Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen has been recognized since the 1940s as one of the most inspired poets of Portuguese literature. She was influenced by the classic authors of ancient Greece and by the magical environment of their Mediterranean landscapes. Her work expresses a poetic knowledge of human existence, and it reaches a sort of substantial transparency that is closely linked with her search for what she calls "the undivided time"--that is, an original, undisrupted time, before the appearance of chaos, when all things were united as part of the same whole. Her work does not consist solely of poetry: she has also published novels, essays, literature for children, and translations. Her translations include Dante's Purgatory, Paul Claudel's The Tidings Brought to Mary, William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Emile Mireaux's Vie quotidienne au temps d'Homère (Everyday Life in Homer's Time).

Andresen was born in Porto on...