Aparentemente um livro de contos, histórias de enredos simples, mas romanticamente transcendentes, representam os passos de um homem em torno da sua existência, sem respostas paradigmáticas, num vazio que se procura transformar em matéria. Sobeja-lhe o corpo, divino, prodigioso e redentor, onde regressa sempre. «Talvez pudesse ouvir passos junto à porta do quarto, passos leves que estacariam enquanto a minha vida, toda a vida, ficaria suspensa. Eu existiria então vagamente, alimentado pela violência de uma esperança, preso à obscura respiração dessa pessoa parada. Os comboios passariam sempre. E eu estaria a pensar nas palavras do amor, naquilo que se pode dizer quando a extrema solidão nos dá um talento inconcebível. O meu talento seria o máximo talento de um homem e devia reter, apenas pela sua força silenciosa, essa pessoa defronte da porta, a poucos metros, à distância de um simples movimento caloroso. Mas nesse instante ser-me-ia revelada a essencial crueldade do espírito. Penso que desejaria somente a presença incógnita e solitária dessa pessoa atrás da porta.»
Author
Herberto Helder was born into a family of Jewish ancestry in the Portuguese Atlantic island of Madeira. In 1946 he traveled to Lisbon to complete his secondary studies and subsequently in 1948 moved to Coimbra to study Law at university. In 1949 he had changed to the Humanities University to study Romance Philology but dropped out after three years without completing the course. After returning to Lisbon he took up several temporal jobs, and got in contact with a circle of artists and writers such as Mário Cesariny, Luiz Pacheco, João Vieira and Hélder Macedo, known as the "café gelo" group . This group revolved around Surrealism which would inform his early writings. In 1958 his first book, O Amor em Visita, was published. In the following years he traveled and lived in France, Holland and Belgium taking menial and marginal jobs to survive. He returned to Portugal in 1960 and published some of his best books in the following years A Colher na Boca, Poemacto e Lugar, Os Passos em Volta and A máquina de emaranhar paisagens. In 1964 he participates in the organization of Experimental Poetry magazine. After the April Revolution he published Cobra, O Corpo, O Luxo, A Obra, Photomaton and Vox. The singularity of his poetry goes along with the personality of the poet: nowadays he abandoned public life, refusing prizes or interviews.
