Alone

Nobre, António Pereira, 1867-1900Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.0

Word count: 117K words
Chapters: 12

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Só by António Pereira NobreAuthor: Nobre, António Pereira, 1867-1900,Language: Portuguese, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Nov 30, 2005

Editor's review

Só is the only poetry collection published in his lifetime by the Portuguese poet António Pereira Nobre and a turning point in modern Portuguese poetry. The title means "alone," and the lyrical subject often faces night, memory, and passing time in monologue; the language is spare and musical, with echoes of Symbolism and late Romanticism. Its value lies in creating a long emotional space with minimal words; many poems are short yet reward rereading and recitation. For readers learning Portuguese or studying Iberian literature, this collection is an important sample for understanding the shift in late nineteenth-century Portuguese poetry. When reading, do not seek plot but attend to sound, rhythm, and recurring imagery. It suits slow reading in quiet moments and can also serve as supporting text for language learning.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers learning Portuguese who wish to encounter poetry in the original
Students of Portuguese literature and Symbolist poetry
Readers who enjoy short lyric poems and value the music of language
Those interested in late nineteenth-century European poetic currents

Not a good fit for

Beginners unfamiliar with Portuguese and without a translation to help
Readers who prefer narrative long poems or plot-driven works
Readers expecting systematic literary history and detailed annotation

Reading tips

Read through once to feel the rhythm, then read poem by poem closely; do not force understanding in order.
Read aloud, attending to line breaks and sound to appreciate the musicality.
Use a Portuguese dictionary and literary history materials to check key words and period background.
Read only three to five poems at a time and leave time for them to linger, avoiding aesthetic fatigue from reading it all at once.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can I read this book without knowing Portuguese?

You can read with a translation or a bilingual edition, but the rhythm and sound of the original are a major part of its value, and not knowing Portuguese at all will lose much of the beauty. It is best to use it with notes or an introduction.

What are the themes of this collection?

It centers on solitude, night, memory, and the passage of time; the lyrical subject expresses inner feeling in monologue, with spare language, concentrated imagery, and a Symbolist coloring.

Why is the title "Só"?

In Portuguese, só means "alone" or "lonely," which identifies the collection's core emotion and lyrical stance and invites readers to enter the poems in a solitary frame of mind.

Comments

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About the author

Nobre, António Pereira, 1867-1900 Author · Portuguese · 1867–1900

António Pereira Nobre (1867–1900) was a Portuguese Symbolist poet who lived to only thirty-three. His surviving body of work is small; two titles are held here: the poetry collections Só and Despedidas: 1895–1899. Só is his representative work, written in a melancholic tone and centered on childhood memory and homesickness, with restrained feeling and hazy imagery that reflect the Symbolist emphasis on the inner world and musicality. His verse is sorrowful yet controlled, attentive to subtle shifts of emotion in everyday life and recollection, and it has had some influence on later Portuguese lyric poetry. Because he died young, biographical and critical material on him is relatively limited, and public information is scarce; scholarly assessment tends to focus on Só, through which readers can sense his distinctive melancholy and Symbolist character.