José Rodrigues Miguéis

José Rodrigues Claudino Migueis ( born December 9, 1901 in Lisbon, Portugal, † October 27, 1980 in New York, United States) was a Portuguese writer. As a link to the Luso- American culture, it was important primarily as a storyteller and essayist. He also worked as a translator and playwright.

Life

Migueis was born the son of Manuel Maria Migueis Pombo and Maria Adelaide Rodrigues Migueis. As a student, he attended the Colégio Francês in Lisbon and the Camoes and Gil Vicente Lyceum. In 1917 he began studying law at the University of Lisbon. 1924 completed his law degree and he went to Setúbal, where he practiced for a year as a lawyer. In 1926 he returned to Lisbon. As a teacher of geography and history, he was, among other things at his former school, the Vicente Lizeum, works. In 1929 he moved to Brussels, where he studied at the University of Brussels until 1933 Pedagogy and Educational Sciences. Tours throughout Europe, inter alia, in the Netherlands, France, Germany and Spain extended its horizon at this time. He completed his first marriage in 1932 nor in Brussels with a Russian teacher. After 1932, the dictator Antonio Salazar came to power, he decided in 1935 to go into exile in the United States and lives henceforth until his death - with a one-year interruption from 1949 to 1950 in Rio de Janeiro - in the U.S. metropolis.

In New York, he founded the " ClubO operario portugues ", a union of the Portuguese exile in the city. He also wrote there for various Luso- American and Hispanic newspapers and magazines, as for O Globo, La Voz (Journal of the Spanish minority ) or O Diario. After the divorce from his first wife he married in the same year in 1940 his second wife, Camilla Pitta Campanella, who was a member of the Italian community in the United States. Both adopted in 1946, the only child of the family, Patricia. In 1942 he finally decided to accept the American nationality, which did not prevent him to continue to feel as a Portuguese and think. He earned his livelihood from now on as an assistant director at Reader 's Digest, where he was responsible for the editing of the Portuguese-speaking articles of the publisher. For some getaways he came again back to Portugal, as from 1946 to 1947 and in the 1950s and 60s. In the 1970s, he has not set foot in Portuguese soil.

In 1961 he became a member of the Hispanic Society of America. In 1976 he became a member of the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon. In 1978, he was to be a visiting professor at Brown University in New York, but could not even make the more Inauguration Lecture, due to its very poor health. In the USA and now highly valued in Portugal, he died in New York on 27 October 1980 after a long illness.

Migueis as an author

He was close to communism and is considered an important interpreter of neorealism within the Portuguese literature. Especially as a storyteller, essayist and playwright, he had to have publications. For this purpose, a large number is partly to today unedited articles in Portuguese or Portuguese-speaking newspapers and magazines. For many years was a part of his work in Portugal censored. The main themes of his subjects were mostly exile, emigration, traveling generally, the political situation in his country and other parts of the world. He had his very first publication in the left magazine " Seara Nova "; it was followed by numerous other articles in magazines and newspapers such as O Sol, Alma Nova Republica, O Seculo, Diario de Noticias. In Seara Nova, the travel narratives and reports that he had made about his extensive travels through Europe appeared. Even as a translator he worked, it was transmitted by him to the novel The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald for the first time in Portuguese, as well as the work of Stendhal, Erskine Caldwell, Carson McCullers. He was in regular correspondence with a large number of personalities, so with Raul Proenca, Jaime Cortesao, Antonio Sergio, David Mourão Ferreira, Jose Cardoso Pires, Jorge de Sena, Aquilino Ribeiro, Jose Saramago. Parts of his work were also transmitted alongside English into Italian, German, Polish, Czech and Russian, especially for anthologies.

Aftermath and reception

After his death, the legacy of the writer was administered and symposia convened by the Brown University. 1981 convened the Brown University, where in the local John Hay Library his estate is administered, the first international Migueis Symposium in New York to life: Under the title " José Rodrigues Migueis -Lisbon in Manhattan " met friends companions and researchers to a first exchange of views on the man's life and work. In 1983 the archive at the Hay Library was established, which is regularly frequented by researchers and supporters of the United States and Portugal, but also from the UK, Italy, Spain and France. The second international Migueis - Simposium was held in 2001 in Lisbon. The reception of man and author Migueis has increased in Portugal after the end of the dictatorship and of his death: there are, in Lisbon a street that is named after the author ( Rua de José Rodrigues Migueis ), a large documentation from 1998 worked his life and work out and had great personalities of his life to speak, including Eduardo Lourenco, who researched his work and his wife Camilla, who was still living at an old age at that time. For the show " Os Grandes Portugueses ", in which the largest Portuguese were looking for, he was - albeit on the rear seats - one of the candidates. The American writer and literary critic John Austin Kerr, Jr. wrote in 1970 - ie during the lifetime of the author - his dissertation on the work of Migueis. From the Smithsonian Institute, he was given the special honor in 1961 phonogram poems important Portuguese poet, so Antonio Nobre, Antonio Botto, Cesario Verde, Fernando Pessoa, Antero de Quental among others to discuss in order to leave behind a legacy of Portuguese language and culture for future generations of scientists and interested parties.

Artist of the Luso- American culture

In addition to such diverse figures as Cardinal Humberto Medeiros Sousa, John Philip Sousa and John Dos Passos, and Jorge de Sena, he is considered an important representative of the joint American and Portuguese culture. The culture that to this day has always been rather quiet and never gained great influence in the United States, shaped the United States, especially in the fields of religion ( Catholicism ) and the literature. Migueis ' contribution is primarily its originated in the USA in Portuguese literature that existed in the states printed in English, its commitment to the academic life in New York, which earned him many friends, as well as the Portuguese community in the United States, with whom he was strongly attached. A reappraisal of this will be important for future generations of Americans of Portuguese descent of the utmost importance.

Work (selection)

Collections of short stories

• Uma adventura inquietante, 1958.
• A escola do paraiso, 1960.
• Nikalai! Nikalai! Segredo de a mumia, 1971.
• O pao cai nao do ceu, 1981 ( posthumously ).

Short story volumes

• Pascoa Feliz, 1932.
• Leah e outros historicos, 1958.
• Comercio com o imimigo, 1973.

Play

• O Passageiro do Expresso, 1960.

Essays

• O espelho polidornico, 1973.

Awards (selection)

Swell

• Http://www.alfarrobio.di.umminho.pt/vercial/migueis.htm
• Http://www.infopedia.pt/ $ jose rodrigues Migueis.
• Http://www.portaldaliteratura.com/autores.php?autor=249.
• Http://www.brown.edu/facilities/university-library/libs/hay/collections/migueis/

• Author
• Of the Order of St. James of the Sword ( Grand Officer )
• Portuguese
• Born 1901
• Died in 1980
• Man