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Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) - pseudonyms Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis | |
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The most celebrated Portuguese poet, the greatest repserentative of the Modernist group Orpheu. During his career, Fernando Pessoa was virtually unknown and he published little of his vast body of work. Most of his life Pessoa lived in a furnished room in Lisbon, where he died in obscurity. Pessoa used "heteronyms", literary alter egos, who support and criticize each other's works. His three major poetic heteronyms were Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos. Countless lives inhabit us. Fernando
António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon. His
father, Joaquim de Seabra Pessoa, died of tuberculosis when Pessoa was
young. At the age of five or six Pessoa began to address letters to an
imaginary companion, named Le Chevalier de Pas, the precursor of hís
fictitious authors. Maria Madalena Nogueira Pessoa, his mother,
married João Miguel Rosa, the Portuguese consul in Durban in South
Africa, where the
family lived from 1896. The marriage was happy; they had six
children. During these years Pessoa became fluent in
English and developed an early love for such authors as William
Shakespeare and John Milton. He also composed his early poems in
English. In a letter to the editor of the British Journal of Astrology,
Pessoa said that English education had been a factor of supreme
importance in his life. However, his best poems he wrote in Portuguese.
Pessoa was educated in Durban. He was the best student in his class at the Durban High School. By the time he was fourteen he was sending riddles to a newspaper under the pseudonym 'Dr Pancrácio' (Dr Simpleton). At the age of seventeen he returned to Lisbon to study literature at the university. When a student strike interrupted classes, he dropped out of the university, and took a job as a business correspondent. For some years, he lived with his Aunt Anica. She was an enthusiast of occultism, and sparked Pessoa's interest in spiritual matters. Organized religion did not appeal to him. Pessoa had a strong anticlerical bent. In 1916 Pessoa began to experiment with automatic writing. Moreover, he acted as a medium, but admitted later that he had pretended to be able to speak with the spirits. Curiously, Pessoa believed in astrology and he studied Rosicrucianism but he thought that "spiritism should be prohibited by law". (The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, edited and translated by Richard Zenith, Grove Press, 2001, p. 94) In 1919 Pessoa met Ophélia Queiroz, a nineteen years old secretary; they exchanged letters but in November 1920 Pessoa broke off with her. Unlike a number of romantically inclined poets, he never produced a body of love poetry addressed to her. With
his mother, and his half sister Henriquetta, Pessoa
rented an apartment on the Rua Coelho de Rocha, 16, where he lived
until his death. Pessoa never married. What becomes of Pessoa's sexual
orientation, it has been speculated that he was homosexual. Sex is a
recurrent theme in his work. There are some poems (such as
'Epithalamium' and 'Antinoüs') with homoerotic content: "And hairy legs
and buttocks balled to split / White
legs mid which they shift." ('Epithalamium', in Selected English Poems by Fernando Pessoa, edited by Tony Frazer, Shearsman Books, 2007, p. 35)
In a letter in November 1930 to João Gaspar, his future biographer, Pessoa
stated that "lascivious thoughts" are "a hindrance to superior mental
processes." (Ibid., p. 261)
Pessoa had only one female first-person voice, Maria José, perhaps more
of a mouthpiece to Pessoa's own angst than that of the heteronym. Pessoa
set up a small printing company called 'Ibis' with the money he
inherited from his grandmother, but the business failed. He used to
embrass his family by standing on one leg and shooting out "I am an
ibis". Outside his familily he had no close friendships; the heteronyms
replaced the contacts with real people. Pessoa earned a modest living as a commercial translator, and wrote avant-garde reviews, especially for Orpheu, which was a forum for new aesthetic views. His articles in praise of the saudosismo (nostalgia) movement provoked polemics because of their extravagant language. Antinous (1918), with which Pessoa debuted as a poet, was followed by two other collection of poems, all written in English. It was not until 1933 that he published his first book, the slim, prize-winning Mensagem, in Portuguese. It did not attract much attention. The bulk of Pessoa's oeuvre appeared in literary magazines,
especially in his own Athena. In John Murry's Athenaeum his work appeared only
once; the magazine ceased publication in 1921. 'Spell,' published in
May 1923 in Contemporanea,
was the last of his English poems to achieve print in his lifetime. Before creating his literary personalities from his inner
discordant voices, Pessoa had long had doubts about his own sanity.
Under his own name Pessoa wrote poems that are marked by their
innovative language, although he used traditional stanza and metric
patterns. The poetical technique for which Pessoa has become especially
noted is the use of heteronyms, or alternative literary personae,
resembling the verse personae of Ezra Pound.
or Søren Kierkegaard's "characters" who actually "authored" some of his
books. Pessoa's own family name means both person and persona. He
considered that a "heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his
own personality: it is the work of complete individuality made up
by him, or just as the uttersances of some character in a drama would
be." (A Centenary Pessoa, edited by Eugénio Lisboa and L. C. Taylor, introduction by Octavio Paz, 1997, p. 133) It must be said, that Pessoa did not suffer from schizophrenia or
multiple personality disorder. Much of his best work Pessoa attributed later to his
heteronyms, de Campos, Reis, and Caeiro, who were partly born as a
prank on Mário Sá-Carneiro (1890-1916), an avant-garde poet from Orpheu.
Álvaro de Campos, an engineer, represents in the spirit of Walt Whitman
the ecstasy of experience; he writes in free verse. Ricardo Reis is an
epicurean doctor with a classical education; he writes in meters and
stanzas that recall Horace. (See also Jose
Saramago's novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis,
1984.) Some of the minor heteronyms were exotic, like the Baron of Tieve, a suicidal aristocrat, or Jean Seul de Méluret, a French poet and essyist writing about dancing girls and decadence, or Maria José, a young tubercular hunchback with a crippled leg. When analyzing his heteronyms Pessoa came to the conclusion that they "have their origin in a deep-seated form of hysteria. I don't know if I'm afflicted by simple hysteria or, more specifically, by hysterical neurasthenia." (Character and Person by John Frow, 2014, p. 218) Alberto Caeiro, who called himself a shepherd, is against all
sentimentality, and composes his pieces in colloquial free verse. Caeiro appeared in him
suddenly: "I found myself before a tall chest of drawers, took up a
piece of paper, began to write, remaining upright all the while since I
always stand when I can." (Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-century Anglo-American Literature by George Monteiro, 2000, p. 3) Beginning with a title, The Keeper of Sheep, Pessoa
produced over 30 poems in a single go. He then wrote the six poems that
make up 'A Chuva Oblíqua' (Oblique Rain). Caeiro had two disciples, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos,
who says melancholically in 'Tobacco Shop' (1928): "I am nothing.
/ Ill always be nothing. I can't even wish to be something." (Poems of Fernando Pessoa, translated and edited by Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown, 1986, p. 98) Pessoa could be called the greatest Portuguese poet of nothingness. (He had a copy of Poésies by Stéphane Mallarmé's – "the Poet of Nothingness" as Sartre hailed him – in his private library.) According
to Reis, "The curious fact about Alberto Cairo is that he comes
apparently out of nothing, more completely out of nothing than any
other poet . . ." (Ibid., p. 8) Pessoa once
informed that Caeiro died from tuberculosis in 1915. After meeting him
on March 8, 1914, Pessoa began to write poetry. In 'I Never Kept Sheep'
Caeiro said: "I've no ambitions or desires. / My being a poet isn't an
ambition. / It's my way of being alone." (Ibid., p. 10) Each persona has a distinct
philosophy of life. Pessoa even created literary discussions among
them. In 'Toward Explaining Heteronomity' Pessoa criticized the
distinction made between three generic types or classes of poetry – epic
or narrative, in which the narrator speaks in the first person,
drama, in which the characters do all the talking, and
lyric, uttered through the first person. "Like all well conceived
classifications, this one is useful and clear; like all
classifications, it is false. The genres do not separate out with
essential facility, and, if we closely analyze what they are made of,
we shall find that from lyric poetry to dramatic there is one
continuous gradation. In effect, and going right to the origins of
dramatic poetry – Aeschylus, for instance – it will be nearer the truth
to say that what we encounter is lyric poetry put into the mouths of
different characters." ('Toward Explaining Heteronomy' by Fernando Pessoa, in The Poet's Work: 29 Poets on the Origins and Practice of Their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons, 1989, p. 13) Pessoa
died of hepatitis, brought on by heavy drinking, on
November 30, 1935, in Lisbon. (According to his biographer Richard
Zenith, he died probably from intestinal obstruction.) The previous day
Pessoa wrote as his last
words, in English: "I know not what tomorrow will bring." (Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith, 2021, p. 958) Pressoa
was buried at the
Cemitério dos Prazeres– it was not his final resting place. His remains
were removed in 1985 to the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Lisbon. Pessoa's
celebrated last poem, 'Countless Lives Inhabit Us' (1935), was written
just two weeks before his death. Throughout his career, Pessoa kept himself aloof from the literary world, but he followed keenly foreign literary movements. "There are many cultured persons in Portugal, but there is no cultural milieu," he once said. (Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-century Anglo-American Literature by George Monteiro, 2000, p. 5) One of Pessoa's pen friends was the English writer and occult figure Aleister Crowley, known as "the Great Beast" – their correspondence began in 1930. Crowley signed his letters "666". In the 1910s Pessoa had practiced mediumistic writing, claiming that his uncle, Manuel Gualdino da Cunha, had used his hand to make a signature. One of the spirits, Margaret Mansel, rages in July 1916: "You masturbator! You masochist! You man without manhood!" (The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, edited and translated by Richard Zenith, 2001, p. 110) In his library Pessoa had E.G. Stanley's book Amativeness: The Master Passion of Life, which warned about the effects of masturbation. Highly self-critical, Pessoa later said that he fooled himself by thinking he could communicate with spirits, but he continued to experiment with automatic writing, which was in France an important part of the Surrealist techniques. Pessoa
left behind some 25,000 unpublished text and fragments, both poetry and
prose, everything from horoscopes to detective stories.
He wrote in notebooks, on loose sheets, on envelopes, on the back of
letters, on papaer scraps, whatever was at hand. From the 1940s, his
poetry started to gain a wider audience in Portugal
and later Brazil. Several of his collections have been published
posthumously and translated in Spanish, French, English, German,
Swedish, Finnish, and many other languages. Among Pessoa's most important works
are Poesias de Fernando Pessoa (1942), Poesias de
Álvaro de Campos (1944), Poemas de Alberto Caeiro
(1946), and Odes de Ricardo Reis (1946). His writing
has inspired the South-African poet Roy Campbell
(1901-1957), the Nobel laureate José Saramago (1922-2010), and the
Italian novelist and short story writer Antonio
Tabucchi (1943-2012). Although Pessoa is known above all as a poet, he wrote short essays,
several of which were briefly sketched or unfinished. His most
significant work Livro do Desassossego (The Book of
Disquiet), the "factless autobiography," was found in an envelope.
Written under the name Bernardo Soares, which was on the title page, it
appeared for the first time in 1982, almost 50 years after the author's
death. The Book of Disquiet
is a collection of prose
manuscripts, composed in the style of an intimate diary. Bernardo Soares
is troubled by alienation and experiences of drowning: "And amid all
this confusion, I, what's turly I, am the centre that exists oly in the
geometry
of the abyss; I am the nothing around which everything spins, existing
on so that it can spin, being a centre only because every circle has
one."
(The Book of Disquiet, edited and translated by Richard Zenith, Penguin Books, 2003, p. 228) Soares praises the literary magazine to which Pessoa contributes, he
loves and hates his city, but cannot break out of his monotonous life. O banquiero anarquista
(1922, The Anarchist Banker), was Pessoa's longest story.
This dialogue novella asks the question, "What is an anarchist?" The
unnamed protagonist, a banker, sees himself to be a true anarchist, in
idea and practice. He defines the concept of anarchism in the context
of personal freedom. By getting rich, he has gained liberty for
himself, he can do what he wants, what is possible to want. Prophetically, the banker
sees that the Russian Revolution will set back the goal of a free
society by decades. "But what more could we expect from a nation of
mystics and illiterates?" ('The Anarchist Banker, in The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, edited and translated by Richard Zenith, 2001, p. 175) Pessoa's own political views were controversial. He defended the military coup d'etat of 1926, which turned the country into a dictatorship, but he wrote a few satirical poems of António de Oliveira Salazar, who ruled Portugal from 1932 to 1968. Pessoa once described himself as a "mystical nationalist" – he had occult interests, believed in astrology, and had a wide knowledge of Rosicrucianism and Masonic rites. However, in 1935 he stated in a newspaper article, that he was not a Freemason, and did not belong to any Order of a similar or different nature. For further reading: Vida e obra de Fernando Pessoa by Gaspar Simõnes (2 vols., 1950); Estudos sobre Fernando Pessoa by A. Casais Monteiro (1958); O poeta é um fingidor by J. de Sena (1961); Diversidade e unidade em Fernando Pessoa by J. do Prado Coelho (1973); Pessoa revisitado by E. Lourenço (1973); Man Who Never Was by George Monteiro (1982); Poesia e matafísica by Eduardo Lourenço (1983); The Presence of Pessoa by George Monteiro (1998); Modern Art in Portugal 1910-1940, ed by Joao B. Serra (1998); Fernando Pessoa: Self-Analysis and Thirty Other Poems, ed. by George Monteiro (1989); Fernando Pessoa: Voices of Nomadic Soul by Zbigniew Kotowich (1996); An Introduction to Fernando Pessoa by Darlene J. Sadlier (1998); The Presence of Pessoa: English, American, and Southern African Literary Responses by George Monteiro (1998); Fernando Pessoa and 19th Century Anglo-American Literature by George Monteiro (2000); Embodying Pessoa: Corporeality, Gender, Sexuality by Anna Klobucka and Mark Sabine (2007); Fernando Pessoa's Modernity Without Frontiers: Influences, Dialogues and Responses, ed. by Mariana Gray de Castro (2013); Fernando Pessoa - The Poet With Many Faces by Hubert Dudley Jennings (2019); Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us, edited by Bartholomew Ryan, Giovanbattista Tusa, and Antonio Cardiello (2021); Pessoa: A Biography by Richard Zenith (2021); Fernando Pessoa and the Lyric: Disquietude, Rumination, Interruption, Inspiration, Constellation by Irene Ramalho-Santos (2022); O super-Camões: biografia de Fernando Pessoa by João Pedro George (2022) - Note: Pessoa's statue is in front of the café Brasileira in Lisbon. In Finnish: Suomeksi julkaistu myös valikoima Hetkien valellus (1974), suom. Pentti Saaritsa, En minä aina ole sama: runoutta, suom Pentti Saaritsa (2001), Minä, aina vieras, suom. Janne Löppönen & Harry Salmenniemi (2016), Minä se olen, suom. Leo Saukkoriipi (bilingual edition; 2020). Antologiassa Salaperäinen seurue (1997) oli mukana Pessoan runoja. Selected works:
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