Alexandre O'Neill

Alexandre Manuel Vahia de Castro O'Neill de Bulhões, GOSE (19 December 1924, in Lisbon – 21 August 1986, in Lisbon) was a Portuguese writer and poet of Irish descent.

He was born at 39 Fontes Pereira de Melo Avenue the son of José António Pereira de Eça O'Neill (Lisbon, c. 1890 – ?), a bank worker, and wife Maria da Glória Vahia de Barros de Castro (17 March 1905 – aft. October 1989), and paternal grandson of writer, poet, conferencewoman and journalist Maria O'Neill.

He had an older sister, Maria Amélia Vahia de Castro O'Neill de Bulhões, who became a Nun.

He was a self-taught person and worked as a publicitary.

Surrealist and concretist poet and writer, and a publicist, who collaborated in many periodicals.

In 1948, O'Neill was among the founders of the Lisbon Surrealist Movement, along with Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos, José-Augusto França and others. His writings soon diverged from Surrealist to form an original style whose poetry reflects a love/hate relationship with his country.

His salient characteristics – a disrespect of conventions, both social and literary, an attitude of permanent revolt, playfulness with language, and the use of parody and black humor – are used to form a body of incisive depictions of what is to be Portuguese and his relation with the country.

Although most of his works have been lost or are missing or in private collections some of his work was displayed in 2002 at an exhibit on the Surrealist movement.

O'Neill was in permanent conflict with Portugal. While other contemporaries wrote poems that protested against national life under Salazar, O'Neill's attack ran deeper. Poems such as Standing at Fearful Attention and Portugal suggested that the dictatorial regime was a symptom (the worst symptom) of graver ills – lack of courage and smallness of vision – woven into the nation's psyche. Other poems, such as Lament of the Man Who Misses Being Blind, seemed to hold religion and mysticism responsible for an obscurantism that made change difficult if not impossible.

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