Andrée Crabbé Rocha, his wife. Clara Crabbé Rocha, his daughter. Torga marries on July 27, 1940 with the young Belgian woman who would become his life companion. From the beginning he admires in her the culture, civic sense and independence of spirit: "She would be, therefore, by my side a traveling companion, also owner of her personality and her destiny," he writes in the autobiographical novel A Criação do Mundo. To his daughter Clara he dedicates several poems, including "Birth", "Preserved Flower", "Star of the West" and "Ascension".

Andrée Crabbé Rocha (1917-2003)

University professor of Belgian nationality, Andrée Jeanne Françoise Crabbé Rocha graduated in Romance Philology in 1939 from the Free University of Brussels, where she was a Portuguese student of Vitorino Nemésio. She completed her degree with "great distinction", presenting a dissertation on the work of Fialho de Almeida. While still a student, she made a trip to Spain with a group of students from the University of Brussels, in support action for the Republicans during the Civil War.
In 1938, she attended the Summer Course at the University of Coimbra and met Miguel Torga at Nemésio's house. She received her doctorate in 1944 from the University of Lisbon, with a thesis on O Teatro de Garrett, and the following year began teaching at the Faculty of Letters of that University. Dismissed in 1947, in a wave of political dismissals that included more than a dozen prestigious university professors, she was prevented from teaching in public education for more than twenty years. During this period she developed extensive research work, being particularly interested in Portuguese literature of the 16th century and the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende. In 1970, she was finally able to return to teaching at the University of Lisbon, later transferring to the University of Coimbra, where she taught until 1986. Among other titles, her bibliography includes A Epistolografia em Portugal (1965), Garcia de Resende e o Cancioneiro Geral (1979) and Temas da Literatura Portuguesa (1986). Between 1978 and 1986 she directed the magazine Cadernos de Literatura, of which 25 issues were published. She was distinguished in 1979 with the National Order of Merit in France, and in 1986 President of the Republic Mário Soares awarded her the Order of Infante Dom Henrique.

Fotografia de Andrée Crabbé Rocha em Veneza, Itália

Surrounded by students is when she gave her best. Of colloquial and didactic nature, it was in communicating within the boundaries of the collective forum that she felt truly fulfilled. Inventive, she put in the lessons, besides knowledge, the grace of fantasy. And she transformed each class into a pedagogical adventure that fascinated and stimulated the disciples.
A Criação do Mundo

Clara Crabbé Rocha (1955)

Daughter of Miguel Torga and Andrée Crabbé Rocha, she received her doctorate in 1985 from the University of Coimbra, with a thesis entitled Revistas Literárias do Século XX em Portugal, published the same year by INCM. She was an assistant at the University of Coimbra between 1977 and 1985, and a professor at the Nova University of Lisbon from 1985. She dedicated a significant part of her studies to autobiographical literature and Portuguese poetry of the 20th century, having published the following books: O Espaço Autobiográfico em Miguel Torga (1977), Os "Contos Exemplares" de Sophia de Mello Breyner (1978), O Essencial sobre Mário de Sá-Carneiro (1985; 2nd ed., 2017), Máscaras de Narciso. Estudos sobre a Literatura Autobiográfica em Portugal (1992), Miguel Torga – Fotobiografia (2000; 2nd ed., 2018), O Cachimbo de António Nobre e Outros Ensaios (2003, distinguished with the PEN Club Essay Prize and the A.P.E. Grand Essay Prize), O Essencial sobre Michel de Montaigne (2015, Jacinto do Prado Coelho Prize) and O Essencial sobre o Surrealismo Português (2024). Author of several prefaces, she collaborated with literary criticism articles in newspapers and magazines, in literature dictionaries and in international scientific volumes. She was the first woman president of the Academic Association of Coimbra (1976). In 1987, she was awarded the Order of Infante Dom Henrique by President of the Republic Mário Soares. She was a visiting professor at the Sorbonne in 2004. In 2011, she organized the anthology A Caneta que Escreve e a que Prescreve, with the collaboration of Teresa Jorge Ferreira (Verbo, 2012; ed. in Brazil, 2025). She has been part of various juries of national and international literary prizes, such as the European Literary Prize and the Camões Prize.

Clara Rocha was born on October 3, 1955, in Coimbra. On that day, Torga writes a poem.

Coimbra, 3 de outubro de 1955.

Nascimento

Nascem os homens como deuses pobres:
Nus e de um ventre que desesperou
De os guardar
Sagrados e secretos no seu lago.
Nascem disformes, sem nenhum afago
Da raiva desabrida que os expulsa
E das mãos aterradas que os recebem.
Bebem
O ar do mundo aos gritos.
Olham sem ver, e são
Surdos e transitórios mitos
Da nossa devoção.

Diário VII