António Telmo

António Telmo Carvalho Vitorino (2 May 1927 – 21 August 2010), was a Portuguese philosopher, writer and teacher. Son of the jurist, poet and journalist António Dinis Vitorino and brother of Orlando Vitorino, also a writer and philosopher. He graduated in Classical Philology at the Faculty of Arts in Lisbon.

Biography

António Telmo was born in Almeida, Beira Alta, on May 2, 1927. He was, by invitation of Agostinho da Silva and Eudoro de Sousa, for three years, professor of Portuguese Literature at the University of Brasilia. Later, he directed the Sesimbra Library and taught Portuguese in Estremoz.

He published, among other works, Poetic Art (1963), Secret History of Portugal (1977), Secret Grammar of the Portuguese Language (1981) and Philosophy and Kabbalah (1989) and collaborated in the newspaper 57 (1957–1962).

Telmo spent an important part of his youth and adulthood in Sesimbra, where he taught at the Costa Marques College for several years. He combined traditions such as Aristotelian and Hebrew philosophy, the sacredness of the Portuguese language and the gift of the poetic word, the notion of the firmament and the cult of heroes. A philologist open to the intuitio intellectualis of the creative power of the verb, to him we owe, however, the notion of a secret grammar of the Portuguese language and the creationist concept of poetic reason. A fifth-imperial thinker, he still considers, following Álvaro Ribeiro, that sovereignty resides above all in intelligence and imagination. He has collaborated in multiple periodicals.

António Telmo died in Évora at 83 years of age.

Works

• Arte Poética (1963)
• História Secreta de Portugal (1977)
• Gramática secreta da língua portuguesa (1981)
• Desembarque dos Maniqueus na Ilha de Camões (1982)
• Filosofia e Kabbalah (1989)
• O Bateleur (1992)
• Horóscopo de Portugal (1997)
• Contos (1999)
• O Mistério de Portugal na História e n'Os Lusíadas (2004)
• Viagem a Granada (2005)
• Contos Secretos (2007)
• Congeminações de um neopitagórico (2006; 2009)
• A Verdade do Amor, seguido de Adoração: cânticos de amor, de Leonardo Coimbra (2008)
• Luís de Camões (2010)
• A Aventura Maçónica (2010)
• O Portugal de António Telmo (2010; anthology)

References

• O Portugal de António Telmo. Lisboa: Guimarães (2010)