It has been compared to Fernando Pessoa. Because of its importance in Portuguese literature. The writer Herberto Helder, considered by critics to be one of his country's greatest contemporary poets, died on Monday at the age of 84 at his home on the outskirts of Lisbon, his publishing house announced on Tuesday.
Herberto Helder Luis Bernardes de Oliveira, born on November 23, 1930 in Funchal, the capital of the Madeira archipelago, was a very reserved man who refused to express himself in the media for almost thirty years. In 1994, he refused Pessoa AwardIt is one of the most important Portuguese differences in the field of literature and science.
“Having a rare imagination and sensitivity, his work is distinguished by its originality, coherence and the qualities of genius thanks to which he asserted himself from his first book,” published in 1958, Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva noted in a message of condolence. .
“Magnetic and bad work”
Literary critic Pedro Mexia noted that “the importance of his works in the second half of the twentieth century is equal to that of Fernando Pessoa in the first half.”
With his “attractive and flowing” work, Herberto Helder was “undoubtedly the greatest Portuguese poet of the second half of the twentieth century,” according to Chandin Publishing, which published in French one of his most famous collections: The hundred steps (Traffic system in Volta1963), and the anthology entitled The poem continues.
