CESÁRIO VERDE (1874)

Poet who revived Portuguese poetry by introducing colloquial language and exploring its capacities for expression at a time when exalted rhetoric was the accepted means.

He dealt with the poetic essences of everyday life in an unaffected and consciously sentimental vocabulary finding in the growth of urban life one of his chief themes.

He is considered to be one of the most original Portuguese poets of the 19th century.

Born into a well-to-do middle-class family he studied at the faculty of arts of the University of Lisbon leaving without a degree.

Adopting a bohemian life-style he nevertheless earned a living as a fruit farmer and for a time as a businessman publishing poetry in newspapers and literary magazines sporadically until his early death from tuberculosis.

After his death a friend the literary critic António da Silva Pinto collected and published his poems as O Livro de Cesário Verde 1873-1886.
Through this work Verde became a lasting influence on Portuguese poets who found in his view of the everyday world a new source of inspiration.