No less relevant are the essays on the journal Presença and, in particular, on José Régio, concentrated in Presença da “presença” (1977). David, himself a mentor of journals such as Távola Redonda , a contributor to various periodicals and other publications, shows a relationship with Régio that was not always peaceful, referring to him in critical terms with his usual elevation, while also taking the opportunity, as he did in several other essays, to record moments from his biography – in this case, the audacity of going to meet the poet to “seek to get to know personally a writer he greatly admired” (p.134), noting that the closeness is accentuated by the high regard both held for António Sérgio.

David Mourão-Ferreira approached many other authors throughout his life as a critic, essayist and teacher – suffice it to mention some of those he encouraged his students to read, such as Manuel Teixeira-Gomes, Aquilino Ribeiro, José Rodrigues Miguéis, Vitorino Nemésio, Sebastião da Gama and many other leading poets and fiction writers, all covered in Sob o mesmo tecto [Under the Same Roof] (1989), based on the solid course he set out on when he was very young, growing and changing without ever losing sight of his roots. His essays were recognised with numerous awards, including some of the most important in Portugal (Jacinto do Prado Coelho Prize, 1988; APE/PT Grand Prize for Literary Essays, 1990; Career Achievement Award from the Portuguese Society of Authors, 1996, joining the many awards he received for his work as a poet and fiction writer). These distinctions give deserved and well-deserved prominence to this author’s critical work; In this vein is the posthumous tribute by Colóquio-Letras ( 1997): in addition to those already mentioned, we refer to the article by Ernesto Rodrigues on “David verbetista” and that by Vítor Aguiar e Silva, in a very accurate summary of all the essayistic work of David Mourão-Ferreira. Multimodal and always moving, David Mourão-Ferreira’s essays are characterised by a workshop governed by rigour, a love of literature and its thorough study, integrating and illuminating all the facets of a polygon of remarkable scope and supreme importance in the panorama of literary criticism and historiography in Portugal. Ócios do ofício [Leisure of the Craft] is the title of his 1989 volume of essays, in which we can read the brilliance of assonances and the awareness that literature has sonic and rhetorical effects on which taste is based, built by craft, that is, by analysis combined with synthesis, by labour that never wanes, but expands and grows, infecting those who read and – if I may use the term – those who revere him as a master.

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