Eduardo Metzner

Poet and polemicist. Raised at Casa Pia, he studied at the Coimbra Seminary, which he would abandon in 1905, following family problems related to his mother. To this incident is owed his work Maldição às Mães, which would mark his life as a self-proclaimed anarchist, libertarian, and revolutionary. He then headed to Lisbon, where he relied on some friends to survive. Always dressed in black, with a tendency for alcohol and a «frail figure» (according to Tomás d'Eça Leal), he preferred cafés and casinos as venues for his protest art. He published numerous pamphlets that the editors of the time exploited, earning substantial sums at the expense of the scandals and controversies raised. Metzner's insults were directed mainly at high political authorities, not sparing the king (D. Carlos I). Such attitudes earned him imprisonment, as a suspect of «professing libertarian ideas». In 1907, he was 'placed' as a second-aspirant in the Treasury Department of Lourenço Marques. He never ceased, however, to write verses in a romantic style, with classical rigor, but with forceful sarcastic verbalism. After October 5th, he turned against the republicans, collaborating with monarchist newspapers.