Cesário Verde

Cesário Verde (25 February 1855 – 19 July 1886) was a 19th-century Portuguese poet. His work, while mostly ignored during his lifetime and not well known outside of the country's borders even today, is generally considered to be amongst the most important in Portuguese poetry and is widely taught in schools. This is partly due to his being championed by many other authors after his death, notably Fernando Pessoa.

Biography

José Joaquim Cesário Verde was born in Lisbon, Portugal. His father was a shopkeeper and exporter of fruit products. He also had a small farm on the outskirts, at which Verde's family resided during the summer. In 1857, an outbreak of the plague lead his father to permanently move the family to the country, where they lived until coming back to Lisbon in 1865. This early contact with the countryside instilled in Verde a deep love of nature, which would show up repeatedly in his poems about life in the country, almost always depicted in a bucolic, idyllic light.

Verde, the oldest of four children, started working at his father's shop at an early age; all accounts of his family life point towards him having been brought up in a household that mostly cherished the middle class work ethic. In 1872, his sister Julia died of tuberculosis – the grief over this loss is considered by many critics to have had a big impact on his literary work, as his poems frequently deal with the sickly, often portrayed in the guise of beautiful, innocent women. The autobiographical poem “Nós” makes explicit mention of his sister's death.