A Thousand Thoughts in Flight

Book excerpt: A remarkable collection of diary entries from cross-genre Portuguese author Maria Gabriela Llansol, which span dozens of diaries and 33 years. "She dedicated herself to this work regularly, at the same time, in the same place, and in almost the same position…” (The Book of Communities). Over the course of her life, Maria Gabriela Llansol wrote many thousands of pages. She left behind 70 diaries in all, which began in November 1974 and continued until 2007. Three of them were published during her lifetime. Diary I begins the day she finishes The Book of Communities and ends the day she finishes The Remaining Life, in 1977. Diary II picks up two years later, when she is finishing In the House of July and August and beginning the second trilogy. It follows her through the second trilogy and captures her first ideas for the Lisbonleipzig duology; it is here where Bach and Pessoa begin their encounter, in 1982. Diary III is less a diary than a mourning of the death of her friend, the Portuguese writer Virgílio Ferreira, one of the only contemporary writers with whom she felt any affinity, a mapping of their relationship and a conversation between them.