Eduardo Lourenço was born in the tiny village of São Pedro de Rio Seco, in Guarda district. As he called it: his "piccolo mondo antico", an agriculture-based village where there were very strong yet impoverished community bonds. Only the happy few were able to study as he did. He was the oldest of seven brothers and son of a military official. The childhood memories in São Pedro de Rio Seco were truly happy:
"This village of mine, with no history of gold or blood, a shipwrecked vessel on the Spanish meseta, settles gently into its existence, with all the lights switched off and a cargo of ghosts covered in ancient sweat and even older tears."
He donated his personal library to the Municipal Library of Guarda, named after him, to the University of Coimbra, to Casa da Escrita, also in Coimbra, and his manuscripts are preserved in the National Library, in Lisbon. He studied in the Military College in Lisbon and in the Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra, where he graduated in History and Philosophy.
In 1949, he moved to France, when he published his first book Heterodoxia I, "one of the noblest and disturbing essays of Portuguese literary history", according to the Professor and essayist Eugénio Lisboa.
In the enlightening words of Portuguese Vatican Cardinal Tolentino Mendonça, Head of the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Roman Curia:
"To Eduardo Lourenço we owe a rare ability to cherish an idea of community: strengthening us as a nation; making clear the common asset which is a country; indicating how the mental and spiritual mapping is essential to understand geography; showing us how we all inhabit Fernando Pessoa's solitude, the prophetical character of Antero de Quental or Agostinho da Silva, the non-compliance of Saramago, the rebel chords of Lopes Graça, the religiosity that brought together José Régio and Manoel de Oliveira, the Douro landscapes of Agustina Bessa-Luís and the soft-sand beach that Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen dreamed of. Along the thousands of pages that he wrote, maybe the idea of community was the one he sought the most. His biggest passion."
A deep connaisseur of the intricate labyrinths of the Portuguese soul, Eduardo Lourenço was a citizen of the world and a brilliant ambassador of Guarda. His thoughts shed light to a better understanding of the Portuguese identity.
