Camilo Pessanha’s Missing City: Race, Poetry, and Urban Writing in Portuguese Macau

Abstract

The Portuguese poet Camilo Pessanha’s long stint in Macau has been the subject of much scholarly debate and biographical intrigue. Critics have tended either to deny the city’s poetic import altogether, erroneously claiming that Pessanha wrote virtually no poetry in Macau, or else present a highly romanticized portrait of the poet’s time there, focusing on his opium addiction and emphasizing the city’s exoticism. In this article I seek to problematise both portrayals, examining Pessanha’s poetry in light of his critical writings on Macau. My analysis shows that Macau’s heady cultural life interacted powerfully with Pessanha’s individualized notions of pastoral poetics and theory of race.