Jorge de Sena


Jorge Cândido Alves Rodrigues Telles Grilo Raposo de Abreu de Sena was a Portuguese-born poet, critic, essayist, novelist, dramatist, translator and university professor who spent the latter portion of his life in the United States.

Life

Jorge Candido de Sena was the only child of Augusto Raposo de Sena, from Ponta Delgada in the Azores, a merchant marine captain, and Maria da Luz Telles Grilo de Sena, from Covilhã. Both families belonged to the middle class, the mother's originally well-to-do but nothing much remained of it by time her child was born; the father's family hailed from military and political offices, the mother's from merchants. Jorge was born in Lisbon.
He received his degree in civil engineering from the University of Porto, but published his first poems at age 18. His interests were wide-ranging, including literature, intellectual history, politics, and other areas of the cultural spectrum. His liberal yet strongly independent convictions regarding Portuguese politics during the Salazar dictatorship led eventually to his exile in Brazil in 1959, and subsequently, after the military coup in Brazil in 1964, to the United States, in 1965. He became a professor of literature in Brazil, which also afforded him the opportunity to complete his doctorate, and that was his profession in the U.S. until he died.
He died in Santa Barbara, California in 1978. His remains were moved to the Cemitério dos Prazeres in Lisbon on 11 September 2009.
Jorge de Sena is one of the most relevant Portuguese intellectuals of the twentieth century. His output in fiction, drama, essays, and poetry is vast. He considered himself primarily a poet. His autobiographical novel Sinais de Fogo was adapted to film in 1995 by Luís Filipe Rocha, who is also the author of a documentary about Jorge de Sena.

Works

Poetry
Prose
Drama
Essays