Pseudonym for Adolfo Correia da Rocha. Born: Sao Martinho da Anta, Tras-os-Montes, Portugal, 12 August 1907; lived in Brazil, 1920-25. Education: Educated at Seminario de Lamego, 1918-19; University of Coimbra, 1925-33, degree in medicine, 1933. Career: Doctor, in Sao Martinho da Anta, Vila Nova de Miranda do Corvo, Leiria, and, since 1940, in Coimbra; travelled frequently in Europe, from 1953; visited Brazil, 1954, and Angola and Mozambique, 1973. Contributor, Presenga, from 1930; co-founder, with Branquinho da Fonseca, Sinal, 1930; adopted pseudonym Miguel Torga, 1936; co-founder, with Albano Nogueira, Manifesto, 1936 (five issues). Awards: Montaigne prize; Morgado de Mateus prize; Almeida Garrett prize; Diario deNoticias prize, 1969; Biennial International Grand prize for poetry (Belgium), 1976; International Association of Directors medal, 1978; CamSes prize, 1989; Association of Portuguese Writers Vide Literaria prize, 1992; Foreign Correspondents prize, 1992. Died: Coimbra, Portugal, 17 January 1995.
Publications
Verse
Ansiedade (as Adolfo Correia da Rocha). 1928.
Rampa. 1930.
Tributo. 1931.
Abismo. 1932.
O outro livro de Job. 1936.
Lamentagao. 1943.
Libertagao. 1944.
Odes. 1946; revised edition, 1977.
Nihil sibi. 1948.
Cantico do homem. 1950.
Algunspoemas ibericos. 1952.
Penas do purgatorio. 1954.
Orfeu rebelde. 1958; revised edition, 1970.
Camara ardente. 1962.
Poemas ibericos. 1965.
Antologia poetica. 1981; revised edition, 1985.
Miguel Torga (selection), edited by David Mourao-Ferreira. 1988.
Fiction
Pao Azimo (stories). 1931.
A criagao do mundo: Os dois primeiros dias. 1937; revised edition, 1981; as The Creation of the World: The First Day and the Second Day, translated by Ivana Rangel-Carlsen, 1996.
O terceiro dia da criagao do mundo. 1938; revised edition, 1970.
O quarto dia da criagao do mundo. 1939; revised edition, 1971.
Bichos. 1940; revised edition, 1970; as Farrusco the Blackbird and Other Stories, translated by Denis Brass, 1950.
Montanha: Contos. 1941; enlarged edition, as Contos da Montanha, 1982.
Rua: Contos. 1942; revised edition, 1967. O senhor Ventura. 1943.
Novos contos da Montanha. 1944; revised editions, 1975, 1980.
Vindima. 1945; revised edition, 1971.
Pedras Lavradas (stories). 1951; revised edition, 1958.
Open Sesame and Other Stories, translated by Denis Brass. 1960.
The Death Penalty, translated anonymously. 1967.
O quinto dia da criagao do mundo. 1974.
O sexto dia da criagao do mundo. 1981.
Tales from the Mountain, translated by Ivana Carlsen. 1991.
Tales and More Tales from the Mountain, translated by Ivana Rangel-Carlsen. 1995.
Plays
Teatro: Terra firme; Mar. 1941.
Mar (produced 1946). In Teatro, 1941; published separately, 1958,revised edition, 1983.
Terrafirme (produced 1947). In Teatro, 1941; published separately, 1947, revised edition, 1977.
Sinfonia. 1947.
O Paraiso. 1949.
Other
A terceira voz. 1934.
Diario 1-15. 1941-90; vol. 1 revised, 1967; vol. 5 revised, 1974; vol.6 revised, 1960; vol. 7 revised, 1961.
Um reino maravilhoso: Tras-os-Montes. 1941.
O Porto. 1944.
Portugal (travel writing). 1950; revised edition, 1967.
Trago de uniao (travel writing). 1955; revised edition, 1969. Fogo preso. 1976.
Lavrador de palavras e ideias. 1978.
Tras-os-Montes, illustrated by Georges Dussaud. 1984.
Camoes. 1987.
Critical Studies:
Sa Carneiro, Jose Regio, Miguel Torga: Tras atitudes perante a vida by Castro Gil, 1949; Humanist Despair in Miguel Torga by Eduardo Lourengo, translated from the Portuguese, 1955; ”Miguel Torga: A New Portuguese Poet” in Dublin Review, 229, 1955, and ”The Art and Poetry of Miguel Torga” in Sillages, 2, 1973, both by Denis Brass; Homenagem a Miguel Torga edited by Frederico de Moura, 1959; O Drama de Miguel Torga by Armindo Augusto, 1960; Cinco personalidades literarias by Oscar Lopes, 1961; Casticismo e humanidade em Miguel Torga by Jacinto do Prado Coelho, 1976; Sete meditagoes sobre Miguel Torga by Fernao de Magalhaes Gongalves, 1977; Vestigios de Miguel Torga by Frederico de Moura, 1977; O Espago autobiografico em Miguel Torga by Clara Crabbe Rocha, 1977; ”The Portuguese Revolution Seen Through the Eyes of Three Contemporary Writers” by Alice Clemente, in Proceedings of the Fourth National Portuguese Conference, 1979; Miguel Torga: Poeta Iberico by Jesus Herrero, 1979; Estudio orientado dos Bichos de Miguel Torga by Lino Moreira da Silva, 1980; ”Madwomen, Whores and Torga: Desecrating the Canon?” by Maria Manuel Lisboa, in Portuguese Studies, 7, 1991; Estudos Torguianos by Antonio Arnaut, 1993; Aqui, neste lugar e nesta hora: Actas do Primeiro Congresso International sobre Miguel Torga, 1994.
Miguel Torga, the doyen of Portuguese letters, and Portuguese candidate for the Nobel prize, has shown over almost 60 years a consistency of courage and artistic purpose rarely equalled among his national contemporaries. This has led him into clashes with authorities duing the Salazar period, and he did his stint in prison. His early experience in a seminary, from which he fled to Brazil as a poor peasant boy to eke out an existence as a menial on a coffee estate, has marked his writing. He has rejected his childhood Catholicism but retained the imagery. With the Revolution of 1974 he achieved almost guru status with the new socialist government, and published his political writings under the title Fogopreso [Shackled Fire]. His fame rests, however, on a substantial corpus of poetry, and on his several collections of short stories which have been acclaimed as some of the finest in the language. ”Torga found himself with a twofold problem. On the one hand he wanted to find real living types, that, while keeping the peninsular fire of their own condition, would have a universal message, and at the same time remain Portuguese. On the other hand he had to create a style that could interpret this message in the drama and dynamism of our own times. And so he took the language to pieces and built it anew, taking in idioms and vocabulary of his own region, charged with dramatic content. And so, his is the short sentence and the significant word. An approach to cine technique” (introduction by Denis Brass to Farrusco the Blackbird).
The key to his work is his intense, even sensual, relationship with his birthplace in Tras-os-Montes. His anguish is that the people there, for whom he wrote in the first place, are, many of them, illiterate, and cannot appreciate his work. Torga is a passionate traveller in his own and other countries; many journeys are recorded in the Diario. He recognizes the importance of the sea for the history and the economy of his country, and in his Poemas ibericos [Iberian Poems] he addresses the peninsular explorers who set out to till the sea against an uncertain harvest. The sea is also the title of one of his theatre pieces, Mar [Sea], where he treats a favourite theme of the prodigal, the man who is lost in a shipwreck, or who goes overseas abandoning his family, and who may or may not return. Torga sees himself as a kind of smuggler on the frontier between two worlds: Agarez, his birthplace, and the rest. Agarez symbolizes the whole Iberian peninsula. He set out to explore that other world—Europe—but he always returned to ”my peninsular night.” He is very conscious of his mission as a peninsular writer. His world, he says, finishes only at the Pyrenees, that great barrier that saves his Don Quixote from the temptations of the Folies Bergeres.
Torga has the ”uncontaminated vision” of the countryman and the hunter. Hunting is his recreation, and it informs several of his stories. He is a practising doctor, and his observation has been helped by his experience in the consulting room. He sees a link between the healing mission of the doctor, the priest, and the poet, all intent on saving or praising life, a mission wonderfully portrayed in the short story O senhor Ventura. The poet’s alternating moods of hope and despair find utterance in the two longer poems Lamentagao and Libertagao. His poet’s faith and optimism are boldly proclaimed in the title poem of the collection Orfeu rebelde [Orpheus in Revolt].
