Letters Returned to Sender by António Botto
May 2011

Letter 1

I have the right to my ideas but not to my life.  Of my Songs, of my art, much has been said!  And I haven’t even tried to explain, publicly, this or that misunderstood detail.  But to explain — why?  Those who are inferior have another way of understanding, they speak another language.  I write my poetry indifferent to facile seduction and indifferent, also, to those who can’t or won’t understand it.  A poet is he who knows how to take an interest in things other people disdain and don’t understand.  Everything within us that never came to be has, in poetry, its highest emotional resonance.  Yes, my love: great poetry isn’t sentiment; — great poetry is experience.  Poetry is nothing more than memory purified by the beauty of expression.  Good bye. — Please don’t even think about telling me what they’re all saying.

 

From Letter 3

Like the lighthouses on the surface of the waters darkly guard the secrets of the sea, so does the sad silence of my eyes guard the mystery of my love.

 

Letter 7

You didn’t show up again.  I wasn’t angry, despite my impatience having reached a feverish irritation that was hard to overcome.  You’re being cautious, so you think, reducing everything to the penury of what might happen.  I don’t like love disciplined by rules; I give myself over to the freedom of my emotions without fearing the consequences . . . Artists don’t feel themselves obliged to respect established morality . . . As you can see, my logic is completely sentimental.  But, really, why didn’t you show up?

 

Letter 13

Yes; that desire to kiss you evaporated at first contact...It’s just that I assumed that your nerves didn’t allow such lamentable aberrations in your being — In matters of love, I considered you nobler.  So, don’t insult or embarrass me for having been a slave of your flesh — bronze, beautiful, hard!  I can’t, I won’t, stop loving you; but to stop wanting you I feel is easily achieved after all!  It’s not illusion but reality that allows us the possibility of being immensely happy in life.  Good bye.

 

Letter 41

After our quarrel, I went to sit by the sea.  There I remained, until the last rays of the setting sun--as if someone had strewn the petals of an enormous flower of shadow over the world — also embraced my soul, making it sadder and more alone.  I wept, I suffered, but no one saw me.  All of my thoughts shipwreck in my heart.  And, chained to the sweet memory of your body, I don’t know which path I must follow in order to forget . . .

 

António Botto (1897-1959) was a controversial Portuguese poet of the first half of the twentieth century who published openly homoerotic verse.  His series of Cartas que me foram devolvidas (“Letters Returned to Me” or “Letters Returned to Sender”), included in successive editions of his books of poetry, are addressed to no one in particular and may never have been sent.  Like many of his poems, Botto’s Letters are flashes into the psyche, expressions of intense longing and often unrequited desire, of a life in silence frequently misunderstood.

 

Josiah Blackmore is the editor of The Songs of António Botto (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), translated into English from the Portuguese by Fernando Pessoa.  He has written other projects on shipwreck literature, Portugal and Africa, and medieval poetry.  He teaches at the University of Toronto.