Writers Who Inspire Us: The Melancholic Verses of Florbela Espanca
Allen Ginsberg once said: “And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.” I think his quote represents the very essence of Florbela Espanca — a Portuguese poet who turned pain into poetry. Espanca’s sonnets reflect the bitterness of her life and her insatiability.
Born in Alentejo, Espanca’s childhood had painful events such as the rejection of her father, and later her mother’s death. Such situations were channelled to the paper in an emotive way. As a child, she wrote her first poem entitled “Life and Death”, where her gloomy aura is blatant, that would come to characterise her entire literary work.
From the first book Livro de Mágoas which translates to Book of Sorrows — strongly inspired by the happenings mentioned above — I felt the intensity of her soul. Lyrically written, the poems emphasise her frustrations and longings. I experience her tumults when I read her verses of melancholy. Her use of language and word choice confer beauty to the heaviest woes.
Her most prevalent themes are femininity, grief, love, and solitude. The raw material of her poetries is the sentiment that is revealed in an intuitive writing. This female voice was often ostracised since her attitudes were against the patriarchal society and Espanca’s poetry was labelled as very feminine.
Each poetry collection details her mind in a confessional tone lingering in my memory long after I close the books. And I return to her words, time and time again, to seek inspiration, and a sense of comprehension. Like many women before her, Espanca embodies the literary, as well as the social emancipation of women.
“A Mulher” (“The Woman”) is one of my favourite poems and an exquisite tribute to all women. The poem utters that women are capable of hiding their anguishes while they smile at the world. The first stanza roughly translated says:
“O Woman! How weak you are and how strong you are!
How you know how to be sweet and disgraceful!
How you can pretend when in your chest
Your soul is bitterly writhing!”
Another poem that I truly love is “Torre de Névoa” (“Tower of Mist”). The poetic “I” presents herself as a poet who consults the dead poets telling them her dreams. They also had them, however everything faded.
Alongside the poetic work, Florbela Espanca penned short stories, always in a haunted writing. As Máscaras do Destino (The Masks of Destiny) was stirred by the death of her brother, Apeles Espanca, sinking her into an abyss of sadness. Florbela Espanca committed suicide on the day of her birthday three years later.
As a poet, Florbela Espanca has inspired me to explore the deepest corners of my soul, and to convert dismal into poetry.
Recommended Reading
Poems
“Vain Desires”
“Fanaticism”
“If You Came to See Me”
“To Be a Poet”
“To Love”
“Trees of Alentejo”
About Raquel Dionísio Abrantes
Raquel Dionísio Abrantes is a writer from Portugal. She has a Bachelor's Degree and a Master’s Degree in Cinema from Universidade da Beira Interior. Raquel gave a Master Class in Writing of Scripts about Narrative Structure. Her writing has been published by Write or Die Tribe, Better Than Starbucks, New Hand Lab, The Fictional Café, and Black Flowers, among others. She writes for Read Poetry and O Cipreste. More about her work can be found on Instagram, @woodland.poem.