Wednesday, July 16, 2008

PESSOA

Portugal Holds on to Words Few Can Grasp
By
MICHAEL KIMMELMAN Published: July 15, 2008
LISBON — The latest brouhaha involving cultural property is unfolding here — and not, for a change, over stolen vases or precious war booty, but a poet’s correspondence. As usual, it’s a window onto a nation’s character. The elderly heirs of Fernando Pessoa, the exalted Portuguese writer, plan this fall to auction Pessoa’s correspondence with Aleister Crowley, the early-20th-century British mystic, mountaineer, writer and practitioner of black magic.
Portugal’s culture minister is among those who have shown distress in recent days about the letters’ leaving the country.
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