Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues

Armando César Côrtes-Rodrigues, considered the Prince of the Azorean Poets at the time, affirmed himself as one of the greatest Azorean intellectuals of the 20th century, leaving a remarkable cultural work. It is remembered in the toponymy of Ponta Delgada, a city where there is also a space of memory and aesthetic creation, the Writing House / House Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues, a cultural equipment installed in the last house where the writer lived and died on October 14, 1971, to the 80 years of age, son of the poet António César Rodrigues, doctor and co-founder of the Institute of Vila Franca.

He was born in Vila Franca do Campo on February 28, 1891 and became an orphan at birth. He attended Fisher College and did his high school studies in Ponta Delgada, showing already in his teenage years a penchant for writing. After completing his secondary education, he left for Lisbon, where he graduated in Romance Philology from the Faculty of Letters of Lisbon (1910-1915). At that time Fernando Pessoa was known. He collaborated in the first two issues of the magazine “Orpheu” with several poems, some of them signed with the pseudonym Violante de Cysneiros. Already in this collaboration he demonstrates a moderate modernism, which he would abandon almost completely along his poetic path, yielding to the tradition of lyrical composition and reflecting in his work his azorianity through a poetic classicism with a marked humanist side. He returned to the Azores in 1917, joining the lyceum teaching career, working in the high schools of Ponta Delgada and Angra do Heroísmo (in this last city only until it took place in Ponta Delgada). Although settled in the Azores, he continued to correspond assiduously with Fernando Pessoa, sharing the ideals of the new aesthetic without, however, adopting them entirely. It is dedicated to the study of the Azorean ethnography, an area in which it was to be highlighted and to a poetic of religious interest. His ethnographic studies, for which he made important collections, focused on the area of ​​oral and popular literature in the Azores, popular songs and adages. His ethnographic work is among the best in this area produced in the Portuguese language, having received in 1953 the “Antero de Quental Prize” with the book “Horto Closed and Other Poems”, a work in which it evokes its roots. He was an important cultural activist,participating in multiple initiatives and institutions, being one of the founding partners of the Cultural Institute of Ponta Delgada, and directed his publication, the magazine «Insulana».

The funeral of the Poet

At 5:00 pm on October 15, 1971, an extensive car parade accompanied the poet Armando Cortés Rodrigues, who left the Sant’Anna Chapel in Ponta Delgada, on his way to his beloved Vila Franca do Campo.

In the parish church of São Miguel Arcanjo, numerous people from that village waited for the arrival of the funeral car, standing out among them the president and city councilors, teachers and students of the Externato de Vila Franca and primary schools and people of social representation from the village. In Ponta Delgada, incorporated into the funeral procession, besides the District Chief, president of the General Board, professors of the Lyceum, there was an innumerable number of friends and admirers of Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues, who not only wanted to accompany their children in this painful moment , as well as rendering the great poet his last honor. In addition to these presences, there were also representations of persons and entities from outside the island, namely the Society Afonso de Chaves and its president, Lieutenant Colonel José Agostinho, as well as the counselor of the Supreme Court of Accounts Dr. Armando Cândido de Medeiros, represented by Mr. Francisco Carreiro da Costa.

In the building of the Paços do Concelho, as well as in the Externato of Vila Franca, they saw the respective banners raised at half-stem, as a sign of mourning.

Soon after the entrance of the coffin in the Church of St. Michael, the temple was literally full, and then a mass of the present body was celebrated.

After the celebration of this last religious event, students from the Vila Franca day-school and primary schools, some with flower garlands, and accompanied by their teachers, opened the funeral procession that followed on foot, and in the middle of the most pitiful silence, to the cemetery of Santo Amaro. At the edge of the grave, the companion of Armando Cortes-Rodrigues in more than forty years of teaching and high school president of the Cultural Institute of Ponta Delgada. Dr. John H. Anglin read, with great emotion, the following words:

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“This is not the opportune moment to develop considerations or commentaries on the value of the literary work of this illustrious micaelense, but it is possible not to mention, at the last moment of his presence in this world, the high merit of his poetic productions, which are attested his love for the native land and the people and humble and simple things that always trapped his spirit and intelligence.

An essentially regionalist poet, loving the people and singing the facets that best characterize and define him, Armando Cortes Rodrigues was arrested, an old companion of long years in the teaching, entirely and devotedly to the clod where he was born and kept almost uninterruptedly, buried there after long life of fruitful labor.

Azorean connoisseur of the ethnography and popular folklore of the archipelago, bequeathed to posterity, in prose and verse, an imperishable monument, which will always be the object of admiration and spiritual pleasure of those who cherish these things, in simple but at the same time valuable and elevated appearance.

Corte Rodrigues was a poet and prose writer, but above all a poet, because poetry infiltrated, as a seductive fairy, in all his literary productions, leaving behind the perfume that is always evolved from the flowers of the field, however modest and dim they may appear.

He loved the sea in all truth, confused with the rude and fearless fishermen, of whom he became a friend and companion, reason why, in his own times, he enjoyed spending long hours in direct contact with the waves, imbued with the sunshine and ocean spray.

Of the men of the country, harshly laboring with the hoe in the task of earning their daily bread, sang in delightful verses the honorable labor, in the admiration of the intellectual who knows how to appreciate and praise the virtues of the people, the nation’s its existence.

Cortes-Rodrigues had a soul of choice, a lover of the beauty and work of God, to whom he had always been faithful, notwithstanding certain moral storms that sometimes assailed his spiritual experience.

He was a good and affable friend, even in moments of anger which, seemingly enduring, soon crumbled into foam, like the waves that lose their momentum when they hit the hard pen.

May the Lord have the soul of Armando Cortes Rodrigues in his right hand, waiting for those who still await the time to leave for the eternal journey. ”