Irene Lisboa as a Writer of Fiction

Portugal lost one its most original and powerful writers. Her work, whether in the field the short story or the novel, the lyric poem or the essay, exhibits a continuous fidelity to a personally developed esthetic which has given her a place apart in a country in which creative literature and literary criticism have attained an unusually high level in the twentieth century. She can hardly be said to have belonged to any national school or movement although her name was linked for years to Seara Nova, for she was a frequent contributor to that magazine. She may perhaps be compared with Pio Baroja and Virginia Woolf because her theories about the form fiction, her insistence upon the importance the apparently unimportant or insignificant detail in the presentation character, and her deliberate and consistent understatement in her presentation highly dramatic material. Yet it is not likely that she had studied either novelist. She apparently read little, and it is not easy to say that she owed much to other writers; her craft seems to have developed independently as the result much meditation upon the problems presented by her material. For this reason and because her power as a writer she occupies a position in literature that suggests the need for a careful study all her work, and especially her fiction. From 1926 to 1958 Irene Lisboa published poems, short stories, short novels, tales for children, sketches, literary criticism and articles and books on pedagogy. She contributed to some the most important Portuguese periodicals, such as Presenqa, Revista de Portugal and Seara Nova, as well as others that are not so well known, such as O Diabo and Planicie. Her work was familiar also to readers the literary supplements O Primeiro de Janeiro, 0 Comercio do Porto and O Estado de Sao Paulo, the Brazilian newspaper. Besides publishing under her own name she brought out some her creative writing under the pseudonyms Joao Falco and Maria Moura and her writings on education under the pseudonym Manuel Soares. All told, the number her separately published volumes and pamphlets is twenty-five, which thirteen are book sized volumes,' Although little has been written about her work in either Portugal or Brazil, in both countries her books were warmly received by the critics, and her short stories and poems are represented in the most important anthologies. Cecilia Meireles praises her for her domination the craft poetry,2 and speaking her prose Joao Gaspar Sim6es says that she is one of the greatest 'urban chroniclers' in contemporary Portuguese literature-as she is the most powerful, the most solid and the most human our writers about the people.3 Jos6 R'gio speaks the originality and timelessness her work,4 and Jorge de Sena says that she is considered today to be one the great Portuguese writers on account the incomparable originality her style and personality.5 Her work is interesting, however, not only because its human quality, its power and its originality but also because its modernity. It is poetry that is close to prose, prose that is close to poetry; essays and short stories which defy classification; and diaries and autobiographies which leave the impression the most artistic fiction.