Vitorino Nemésio was a poet, fictionist, essayist, chronicler, and literary critic born in Praia da Vitória, Terceira island, on 19th December 1901. His literary vocation started when he was attending high school, with the verse book “Canto Matinal”.
After doing his military service, he moved to Coimbra, where he finished his high school studies in 1921, and then entered the Law School of the University of Coimbra. In 1924, he transferred to the Degree in History and Philosophical Sciences of the School of Arts and Humanities of the same University and, in 1925, he enrolled in the Degree in Romance Philology. During his stay in Coimbra, in 1926, he married Gabriela Monjardino de Azevedo Gomes, with whom he had his four children.
In 1930, he moved to Lisbon, where he finished his degree in Romance Philology at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon, with high grades, and immediately started teaching at the same university, where he obtained his doctorate in 1934.
In 1937, he founded, the “Revista de Portugal”, a philosophical and literary publication, together with Alberto Serpa. In his academic career, he travelled through Belgium, Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, and France, and he was distinguished as Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universities of Montpellier and Ceará.
His literary production, moving between prose and poetry, expressed contemporary aesthetic languages such as Imagism, Surrealism, or Existentialism, often emanating the nature and the horizon of his native island.
Among his works, “Festa Redonda” (1950), “Nem Toda a Noite a Vida” (1952), “O Pão e a Culpa” (1955), “O Verbo e a Morte” (1959), “O Cavalo Encantado” (1963), “Canto da Véspera” (1966), “Sapateia Açoriana” (1976) stand out, and his novel “Mau Tempo no Canal” (1944), awarded with the Ricardo Malheiros Prize, received a singular acknowledgement. In 1966 he also won the National Literature Prize.
He died on 20th February 1978, in Lisbon, and was buried, by his will, at the Santo António dos Olivais Cemetery, in Coimbra.