Camilo Pessanha
| Camilo Pessanha | |
|---|---|
Camilo Pessanha
|
|
| Born |
September 7, 1867 Coimbra, Portugal |
| Died | March 1, 1926 (aged 58) Macau |
| Occupation | Public defender, Judge, Teacher, Poet, Writer |
| Genre | poems, essays and translations |
| Literary movement | Symbolist poetry |
| Notable works | Clepsidra |
Camilo Pessanha (September 7, 1867, Coimbra – March 1, 1926, Macau) was a Portuguese symbolist poet.
Camilo de Almeida Pessanha was born the illegitimate son of Francisco António de Almeida Pessanha, an aristocratic law student, and Maria do Espírito Santo Duarte Nunes Pereira, his housekeeper, on September 7, 1867, at 11.00 p.m., in Sé Nova, Coimbra, Portugal. The couple would have four more children.
In 1870, after his father's graduation, the family moved to Azores, where he had been appointed public defender. In 1878 the Pessanha family was living in Lamego where young Camilo completed his basic schooling. In 1884 he finished his secondary studies and, following his father's footsteps, entered law school at the Coimbra University. A year later, he wrote his first poem, Lúbrica (Lascivious). The next several years he would write more poems and publish some of them in local newspapers. From early 1888 up to late 1889 he interrupted his studies, due to his frail health quite affected by depression over a sorrow of love.
In October 1889 he resumed his studies and began a close and lifelong friendship with António Osório de Castro, a fellow student and director of a paper where he published some his poems. Pessanha also became intimate with his friend's sister, Ana de Castro Osório, a would-be writer and pioneer feminist in Portugal. In 1890 he graduated, started working as an attorney and discovered the works of French poet Paul Verlaine, which would deeply influence him.
In August 1893, lured by the Far East mysteries, Pessanha applied for a position as philosophy teacher in the newly established gymnasium of Macau, then a Portuguese colony in distant China. He was appointed on December 18, along with Wenceslau de Moraes, among others. On February 19, 1894 he sailed to Macau where he docked April 10.
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