QUENTAL, ANTERO de. - Portuguese poet, b. at Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel (Azores) on 18 April 1842, d. there on 11 September 1891.
After a vague youthful intention of entering the priesthood, he attended law courses at Coimbra, where he devoted himself to a passionate study of progressive ideologies, with manifold interests in foreign cultures, German above all. Having turned to socialism, he became its propagandist in his country. On the philosophical and literary plane he led the so-called "Coimbra School" (1865) and promoted the "Democratic Conferences of the Lisbon Casino" (1871), with the first of which he dealt a mortal blow to Romanticism (still lingering under the guidance of the old blind poet Castilho), and with the second he introduced into Portuguese life the "progressive" tendencies and tastes typical of the later nineteenth century, with attempts at reconciliation between materialism and spiritualism. Among his most characteristic ideas is that of Iberism, that is, of a fusion of the two nations of the peninsula into a federal republic. Embittered by the contrast between his ideals and everyday reality, gravely undermined in health by excessive activity and the intensity of his inner life, having withdrawn into philosophical meditation in a pessimistic sensation of things, he committed suicide.
The poetry of Q., who, having lost the faith, nonetheless feels the need to have one, brings about a singular transformation of a world of ideas into a world of art. Q.'s inner torment finds peace in his lyric poetry, in crystalline and perfect verses, especially in the last compositions, those of the Odes modernas and, above all, of the Sonetos: he restores the sonnet to the height to which Camões had raised it three centuries earlier. Famous, among the sonnets, are those in which the need for religiosity is revealed, at times even in a tendentially Catholic sense, of the poet's spirit: Ideal, À Virgem Santissima, Na mão de Deus.
Bibliography4 works
Giuseppe Carlo Rossi