Symptomatic of this same way of conceiving criticism is, in Tópicos recuperados [Recovered topics], “António Sérgio, literary critic”, bringing together pieces from 1962 and 1975, in which the very length of the excerpts quoted leads to the essays collected in the various volumes by Sérgio, in such a way that David presents them as highly interesting in terms of how the questions are formulated and the concepts that are explained (e.g., the rejection of biographism). The starting and ending points of this inquiry into Sérgio’s steps as a literary critic question in the first person whether Mourão-Ferreira is or is not his disciple, drawing a self-portrait that is ultimately close to that thinker – independence and “seductions of l’école buissonière” (p.55), an apparently dispersive principle, but ultimately refocusing, in a disciplined centripetal movement that brings the rays back to the main and unifying core: from the margins, one returns to the “same roof” (Sob o mesmo tecto, 1989), to the common home of a way of thinking also supported by António Sérgio. This is the man who was “always against everyone” - “everyone” being the “systems”, “regimes”, “repression” and “persecution” that befell “poets and novelists, scientists and thinkers” (p.57), summarises David, according to whom the author of Ensaios [Essays] “[became] (...) one of the greatest, if not the greatest, prose writers of ideas in our literary history” (p.59).

We have already mentioned the “polygonal” and comprehensive perspective of the critical work of the author of Hospital das Letras (1966, 2 nd ed. 1982), an issue that is very present in this volume. It is worth noting the apt choice of titles for the successive books, which also extends to the essays, in certain cases paying homage to tradition from the very beginning: while Motim literário [Literary Mutiny] (1962) comes from a perhaps unexpected José Agostinho de Macedo, Hospital das letras [Hospital of the Letters] quotes the eponymous work by D. Francisco Manuel de Melo, both in the title and in the epigraphs placed at the beginning of each section (seven in total; this structure may be overlooked, as the index does not account for it). In the seventh and last of these, we read this excerpt from the 1657 work that Mourão-Ferreira evokes: “It is necessary to clear the ears of the living, as one clears the eyes of the occupation that has made them famous in the past, so that they may see or hear and esteem the names and fame of the present.” (from “53ª fala de Lípsio” [53 rd speech of Lípsio], p.81, 1982 edition). In terms of historical and literary concept, on the one hand, the articulation between past and present is postulated, with lineage being an indispensable mainstay for situating the reading; but on the other hand, a line is drawn here between this book and, within it, the figure of D. Francisco Manuel de Melo, and the volume that would be published in 1976 – Sobre viventes [On the Living] , a compilation of essays, several of them “written in 1975. More precisely: after 11 March, before 25 November 1975” (as explained in the short and incisive “Preliminary note” on page 11, which should be read by anyone wishing to know David Mourão-Ferreira’s political position in the post-Revolution period). Inscription in History, therefore, confrontation with reality, acute awareness that beyond circumstances lies the permanence of literary art and its study – the “living” resist and persist.

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