Vitaliano José Brum da Silveira

Poet. Natural son of Dr. João José Paim Brum da Silveira Terra Leite, an Azorean from the island of Faial who also cultivated poetry and translated Virgil, he was born while his father was still a student of Canon Law in Coimbra, between 1745 and 1750, as his biographer Ernesto Rebelo believed, or later (around 1768, according to Pedro da Silveira), during the time Dr. João José Paim still remained in that city, held there by matters of the heart. He later accompanied his father when the latter, having become heir to the family entail upon the death of his older brother, returned permanently to the Azores. Of a bohemian, jovial, and somewhat Don Juanesque temperament, he led a wild and carefree life, becoming famous in convent parlors and at country festivals that he frequented, where he spread his poetry by singing it to the guitar. He also appeared in aristocratic salons, where poetry and music were cultivated at the time. What survived of his work – sixteen sonnets, four odes, and an elegy – does not, however, match the image of the author established by tradition: on the contrary, they are generally bitter verses expressing a «sad heart» «imprisoned in the irons of love» and abandoned «to the impious force / of a living torment».