959.

CARTA A MEUS FILHOS SOBRE OS FUZILAMENTOS DE GOYA

Não sei, meus filhos, que mundo será o vosso.

É possível, porque tudo é possível, que ele seja

aquele que eu desejo para vós. Um simples mundo,

onde tudo tenha apenas a dificuldade que advém

de nada haver que não seja simples e natural.

Um mundo em que tudo seja permitido,

conforme o vosso gosto, o vosso anseio, o vosso prazer,

o vosso respeito pelos outros, o respeito dos outros por vós.

E é possível que não seja isto, nem sequer seja isto

o que vos interesse para viver. Tudo é possível,

ainda quando lutemos, como devemos lutar,

por quanto nos pareça a liberdade e a justiça,

ou mais que qualquer delas uma fiel

dedicação à honra de estar vivo.

Um dia sabereis que mais que a humanidade

não tem conta o número dos que pensaram assim,

amaram o seu semelhante no que ele tinha de único,

de insólito, de livre, de diferente,

e foram sacrificados, torturados, espancados,

e entregues hipocritamente à secular justiça,

para que os liquidasse "com suma piedade e sem efusão de sangue."

Por serem fiéis a um deus, a um pensamento,

a uma pátria, uma esperança, ou muito apenas

à fome irrespondível que lhe roía as entranhas,

foram estripados, esfolados, queimados, gaseados,

e os seus corpos amontoados tão anonimamente quanto haviam vivido,

ou suas cinzas dispersas para que delas não restasse memória.

Às vezes, por serem de uma raça, outras

por serem de uma classe, expiaram todos

os erros que não tinham cometido ou não tinham consciência

de haver cometido. Mas também aconteceu

e acontece que não foram mortos:

Houve sempre infinitas maneiras de prevalecer,

aniquilando mansamente, delicadamente,

por ínvios caminhos quais se diz que são ínvios os de Deus.

Estes fuzilamentos, este heroísmo, este horror,

foi uma coisa, entre mil, acontecida em Espanha

há mais de um século e que por violenta e injusta

ofendeu o coração de um pintor chamado Goya,

que tinha um coração muito grande, cheio de fúria

e de amor. Mas isto nada é, meus filhos.

Apenas um episódio, um episódio breve,

nesta cadeia de que sois um elo (ou não sereis)

de ferro e de suor e sangue e algum sémen

a caminho do mundo que vos sonho.

Acreditai que nenhum mundo, que nada nem ninguém

vale mais que uma alegria ou a alegria de tê-la.

É isto que mais importa - essa alegria.

Acreditai que a dignidade em que hão de falar-vos tanto

não é senão essa alegria que vem

de estar-se vivo e sabendo que nenhuma vez

alguém está menos vivo ou sofre ou morre

para que um só de vós resista um pouco mais

à morte que é de todos e virá.

Que tudo isto sabereis serenamente,

sem culpas a ninguém, sem terror, sem ambição,

e sobretudo sem desapego ou indiferença,

ardentemente espero. Tanto sangue,

tanta dor, tanta angústia, um dia

- mesmo que o tédio de um mundo feliz vos persiga -

não hão de ser em vão. Confesso que

muitas vezes, pensando no horror de tantos séculos

de opressão e crueldade, hesito por momentos

e uma amargura me submerge inconsolável.

Serão ou não em vão? Mas, mesmo que não o sejam,

quem ressuscita esses milhões, quem restitui

não só a vida, mas tudo o que lhes foi tirado?

Nenhum Juízo Final, meus filhos, pode dar-lhes

aquele instante que não viveram, aquele objecto

que não fruíram, aquele gesto

de amor, que fariam "amanhã".

E, por isso, o mesmo mundo que criemos

nos cumpre tê-lo com cuidado, como coisa

que não é nossa, que nos é cedida

para a guardarmos respeitosamente

em memória do sangue que nos corre nas veias,

da nossa carne que foi outra, do amor que

outros não amaram porque lho roubaram.

(Metamorfoses, 1963)

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

Sophia de Mello Breyner had a limpid, economical, precise and musical style, in which every word shines and weighs and none is out of place. She was in many ways a classical poet. She captured the light - of her beloved Greece but also the different more intense Atlantic light of Portugal - and the shadow; she was in touch with the elements; and she had a strong moral voice, which she used effectively in opposition to Salazar's dictatorship. This is "Pátria", her take on Portugal in 1962:

PÁTRIA

Por um país de pedra e vento duro

Por um país de luz perfeita e clara

Pelo negro da terra e pelo branco do muro

Pelos rostos de silêncio e de paciência

Que a miséria longamente desenhou

Rente aos ossos com toda a exactidão

Dum longo relatório irrecusável

E pelos rostos iguais ao sol e ao vento

E pela limpidez das tão amadas

Palavras sempre ditas com paixão

Pela cor e pelo peso das palavras

Pelo concreto silêncio limpo das palavras

Donde se erguem as coisas nomeadas

Pela nudez das palavras deslumbradas

- Pedra rio vento casa

Pranto dia canto alento

Espaço raiz e água

Ó minha pátria e meu centro

Me dói a lua me soluça o mar

E o exílio se inscreve em pleno tempo

(Livro Sexto, 1962)

Siglo de Oro

The Spaniards invented the concept of the "Siglo de Oro" to designate their most glorious cultural period (which in fact runs over almost two centuries, the sixteenth and most of the seventeenth) whose greatest figures were writers like Cervantes or Lope de Vega, poets like Quevedo, Gongora or San Juan de la Cruz and painters like Velazquez or Murillo. In Portugal, we are now also inventing our own "Século de Ouro", in this case the twentieth century when several generations of poets raised the level of Portuguese literature to a very great height. Everybody knows Fernando Pessoa, the greatest portuguese poet of the century and, with Luis de Camões, one of the greatest ever; but by no means was he the only extraordinary poet to appear in Portugal: Jorge de Sena, Sophia de Mello Breyner, Alexandre O'Neill, the incomparable Herberto Helder, to name just a few of my favorites (and there are many others) will surely have their place in the literary canon of the century. Examples to follow in the next posts.