João de Deus Ramos was born on the 8th March, 1830, in São Bartolomeu de Messines. His parents were João Pedro Ramos, a shopkeeper, and Isabel Gertrudes Martins. He received his earliest instruction from his mother, a relevant fact that would help him later write his “Cartilha Maternal”, whose creative method consists of an easy and natural way to teach reading (and, through reading, writing) in Portuguese.
“Through his poetry I learned to love Portugal; through his “Cartilha Maternal” I learned to read Portuguese and taught my children to read”, Queen Amélia wrote.
After having attended a Catholic seminary he was admitted to the Law Faculty of the University of Coimbra. It took him ten years to conclude his course of studies, as long as the Trojan War, as he humorously used to say. But he stayed on in Coimbra for some more time after graduation immersed in the students’ bohemian environment.
For family matters and lack of money he had to go back to the Algarve in 1862.
His rebellious mind, however, was the reason for his going to Beja, where he stayed for two years as editor of “O Bejense”, a local newspaper.
He finally returned to São Bartolomeu de Messines and, in Silves, to the new artistic and literary get-togethers which took place at José António Carcia Blanco’s house, who together with Domingos Vieira persuaded him to stand for election to the Lisbon parliament. He was elected by the Silves constituency and against his own will he had to take lodgings in Lisbon. Politics didn’t appeal to him. He rarely showed up at parliament which he attended for just one term of office out of consideration for his friends.
He preferred to chat with friends at Café Martinho.
He married late in life Dona Guilhermina Battaglia from whom he had four children – two boys and two girls – and this new status forced him to abandon his previous way of life.
He was appointed General Commissioner for the Teaching of Reading, according to his own method used nationwide, “Cartilha Maternal.” His appointment, however, met with some opposition.
He was an excellent poet, a transitional journalist, a passionate pedagogue and an occasional politician… Today, we study him and day after day we keep learning new things. Let us then listen to what some of his peers said about him as a poet, leaving the journalist for the experts, the pedagogue for the scholars and the politician for the really interested.
“João de Deus goes deeper in search for the hidden meaning of life, and reaches higher when he faces, as other Portuguese poets have rarely done, the unchangeable essence of all things”, David Mourão Ferreira wrote.
“As he often confided to me, he had the habit of first mentally composing the poem, at a slow pace, frequently correcting and changing what he had done before, and he only wrote it down when he was sure of having reached the definite form” , Eugénio de Castro said.
In fact, a few of his poems and letters – as, now and then, happens with writing and drawing on different materials – show that he used the same care in the revised edition of “Campo de Flores”, as Teófilo Braga refers in his preface to the second edition of the book.
And here is Joaquim Magalhães’s commentary: “The simplicity of João de Deus’s poetry is the result of improvement work which from my viewpoint makes his work more valuable. It is this refining work to reach perfection that gives us the impression of simplicity and spontaneity.”
Apart from literary schools, the poet from São Bartolomeu de Messines kept himself connected to his simple, ardent, enchanted, elevated truth. The fundamental themes of his poetry are God and the Woman, Transcendence and Eroticism.
In his last years at Coimbra he used other poetic forms such as satire or fable, without however achieving the level of his lyricism.
João de Deus’s poetry has nothing to do with the goody-goody eroticism and the revolutionary, scientific and philosophical ideals of the Ultra Romantics. It is full of sensuality, veneration and desire, keeping its freshness and naivety in a pure natural way.
João de Deus also hesitates, questions and doubts but he soon comes to life to assert his belief in the people he comes from and to whom he always returns as a poet. A simultaneously noble and popular poet…
“Popular because he is appreciated by people of diverse social, economic and cultural backgrounds, from the well-informed to the less-informed,” according to his great-grandson, António Ponces de Carvalho.
In 1868, José António Garcia Blanco collected his poetry under the title of “Flores do Campo”, the second edition of which appeared in the following year at Oporto and was followed by the “Ramo de Flores” collection.
In 1893, Teófilo Braga published all his scattered work in a book entitled “Campo de Flores”, whose new 1896 edition the poet himself still began to revise.
On the 8th March 1985, students from Lisbon, Coimbra, Oporto, Santarém, Braga, Lamego and Portalegre, representatives of the Portuguese press, and many common people, children included, gathered outside his Estrela house in Lisbon to salute the poet.
He was then nominated an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and of the Instituto de Coimbra.
On the 9th March, after a new public gathering in his honour, a soirée took place at D. Maria Theatre, attended by King Charles. The Poet left the theatre under a thundering applause walking on the students’ typical black cloaks who took him home pulling his carriage and so replaced the unhitched horses.
João de Deus died on the 11th January 1896 and his funeral was an impressive demonstration of national grief. Buried at first at Jerónimos he was later transferred to the Panteão Nacional.
“If there are childhood passions, I dare say that João de Deus has been for me a big and secret passion since my childhood. All that gentleness was beauty, a magic force I didn’t know how to name, and learning to read was like learning to love.” And we humbly subscribe to these words by Matilde Rosa Araújo.
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*Eça de Queiroz
Trad. - António Simões, Dr.
