Irene Lisboa
(Dec. 25, 1892 – Nov. 25, 1958)
At the Exhibition
The writer’s desk is smaller and
plainer than the smallest, plainest
American writer’s desk I know of
(Louisa May Alcott’s). Her chair,
Too, is small, a bench, backless, of
course (though upholstered). It dwarfs
before O’Connor’s. And her typewriter
-a black Continental-is in better
shape than Flannery’s (maybe it’s
because she seems to have used it
only for final texts, and then seldom).
Ah, but this writer possessed writerly
luxuries, a fancy Italian inkwell, a steel
nibbed pen, her eyeglasses and case,
a box for her paper, a present, hand-
decorated with, among other motifs,
cruzeiros, and four hearts, two of them
upside down. One doesn’t imagine her
at her fine needlework here, though one
should. She is steadfastly mannish in
photographs, this writer known best as
João Falcão, though not to be missed is
the ts “Felicidade” (“Cortado pela censura.
20-5-946”), signed Irene Lisboa for once.
Lisbon
Feb. 6, 1993
George Monteiro
————
George Monteiro is Professor Emeritus of English and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University, and he continues as Adjunct Professor of Portuguese Studies at the same university. He served as Fulbright lecturer in American Literature in Brazil–Sao Paulo and Bahia–Ecuador and Argentina; and as Visiting Professor in UFMG in Belo Horizonte. In 2007 he served as Helio and Amelia Pedroso / Luso-American Foundation Professor of Portuguese, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Among his recent books are Stephen Crane’s Blue Badge of Courage, Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Literature, The Presence of Pessoa, The Presence of Camões, and Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop and Critical Essays on Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Among his translations are Iberian Poems by Miguel Torga, A Man Smiles at Death with Half a Face by José Rodrigues Miguéis, Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems by Fernando Pessoa, and In Crete, with the Minotaur, and Other Poems by Jorge de Sena. He has also published two collections of poems, The Coffee Exchange and Double Weaver’s Knot.
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