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Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa (pron. IPA /fɨɾ.'nɐ̃.du pɨ.'so.ɐ/) (b. June 13, 1888 in Lisbon, Portugal — d. November 30, 1935 in the city of his birth) was a poet and writer, seen by many as one of the most notable Portuguese authors of all time. Critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the 20th century, along with Pablo Neruda. Pessoa is unique as an author due to the prevalence of heteronyms in his writing, with few of his poems being signed by himself.
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When Pessoa was of age five, his father died of tuberculosis, with his brother also passing away one year later. Pessoa's widowed mother eventually married the Portuguese consul in Durban, South Africa, moving to the city in 1896. Pessoa received his early education in Cape Town [1], becoming fluent in the English language and developing an appreciation for English poets such as William Shakespeare and Milton.
He then went back to Lisbon, at the age of 17, attending there "Curso Superior de Letras" in a Portuguese university. A student strike soon put an end to his studies, however, and Pessoa chose to study privately for a year at home. His term of study ended and Pessoa found a job working as an assistant for a businessman, where he was charged with writing correspondence and translating documents. Pessoa died of cirrhosis in 1935.
Pessoa's earliest heteronyms were Charles Robert Anon and Alexander Search; these were eventually succeeded by others, most notably: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares. The heteronyms possess distinct temperaments, philosophies, appearances and writing styles. According to Pessoa, the heteronym closest to his personality was Bernardo Soares, the author of Book of Disquiet. (For a more comprehensive discussion of the genesis of the heteronyms see: Genesis of Heteronyms)
Alberto Caeiro is Pessoa's first great heteronym.
The best summarization of Caeiro is given by Pessoa himself: "He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower... the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him... this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absence of sentiment, he makes poetry."
What makes Caeiro such an original poet is the way he apprehends existence. He does not question anything whatsoever; he calmly accepts the world as it is. The recurrent themes to be found in nearly all of Caeiro's poems are "wide-eyed child-like wonder at the infinite variety of nature", as noted by a critic. He is free of metaphysical entanglements. Central to his world-view is the idea that in the world around us, all is surface: things are precisely what they seem, there is no hidden meaning anywhere.
He manages thus to free himself from the anxieties that batter his peers; for Caeiro, things simply exist and we have no right to credit them with more than that. Our unhappiness, he tells us, springs from our unwillingness to limit our horizons. As such, Caeiro attains happiness by not questioning, and by thus avoiding doubts and uncertainties. He apprehends reality solely through his eyes, through his senses. What he teaches us is that if we want to be happy we ought to do the same. Octavio Paz called him "the innocent poet". Paz made a shrewd remark on the heteronyms: "In each are particles of negation or unreality. Reis believes in form, Campos in sensation, Pessoa in symbols. Caeiro doesn't believe in anything. He exists."
Poetry before Caeiro was essentially interpretative; what poets did was to offer us an interpretation of their perceived surroundings; Caeiro does not do this. Instead, he attempts to communicate his senses, his feelings to us, without any interpretation whatsoever.
Caeiro teaches us to apprehend Nature differently; he asks of us, simply, to see what is before us. Poets before him would have made use of intricate metaphors to describe what was before them; not so Caeiro: his self-appointed task is to bring these objects to the reader's attention, as directly and simply as possible. Caeiro sought a direct experience of the objects before him.
It does not surprise us that Caeiro has been called an anti-intellectual, anti-Romantic, anti-subjectivist, anti-metaphysical...an anti-poet, by critics; Caeiro simply--is. He is in this sense very unlike his creator Fernando Pessoa: Pessoa was besieged by metaphysical uncertainties; these were, to a large extent, the cause of his unhappiness; not so Caeiro: his attitude is anti-metaphysical; he avoided uncertainties by adamantly clinging to a certainty: his belief that there is no meaning behind things. Things, for him, simply--are.
Caeiro represents a primal vision of reality, of things. He is the pagan incarnate. Indeed Caeiro, Richard Zenith tells us, was not simply a pagan but 'paganism itself'.
The critic Jane M. Sheets, sees the insurgence of Caeiro--who was Pessoa's first major heteronym-- as essential in founding the later poetic personas: "By means of this artless yet affirmative anti-poet, Caeiro, a short-lived but vital member of his coterie, Pessoa acquired the base of an experienced and universal poetic vision. After Caeiro's tenets had been established, the avowedly poetic voices of Campos, Reis and Pessoa himself spoke with greater assurance."
Reis sums up his philosophy of life: he admonishes: 'see life from a distance. never question it. there's nothing it can tell you.' Like Caeiro, Reis defers from questioning life; his philosophy entails the avoidance of pain; man for him should seek tranquillity and calm above all else. Richard Zenith notes Reis' recurrent themes: 'the brevity of life, the vanity of wealth and struggle, the joy of simple pleasures, patience in time of trouble, and avoidance of extremes.'
He is in a sense a passive poet: his philosophy is one of resignation. Is his stance a product of weariness? He lacks the joviality which characterizes Caeiro. Reis's poetry, as noted by a critic, is austere and cerebral. He is detached, intellectual, like his creator Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa's heteronyms in one way or another represent aspects of the poet himself. Reis represents Pessoa's wish for measure and sobriety; a world free of troubles and respite.
Reis, a pagan, is decidedly un-Christian: he casts off the fetters of Christianity which he feels encumber his existence; instead he chooses to worship the ancient Greek gods. He chants: 'Your dead gods tell me nothing I need to know. Without love or hatred I dismiss the crucifix from my way of being.'
Reis is a modern pagan who urges one to seize the day and accept fate with tranquility. 'Wise is the one who does not seek', he says; and continues: 'the seeker will find in all things the abyss, and doubt in himself.' In this sense Reis shares essential affinities with Caeiro.
The essential difference between the two is that while Caeiro's predominant attitude is that of joviality, Reis is marked by melancholy; he is saddened by the impermanence of all things. And while it is true that Caeiro can be sad, his is of a different kind. 'My sadness,' Caeiro says, 'is a comfort for it is natural and right.'
Álvaro de Campos is undoubtedly Pessoa's greatest heteronym. 'Campos,' as Zenith notes, 'was the most substantial of Pessoa's heteronyms and the one closest to his true heart and person...he was in many ways a larger-than-life version of his creator.' Of the three heteronyms he is the one who feels the strongest; his motto was 'to feel everything in every way.' 'The best way to travel,' he wrote, 'is to feel.'
Campos manifests two contrary impulses: on the one hand: a feverish desire to be everything and everyone, declaring that 'in every corner of my soul stands an altar to a different god.' The second impulse is toward a state of isolation and a sense of nothingness.
Of the first of these impulses: Campos is possessed of the Whitmanian desire to 'contain multitudes'. Critics have noted how 'Whitman's influence is apparent in part in the sheer vitality of these poems, in the zest for experience which they express.' Indeed Campos has in many respects outdone his precursor in 'containing multitudes': it seems that the entire cosmos is not enough for him to 'contain'. After chanting all the places, all the ports, all the sights he's seen.... 'Of all this,' he remarks, 'which is so much, is nothing next to what I want.'
One of the poet's constant preoccupations is that of identity: he does not know who he is. The problem, it seems, is not that he doesn't know what to be; on the contrary: he wants to be too much, everything; short of achieving this he despairs. Unlike Caeiro, who asks nothing of life, he asks too much. In his poetic meditation 'Tobacco Shop' he asks:
Campos can be manic-depressive, exultant, violent, dynamic; he quests for nowhere and everywhere at once. His is an agonized doubt at the wasting of life-- at life, everything. For a critic he is 'par excellence the poet appalled by the emptiness of his own existence, lethargic, lacking in will-power, seeking inspiration, or at all events finding it, in semi-conscious states, in the twilight world between waking and sleeping, in dreams and in drunkenness.'
'Fernando Pessoa-himself' is not the 'real' Fernando Pessoa. Like Caeiro, Reis and Campos-- Pessoa-himself embodies only aspects of the poet. As will be seen Fernando Pessoa's personality is not stamped in any given voice; his personality is diffused through the heteronyms. For this reason 'Fernando Pessoa-himself' stands apart from the poet proper.
In reading the poetry of Pessoa-himself we shall realize that he shares many essential affinities with his peers, Caeiro and Campos in particular. Lines crop up in his poems that may as well be ascribed to Campos or Caeiro. It is useful to keep this in mind as we read this exposition.
The critic Leland Guyer sums up Pessoa-himself: "the poetry of the orthonymic Fernando Pessoa normally possesses a measured, regular form and appreciation of the musicality of verse. It takes on intellectual issues, and it is marked by concern with dreams, the imagination and mystery."
Richard Zenith calls Pessoa-himself '[Pessoa's] most intellectual and analytic poetic persona.' Like Álvaro de Campos, Pessoa-himself was afflicted with an acute identity crisis. Pessoa-himself has been described as indecisive and doubt plagued, as restless. Like Campos he can be melancholic, weary, resigned. The strength of Pessoa-himself's poetry rests in his ability to suggest a sense of loss; of sorrow for what can never be.
A constant theme in Pessoa's poetry is Tedio, or Tedium. The dictionary defines this word simply as 'a condition of being tedious; tediousness or boredom.' This definition does not sufficiently encompass the peculiar brand of tedium experienced by Pessoa-himself. His is more than simple boredom: it is a world weariness and disgust with life; a sense of the finality of failure; of the impossibility of having anything to want.
'The impossibility of having anything to want': this is Tedio for Pessoa-himself. It is one thing to have nothing to do or want, but to be deprived even of this...is tedium. Kierkegaard tells how if asked to choose between the two; between a perpetual state of boredom, or eternal bodily pain; he would choose--eternal bodily pain. Pessoa-himself, I believe, would undoubtedly concur with the melancholy Dane.
Mensagem Message is a very unusual 20th century book: it is a symbolist epic made up of 44 short poems organized in three parts or Cycles: The first called "Brasão" (Coat-of-Arms) relates Portuguese historical protagonists to each of the fields and charges in the Portuguese coat-of-arms. The first two poems ("The castles" and "The escutcheons") draw inspiration from the material and spiritual natures of Portugal. Each of the remaining poems associates to each charge a historical personality. Ultimately they all lead to the Goldean Age of Discovery.
The second Part, called "Mar Português" (Portuguese Sea) refers the country's Age of Portuguese Exploration and to its sea-borne Empire that ended with the death of King Sebastian at El-Ksar el-Kebir (in 1578). Pessoa brings the reader to the present as if he had woken up from a dream of the past, to fall in a dream of the future: he sees King Sebastian returning and still bent on accomplishing an Universal Empire, like King Arthur heading for Avalon...
The third Cycle, called "O Encoberto" ("The Hidden One"), is the most disturbing. It refers to Pessoa's vision of a future world of peace and the Fifth Empire. After the Age of Force, (Vis), and Taedium (Otium) will come Science (understanding ) through a reawakening of "The Hidden One", or "King Sebastian". The Hidden One represents the fulfillment of the destiny of mankind, designed by God since before Time, and the accomplishment of Portugal.
In 1912, Fernando Pessoa wrote a set of essays later collected under the designation The New Portuguese Poetry for the literary journal A Águia, (The Eagle), founded in Oporto in December 1910. The first series of two articles engage the issue 'The new Portuguese poetry viewed sociologically' (nos. 4 and 5 ); the second series of three articles is entitled 'The psychological aspect of the new Portuguese poetry' (nos. 9,11 and 12). The articles disclose him as a connoisseur of modern European literature and an expert of recent literary trends. On the other hand, he does not care too much for methodology of analysis and problems of history of ideas. He states his confidence that Portugal would soon produce a great poet -a 'super-Camoens' as he calls him – pledged to make an important contribution for European culture, and indeed, for humanity.
The philosophical notes of young Fernando Pessoa, mostly written between 1905 and 1912, illustrate his debt to the history of Philosophy more through commentators than through a first-hand protracted reading of the Classics, ancient or modern. The issues he engages with pertain to every philosophical discipline and are dealt with a large profusion of concepts, creating a vast semantic spectrum in texts whose length oscillates between half a dozen lines and half a dozen pages and whose density of analysis is extremely variable; simple paraphrasis, expression of assumptions and original speculation.
Pessoa sorted the philosophical systems thus: 1)Relative Spiritualism and relative Materialism privilege “Spirit “or “Matter “as the main pole that organizes data around Experience. 2) Absolute Spiritualist and Absolute Materialist "deny all objective reality to one of the elements of Experience". 3) The materialistic Pantheism of Spinoza and the spiritualizing Pantheism of Malebranche, “admit that experience is a double manifestation of any thing that in its essence has no matter neither spirit". 4) Considering both elements as an illusory manifestation", of a transcendent and true and alone realities, there is Transcendentalism, inclined into matter with Schopenhauer, or into spirit, a position where Bergson could be emplaced. 5) A terminal system “the limited and summit of metaphysics” would not radicalize - as poles of experience one of the singled categories - matter, relative, absolute, real, illusory, spirit. Instead, matching all categories, it takes contradiction as “the essence of the universe” and defends that “an affirmation is so more true insofar the more contradiction involves". The transcendent must be conceived beyond categories. There is one only and eternal example of it. It is that cathedral of thought -the philosophy of Hegel. Such Pantheist Transcendentalism is used by Pessoa to define the project that “encompasses and exceeds all systems "; to characterize the new poetry of Saudosismo where the “typical contradiction of this system“ occurs; to inquire what are the social and politic results of its adoption as the leading cultural paradigm; and, at last, he hints that metaphysics and religiosity strive “to find in everything a beyond".
Book of Disquiet, tr. Richard Zenith
Fernando Pessoa & Co: Selected Poems
The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
Poems of Fernando Pessoa, tr. Honig & Brown
Fernando Pessoa (Pocket Archives Series): Photographs
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Articles:
(The following articles are located on the Gale website (Galenet.com) --note: password is required for access. Ask your public librarian for a password...More essays can be located in the Gale Criticism Anthologies; these are also found in your public library.)
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