The Azores oceanic islands by Vitorino Nemésio and Cecília Meireles: Landscape, journey and memory

Abstract

This paper aims to conduct a thematic and comparative analysis after the concepts of landscape, space, place and memory in six texts by Vitorino Nemésio and Cecília Meireles in which the Atlantic islands of the Azores archipelago are represented. In these texts, the landscape is a manifestation of the authors’ontological topography, resulting in a subjective construction process that re-signifies the places of the islands. In common, these texts have the themes of the islanders’ life simplicity, isolation and poverty. If these traits bring them close, others separate them. In Nemésio, the islands are transfigured into a tourist landscape and migration space, reflecting the substance and the constraints of Azoreanness. In contrast, in Cecília, the island is a place in the frontier of the real and the imaginary, constructed by the poet's fantasy, emotional geography and childhood memories. In Nemésio, the texts manifest images of individual and collective memory, whereas, in Cecília, the work of memory facilitates an escape from reality and a journey to the realisation of the lost paradise myth: the Island of Nanja.