Joaquim Pegado Cardoso

Poet, doctor, and lawyer. Son of Goan parents, he moved to Goa as a teenager, where he completed his secondary studies and graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the Medical-Surgical School of that city. In 1945, he came to Portugal, earning a law degree from the University of Lisbon. While a law student, he served three consecutive terms as president of the India Section of the Casa dos Estudantes do Império during a period when Amilcar Cabral, with whom he was friends, was a leader of that institution. He worked in various public services, was a program controller for Rádio Televisão Portuguesa, and practiced medicine and law. He is retired as an inspector for the Directorate-General of Health Services. While a student in Goa, he collaborated with various periodicals in that city, namely, the newspaper for women and children, Mascote, the student publications O Cábula and Revista Académica, the daily newspapers Heraldo and O Heraldo, and the pedagogical bi-weekly Tempo. As a poet, he debuted, still in Goa, with the book Flor do Carmelo, 1941, and as an essayist with Dissecção de um Índio Cristão de Goa, 1938. However, his most important work is the book of sonnets Coração em Chamas, preceded by an essay on poetics, dated 1990, which the author calls «Prólogo». As this book, in its first version, was slated for publication in 1975, it includes a preface by Vitorino Nemésio prepared for that edition and dated that year. The definitive version features an afterword by David Mourão-Ferreira, in which this poet and essayist states that he knows of no other book in Portuguese literature «that compares to this one in the surprising way it brings together or juxtaposes a poetic experience and critical reflection, the practice of a certain form and theoretical meditation on its respective antecedents, its respective vicissitudes, its respective form throughout the centuries».