Valentín, sempre ao seu aire: "a velas vir, e a pillalas todas"

Abstract

“... with a view to composing a biography, Valentín’s biography, which appears to have been invented for his own ego –the many ‘selves’ that Paz-Andrade embodied at the same time, written mostly in his own hand with nobody to contradict him. What is more, what we know about the author is only what he wanted us to know. He got hold of the pertinent newspapers, documents (however sparse), a few books, photographs, chronicles, news, conferences, discourses, courses and ambitions. He sensed how to be in the right place at the right time. And he was right. He consolidated a biography, which was not yet his, based on a priori assumptions and rounded out with a posteriori facts, while –apparently– purging anything that turned out not to fit the image he wanted to convey, as part of the cursus honorum that he was shaping so as to be followed as a leader.
In other words, Valentín’s biography is not the outcome of a series of facts about his life (although this is also true), but rather the basis of a life’s journey to which he seems to have been driven by those facts. You can find yourself by living. Valentín knew he was important, long before he became important, and this requires some considerable skill, whether you eventually find yourself or not. Could it indeed be true that a man’s character is his fate, as Malraux wrote?”