Poet, novelist, and essayist Henrique Levy chose to live in the Azores ten years ago because he identified with the archipelago’s human landscape.
“I lived for a long time in various African countries, then in Europe and Asia, where I was a teacher in Macau. Later, I lived in the United States. When I returned to Europe, I couldn’t find myself. And as I came every summer to the Azores, which I knew very well and with which I identified a lot because of the geographical landscape, but essentially because of the human landscape, because I think the Azoreans are the great guardians of Portuguese culture, I thought: why put off living any longer in the place where I want to die? So I came to São Miguel,” he says.
It was a life journey that was also a journey of discovery. “I don’t belong anywhere. I’m the son of a Cape Verdean and a Portuguese, and I have in me the three religions of the Book—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—which form the basis of my humanist roots. I have a deep knowledge of these books because I couldn’t write without knowing the most wonderful aspect of man, which is what connects him to God,” he says.
However, he says that it was on the island of Flores, through the mouth of a shepherd with three cows, that he received “the most beautiful lesson in life.”
“I found the most beautiful life lesson on the island of Flores, when I asked a shepherd: ‘Don’t you feel lonely? He looked at me and said: ‘Loneliness, sir, I don’t know what it is. I have the sea, God and you, my mother. In fact, we don’t value the essentials,” he says.
(at the book presentation in the Azores–Photo by José Andrade)
From the Azores, where he says he was very well received, he highlights the history and resilience of the Azoreans. “They are a heroic and great people, and the mirror of this people is Bento de Goes,” he says, referring to the Franco-Villager and hero of his book Bento de Goes: A Long Walk in Central Asia. He adds, “Only an Azorean could have done what he did at the age of 47.”
It was also in the Azores that Henrique Levy discovered Marianna Belmira de Andrade, a poet from São Jorge who lived at the beginning of the 20th century and who led him to found N9na Editora, the only publishing house dedicated to poetry in the region.
“Marianna Belmira de Andrade, with a vast culture, died in 1921 and is like a family member whom I know very well. A woman of extraordinary courage, she married a nobleman from São Jorge, from whom she separated after just over a year of marriage. She then became an elementary school teacher and settled in Urzelina, where she raised her son and was a happy woman,” she says, explaining that “in order to be able to publish Marianna Belmira de Andrade’s poems, I founded N9na Editora, and today it’s the book that sells the most.”
Marianna Belmira de Andrade’s work is published in “A Sibylla—Versos Philosophicos” (2020), a book edited and annotated by Henrique Levy. The first edition dates back to 1884. From then on, he began to edit other poets, “but poets of great quality according to my aesthetic sensibility, because I believe in poetry.”
It is as a poet that Henrique Levy describes himself, having published eight books of poetry: “Mãos Navegadas” (1999); “Intensidades” (2001); “O Silêncio das Almas” (2015); “Noivos do Mar” (2017); “O Rapaz do Lilás” (2018); “Sensinatos” (2019); “Poemas do Próximo Livro” (poems translated into Cape Verdean and Castilian) (2022); “Livro da Vacuidade e da Demanda do Vento” (2022); “Estado de Emergência”, co-authored with Ângela de Almeida (2020); “Silêncio” (2021), translated into Spanish by Coloma Canals; and “Elementos” (with Ângela de Almeida and Daniel Gonçalves) (2022).
“I live for the fascination of words and storytelling. I began by writing poetry. I’m a poet, but fiction is where I feel most at home. Poetry is much more demanding, it’s an elaborate play on words in which I reveal myself much more,” he says.
In fiction, Henrique Levy has just published “The Drama of Afonso VII of Portugal.”
“This is a book that summons all of humanity. Every man is there with his guilt, his fear and the loneliness of his decisions. This book is a tribute to April 25, with a king who frees Portugal from a fascist republic, but who in the early 1990s is faced with the decision of whether to sit on the throne of Yugoslavia and avoid war in Europe or abandon Portugal to its fate,” he describes.
“This was the message I wanted to send out to the world at this time, when we can’t be afraid or feel guilty about the situation Europe seems to be falling into. And for that, we have to have a free conscience and summon up the conscience of Humanity, which has done so much to get us here,” he adds.
“The Drama of Alfonso VII of Portugal” is the author’s seventh novel. It’s a set of fictionalized historical books in which he introduces Bento de Goes, a French villager who, in the 16th century, made a journey on foot from India to Beijing with a cultural objective, describing the languages and religions he passed through. He also portrays the life of Maria Bettencourt in “Maria Bettencourt: Diários de Uma Mulher Singular” (2019), a satire on the customs of Ponta Delgada society in the mid-20th century through the diaries of a woman from São Miguel, and a royal visit to the Azores through the eyes of the king’s wife, in “Degredos da Visita Régia aos Açores” (2020).
These are a set of books that, as the author points out, have a strong female presence in common. In this sense, Henrique Levy points out that in “Vinte e Sete Cartas de Artemísia” (Twenty-Seven Letters from Artemisia), a novel awarded the Natália Correia Literary Prize (2022), he calls on religion, poetry, politics, and theology, because he calls on the lives of women and the way they have always tried to impose themselves on a patriarchal society that imprisons them.
In “The Memoirs of Mother Aliviada da Cruz” (2021), she satirizes the lives of women cloistered in convents at the beginning of the 19th century and the sexual freedom with which these cloistered women lived.
“The vast majority of my characters are women. I’ve always been a feminist and a defender of equality between men and women, but I’m a feminist because I’m deeply selfish, in other words, because I’ll only be free when everyone around me is free. As long as people are discriminated against, in this case because of their gender, I won’t be free,” she explains.
“It’s no coincidence that consciousness is feminine, even that of a man. The fact that there are feminine words like ‘Humanity’ or ‘Person’ that designate a set that contains the masculine, that doesn’t affect the masculine gender. The Portuguese language has never been sexist,” he reflects.
Author of this journalistic piece: Ana Carvalho Melo for the newspaper Açoriano Oriental. Translated by Diniz Borges. Photo of Henrique Levy by Eduardo Resendes for Açoriano Oriental. Photo of book presentation with poet João Pedro Porto by José Andrade.
If you read Portuguese, here is a link to the original article.
Link to a brief video on the production of the novel
https://www.facebook.com/letraslavadas.editores/videos/473987221816876
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