EN
Miguel Veiga called him "prodigious creator of books". It is impossible to speak about the history of publishing in Portugal without mentioning José da Cruz Santos.
Born in Porto, in 1936, this publisher, bookseller and second-hand book dealer never liked to be in the public eye - not even at the presentations of the books he publishes. "I am never anywhere," he says. Over the years, he has become even more reluctant to appear in public, but this doesn't mean that he stopped encouraging and promoting tributes to the authors he appreciates or has become friends with.
Cruz Santos is as discreet as he is kind. "That doesn't mean I'm not interested in things. Even now, I'm at the origin of things done to remember Vasco Graça Moura. When it comes to remembering someone who I admire, I’m still available”, he tell us, referring to the round table "Em torno de Modo Mudando" (Around the Changing Mode), which took place on December 4, at Casa dos Livros of the University of Porto, to mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of Graça Moura’s first poetry book.
"Until they were old enough to go to primary school, the parents sometimes put the children in the homes of some old ladies, spinsters or widows, who would look after them and pretend to teach them something. I must have found my lifelong passion there: books".
But let's go back to the beginning, to when José was still learning to put letters together. "Until they were old enough to go to primary school, the parents sometimes put the children in the homes of some old ladies, spinsters or widows, who would look after them and pretend to teach them something. I must have found my lifelong passion there: books".
He remembers reading the comic magazines Mosquito as a teenager: "It was in that journal of adventures, with comic strips, that I have learnt how to read and to always be on the side of the humiliated and offended people. Of the persecuted. Of those who are hungry." He reinforces that this is still the case today. "If you look at the shop window sign, you’ll see that it is still the case", he says, referring to the paper in the window of his bookshop, Modo de Ler, entitled "Palestine", with a small text by José Saramago.
O Mosquito magazine cover from 1936, © DR
He reveals that as a child he often hid his passion for reading from his parents because it took hours away from his studies, but to this day he still doubts that it was more important for his education "to solve a problem with two unknowns or to know the chemical symbol for lead than to experience the moment when D’Artagnan, Atos, Portos e Aramis a lifelong friendship. And today I know that friendship is the most beautiful place in the world." – Because Friendship is the Most Beautiful Place in the World is precisely the title of the book that he has dedicated to his friends Luís Telles de Abreu, Miguel Veiga and Vasco Graça Moura.
He says that it was Amadeu Cordeiro Marinho, who had a small bookshop with rare books in Rua de Fernandes Tomás, who stimulated his love of reading. "Perhaps my path as a reader would have been different, poorer, if at the end of my childhood I hadn't met an admirable second-hand book dealer, a born pedagogue, who knew how to awaken in me a curiosity for books and authors that marked my youth. This man had no less respect for the child who came into his bookshop asking if he had any Cavaleiros Andantes (another Portuguese comic book) than for the adult who asked about Iliad or Politics by Aristotle. Would you like to flick through this book?, he asked."
He doesn’t know when he first thought he wanted to work in a publisher, but he remembers that he "hated the degree he was taking at night and the jobs he was getting". And what does it take to be a good publisher? He answers with the teachings of Gaston Gallimard, founder of Éditions Gallimard. "The great French publisher Gallimard taught that the true publisher is the one who tries to publish a book that he himself would like to find as a reader."
A man who loves wisterias and books
His friend Graça Moura summed up José's biography in a poem: "A man liked wisterias, to see them, to breathe them, / their fragrant arabesques on summer afternoons./ And he also liked words, the way they / stand out against death. And out of words he made/ his cathedral (...) and today we see this: a man, his work,/ and his sober dignity,/ as a simple friend of words and wisteria,/ holding hands with his friends and telling them calmly: Yes, this is my life."
The edition of Aparição by Virgílio Ferreira, edited by José Cruz Santos, and with illustrations by Júlio Resende, © DR
The life of Cruz Santos revolves around books and he likes to talk about them. He points to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë and C. by Maurice Baring, which he edited at Portugália, where he began working in the early 1960s, as the most important books of his life and the ones he has read most often. "It was wonderfully translated by Cabral de Nascimento, a great poet," he remarks. "The author wrote the book for me," he says emphatically, although he doesn't know what makes it so special. "I offered the book to friends who love reading to see if they could help me understand why I liked it so much, but none of them told me anything more about it."
After working at Portugália, in Lisbon, Cruz Santos returned to Porto to found Inova in 1967. The book that marked this transition, released under a double label, was a special edition of Vergílio Ferreira's novel Aparição, illustrated by Júlio Pomar and packaged in a box to commemorate the author's 25 years of literary life. It won first prize at the São Paulo Biennial. "I am sure that I was born to be a publisher, to invent books, or, as the writer Vergílio Ferreira used to say, to create a book out of everything, but as if nothing existed. He said this when he saw the edition I did of his book Aparição. The book already existed, but it came into being in a different way", he said.
One of the distinguishing features of Cruz Santos' editions, particularly those of poetry, is the presence of illustrations by visual artists. "It has always been the case with poetry. In all the poetry books I've published, from the very first one, there was always a concern for a visual artist to collaborate. In the more than 380 books I've published, there was always a visual artist, sometimes more than one. [laughs]
Cruz Santos is perhaps the Portuguese publisher who has published the most poetry books. And what is poetry for? "That’s very easy to answer. Once, a client who didn't like poetry asked me bluntly what poetry was for. And I replied: - Do you know Rua das Flores? - Yes. - Do you go there sometimes? - Yes, I do. - Have you never noticed - not so much now, this was a few years ago - that many of the balconies on Rua das Flores have pelargonium flowers? And haven't you ever wondered why people put pelargonium flowers in their windows? Because beauty is needed. It's a way of adding beauty to the place where they are, that's poetry."
"The sun warms up until the future"
As he approaches his 90th birthday, Cruz Santos continues his path as a publisher. "I'm working on two or three things. Two books are about to be published... There's a very important book about Lisbon that's finished. Before he died, Vasco Graça Moura completed an anthology on Lisbon [like the prose and verse anthologies on Porto, Daqui Houve Nome Portugal (1968), and on Coimbra, Memórias de Alegria (1971), both by Eugénio de Andrade]. I really like Lisbon, so I wanted to do this. I asked Vasco Graça Moura to do it because Eugénio was no longer able to do it. The book is finished and is waiting for a sponsor to support its publication."
Lisbon and Porto: In the publisher's heart, the journey is short
"I don't understand why there are people who don't like Lisbon just because they really like Porto. Just because they like Porto. Why is that? Can't people who like one thing like the other? If I didn't like Porto as much as I do, with all the constraints I could put on Porto, I wouldn't have done the editions I did on Porto. And when I do one, I always say it’s the last one, and I always end up doing another one."
Modo de Ler - Editores e Livreiros
New and second-hand books | Rare and out-of-print books
Praça Guilherme Gomes Fernandes, 43
por Gina Macedo
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