DESTINATION
Through well seasoned paths we discover pieces of history at every stepMiguel Torga's Route
From the mountains was born the poet that searches eternally the reason for his existence. The rocks are his air, the Heather is his name. He began as Adolfo Correia da Rocha, but soon he identified himself as another, Miguel Torga.
Adolfo Rocha was the son of modest farmers from Trás-os-Montes, learned to work the land, taste that is not lost over the years, such as, a taste for hunting.
A careful observer of the world around him he traveled through several countries venturing even by Spanish lands in full civil war to make the literary portrait that would take him to jail in Portugal.
His role was instrumental in the construction of Portuguese democracy. After the Revolution in 25 of April, 1975, Miguel Torga helped found the Socialist Party alongside Mário Soares.
But we will talk about the poet, the writer, the observer. Miguel Torga left us 20 years ago and still there was no one like him. In his memories divided into diaries he shared a world that was his and ours. Made the portrait of a Portugal still distant from the other European countries. He talks about the nature of our country and of the Portuguese in a critically and a realistically way.
An amazing bibliography that is now studied and compulsory teaching in Portugal. Works such as "Bichos" and "Contos da Montanha" cannot be forgotten from collective memory. In addition to its known prose and poetry, Miguel Torga was also the author of essays and plays.
We hope that this theme arouses your curiosity to learn more about this brilliant author.
São Martinho de Anta
Coimbra
Leiria
Meet the life path of Miguel Torga.
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São Martinho de Anta (Sabrosa)
Miguel Torga's House - Where he was born in 1907
Primary School - Where he studied from 1913 and 1917
Miguel Torga's Space - Opened in 2014 is a tribute to the office space where an exhibition on the life and work of the writer and poet.
Ulmus - The town center is a tribute place to Miguel Torga, where once there was an Ulmus much loved by the poet, that has even dedicated a poem to it "A um Negrilho" in Diário VII
"In the land where I was born there is only one poet.
My verses are leaves of its branches.
When I come from far and we talk,
It is he who reveals to me the world visited.
Falls the night sky, rises the dawn,
And the sunlight on or off
It's in your eyes that the inn is seen (...)"
Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora da Azinheira - Place where Miguel Torga was inspired to do the poem Identification - Diário XV an ovation to the stones that saw his birth.
"Here I was in the feast of Senhora da Azinheira. I dropped from Gerês with two friends in lands of Cabreira and Basto, crossed the Tâmega and the plateau Alvão, went down the valley of Vila Pouca, climbed again, we've arrived, I raised the old from the bed, placed him in the car, and here we are all in the atrium of the chapel, at the shadow of a Ulmus, to look to the horizons and hear a sermon."
In Diário VII
Tumulus of Madorras - Miguel Torga follow with great interest the work of archaeologists at the time of its discovery.
Cemetery where he is buried along with his wife Andrée Crabbé.
Saint Leonardo of Galafura - Place where Miguel Torga was inspired and decided that one day he would be a writer.
"From this land I am made of.
Boulders are my bones,
Humus are my flesh .
I have wrinkles in the soul
And run in my veins
Rivers rushing.
I give rough poems,
And I'm also far
In the nation's map.
Far and out of hand ..."
in Diário XV
Coimbra
Between 1925- 1933
High school José Falcão – where he did in 1927 the entire third cycle of high school in just one year.
Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra.
Estrela de Alva's Republic (Slope of the Seminar) - Where he lived as a medical student.
(...) Coimbra is a beautiful city, full of national significance. Well-tailored, showy, favorably placed between Lisbon and Porto, the first, is maritime, the second, earthly, one to pull off and another pull-in, it represents a vigilant neutrality, making the osmosis of the spirit that part of the body that is. The spirit that goes, or must go, to all the adventures of the world, and of the body that has immutable roots in native ground. (...)
Yes, Coimbra is a beautiful city and, full of national sense. There is no more beautiful city in the country, and much of what the nation has of good and bad did it there or there had its genesis.
Miguel Torga, in Portugal
Between 1940- 1995
1ª house in Coimbra - No 32 Estrada da Beira.
Medical Office - No 45 Largo da Portagem (1First Floor).
House Museum of Miguel Torga – Fernando Pessoa Street No 3, house he has built in 1953 and in where he lived until his death. The space is maintained as it was in the writer's time and so we can experience the day-to-day go through the same corridors of the writer.(Offering an entry with the Poetry and Prose Box)
Memorial to Miguel Torga – By the river, near Largo da Portagem.
"Of all the cilices, only, one,
I was grateful to suffer
Fifty years of unrest
To see running,
Serene,
Mondego's waters "
Miguel Torga, in Diário XIV
Leiria
Medical Office – Comandante João Belo Street and Marechal Gomes da Costa Square. In this building doctor Adolfo Rocha (Miguel Torga) established his office in 6 nd of July 1939, on the 1st floor of the number 5, which became also his residence.
"... and there I spent part of the morning and afternoon, sleepy, attending to the rare patients that the news of my arrival in the local newspaper was bringing, reading and writing in long intervals between consults, while the hours fell monotonously from the Cathedral's tower and madam Gloria was knitting or kicking in the waiting room».
Miguel Torga, in O Quinto Dia of A Criação do Mundo
SEF Building old Police station, Av. Ernesto Korrodi. In November 1939, Miguel Torga was arrested by the police, by order of the Minister of the Interior, for denouncing the horrors of the dictatorships in Europe including Franco and Mussolini in his book A Criação do Mundo - O Quarto Dia. After a vague accusation of defending subversive ideas and communism he is delivered to the Political Police and since then it was impossible to communicate with him. Was transferred to Limoeiro and then to Aljube's Jail in Lisbon where it is confined to isolation. He was released in February in 1940 without a trial.
"From the barred window of the cubicle where I was thrown I could see the roofs of half a city, a sliver of the facade of the Cathedral, the towers of several churches, the cemetery and (...) the Senhora da Encarnação chapel (...). Behind it, far away, the village of Abadia white in the greenery of the mountains where I used to hunt..."
Miguel Torga, in O Quinto Dia of A Criação do Mundo
In Leiria, Miguel Torga also attended the Library and the District Archive at Cónego Maia Square, as well as the old Theatre D. Maria Pia, where he watched movies, concerts and theater shows. After dinner he enjoyed the walks on the banks of the Lis River with his friend Dr. Olívio.
