Manual of prestidigitation

First published in 1956, «Manual de Prestidigitação» now appears in a renewed edition, thoroughly revised in accordance with the instructions left by its author.

As Fernando J.B. Martinho once said, «[…] The book is all him, with its scenes, its exercises, its dressing rooms, a tribute to the theatre, and the constant reminder that poetry is an art of passes and magical steps, an art of prestidigitation, whether or not it requires a manual. It is astonishing that it has taken so long for someone to remember to make the connection, the correspondence. What else could a poetry that, for a long time, has offered itself to us as ritual, as spectacle, as an invitation to initiation into the ars magna have asked for?

Was it not Cesariny who, one day, celebrated Artaud and who, through him, promised us the «awakening» to another reality, beyond the real that we have, whether susceptible to rehabilitation or not? And was it not he also who set out to welcome us and the actors into the misty castle of another prince, exposing us, mercilessly, to the "molten metal" that runs "between us and words"?»