The Last Journey

For many centuries Portugal was for men what, in a certain way, is the old age: a place “where the earth ends and the sea begins.” For Ricci, struck by an illness which limited his mobility, it was the destination of his last journey outside of Italy. Written for a volume in Portuguese these pages are a tribute to a terminal land and to one of its symbols, the Jerónimos Monastery. “The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese” wrote Pessoa. In the undertow of that sea, one can catch, as in a breath, the echo of another poet, Baudelaire: “O Death, old captain, it is time! let us lift anchor.”