169-173), a very accurate technical analysis and demonstration of the comparative approach that David Mourão-Ferreira always practised with great results, even before the term was established. The book closes with section VII, which brings together essays from the 1960s on contemporary authors (Cabral do Nascimento, José Osório de Oliveira, Tomaz de Figueiredo, Pedro Homem de Mello, Carlos Queiroz – “heir to symbolism” – and Natércia Freire). In short, Hospital das Letras is a beacon in the author’s work and in the history of criticism in Portugal – knowledgeable, rigorous, innovative, with brilliant and exquisite writing.

In the field of studies on Modernism, particularly on Orpheu , Fernando Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro or Almada Negreiros, it is also essential to consider the pieces collected in Nos passos de Pessoa [In the Steps of Pessoa] (1988). Manuela Parreira da Silva paid detailed attention to this volume ( Colóquio-Letras no. 145-146, 1997), emphasising that “the fact that he is a specialist in literature and culture (...) allows him to read [Pessoa] in a unique way. His Pessoa never appears in isolation – he is the link in a chain, a fixer of moments” (p.367), emphasising the issues of lineage and the representation of time. In Fernando Pessoa, according to David, the link between the 16 th century and Garrett and Antero stands out, both in terms of themes and motifs and in terms of metres and other technical aspects. If we add to this, as the critic does, Pessoa’s links with English and other poets, we see how his perspective on the greatest of the Orpheus poets is “polygonal”, open but integrative. It is worth recalling the brief preface to the first volume of Pessoa’s correspondence with Ophélia Queiroz (Cartas de amor de Fernando Pessoa, 1978), in which he recalls Carlos Queiroz’s Homenagem a Fernando Pessoa [Homage to Fernando Pessoa] (1936) for three reasons: first, the memory of Carlos Queiroz, whose work Mourão-Ferreira does justice to in his essays; second, because it was through the author of Desaparecido that the collection of letters came into the possession of our essayist and editor; finally, for the philological rigour of the criteria used (“As this is a first edition, the original spelling has been scrupulously respected (...); the very irregular way in which Fernando Pessoa dated his letters has also been respected; (...)”, p.9). It is a pioneering gesture that is known to be controversial, as certain reactions have shown, based on a genuine interest in anything that could complement Pessoa’s complexity, looking at it with a lamp in the dark (alluding to the title of the 1979 volume). The knowledge of the work of the poet of “Tabacaria” [Tobacconist’s] is also evident in the anthology O rosto e as máscaras – Textos escolhidos em verso e prosa [The Face and the Masks – Selected Texts in Verse and Prose]( chronological anthology, organised and prefaced by David Mourão-Ferreira, 1976, 2nd ed. 1979), proposing a reading framed within the tradition in which the Pessoa universe is inscribed – decadence and symbolism, the nostalgia of A águia , etc., all reverting to that matrix of unity and diversity that Jacinto do Prado Coelho had studied, in yet another nod to the concept of the polygon which, as we are seeing, is one of the constant themes in Mourão-Ferreira’s critical work.

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