Life

Adolfo Correia Rocha was born on August 12, 1907 in S. Martinho de Anta, municipality of Sabrosa, district of Vila Real, between the "warm earth" of schist from the Douro and the "cold earth" of granite from northeastern Trás-os-Montes. The village, humus that feeds his childhood, appears with the name Agarez in the autobiographical novel A Criação do Mundo, in a mythical projection of the native clod.

He grows up in a poor, honorable family, determined to open horizons for him. The father, Francisco Correia Rocha, blond, with blue eyes, is the vital stake. The mother, Maria da Conceição de Barros, almost green eyes, sweet voice, the warmth of the sentimental lap. He completes the fourth grade with distinction. Servant in Porto, one year at the Seminary of Lamego, the certainty that he doesn't want to follow the priesthood. At thirteen he leaves for Brazil to work on his uncle's farm, in Leopoldina (Minas Gerais). He returns five years later, does high school in three years and completes his degree in Medicine at the University of Coimbra, in 1933, with an average of 15 values. He returns to S. Martinho de Anta, and then practices in Vila Nova de Miranda do Corvo, in Leiria and, finally, in Coimbra.

In 1934, he adopts the literary name Miguel Torga. Miguel in homage to two great figures of Iberian culture, Cervantes and Unamuno. Torga in homage to the mountain heather, with hard roots and white or purplish flower. He travels through Europe to Italy, crossing a Spain wounded by the Civil War. The book "O Quarto Dia" of A Criação do Mundo (1939) is seized, the writer is arrested in Leiria and then taken to Aljube, where he remains for three months. In prison he writes the poem "Ariane" and some of the stories that make up the volume Bichos.

He is an unsatisfied author, writes in duplicate, on a typewriter with carbon paper. And rewrites. He corrects by hand, cuts strips of paper that he glues on top of the sheets. His days are diary, poetry, novel, short story, theater, intervention pages. Dedicated doctor, specialist in ears, nose and throat, in 1940 he opens a practice at Largo da Portagem, nº 45, in Coimbra, where he practices for more than fifty years. He travels incessantly through Portugal and the world, recording the physical, social and cultural landscape. He is also a hunter, left-handed with the weapon, strong-legged, shoots partridges, rabbits and hares through mountains and hills. He is one of the most influential Portuguese poets and writers, author of a vast literary production. Laureate with various national and international literary prizes, he receives the first Camões Prize in 1989 and is proposed five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. For many years, he is the editor of his own books.

He dies on January 17, 1995. He is buried in the cemetery of S. Martinho de Anta, in a flat grave, with a torga nearby.

Chronology in the first person

Childhood. "I left the seat of my pants on the mountain slides, I put my shirt in tatters crossing thickets behind a lizard, there were no knee pads that could resist the explorations I made in the dry mines, looking for the badgers that got inside."

Servant in Porto."I was a doorman. But I also watered the garden, went on errands, served as a donkey for children younger than me, cleaned dust, polished the noble staircase metals with Coração ointment. I walked in a white jacket, slept in a cubicle, with a bell at the headboard, and earned fifteen tostões a month."

Departure for Brazil, by boat, at 13. He docked on the other side of the Atlantic on a Monday full of sun. "I carried a stuffed suitcase. Four sheets of raw cloth, five pillows, a flannel blanket, a bedspread, a cashmere suit, two shirts, two underwear, five towels, six bottles of old Roncão and a dozen salpicões."

The first poems. "Lately I was making verses left and right. For the sake of it, a sonnet, ode, or nameless thing came out, but rhymed. I filled notebooks with quatrains, where love demanded pain, longing goodness, star beautiful, moon yours, pale chrysalis, etc."

Return to Portugal. "It was in the evening that the anchor came out of the mud of the pier and rolled up the hull. Slowly, the bow of the boat began to move and the Brazil of my sufferings to distance itself. First, the hard mass of the city; then, the round ribbon of the marginal avenues; then, the Sugar Loaf; finally, the coastline, increasingly blurred. Great and small accidents of a whole that I had covered with childish tears. With tears that I didn't have now to cry..."

Literature. "We lived in constant challenge, without compromises, without complacencies, sure of our renewing mission. Few and united, we challenged all of Portugal, which continued blind in its routine, in its conformism, in its rhetoric. All graphic and literary experiences were made, all attempts were dared."

Love. "Love had finally knocked on the door, after a thousand simulacra and denials. All previous appearances ceased to have any meaning in the face of the present evidence. No emotional shock experienced until then in this chapter could compare to the excitement I felt now before each meeting."

The doctor and the patients. "I was always in panic in front of those creatures, until recently completely unknown, there, defenseless, confidently exhibiting the miseries of body and soul.

Doctor-poet-writer. "Fulfilled the professional obligation, the creative devotion. I put away the scalpel and picked up the pen. And I had the impression that I continued to open on paper the same abscesses as before. The pages bled like torn wounds, and the poems seemed like howls."

Doctor in Coimbra. "I lived in an old little house perched on a ravine overlooking the river. Below, the green islands were covered with orange groves. Mountain boats, loaded with firewood or bundles of clean clothes, descended from Penacova. On Sundays and holy days, Baptist groups sang hymns on the sand and devoutly immersed the neophytes in the clarity of the current, which reflected the houses erected in a nativity scene by the hills."

The hunter. "The primitive man who had never resigned himself within me only came to the surface in all his fullness with a cartridge belt at his waist. The hunting act was for my senses the return to original purity. From the clothes I wore, worn like an old vestment and adapted to the movements of the body like a second epidermis, to the healthy frugality of the snack, always the same, to the wine drunk exceptionally, everything was part of a secret communication with the sacredness of nature."

Journey through Europe. The Spanish Civil War. "We all saw, lanced, that, more terrible than war, were its ruins, the waste of useless heroism, the satanic sterility of its trail. What was left behind, although terrifying, still had life, and, therefore, the instinct of conservation could at least feed the hope of escape. Now, a total discouragement invaded the spirit, drying up the energy of despair at the root."

Arrested by PIDE, hours sitting, frozen, buried alive. "Caged like a beast, deprived of the most elementary means of hygiene, hearing and smelling my own noises and odors, without voice, without rights, without action, condemned to a merely vegetative, functional, still existence, food entering and leaving, sleep and wakefulness alternating in the pendular repetition of the same absurdity."

The regime, the dictatorship. The unconformed voice: "Those who didn't match the pace with the herd's stomp, either rotted in a dungeon or died of hunger. The entire nation was now a tomb of silence and abulia. In the fields, in the factories, in the schools and in the offices, the dictator's hard profile seemed to listen to the voice of the very consciences. And the consciences fell silent in the deepest depths, fearful of any revealing expression. No place, from the highest to the lowest, was filled without the approval of the political police."

April 25. "A simple cannon pointed was enough for the fortress to crumble. Surprised by the miracle, the national soul exploded with joy. From north to south, transfigured crowds filled the streets in an impulse of uncontained renewed hope. It seemed like a dream! (…) Flags of all colors smiled unfurled in the clear atmosphere of April. (…) The homeland finally regained its voice and dignity."

Journey to Africa. Luanda, Angola: "(…) the city resembled a Sodom of irresponsibility surrounded by curse." Island of Mozambique, oasis of hope.

The native ground. "The attachment of roots to the native ground? After so many wanderings, so much suffering, so much study, the umbilical cord remained connected to the matrix. I really had a landscape, a medium, a vital geographical place engraved in my chromosomes! The body could run all the paths of the world, and the spirit fly in all directions. Wherever they arrived they would always denounce the mark of origin, the unmistakable singularity, a kind of taste of the earth of provenance, like that of fruits."

Old age. "I feared decay, I didn't fear death. To stop writing, to stop loving, to stop hunting would be the supreme misfortune."

At the end of life. "The man, who on the outside seemed like a monolith of certainties, on the inside was an amalgam of doubts. Thirsty for the absolute, he only knew the bitter taste of the relative. Profoundly religious, he could never bend his knees before any altar. Medullarly affective, he had created, without knowing why, alongside some firm friendships, a countless number of fierce enemies. From a sickly shyness, he had spent the days compensating for it with violent acts. Superstitious and insecure at every step, he moved in the field of realities like a willful ghost."