Costa Pereira (Luiz da)

Luiz da Costa Pereira was an illustrious Madeiran who distinguished himself in several fields of human endeavour, yet his name is almost entirely unknown here, although only 26 years have passed since his death. Cruelly stricken by adversity, he spent his last years in an obscure and forgotten existence, locked in a dreadful struggle with illness, poverty and old age.

Luiz da Costa was born in Funchal on 17 August 1818, and in this city he took the preparatory courses required for enrolment at the University of Coimbra (Universidade de Coimbra). After a brilliant course of study, in which he won several prizes, he graduated from the faculty of mathematics in 1844. His name was mentioned alongside those of Teixeira de Vasconcelos, João de Lemos, José Vicente Barbosa du Bocage, Casal Ribeiro, Couto Monteiro, Gonçalves Lima, Xavier Monteiro, etc., his contemporaries at the University, with whom he stood shoulder to shoulder in the cultivation of the sciences and letters.

In 1851 he was appointed a teacher at the Funchal Lyceum (Liceu do Funchal), a post he held for only a few years. He then served as schools commissioner in the district of Braga, where he likewise did not stay long. A fickle and restless spirit, he failed to make use of the gifts with which nature had enriched his exceptional intellect. That is why Bulhão Pato said of him, with complete justice: ‘I never knew anyone who combined so many faculties, nor anyone who strove more doggedly to destroy them. It was not mere aptitude that he possessed; they were lofty faculties. A blessed constitution, powerful in everything, even in the strength with which it managed to hide in the shadows a light that should have shone among the most brilliant.’

Luiz da Costa Pereira settled in Lisbon and for many years devoted himself almost exclusively to the theatre, for which he had a decided vocation. There he revealed the brilliant gifts of his extraordinary talent as actor and author, rehearsal director, technical director and royal commissioner of the Teatro Maria II, and as professor of declamation and the art of acting at the Royal Conservatory of Lisbon (Real Conservatório de Lisboa). Camilo Castelo Branco said: ‘This is that Luiz da Costa who in my youth was the symbol, the master of the stage; in this brain pulsed all the talents that create the relentless passions of tragedy; from this man’s breast burst the cries that lifted audiences into a frenzy of triumph’.

Luiz da Costa translated and adapted several foreign plays for the Portuguese stage and wrote the book Rudimentos da arte dramatica, of which he published only the first part, in a volume of 240 pages.

In his youth he cultivated poetry with extraordinary success and was one of the contributors to the well-known and brilliant review O Trovador, where his colleagues included João de Lemos and other poets of equal stature. The great Castilho refers to him in the loftiest terms of praise. In the literary traditions of Coimbra, the gathering known as the S. João Poético became famous. It was later immortalised by João de Lemos’s inimitable description of it: six poets met in intimate company and recited the poems they had written beforehand for the occasion. It was there that, impromptu and in homage to Castilho, they composed a sextain, which later became very well known, in which each poet wrote one line:

Among these acclaimed poets was Luiz da Costa Pereira, who, immediately after João de Lemos, recited the poem Branca Alvarinho.

Besides the works already mentioned, Costa Pereira wrote the novel Misterios de Almas, the book Reflexos (‘Reflections’), in prose and verse, and the scientific work Leituras sobre astronomia, and he contributed extensively to the leading literary and scientific reviews of his time. It is recorded that his unpublished papers included two works of merit: A Natureza and A Religião Democratica.

He died in Lisbon, poor and in the most complete obscurity, on 18 January 1893.