Luiz Pacheco
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Luiz Pacheco (May 7, 1925 in
Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...
– January 5, 2008 in Montijo) was a writer, publisher, polemicist and literary critic (mainly of Portuguese literature). He was proudest of his work as a publisher. The publishing house Contraponto, his creation, released works by many previously unpublished Portuguese writers ( Herberto Helder,
Natália Correia Natália de Oliveira Correia, Order of St. James of the Sword, GOSE, Order of Liberty, GOL (13 September 1923 – 16 March 1993) was a Portuguese intellectual, poet and social activist, as well as the author of the official lyrics of the "H ...
,
Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos or Mário Cesariny (August 9, 1923 – November 26, 2006) was a Portuguese surrealist poet and painter. He published several major works of poetry during a career spanning 50 years. Cesariny was also a painting, pain ...
,
Vergílio Ferreira Vergílio António Ferreira, JOSE (Melo, Gouveia, born 28 January 1916 – Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits ...
,
António Maria Lisboa António Maria Lisboa (1 August 1928 – 11 November 1953) was a Portuguese surrealist poet. Life Antônio Maria Lisboa was born on 1 August 1928 in Lisbon. He studied. at the ''Ensino Téchnico''. He formed a small surrealist group in 194 ...
), and introduced
Sade Sade may refer to: People * Marquis de Sade (1740–1814), French aristocrat, writer, and libertine; namesake of the word ''sadism'' * Sade (singer) (born 1959, Helen Folasade Adu), British Nigerian musician and lead singer of the eponymous band * ...
to the Portuguese readers.Morreu Luiz Pacheco
, Público
Morreu Luiz Pacheco
,
SIC The Latin adverb ''sic'' (; ''thus'', ''so'', and ''in this manner'') inserted after a quotation indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated as found in the source text, including erroneous, archaic, or unusual spelling ...


Life

He was born in an old house at Rua da Estefânia in the São Sebastião da Pedreira district. His father was a civil servant and an amateur musician. Only child of a middle-class family with roots in Alentejo, soon Luiz Pacheco had read all the books of his family considerable-sized library. Since early age he was asthmatic and short-sighted, and later in his life it became impossible for him to read, something rather cruel to anyone, but in particular to a person who needed to read to feel sane. He was arrested twice while a minor for romantic involvements with young girls. He compulsively married one of these girls who became pregnant when he was 18 years old. She was 15 years old. After one year, he turned to her younger sister. The three of them lived together during a spell, with all his children. It was then that he wrote A Comunidade (The Community), his centrepiece; it portrays that period. His women were always his intellectual inferiors, the first two were peasants. He loved to teach them to read. He had eight children from three different wives. He studied in Camões high school, being the best student of his year, and later he was enrolled at the ''Faculdade de Letras'' of the University of Lisbon, dropping out due to financial troubles.
Mário Soares Mário Alberto Nobre Lopes Soares (; 7 December 1924 – 7 January 2017) was a Portugal, Portuguese politician, who served as prime minister of Portugal from 1976 to 1978 and from 1983 to 1985, and subsequently as the List of Presidents of P ...
,
Urbano Tavares Rodrigues Urbano Tavares Rodrigues, GCIH (December 6, 1923 – August 9, 2013) was a Portuguese professor of literature, a literary critic and a fiction writer, winner of many literary prizes. Life Urbano Tavares Rodrigues was born in Lisbon on Decembe ...
and Artur Ramos were his classmates. He used to say his highschool grade was 18 (out of 20), while Urbano Tavares Rodrigues’ was 12. Urbano, a somewhat popular Portuguese writer, was one of Pacheco's ‘favourite enemies’. After dropping out from the University of Lisbon, Pacheco decided to become an autodidact, and he did manage it. He was a compulsive reader and always had an analytic point of view, as one could see from some of his books, always underlined and with his own comments. In 1946 he got a job at the state-run ''Inspecção Geral de Espectáculos'' as a fiscal for theatre plays, music shows and movies. Some people say he was a censor, but nothing could be farther away from the truth. In fact, he saw this as an opportunity to watch plays and films for free. There was never a single play or movie prohibited or altered due to his action. This was perhaps a way to antagonize the dictatorship he always condemned with all his strengths. But then he decided that he couldn't take it and left. Since that time he never had a proper job again. He wrote articles for newspapers and magazines, including O ''Globo'', ''Bloco'', ''Afinidades'', ''O Volante'', ''Diário Ilustrado'', ''Diário Popular'' and
Seara Nova Seara is a municipality in the state of Santa Catarina in the South region of Brazil. The Museu Entomológico Fritz Plaumann is located in the town. See also *List of municipalities in Santa Catarina This is a list of the municipalities in t ...
, he made translations, and was an excellent proof reader. A libertine, always living through hardships, he depended on his friends' good will; he used to classify them according to the amount of money he could borrow from them each time. He sold books and pamphlets edited by Contraponto for survival. When there was money to spend he was extremely generous toward his friends and people in need. During the years of financial instability, he lived in many houses, rented rooms, pensions, all over the country, and many important documents have been lost in these constant moves. Charismatic places for Pacheco, where he wrote many of his works were
Caldas da Rainha Caldas da Rainha () is a medium-sized Portugal, Portuguese city in the Oeste Subregion, Oeste region, in the historical province of Estremadura Province (1936–1976), Estremadura, and in the Leiria District, district of Leiria. The city serves a ...
and
Setúbal Setúbal ( , , ; ), officially the City of Setúbal (), is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the entire municipality in 2014 was 118,166, occupying an area of . The city itself had 89,303 inhabitants in 2001. It lies withi ...
, but, as he once said, being away from Lisbon blurred his view and critical sense. He never had an affiliation to any political party, although in his late years he publicly asked the Portuguese Communist Party to accept him, because he wanted to be warm when he died, and what better than the Party's flag! This irreverent posture, always laughing at stupidity, made his life a living hell. But he couldn't live it any other way. A dedicated literary and cultural critic, he became famous (and feared) for his sarcastic and irreverent critical writings. He denounced intellectual dishonesty and the censorship imposed by Salazar's Estado Novo regime. Tall, thin and skinny, bald, wearing eyeglasses with thick lenses, dressing second-hand clothes (sometimes ragged and undersized ones), hypersensitive to alcohol (he enjoyed red wine and beer), hypochondriac, always foreseeing his own death (due to asthma and a poor heart condition), cynical but honest, paradoxical, he is a worthy heir of
Luís de Camões Luís Vaz de Camões (; or 1525 – 10 June 1580), sometimes rendered in English as Camoens or Camoëns ( ), is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of William Shakes ...
,
Bocage Bocage (, ) is a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture characteristic of parts of northern France, southern England, Ireland, the Netherlands, northern Spain and northern Germany, in regions where pastoral farming is the dominant land use. ' ...
, Gomes Leal or
Fernando Pessoa Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (; ; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, and publisher. He has been described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th c ...
.


Writings

Luiz Pacheco published many of his writings in ''Contraponto'', mainly short stories and critical texts concerning Portuguese literature. He wrote thousands of letters to friends with enormous literary value and many of them were published in different books. ''
Comunidade The Comunidades of Goa are a form of land association developed in Goa, India, where land-ownership is collectively held, but controlled by the male descendants of those who claimed to be the founders of the village, who in turn mostly belonged to ...
'', '' O Libertino passeia por Braga, a idolátrica, o seu esplendor'' and '' Teodolito'' are his most acclaimed books. '' Pacheco versus Cesariny'' is an 'epistolary novel' of the surrealist movement in Portugal. His frontal way of analysing works was feared by many. Fernando Namora, a known Portuguese writer, is an example of this: Luiz Pacheco heard about some coincidences between two books by Fernando Namora and Virgilio Ferreira. Deciding to decipher the mystery, he bought every edition of the two books he could lay his hands on and compared them in order to find the coincidences and who copied whom. The result was published by the name of ''O Caso do Sonâmbulo Chupista''. Most of his books are currently not available in book stores. Here is an incomplete list of his published works. * ''História antiga e conhecida'' (1956) - republished in ‘Crítica de circunstância’ in 2002 as ‘Os doutores, a salvação e o menino Jesus’ * ''Caca, cuspo & Ramela'' (1958)- with Natália Correia and Manuel de Lima * ''Carta-Sincera a José Gomes Ferreira'' (1959) * '' O Teodolito'' (1962) * ''
Comunidade The Comunidades of Goa are a form of land association developed in Goa, India, where land-ownership is collectively held, but controlled by the male descendants of those who claimed to be the founders of the village, who in turn mostly belonged to ...
'' (1964) * ''Coro de escárnio e lamentação dos cornudos em volta de S.Pedro'' (1966) * ''Crítica de Circunstância'' (1966) * ''Textos Locais'' (1967) * '' O Libertino Passeia por Braga, a Idolátrica, o Seu Esplendor'' (1970) * '' Exercícios de estilo'' (1971) * ''Literatura comestível'' (1972) * '' Pacheco versus Cesariny - folhetim de feição epistolográfica'' (1974) * ''Textos de Circunstância'' (1977) * ''Carta a Gonelha'' (1977) * ''Textos Malditos'' (1977) * ''Textos de Guerrilha 1'' (1979) * ''O Caso das Criancinhas Desaparecidas'' (1981) * ''Textos de Guerrilha 2'' (1981) * ''Textos do Barro'' (1985) * ''O Teodolito e a velha casa'' (1985) * ''Textos Sadinos'' (1991) * ''Carta a Fátima'' (1992) * ''O uivo do coiote'' (1992) * ''Memorando, Mirabolando'' (1995) * ''Cartas na mesa: 1966-1996'' (1996) * ''Prazo de validade'' (1998) * ''Isto de estar vivo'' (2000) * ''Uma admirável droga'' (2001) * ''Mano forte'' (2002) * ''Os doutores, a salvação e o menino Jesus'' (2002) * ''Raio de Luar'' (2003) * ''Figuras, figurantes e figurões'' (2004) * '' Diário remendado 1971-1975'' (2005) * ''Cartas ao léu'' (2005) * ''O crocodilo que voa'' (2008) - interviews


''Dictionnaire Philosophique'' translation

Circa 1965, Luiz Pacheco's friend Bruno da Ponte asked him for help translating volume one of
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778), known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' Voltaire (, ; ), was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, philosopher (''philosophe''), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit ...
's ''
Dictionnaire Philosophique The (''Philosophical Dictionary'') is an encyclopedic dictionary published by the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire in 1764. The alphabetically arranged articles often criticize the Roman Catholic Church, Judaism, Islam, and other institutions. ...
''. Even though Pacheco was paid in advance for the job, he missed the deadline without completing any of the work assigned to him. After much pressure from Bruno da Ponte, he began typing away his translation as he read from the book, but not having a dictionary at hand, he decided to temporarily replace every word he didn't know with a vulgarism in red ink. Unfortunately, he forgot about it and the draft was rushed to print without being proofed by either translator or the editor. The printers obediently set every word given to them and, as it was common practice, used
italics In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...
for those words typed in red. Pacheco eventually realised he had forgotten to take out the vulgarisms and raced to the printers in time to halt production of the book. However, his revisions weren't thorough enough, and the first edition of the book still came out with a footnote on page 273 bearing reference to "delicious ''shit'' sandwiches". , directed by
António José de Almeida António José de Almeida (July 27, 1866October 31, 1929) was a Portuguese politician who served as the 6th president of Portugal from 1919 to 1923. António José de Almeida also served as prime minister from 1916 to 1917. He was the only pr ...
, RTP
Voltaire, ''Dicionário Filosófico — 1.º Volume'', trans. Bruno da Ponte, João Lopes and Luiz Pacheco (uncredited),
Editorial Presença An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK), is an article or any other written document, often unsigned, written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper or magazine, that expresses the publication's opinion about a ...
, 1966 (First Edition).


Death

On 5 January 2008, Pacheco died in Montijo. The Portuguese television channel
RTP 2 RTP2 (''RTP dois'') is a Portuguese free-to-air television channel owned and operated by state-owned public broadcaster Rádio e Televisão de Portugal (RTP). It is the company's second television channel, and is known for broadcasting cultural ...
broadcast a biographical documentary about his life, filmed in his last years, where Nobel laureate in Literature
José Saramago José de Sousa Saramago (; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese people, Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which ...
, former Portuguese statesman
Mário Soares Mário Alberto Nobre Lopes Soares (; 7 December 1924 – 7 January 2017) was a Portugal, Portuguese politician, who served as prime minister of Portugal from 1976 to 1978 and from 1983 to 1985, and subsequently as the List of Presidents of P ...
, and Luiz Pacheco himself, among other figures, commented the writer's eccentric life and work.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pacheco, Luiz 1925 births 2008 deaths Portuguese male writers