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8°, later quarter morocco over cloth boards, spine with raised bands in six compartments, dark green morocco lettering piece in second compartment from head, gilt letter and gilt fillets on bands, original printed wrappers bound in. Foxing to front wrapper. Overall in very good condition. Author's signed and dated six-line presentation inscription on recto of initial (blank) leaf: "Ao José Maria, // com a velha amistade // de // Miguel Torga // Coimbra // Maio de 42". Ticket of the Porto bookseller Manuel Ferreira in upper outer corner of front pastedown endleaf, partially obscured by the much larger engraved armorial bookplate of Dom Diogo de Bragança (Lafões). 32 pp., (1 l. colophon). *** FIRST EDITION of this significant, relatively early poem. Among the most important Portuguese authors of the twentieth century (?figura cimeira das Letras portuguesas?- Grande enciclopédia, Actualização, X, 397), the physician Adolfo Rocha (1907-1995) was at the center of the "Grupo Presença". His poetry is said to reflect "ainda as apreensões, esperanças e angústias do seu tempo, dentro de um ângulo individualista e, no fundo, religioso de visão, e a sua pureza e originalidade rítmicas, a coerência orgânica das suas imagens impõem-se ." (Saraiva & Lopes, História da literatura Portuguesa [17th ed., 2001], p. 1015).Adolfo [Corrêa] Rocha, who wrote under the pseudonym Miguel Torga, made major contributions to Portuguese prose and poetry. Born in 1907 in S. Martinho de Anta, Trás-os-Montes, he made his literary debut in 1928 with Ansiedade (not offered for sale to the public), followed by Rampa, 1930, Tributo, 1931, and Abismo, 1932, all innovative in form and nonconformist in content. He gained wide public acclaim in 1936, with O outro Livro de Job, and his autobiographical series A criação do Mundo (os dos primeiros dias), 1937, O terceiro dia da criação do Mundo, 1939, and O quarto dia da criação do Mundo, 1939, is considered one of the major Portuguese prose works of the twentieth century. Torga was associated with the second Modernist movement, but broke away from it in 1930 to follow his own path: "verdadeiramente inconfundivel, caracterizado por um realismo de sentido individualizante, de feição violenta e vitalista, socialmente responsabilizado e responsabilizador" (Magalhães Gonçalves, p. 12).Provenance: According to penciled inscriptions we have seen in other volumes with similar presentation inscriptions, bindings, and provenance (in the hand of the Porto bookseller Manuel Ferreria [?] or of Diogo Lafões [?]), "Jose Maria" was José Maria Reis Pereira, who wrote under the pseudonym José Régio, one of the most important forces in the second wave of Portuguese modernism. Régio collaborated with Torga on the influential literary review Presença. However, we have been informed by a colleague who handled a similar volume in which the full name of the recipient was present in the inscription, that "José Maria" was José Maria Lopes Gomes, apparently an old friend. Dom Diogo de Bragança (Lafões) (Lisbon, 1930-Lisbon, 2012) was an accomplished equestrian, author of books on dressage, and a dedicated bibliophile whose collection focused on books about horses and horsemanship, plus works on Portuguese history and literature. Dom Diogo used the courtesy title Marquês de Marialva, by permission of his elder brother, Dom Lopo de Bragança, Duque de Lafões, the actual holder of the title. For the bookplate, see Avelar Duarte, Ex-libris portugueses heráldicos. See also Anuário da Nobreza de Portugal, III, Tomo I (1985), pp. 20-1. *** Melo, Miguel Torga, Ensaio biobibliofotográfico p. 119: incorrectly listing the first edition as 1943. Serpa 1250. Almeida Marques 2252-3. On Torga, see also Magalhães Gonçalves, Ser e ler Torga; Casais Monteiro, "Miguel Torga - O outro Livro de Job," in Poesia portuguesa contemporânea, p. 235-38; Fernando Guimarães in Machado, ed., Dicionário de literatura portuguesa, pp. 476-7; Eloísa Álvarez in Biblos, V, 461-7; Dici.
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