The renowned Portuguese poet, essayist, and translator Fernando Guimarães has passed away today at the age of 97, as announced by the publisher Afrontamento on its Facebook page.
Born on February 3, 1928, Fernando de Oliveira Guimarães graduated in Historical and Philosophical Sciences from the University of Coimbra. He served as a secondary school teacher and was a researcher at the Center for Portuguese Thought Studies at the Catholic University.
His first book of poetry was published in 1956, and since then, he has established a literary career that recognized him as one of the leading Portuguese poets of recent generations, as highlighted by his publisher, who has been publishing his work for decades.
Guimarães authored numerous essays on literary theory and criticism, addressing the evolution of Portuguese poetry from the late 18th century to the present day.
As a translator, he brought works of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Dylan Thomas, and D.H. Lawrence, among other esteemed poets and writers, into Portuguese.
Throughout his life, he contributed to various newspapers and magazines, including 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.
Fernando Guimarães received several literary awards throughout his career for specific works, translations, and his collected oeuvre, awarded by the Portuguese Writers Association, International Association of Literary Critics, PEN Club, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Casa de Mateus Foundation, Luís Miguel Nava Foundation, Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, and the University of Évora.
On June 9, 1995, he was appointed Commander of the Military Order of Saint James of the Sword, and earlier 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.”
His major works of poetry and literary essays include titles such as ‘O Anel Débil’ (1992); ‘Uma Homenagem a Guilherme de Castilho’ (1994, with Isabel Pires de Lima); ‘Limites para uma Árvore’ (2000); ‘Os Caminhos Habitados’ (2013); ‘A Terra Se É Leve’ (2017); ‘Junto à Pedra’ (2019); ‘Os Outros Movimentos Literários. Encontros e roturas a partir do século XIX’ (2020); ‘Poética do Modernismo. Entre a Modernidade e a Pós-Modernidade’ (2023); ‘Das Mesmas Fontes’ (2023); ‘Sobre a Voz (2024)’, among others.
