Poetry
Sacred Hope
Sagrada Esperança
Agostinho Neto · 1974
Synopsis
Poems written from 1945 to 1960, many of them in the prisons of the Portuguese regime, which take up those of his first two collections. The book opens with "Adeus à hora da largada", a farewell to black mothers and to the native land, and moves from waiting to action: the poet no longer hopes, he is "the one who is awaited". A collective voice sets the colonial night against the light of hope and dignity, and it includes "Havemos de voltar", which became a song of struggle.
Context
The collection was published in 1974 in Lisbon by Sá da Costa, in the Vozes do Mundo series; some of these poems had already appeared in Italy in 1963 as Con occhi asciutti. Marga Holness translated it into English as Sacred Hope, published the same year in Dar es Salaam with a preface by Basil Davidson; the French translation, Espérance sacrée, appeared in 1980, and a Poésie complète, translated by Jean-Michel Massa and Annick Moreau, in 2015. Critics read it as a political manifesto whose rhythm is made to mobilise.
Who it is for
To read the poetry of the Angolan anticolonial struggle, carried by a cadence made to be spoken and taken up.
Prizes and reception
In 1970, the fourth conference of Afro-Asian writers awarded the poet the Lotus Prize.