Que pitoresca era a jornada!
Logo, ao subir da madrugada,
Prontos os dois para partir:
-Adeus! adeus! é curta a ausência,
Adeus! — rodava a diligência
Com campainhas a tinir!
(…)
E, na subida de Novelas,
O rubro e gordo Cabanelas
Dava-me as guias para a mão:
Isso … queriam os cavalos!
Que eu não podia chicoteá-los…
Era uma dor de coração.
Depois, cansados da viagem,
Repoisávamos na estalagem
(Que era em Casais, mesmo ao dobrar…)
Vinha a Sr. a Ana das Dores
«Que hão-de querer os meus Senhores?
Há pão e carne para assar…»
Oh! ingénuas mesas, honradas!
Toalhas brancas, marmeladas,
Vinho virgem no copo a rir…
O cuco da sala, cantando…
(Mas o Cabanelas, entrando,
Vendo a hora: «É preciso partir».)
(António Nobre, Viagens na minha terra In Só, 1966, p.73-76)
When we contemplate the face of António Nobre in photographs, we see a character with a romantic, elegant posture, but at the same time mysterious, with a luminous complexion and rounded eyes that show some wandering and sadness.
Part of his personality was shaped by the rural environments of Borba de Godim and Recesinhos, his father’s and mother’s birthplaces respectively.
Recesinhos would return with some frequency to visit his maternal grandmother and to seek inspiration for his writing. The trip to this region mostly involved going through Penafiel, where on several occasions she got off at the Novelas train station and went on horseback to the lands of her childhood. This journey is reported in the introductory poem to this article, a poetic logbook that describes landscapes, moods, local characters, aromas, flavors and feelings experienced by Nobre during these visits.
Penafiel would have been a city of passage, but at the same time of some permanence. In this land he settled for several seasons at the Estalagem das Irmãs Andrade (currently the Bolinhos de Amor house), in Casais Novos [1].
A space that he frequented more assiduously after the first symptoms of tuberculosis (1892) [2] and which received him in the last days of his life.
On March 18, 1941, the city of Penafiel paid homage to him with the inauguration of a bust located in Jardim do Calvário. An event that was attended by some of the poet’s relatives, with the recitation of poems and with solemn figures such as the poet from Amarante Teixeira de Pascoaes.
Pascoaes once described António Nobre as “one of the greatest poets that women and the Portuguese land have given birth to. (…) He did not reach full Spirit and always despised Matter.
Hence its emotional field of action limited to the place where bodies begin to decondense into souls. He saw neither the Cloud nor the Wave, but the passage from one to the other.
His poetic work really marks a period of transition.” (Teixeira de Pascoaes, 1988, p. 29)
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Nobre, A. (1966). Só. Porto. Livraria Tavares Martins. 13ª edição. (1ªedição do Só, impressa em Paris em 1892)
Queirós, A. (2008). Viajar com… António Nobre. Direção Regional da Cultura do Norte.
Teixeira de Pascoaes (1988). A saudade e o saudosismo: dispersos e opúsculos. Lisboa. Assírio e Alvim.
Sofia Mesquita,
Stay to Talk Instituto de Imersão Cultural
