The Task of Introducing Fernando Pessoa to a Distant Culture: Korean Translation Project, Methodological Issues and a Preface

! 3 Summary Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………….....5 Resumo ………………………………………………….…..…………….……….....6 Abstract …………………………………………………………..……..………….....7 Index of tables ……………………………………………………..……………….....8 PART I – Methodological Issues………………………………..……………….......9 1. Backgrounds - A Project: Poetry Anthology Translated into Korean.…………….10 2. Introducing Pessoa ...…………………………………………………...…………14 2.1. Brief Overview on Introductions………………………………………...14 2.2. Brief Overview on Translations…………………………………………15 2.3. Special Considerations…………………………………………………..17 2.3.1. Heteronyms……………………………………………………17 2.3.2. The Poet or the Diary Keeper………………………………….18 2.3.3. The “Zen” Facet of Alberto Caeiro……………………………19 3. Project Definition……………………………………………………..…………...19 3.1. Dimension…………………………………………………………….…20 3.2. Hypothetical Reader …………………………………………………….21 3.3. Preface & Supplementary Contents..……………………………………21 4. Methodology & Editorial Principles……………………………...…………….…22 4.1. Structure…………………………………………………………………22 4.2. Selecting Process & Criteria …………………………………………...23 4.3. List (Result)……………………………………………………………...24 4.4. Provenance of texts……………………………………………………...25 5. Translation Issues……………………………………………………………...…..25 5.1. Rhythm and Rhyme……………………………………………….……..25 5.2. Ambiguity of Words……………………………………………….…….27 5.3. Letter Case……………………………………………………….………28 Final Considerations………………………………………….……………….……...28 Bibliography.………………………………………………………………….……...30 ! 4 PART II – Preface……..…………………………………………………….……...34 Table of Contents…...…..…………………………………………………….……...35 Notes on Quotation………………………………………………………….…….....36 Preface…………..…………………………………………………………….……...37 Bibliography.…………………………………………………………………...…...116 ! 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all those who helped with this project. My primary debt of gratitude is to Dr. Rosa Maria Martelo for the overall orientation, insightful comments, and unwavering support. Richard Zenith deserves a very special mention for his invaluable help. I thank him for the inspiration I have received from conversations with him and through reading his work. I benefited from Dr. Pedro Eiras, especially from his seminar “The Orpheu Generation”, and also from Dr. Jerónimo Pizarro for his key advices. I also owe Nuno Amado special thanks for sharing his insights, especially on Ricardo Reis. I would like to thank Dr. Kazufumi Watanabe, Dr. Min Xuefei, Inez Zhou and Cristina Zhou for their advices and for sharing valuable informations. Many thanks go also to Dr. António Feijó and Dr. João Figueiredo from the University of Lisbon, and to Teresa Monteiro and José Correia from Casa Fernando Pessoa. I am grateful to Carla Augusto, from the International Office of FLUP, for her support. I wish to thank Dr. Hyun Kyun Kim for his ongoing support and encouragment. I owe my friends and colleagues Hugo Miguel Pereira, Juliana Cesar, Duarte Drumond Braga, Rúben Gonçalves, Renata Ribeiro Lima, Soo Jie Lee and Helen Shin many thanks. There are three people to whom I owe a particularly large debt of personal gratitude. First, I take special pleasure in thanking my friend Paulo Lopes Graça for letting all this begin. Finally, my sincere gratitude goes to my brother Sanha Kim and sister Solha Kim for always being available. Without their support this whole project wouldn’t have gotten done. September 20, 2015 Lisbon Hanmin Kim ! 6 Resumo Esta dissertação1 é constituída pela defesa crítica de um projeto de apresentação do poeta português Fernando Pessoa aos leitores coreanos. O projeto consiste na publicação de uma antologia de poemas traduzidos do português para o coreano, comportando um conjunto de práticas de organização do âmbito da edição, tradução e apresentação. Na primeira parte, após uma breve reflexão sobre o presente panorama internacional das traduções de Pessoa, a argumentação irá incidir principalmente sobre questões de metodologia relacionadas com a apresentação, seleção e tradução dos poemas essenciais de Pessoa. A segunda parte é constituída pelo prefácio que acompanhará a antologia, centrado no percurso literário de Pessoa enquanto poeta e nas principais temáticas da sua poesia.! ! Palavras-chave: Fernando Pessoa, Tradução, Coreano, Antologia Poética. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 A presente dissertação irá referir investigadores e tradutores internacionais. Assim sendo, e de forma a maximizar a sua disponibilidade ao público-alvo, encontra-se escrita em inglês, língua amplamente aceite como a língua franca da comunidade académica internacional. ! 7 Abstract This dissertation2 is a critical justification for an introductory translation & publishing project of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa for Korean readers. This project consists of a poetry anthology translated from Portuguese to Korean language, and involves a set of organizing practices such as editing, translating and presentation. In the first part, after a brief overview of Pessoa’s international current state of translation is provided, the discussion will mainly focus on methodological issues concerning presentation, selection and translation of Pessoa’s essential poems. The second part is an elaborated preface which focuses on the literary trajectory of Pessoa as a poet, and discusses his major poetic themes. Key Words: Fernando Pessoa, Translation, Korean language, Poetry Anthology. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 This dissertation is expected to address international researchers and translators. Hence, in order to maximize its availability to the target readers, it is written in English, widely accepted as the lingua franca of the international academic community. ! ! 8 Index of Tables (Table 1) Pool of references……………………………………………….…………....23 (Table 2) Example of finding an intersection between the selected anthologies.……..........24 (Table 3) The first list of “essential” poems.………………….…………………………...24 (Table 4) The list of additional poems………….……………………………...….……...25 ! 9 PART I Methodological Issues ! 16 rich?» (Lind, 1962: 160).25 He considers the approach of the French translator Armand Guibert not ideal, because Guibert «calmly avoided the rhymes, limiting oneself to a literal translation that captures the exact meaning of the words, but renounces the supplementary means which forms the musical charm of poetry» (ibid.).26 In English, the most immediately accessible to a foreign audience is perhaps Álvaro de Campos, the out-and-out Modernist whose exciting and often daring form and content more easily commend themselves to translation and comprehension. (…) Tabacaria [Tobacco shop] has received an excellent English translation by Suzette Macedo (1987) and created wide interest. Others are virtually untranslatable. (Classe, 2000: 1066) Edward Honig agrees with the principal difficulty of translating Cancioneiro [Songbook] (in Monteiro, 1981: 156) and argues that when he [Pessoa] expresses so perfectly, as he often does, what’s special about the Portuguese temperament, it’s something one expects only the Portuguese themselves to appreciate. (…) For many, Pessoa’s texture is not “poetic” enough. Something disappoints them – the thinness of the verbal play, the sophism of the lines, the raucousness (…) which doesn’t translate from Portuguese either. (Id: 158159)27 Outside the Latin alphabet using countries, there is a general lack of reported sources related to translation issues. Alexandra Koss denotes a rare case study of Cyrillic script in Russian reception. She introduces a particular case of the poem Autopsicografia where a Russian translator substituted the word “Coração” [Heart] to “Alma” [Soul], which raised serious scrutiny of some critiques. However, since in Russian, it is the soul where the metaphysical pain is born: talking about the heart, (…) it would be a cardiological pain. (…) The apparent detour of the translator is, in fact, a solution (…) to reach to its supreme objective that would be the integral fidelity of the totality of the text. (Koss, 1966: 68-69)28 This case is similar with the case of Korea, which will be discussed in chapter 5.2, “Ambiguity of Words”. Difficulties in translating Pessoa do not end here. There is a biographical fact that adds another dimension: the fact that Pessoa was an active translator !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 25 [Que fazer no caso das rimas, traduzindo de uma língua riquíssima em rimas para outra menos rica?] 26 [(…) evitou tranquilamente as rimas, limitando-se a uma tradução à letra que capta o sentido exacto da palavra, mas que renuncia aos meios suplementrares que, no entanto, constituem o encanto musical da poesia.] ! 27 From the “Two interviews” with Edwin Honig and Jean Longland by Carolina Matos. 28 [(…) em russo é na alma que nasce a dor metafísica: tratando-se do coração, (…) é uma doença cardíaca. (…) O aparente desvio do tradutor é, na realidade, uma solução (…) para chegar a sua meta suprema que viria a ser a fidelidade integral da totalidade do texto.] ! 17 himself. Not only did he earn his life as a commercial translator, but also left several noticeable literary translations behind.29 The polyglot poet wrote in three languages (Portuguese, English and French) and auto-translated some of his own works.30 In effect, his preference on specific words in his own translations as well as his opinions on translation may affect his translators, up to certain extent, on making translative decisions.31 This leads to one of the central questions of translation: should the translator transmit the author's words or his (interpreted) will? When it comes to a “bilingual-yet-not-perfectly-bilingual” poet like Pessoa (since his English was fluent and admirable yet not acquainted with real life experience), there can be unintentional “mistakes”. With all due respect, perhaps it might be possible for a translator to provide a “belated advice” to the poet. For example, in such cases like the title “Naval Ode” (widely translated to Maritime Ode, although Pessoa translated it as mentioned), which could sound awkward to a native speaker.32 2.3. Special Considerations 2.3.1. Heteronyms The first question we face is how to deal with one of Pessoa’s most peculiar trait: none other than his multiple literary egos. If not dealt properly, this could be easily misunderstood as an “infantile” trait. Actually, these negative receptions happened even in Portugal in the 1940s, when some critics downplayed the idea of heteronyms. For instance, João Gaspar Simões, the first biographer of Pessoa, did not consider it more than a drollery: «We fall in the trap. We were seriously teased, just like his friends whom he teased by deliberately preparing the great “clownery” of his heteronyms» (Pessoa, 2007:11).33 Even though it is partly true that Pessoa demonstrates a certain aspect of “Homo Ludens” through this eccentric experiment, the introducer should make sure to emphasize the poet’s serious and theoretical approach to his invention. This issue echoes with the often problematic “postmodern reading” of Pessoa. Apparently, it is true that we can observe some common !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 For instance: «Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, Annabel Lee, and Ulalume in verse translations; Walter Pater's La Giaconda; two short stories by O. Henry; and excerpts from the Greek Anthology» (Howes, 1983: 165) and «Fitzgerald's English quatrains, some English Ruba'iyat in his copies of two books, World Literature Series» (Castro, Mariana Gray de, 2013: 95), etc. 30!For example:!The Anarchist Banker, Naval Ode, Preface for Portuguese Sensationists, etc. ! 31 Richard Zenith, in the “Notes” of A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, remarks: «Pessoa translated about five stanzas of the poem into English. He preceded his translation with the following note: “The word ‘Opiary,’ of course, does not exist in English. But neither does ‘Opiário’ (of which ‘opiary’ is the exact translation) exist in Portuguese. The translator has followed the neologism of the original”» (Pessoa, 2006: 425). 32 cf. From a conversation with the renowned Pessoa specialist and American translator Richard Zenith. 33![Caímos na armadilha. Fomos, realmente, burlados, como foram burlados os seus amigos para quem ele preparou, de peito feito, a grande “palhaçada” dos seus heterónimos.] ! ! 18 postmodernist characteristics in Pessoa, – such as ambiguity, fragmentation, relativity, skepticism, indeterminacy, irony and playfulness – but it will be misleading to frame or label Pessoa inside such a postmodernist model, especially concerning the creation of heteronyms. For the most part, the poet dealt his heteronyms with seriousness and earnestness rather than with irony. Some even venture to say, «if one looks attentively, a myriad of Pessoa’s writings seem to lack any irony at all» (Almeida, 2008: 51). Another consideration we should take into account when it comes to publishing Pessoa is to establish “Pessoa himself” first before his heteronyms. Although the questions surrounding Pessoa’s multiple identities are increasingly complex, the “historical” person Fernando António Nogueira Pessôa allows us to construct a detailed and credible biography. If the editor gets overly caught in presenting the elusiveness of the heteronym system, it could result in “erasing” Pessoa behind the mask of Caeiro or Campos, etc. For example, in Korea, the author of O Guardador de Rebanhos was introduced as “Alberto Caeiro”. Perhaps being too loyal to the idea of heteronyms, the anthology was registered under the name of Caeiro even in the bibliographic systems and search engines. Although there was an explanation of Pessoa inside the preface, an average reader without background knowledge would find it increasingly difficult to relate Caeiro with the author of other following publications such as O Livro do Desassossego (also often introduced as “a book written by Bernardo Soares”). Unfortunately, this valuable first direct translation of Pessoa (or Caeiro) in Korea went out of print very soon without raising attention, and the publication became practically unavailable. It took more than 20 years, until now, as I reassume the task of direct translation, to rebuild a continuity. In conclusion, even if the heteronyms deserve due respect, it is strongly recommended to publish Pessoa’s work under the umbrella of Pessoa, at least in the early stage. One may find this confusion of authorship rather natural and meaningful, or even authentic, since it does reveal a particular trait of the poet. However, regarding the lack of general interest and difficult conditions for such publications, to let a valuable translation get isolated and forgotten like this case is not what we are ready to afford, since once an author is misunderstood to have “failed” in raising considerable interest, the opportunities of following publications could be easily overshadowed. 2.3.2. The Poet or the Diary Keeper The second consideration is to shed light on “the poet” facet of Fernando Pessoa. I expect this point might be important to some countries where Pessoa is known only as the eloquent “aphorist” or “diary keeper” of O Livro do Desassossego. This is appropriate, since O Livro is undoubtedly one of the most attractive and intriguing guides to the wide world of Pessoa, and he considered it to be one of his main projects. However, if our reading ends ! 19 there, the richness of his extensive poetic legacy will remain unjustly unknown. We should keep in mind that Pessoa identified himself as a poet and repeatedly compared himself to the greatest poets of literary history. Although he produced a significant amount of prose towards the end of his life, we cannot begin to describe the mark he left in Portugal literature and European Modernism without his poems. This issue will be addressed by composing a preface, exclusively tracing a trajectory of the main “poetic events” of Pessoa, which directly relates to his poetic production instead of offering a conventional biographical introduction. Yet at the same time, we should be fully aware that it is next to impossible to determine a strict border between the poetic/non-poetic aspects of an artist whose life and work were so closely interrelated. As Agostinho da Silva remarked, the better way to approach Pessoa is not just «talking about the poems Pessoa wrote», but rather about «the poem Pessoa was» (Silva, 2006: 54).34 2.3.3. The “Zen” Facet of Alberto Caeiro Could there be any preference of heteronyms by countries? Lind is quite sure that German readers would prefer Campos because of their preference of free verse (Lind, 1962: 156). On the other hand, it is curious to find that Caeiro’s poems frequently appeared as the earliest translations of Pessoa in several countries (France, Spain, Korea and China). Min Xuefei, the Chinese translator of Pessoa’s poems, explained the major reason to choose Caeiro as the first was not only because he is the “Master and Matrix” of the heteronym coterie, but also because the edition of Caeiro would suffer minimum divergence between different editions, since the majority his poems were already published in magazines under Pessoa’s own handling.35 In Korea the reason why Caeiro was the first is not clear. Was it because Caeiro’s simplistic vocabulary allows more accessibility to the reader? Or, was it because one can easily find a philosophically “oriental” perspective in this bucolic poet’s insight? In fact, there were considerable studies conducted about the “Zen” facet of Caeiro. Whether it was intentional or not, it is in fact highly probable that an average Korean reader easily associates Caeiro with oriental wisdom. This topic will also be commented in the preface. 3. Project Definition !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 34 [(...) O Fernando Pessoa era um homem, ao qual o alfaiate podia tirar as medidas e depois fazer um casaco ou umas calças, mas o poema que era o Fernando Pessoa não há jeito de tomar medidas nenhumas. (53) Não estou a falar nos poemas que Fernando Pessoa escreveu, estou a falar no próprio poema que era Fernando Pessoa. (54)] ! 35 From a e-mail conversation with Professor Min Xuefei. ! 20 3.1. Dimension Here we must address some pre-conditions of organizing the anthology in question. First, the dimension of this anthology will be limited to a single volume. If the circumstantial conditions allowed us to publish a multi-volume series or collection, it would have been preferred. Nevertheless, this was impossible, not only for non-literary reasons such as financial factors, but also due to the “un-readiness”36 of the public. This “single-volume condition” faces a different task in comparison with the case of multiple volumes. Even in the case of translating an existing edition, it seems to be impossible to single out an anthology that would both meet our needs and secure indisputable consensus over the choice. Moreover, there is no single-volume anthology that is purposely designed to evoke positive responses of a specific group of readers regarding this case. This is the reason why I will try to organize a new set of poems. For reference, there are a couple of reasons why single-volume anthologies are less published, even in Portugal, although we may witness an abundance of Pessoan publications. Firstly, as Pessoa was such a prolific poet whose works amount to about 3000 poems37, the difficulty to publish a single edition of “complete poems” is understandable.38 Furthermore, to label a book as “complete poems of Pessoa” could be still risky, or untimely, since almost every year a new unpublished text of Pessoa comes to light.39 Secondly, because single volume anthologies are usually preferred by international readers than national readers who have easier access to the full “corpus” of the author, thanks to the variety of publications. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 What do I mean by being ready? I think that some poets need certain pre-conditions for presentation. It is not enough to “cook a dish”, but one has to create the “taste”, which does not automatically follow. If the “taste” part is not established due to cultural differences, it requires a “mediator” to build a bridge. In my view, not all the works of Pessoa, but some of them need a mediator to offer a guideline. To borrow the words of Wordsworth; «If there be one conclusion more forcibly pressed upon us than another by the review which has been given of the fortunes and fate of poetical Works, it is this—that every author, as far as he is great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed: so has it been, so will it continue to be. This remark was long since made to me by the philosophical Friend for the separation of whose poems from my own I have previously expressed my regret. The predecessors of an original Genius of a high order will have smoothed the way for all that he has in common with them; —and much he will have in common; but, for what is peculiarly his own, he will be called upon to clear and often to shape his own road: —he will be in the condition of Hannibal among the Alps» (William Wordsworth (1798) “Essay Supplementary to Preface”, in The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Volume 2,!edited by William Knight, p.344, italic & emphasis added). ! ! 37 According to the experts I have consulted, the total number oscillated between 2,500~3,000. However, there is by far no exact or “official” registration. Besides, if we include his English poems, we may add approx. 300 poems. And a single poem can consist of, at the longest, 903 verses, in the case of Ode Marítima. 38 By far, the most complete single volume international edition is the 2074-page volume “Œuvres poétiques de Fernando Pessoa (2001) édition, traduction et commentaire de Patrick Quillier, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard”. However, following this format would be unrealistic and unpractical considering the conventions of publishing environments in Korea. 39 Concerning poetry, we are quite certain that the most important and renowned poems are already published. Yet, we cannot completely rule out the possibilities of something new to appear. Another idea to formulate a convincing anthology is to exclusively organize the poems “published during his life”, as Fernando Cabral Martins did. However, considering the other valuable poems only published posthumously, it would be untimely to have that criteria as the editing principle, especially in this particular case of publishing in Korea, where this anthology will be practically the first poetry book of Pessoa. ! ! 21 3.2. Hypothetical Reader Now, when we are to bear a target reader in mind, it is not easy to make a clear-cut choice between the general public and the academic community, since interests of both parties will contribute to spread, fuel and foster interests on the author in different ways. But if a choice is to be made, considering the given actual circumstances and the own nature of Pessoa’s particularity, I think the project should address the academic community first. Although there is a small but growing recognition of Pessoa, a professional and academic approach to enrich knowledge of Pessoa’s literature is what we actually lack more in degree. By far, not a single PhD thesis of Pessoa has been published in Korea. Although the general academic community consists of a very small number of readers, we expect it to become the cohesive core group which boosts future interests and activities related to the poet. Considering the possibility that the anthology would serve as a textbook for university classes, I will try to synthesize the most reliable selections of published anthologies and consider adding other poems which frequently appear in important Pessoan studies. If we consider the general public as priority, we must select “accessible” poems, offer a less elaborated, less academic preface with fewer footnotes, and regulate the quantity and length of the volume in order to render it “reader-friendly”. This will not be the case. Yet, obviously, dismissing this “friendliness” does not imply entirely excluding intentions of raising general public interest in Pessoa evoked by latest publications. However, organizing a “commercial” version, solely in order to adjust to the norms of the current market will be avoided. 3.3. Preface & Supplementary Contents As we will focus on academic readers, the preface will play a more important role. As we stated before, the focal point of the preface is the poetic production of Pessoa. In this regard, we will elaborate his poetry in relation with various isms he created himself. I will primarily try to quote relevant references of Pessoa himself, and secondly, incorporate convincing interpretations of distinguished academics. It may be, more or less a collection of “filtered” references and informations, based on my own academic experience of how to start with Pessoa. The general approach intends to be an attentive and faithful reading of Pessoa and of his key commentators. My personal opinions and arguments will be limitedly expressed. Relying on established scholars’ opinions may lead to a conventional and conservative reading of Pessoa, by excluding bold, controversial interpretations. As a result, it is possible to become less experimental and original, but this may be the compromise one is bound to make in the early stage. ! 22 * Supplementary Contents: Some excerpts of Pessoa’s important proses and articles related to his poetics will be added/translated as well: A Nova Poesia Portuguesa [The New Portuguese Poetry], Apontamentos para uma Estética Não-Aristotélica [Notes for a Non-Aristotelian Aesthetics], Heróstrato [Herostratus], etc.! 4. Methodology & Editorial Principles Taking all the abovementioned conditions into account, now it seems to be the time to answer the central question: If one is supposed to suggest a convincing methodology in organizing a single volume anthology of Pessoa, what would be the most adequate approach to compose it, within the given circumstantial limits? I argue that a reliable poetry anthology must consist of the following three elements: (Order according to priority) 1) Representability of the author’s corpus 2) Credibility (Reliability) of the editor/translator and editing process 3) Accessibility for the reader Now, how can we organize an anthology that would introduce Pessoa in the most representative, legitimate, yet accessible way? 4.1. Structure In the majority of cases, the basic structure of editing Pessoa’s poems seems to be consensual. Although the concrete selection of poems would widely vary, almost every single volume anthology adopts the same structure40: presenting three “heteronyms” (Caeiro, Campos, Reis) and the “orthonym” Pessoa (Pessoa himself). Nonetheless, this apparently safe and conventional structure is not unquestionable: What about the “pre-hetoronym” Alexander Search? Do we include the poems of Vicente Guedes? Do we exclude his English and French poems? What about some ambitious poems that evoke interest yet remain unfinished?41 What about his popular quatrains? etc. Eventually, we will begin to realize that, as Ivo Castro mentioned (see page 14), finding a single reliable criterion is not possible. Hence, compromise is inevitable, and to a certain degree, it is necessary to sacrifice the strict sense of categorization by «breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things» (Foucault, 1966: 15). Maybe the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40!There are anthologies which group poems according to thematic affinities, (i.e. “Love poems” or “Esoteric poems” by Pessoa) but these approaches will not suit our goal to organize an anthology with high representability. ! 41 O Fausto, Saudação a Walt Whitman, Passagem das Horas etc. ! 23 “impossibility of congruence” or, the necessity of alternative categorization is itself, Pessoa. In conclusion, for this case, we will root for the synthetic module: a basic structure + adding “unmissable” poems + supplementary elements. 4.2. Selecting Process & Criteria The most important part is the selecting method of the poems, regarding the overwhelming quantity of Pessoa’s corpus. It will be overly arbitrary and subjective if I chose certain poems depending on my personal opinion of their “literary quality”. There are exceptions, for instance, such as the poet Eugénio de Andrade’s anthology. Although Eduardo Lourenço judges it as a «extremely personal choice, of pure taste» (Lourenço, 2006: 7)42, the widely respected poet’s selection does not lose its unique value. Alternatively, one can opt for selecting only the published poems during Pessoa’s lifetime, but it could exclude numerous valuable poems. Taking reference from Pessoa’s own editing plans (unpublished drafts and notes) as a guideline could also be a method, but these lists are either too incomplete or vary too much. Assigning a numerical frame such as giving a title like “100 poems of Pessoa” could also be another method to set a limit, but in our case I prefer the project not to be confined by a self-imposed arbitrary number. I contend that the most consensual and objective approach would be respecting the history of previous publications and relying on precedent researches. Following this premise, I chose to consult eight examples among single-volume anthologies. The chosen anthologies were organized, edited, introduced by distinguished specialists on Pessoan studies, or widely respected poets/translators. Title Year Editor Publisher/ Country Language Poesia de Fernando Pessoa 1945 [2006] Adolfo Casais Monteiro Editorial Presença / Portugal Portuguese Fernando Pessoa: Selected Poems 1974 [2000] Jonathan Griffin Penguin Classic / USA English Os Melhores Poemas de Fernando Pessoa 1986 [2014] Teresa Rita Lopes Editora Global / Brazil Portuguese Antologia Poética 1982 Ángel Crespo Espasa Calpe / Spain Spanish Fernando Pessoa / poesias escolhidas 1996 Eugénio de Andrade Campo das Letras / Portugal Portuguese Poems of Fernando Pessoa 2001 Edward Honig City Lights Publishers / USA English Antologia Poética de Fernando Pessoa 2006 Eduardo Lourenço Visão JL / Portugal Portuguese Forever Someone Else 2008 [2013] Richard Zenith Assírio & Alvim / Portugal Portuguese / English (Table 1) Pool of Reference43 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 42 [(…) escolha de puro gosto, pessoalíssima]. 43 French editions were excluded because the reliable versions were either too lengthy (the 2074-page French volume Œuvres poétiques de Fernando Pessoa (2001); mentioned in footnote 32), or because they were published separately by heteronyms. ! 24 Once the reference pool was established, the logical first step (a) to organize a rather “objective and reliable” selection of poems was to construct an intersection of these eight anthologies, and find a common ground of choices. (Table 2) Example of finding an intersection between the selected anthologies – step (a) 4.3. List (Result) Each poem selected by more than half of the editors was automatically included. (Table 3) The first list of “essential” poems (76 poems were selected) ! 25 However, as we predicted, relying solely on the intersection would not satisfy our needs. As our focus was finding the best way possible to not lose anything crucial, I started to add poems which were frequently commented or quoted in essential references, in order to facilitate the academic readers on researching. This was the second step (b). As a result, 51 poems were added. ((a)+(b)= Total 127 poems). (Table 4) The list of additional poems – step (b) 4.4. Provenance of Texts For the source of the poems, I have basically consulted the criteria employed by the Pessoa’s Critical Edition. (Edição Crítica das Obras de Fernando Pessoa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda). However, on trying to enhance readability, I decided to exclude the critical apparatus. And when there were variables of words, I chose the one that brought the best effect in Korean translation. 5. Translation Issues 5.1. Rhythm and Rhyme According to the German translator Lind, there is a noticeable facility in translating poems of Campos, since the poet adopts free verse: «Once you find the adequate word, it is just enough to reconstruct a rhythm that can adapt to the tonality of the poem and after that surges a translation which is not (or only a little bit) remote from the original» (Lind, 1962:157).44 The French translator Bréchon finds poems of orthonym Pessoa (for example, the Cancioneiro) extremely difficult to translate: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 44 [uma vez encontrada a palavra adequada, basta reconstituir um ritmo que se adapte à tonalidade do poema e surge depois uma tradução que pouco ou nada se afasta do original.] ! ! 32 ___. (2000) Poesia Inglesa - I (Organização e tradução de Luísa Freire), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2001) Œuvres poétiques de Fernando Pessoa, (Édition, traduction et commentaire de Patrick Quillier), Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard. ___. (2002) The Book of Disquiet (Translated by Richard Zentih), New York, Penguin Classics. ___. (2003) Escritos Autobiográficos, Automáticos e de Reflexão Pessoal (Edição e Posfácio de Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2004) Poemas de Fernando Pessoa 1931-1933, Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, Série Maior, vol. I, Tomo IV (Edição de Ivo Castro), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (2005) Poemas de Fernando Pessoa 1915-1920, Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, Série Maior, vol. I, Tomo II (Edição de João Dionísio), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (2006) A Little Larger Than Entire Universe: Selected Poems of Fernando Pessoa (Translated and edited by Richard Zenith), USA; UK, Penguin. ___. (2006A) Poesia do Eu, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #2 (Edição Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim [2a ed. 2008]. ___. (2007) Poesia dos Outros Eus, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #4 (Edição Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim [2a ed. 2010]. ___. (2007A) Poesia Inglesa, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #6 (Edição Richard Zenith, tradução Luísa Freire), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2007B) The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro (Translated by Chris Daniels), Shearsman Books. ___. (2010) Poesia Completa de Ricardo Reis, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras. ___. (2012) Teoria da Heteronímia (Edição Fernando Cabral Martins e Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2013) O Livro do Desassossego (Edição de Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. BOOKS about Fernando Pessoa & Others: Bassnet, Susan (1991) Translation Studies, Revised edition, London/New York: Routledge. Bloom, Harold (1980) Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens, New Have, Yale University Press. Bréchon, Robert (1996) Estranho Estrangeiro, Lisboa, Quetzal. ___. (1994) The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages, New York, Harcourt Brace. Coelho, Jacinto do Prado (1969) Diversidade e Unidade em Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa/São Paulo, Editorial Verbo. ___. (1979) Dicionário de Literatura Portuguesa: in Modernismo, 3ª ed, 2.º vol., Porto, Figueirinhas. Crespo, Ángel (1984) Estudios sobre Pessoa, Barcelona, Bruguera. Eliot, T.S. (1957) On Poetry and Poets, London, Faber and Faber Limited [1979]. ! 33 Gile, Daniel / Hansen, Gyde (2010)!Why Translation Studies Matters, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins Publishing. Hatim, Basil / Mason, Ian (1997) The Translator as Communicator, London and New York, Routledge. Lind, Georg Rudolf (1970) Teoria Poética de Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Inova. Lopes, Teresa Rita (1985) Fernando Pessoa et le drame symboliste: heritage et création, Paris, Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, Centre Culturel Portugais [1ª ed. 1977]. Martins, Fernando Cabral (2008) Dicionário de Fernando Pessoa e do Modernismo Português, Lisboa, Editorial Caminho. ___. (2014) Introdução ao Estudo de Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. Paz, Octavio, (1988) Fernando Pessoa : O Desconhecido De Si Mesmo (Trad. Luís Alves da Costa), Lisboa, Vega. Simões, João Gaspar (1950) Vida e Obra de Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa, Livraria Bertrand [2a ed. 1971]. Venuti, Lawrence (1995) The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation, London, Routledge. ___. (1998) The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference, London, Routledge. ARTICLES, THESES & JOURNALS: Baker, Mona (1996) “Corpus-based Translation Studies: The challenges that lie ahead”, in Terminology, LSP and Translation. Studies in language engineering in honour of Juan C. Sager, H. Somers (ed.), Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp.175–186. Berman, Antoine (2000) “Trials of the Foreign”, published in The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venutti, Routledge [3rd ed. 2012]. Holmes, J. 1972. (1988) “The name and nature of Translation Studies”, unpublished manuscript, reprinted in Holmes, J. (ed.). Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, Amsterdam, Rodopi, pp. 66–80. Macedo, Helder / Dix, Steffen / Pizarro, Jerónimo (2008) Portuguese studies: Pessoa: The Future of the Arcas, Vol. 24, No. II, Maney Publishing. Pym, Anthony (2005) “Explaining explicitation”, in New Trends in Translation Studies. In Honour of Kinga Klaudy, K. Károly and A. Fóris (eds), 29–34. Budapest, Akademiai Kiado. Viaggio, S. 1992. “Translators and interpreters: Professionals or shoemakers?” in Dollerup and Loddegaard (eds), pp. 307–312 (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the First Language International Conference, Elsinore, Denmark, May 31-June 2, 1991). Internet Sites: http://arquivopessoa.net/textos http://casafernandopessoa.cm-lisboa.pt http://estranharpessoa.com/revista www.est-translationstudies.org http://translation.fusp.it/articles/translation-without-border ! 34 PART II Preface ! 35 Table of Contents Foreword…………………………………………...…………………………………………………..37 1. The New Portuguese Poetry………………………………………………………………………..44 1.1. Naturalization………………………………………………..………….……………..…44 1.2. Début as a Critic……………………………………………..………….………...……...45 1.2. Three Portuguese Poets ………………………………………..………….………….….48 2. Pessoa and Co. …………………..……………………………………………………...…………..52 2.1. Heteronyms ……………………………………………………………....………………52 2.1.1. Alberto Caeiro…………………………………………….………………..…56 2.1.2. Álvaro de Campos……………………………………….……………………59 2.1.3. Ricardo Reis ……………………………………………….…………………61 2.2. Orthonym / Pessoa Himself………………………………………………………………64 3. The Orpheu…………………..……………………………………………………………………..68 4. Amplitude of Sensations…………………..………………………………………………………..74 4.1. Pessoa as a Theorist ………………………………………………………...……………74 4.2. Self-created Isms …………………………………………………………..……………76 4.3. Sensationism ………………………………………….……………………….…………79 5. English Poems …………………..……………………………….…………..……………………..89 6. Esoteric and Nationalistic Phase ………..…………………………..…………………………….96 6.1. Esoteric Poems……………………………………………………...……………………96 6.2. Mensagem ………………………………………………………………………………98 7. Poetic Issues ………..……………………………………………………………...………………101 7.1. Depersonalization…………………………………………………...…………………..101 7.2. Sincerity and Insincerity ………………………………………………………………..106 7.3. Fragmentation …………………………………………………………………………..108 7.4. Interruption ……………………………………………………………………………..111 8. Influences ………..………………………………………………………………………...………113 8.1. The Presencistas ………………………………………………………………………..113 8.2. Other Portuguese Poets …………………….………………………………………..…114 Bibliography………..………………………………………………………………………...………116 ! 36 Notes on Quotation • For the convenience of bilingual readers, every Portuguese quotation is accompanied by its original source text in footnotes. When the English translation of the text was mine, I only indicated the source of the original Portuguese text at the end of my translation; when I cited translations by others, both sources (of the original text and its translation) are indicated at the end of each quotation, respectively. • Other cited texts without any original Portuguese text footnote means that it was originally written in English. ! 37 Foreword “If Fernando Pessoa was a painter, instead of being a poet, what self-portrait would have he painted of himself?” – José Saramago, Presentation of Sabat. What was poetry, or a poem, for Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935)? We may start to find an answer of this question by directly referring to Pessoa himself, since he did not shy away from defining things. Yet, pay attention: he would usually offer definitions rather than a definition; contradict his own arguments without hesitation; allow different opinions to flow through his mind; challenge his thoughts by operating his keen sense of self-criticism. As a result, whenever an attentive Pessoa reader assumes that the poet established one point, he/she is likely to encounter a counter-point among his numerous scattered texts. That being said, his disperse thoughts may allow us, at least, to draw a hazy outline of his notion of poetry. Among the definitions of poetry that Pessoa left, mainly in unpublished notes, let us start with an indirect one, written in a letter to an English editor (1916) where he provided a rather anthropomorphic idea. I sometimes hold that a poem — I would also say a painting or a statue, but I do not consider sculpture and painting arts, but only perfected artisans' work — is a person, a living human being, belongs in bodily presence and real fleshly existence to another world, into which our imagination throws him, his aspect to us, as we read him in this world, being no more than the imperfect shadow of that reality of beauty which is divine elsewhere. (1966A: 126, emphasis added) It could be read as a possible echo of what Pessoa read as Aristotle’s remark on poetry: There are three central tenets of Sensationism. The first is that art is supremely construction and that the greatest art is that which is able to visualize and create organized wholes, of which the component parts fit vitally into their places; the great principle that Aristotle enunciated when he said that a poem was an «animal». (2009:155) In contrast to this “animated” version, he would elaborate a more “artificial” definition in other texts, especially addressing his preoccupation on rhythm and musicality. ! 38 A poem is an intellectualized impression, or an idea converted in emotion, communicated to others through the medium of rhythm (…) a work of art consists of, fundamentally, an objectified interpretation of a subjectified impression. (1966A: 177)1 Another similar idea written in Erostratus brings the musical aspect as well, though this time adding a dimension of visuality. A poem, which is a musical picture of (in) ideas, makes us free, through the understanding of it, to see what we want and to hear what we want. All statues and paintings, all songs and symphonies, are tyrannous in comparison with this. In a poem, we must understand what the poet wants, but we may feel what we like. (1966: 224) Pessoa’s “heteronym” poet Ricardo Reis had an opinion not very different from his creator. Poetry is an expressed emotion in rhythm through thoughts, just like music is an expression, but a direct one, without the mediation of the idea. To give music to a poem is to accentuate the emotion, reinforcing its rhythm. (1966: 73)2 In another modified phrase, Reis seems to be either confused, or still in search of a more satisfactory answer, as he vacillates while attempting to determine the order and process of creation. A poem is a projection in words of an idea through emotion. An emotion is not the base of poetry: it is just a medium which the idea uses to reduce itself to words. (2003A: 207)3 However, the free verse poet Álvaro de Campos, another heteronym of Pessoa, throws another topic to his colleague: the incompatibility of musical rhythm and words. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1![um poema é uma impressão intelectualizada, ou uma ideia convertida em emoção, comunicada a outros por meio de um ritmo (…) a obra de arte, fundamentalmente, consiste numa interpretacao objetivada duma impressao subjetiva] 2 [A poesia é a emoção expressa em ritmo através do pensamento, como a música é essa mesma expressão, mas directa, sem o intermédio da ideia. Musicar um poema é acentuar-lhe a emoção, reforçando-lhe o ritmo.] 3 [Um poema é a projeção de uma idéia em palavras através da emoção. A emoção não é a base da poesia: é tão-somente o meio de que a idéia se serve para se reduzir a palavras.] ! 39 Everything is prose. Poetry is the form of prose in which the rhythm is artificial. (…) But one may ask: why should it have an artificial rhythm? The response is: because the intense emotion does not fit in words. (2003A: 216)4 Campos accepts the notion that poetry consists of an act/performance of singing, yet he thinks one must artificially process the musicality, in order to maintain the poetry nonmusical. The conclusion he draws is concise. This is poetry: to sing without music. For that reason, the great lyric poets, in a broad sense of the adjective “lyric”, are not musicable. How could they be, if they are musical? (1996A: 391, italic added)5 Reis counters6 Campos, as he affirms music as the basis, words as instruments. I, however, would rather say that poetry is the music that we make with ideas, therefore with words. (1996A: 391)7 If so, is poetry “music played with words”, instead of instruments? If Bernardo Soares, Pessoa’s semi-heteronym, had participated in this debate, perhaps he would have inclined towards Campos. Soares preferred prose because he was able to find himself less constrained by rhythm and musical nature. I prefer prose to poetry as an art form for two reasons, the first of which is purely personal: I have no choice, because I’m incapable of writing in verse. The second reason applies to everyone, however, and I don’t think it’s just a shadow or disguised form of the first. It’s worth looking at in some detail, for it touches on the essence of all art’s value. I consider poetry to be an intermediate stage between music and prose. Like music, poetry is bound by rhythmic laws, and even when these are not the strict laws of metre, they still exist as checks, constraints, automatic mechanisms of repression and censure. In prose we speak freely. We can incorporate musical rhythms, and still think. We can incorporate poetic rhythms, and yet remain outside them. An occasional poetic rhythm won’t disturb prose, but an occasional prose rhythm makes poetry fall down. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 [Tudo é prosa. A poesia é aquela forma da prosa em que o ritmo é artificial. (…) Mas pergunta-se: porque há-de haver ritmo artificial? Responde-se: porque a emoção intensa não cabe na palavra.] 5 [É isto a poesia: cantar sem música. Por isso os grandes poetas líricos, no grande sentido do adjectivo «lírico», não são musicáveis. Como o serão, se são musicais?] ! 6 To see the full debate refer to: “Controvérsia entre Álvaro de Campos e Ricardo Reis” (1996A: 391). 7 [Eu, porém, antes diria que a poesia é uma música que se faz com ideias, e por isso com palavras.] ! 40 Prose encompasses all art, in part because words contain the whole world, and in part because the untrammelled word contains every possibility for saying and thinking. (…) I’m convinced that in a perfect, civilized world there would be no other art but prose. (2002: Text 227)8 Through these threads of thoughts, maybe we can conceive a vague direction where Pessoa would like to lead us, as Rita Patrício suggests: «Pessoa thinks essentially in the valorization of art in words, and more particularly, in poetry. An example of this is the way how the notes entitled Aesthetics are exemplified with poetry and are orientated for the valorization of poetry: the projects of Aesthetics of Pessoa, are above all studies on Poetics» (Patrício, 2012: 20).9 However, we also realize that Pessoa simply preferred to indulge inside the in-between space created through endless dialogues of defining/redefining, rather than prioritizing a single dominant idea. At this point, I suggest that we should rather try to decipher his mind through his poetic expressions, since often times «in his poems we encounter more fecund definitions of his theory than in his prose» (Lind, 1970: 331).10 The best example would be one of the most famous “definitions” of a poet, the remarkable opening line of the poem Autopsicografia: « The poet is a feigner» (2008: 277).11 What does the poet “feign” about? And before that, whom –among all the poets created by Pessoa– is the feigning subject? In order to enter Pessoa’s complex literary labyrinth, we must get accustomed to this multiplicity. As Pessoa was (or were) in fact Pessoas, every moment we encounter an issue related to the poetic narrator, lyric subject, or authorship, we are continuously compelled to ask which Pessoa we are dealing with. Depending on the criterion we accept, we could be talking about a good !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 8 [Prefiro a prosa ao verso, como modo de arte, por duas razões, das quais a primeira, que é minha, é que não tenho escolha, pois sou incapaz de escrever em verso. A segunda, porém, é de todos, e não é - creio bem - uma sombra ou disfarce da primeira. Vale pois a pena que eu a esfie, porque toca no sentido íntimo de toda a valia da arte. Considero o verso como uma coisa intermédia, uma passagem da música para a prosa. Como a música, o verso é limitado por leis rítmicas, que, ainda que não sejam as leis rígidas do verso regular, existem todavia como resguardos, coacções, dispositivos automáticos de opressão e castigo. Na prosa falamos livres. Podemos incluir ritmos poéticos, e contudo estar fora deles. Um ritmo ocasional de verso não estorva a prosa; um ritmo ocasional de prosa faz tropeçar o verso. Na prosa se engloba toda a arte - em parte porque na palavra se contém todo o mundo, em parte porque na palavra livre se contém toda a possibilidade de o dizer e pensar. (…) Creio bem que, em um mundo civilizado perfeito, não haveria outra arte que não a prosa] (1998A: Trecho 227). 9 [(…) Pessoa pensa essencialmente na valorização da arte em palavras, e mais particularmente, na poesia. Exemplo disso é o modo como as notas intituladas Estética são exemplificadas com poesia e direccionadas para a valorização da poesia: os projectos de Estética de Pessoa são sobretudo estudos de Poética.] 10 [nos seus poemas encontramos, curiosamente, definições mais fecundas da sua teoria, do que as encontradas na sua prosa.] 11 [O poeta é um fingidor]!(1986B: 40). ! ! 41 number of poets. There are various suggestions around the issue of how to interpret the heteronym system, but probably no single explanation would guarantee a consensus. Besides, the categorization of each heteronym by Pessoa was not as “systematic” as one might imagine. Sometimes, a poem would be attributed to more than one heteronym, sometimes the author would be changed, and sometimes it would end up without any designation. Sometimes the poet would develop and change the style of a heteronym but maintain its name (like the case of Campos). So we should bear in mind that it was a living and constantly transforming system –if we could call it a system at all–, not a strict and rigid logic. By and large, this intricate “constellation” of poets is indeed the most commented part of Pessoa’s literary legacy, but could this represent the originality of his poetry? What does Pessoa stand for in the poetic tradition? Peter Rickard tries to respond: He stands for the denial, not only of sentimentality, but even of sentiment itself as a matter of poetic content. He stands instead for the primacy of thought, intuition, vision and prophecy over sensibility and feeling. His literary ideas, as expressed in a large number of provocative articles, stand in the main for a questioning, a reappraisal, a deepening and heightening of the content of poetry, and for a search for new forms of expression. In his own practice, he introduced into Portuguese a new poetic syntax of the kind already achieved in French Symbolist poetry, and he renovated the poetic vocabulary, carefully avoiding, except in parody, anything resembling the stock poetic diction of the accepted Portuguese literary tradition. (…) Can we explain the poetry in terms of the man? Or the man in terms of the poetry? Only to a very limited extent, and we would probably be wrong to try. (…) Above all, Pessoa has the merit of questioning our assumptions, of delving deeper into the things we take for granted, of making us think along new lines, and of presenting things to us in a different and startlingly unconventional way. Many poets have written about suicide, but who ever treated the subject as he has treated it? Many poets have apostrophized Night, but who has done so as Pessoa did? Who ever compared himself with someone's last look? Who yearned to kiss the harpist's gesture, not her hand? Who has ranged so widely, so originally, so multifariously and at the same time so agonizingly and so poignantly over so many aspects of the mystery of existence and man's quest for identity? (1971: 53, 54-55/ 56, in Introduction by Peter Rickard) Even though Pessoa was the author of the text entitled Uselessness of Criticism, in fact he was quite preoccupied with critical acclaim and literary recognition. He thought that people (and critics) are only able to recognize true originality in relation with the past, or when originality becomes the past. In Erostratus, we read: ! 48 1.3. Three Portuguese Poets Pessoa was indeed an exemplary poet of what Harold Bloom tried to explain with the phrase «every poem is an inter poem» and «every reading of a poem is an inter-reading» (Bloom, 1980: 3). We are already aware of his huge debt to English poets, but his return to Lisbon seems to have triggered his belated discovery of national poets. Although he kept his distance with Pascoaes after ceasing to collaborate with A Águia, his respect toward Portuguese poets continued: «In Portugal, in the 19th century, there were three poets, and only three, who could legitimately compete for the name of Masters. They are, putting in age order, Antero de Quental, Cesário Verde and Camilo Pessanha» (Coelho, 1972: 54).22 The influence of Antero de Quental (1842–1891) was studied by Joel Serrão, Beatriz Berrini23 and most recently by Onésimo Almeida. By regrouping the already exposed yet widely scattered materials and adding unpublished fragments, Almeida shows Pessoa’s consistent reverence of this Romantic poet. Pessoa compares Antero with Shakespeare: «the intimate expression of the idea, the ideation’s form is as superior in Shakespeare as the idea itself is in Antero» (1993A: 246).24 And the poet also offers a classification: Great Poets: Conception (1) Vast, profound and perfect conception (2) Profound and perfect conception. (3) Only perfect conception. Examples: (1) Homer, Shakespeare. (2) Antero ? – (3) Victor Hugo. (BNP/ E3, 14D-78r; unpublished)25 Sometimes he would even put Antero over the English Bard. «I think that, as an intellectual and artistic whole, Shakespeare’s sonnets are not superior to those of Anthero26. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 22 [Houve em Portugal, no século dezanove, três poetas, e três somente, a quem legitimamente compete a designação de mestres. São eles, por ordem de idades, Antero de Quental, Cesário Verde e Camilo Pessanha.] ! 23 For example, “De Antero a Pessoa: Alguns Rumos de Investigação” in Revista Colóquio/Letras. Ensaio, n.º 88, Nov. 1985, p.9-16. / “Pessoa e Antero” in Persona, Porto, n.11/12, 1985, p.11-12, respectively. ! 24 [A expressão íntima da ideia, a forma da ideação é tão superior em Shakespeare quanto é em Antero a ideia em si.] 25 [Grandes poetas: Concepção (1) Concepção vasta, profunda e perfeita. (2) Concepção profunda e perfeita (3) Concepção apenas perfeita. Exemplos: (1) Homero, Shakespeare. (2) Anthero. ? - (3) Victor Hugo.] ! ! 49 (…) Anthero’s sonnets are superior to those of Shakespeare» (2006B: 439).27 For him Antero was the «precursor of our literary current» (1999B: 25).28 No one could better understand this pessimist soul than him. «I am never happy, neither in my selfish, nor in my unselfish moments. My solace is reading Antero de Quental. We are, after all, brother-spirits. Oh, how I understand that deep suffering that was his» (2003: 84). The following text shows the reason of his admiration, which reveals consistency with his poetic imperative on intellectualization. In Anthero de Q[uental] all (…) is thought. He is one of the most conscious, perhaps the most conscious poet that has ever existed. (…) He has not, properly speaking, any spontaneity. Nevertheless, he is great, and an inspired – a truly inspired poet. The fact is, however, that his inspiration – true as it is – is not sentimental, but intellectual. Or rather, his inspiration does not go from his feeling to his intellect, as in most poets it does, but from intellect to sentiment. His poems are made of the first thought, then the thought is felt: then comes the expression. And this expression is not less perfect than that of the poets. It is but calmer (of course), full of infiniteness. (…) (2006B: 438) Pessoa also translated some of Antero’s sonnets, and described the difficulties of translation.29 Onésimo Almeida argues that although Pessoa was often times selfcontradictory and ironic, he «held deep-seated beliefs and values; he championed aesthetic conceptions and ideals and admired authors such as Homer, Shakespeare and Antero, whom he worshipped as demigods. (…) He would become all of them together, and naturally surpass them all» (Almeida, 2008: 63-64). Camilo Pessanha (1867-1926) was a Poet, also serving as a judicial officer in Macau, married to a local Chinese, practically unknown to the Portuguese public of his time. But Pessoa discovered his value through few of his scattered poems published in literary magazines. Through Henrique Rosa’s introduction, they managed to meet twice in Lisbon. After Pessanha returned to Macau, Pessoa wrote a letter to ask his contribution to Orpheu No. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 26 An old Portuguese spelling of Antero. I quote exactly as Pessoa has written it. 27 [acho que, como um todo intellectual e artistico, os sonetos de Shakespeare não são superiors aos de Anthero. (…) os S[oneteos] de A(nthero) são superiores aos de S(hakespeare)]. 28![precursor da nossa corrente literária.] 29 For details, see: Maria Etelvina Carvalho Ferreira (1996): O Poeta é um Tradutor.!Fragmentos para uma Poética da Tradução em Fernando Pessoa. Lisboa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. ! 50 3, but unfortunately, this collaboration would never be realized. According to Arnaldo Saraiva, the reason of this failure is unknown, since we cannot confirm if Pessoa’s letter was actually sent to Pessanha. Under the circumstances we are aware of, it is unlikely that Pessanha would refuse such a proposal full of admiration (1984: 17-18). In the case of Cesário Verde (1855–1886), Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro were the earliest discoverers who deserve credit for finding the originality of this poet-merchant unknown to the literary circle. Pessoa’s French autobiographer Robert Bréchon argues that both the creation of the bucolic Caeiro and the urbanite Campos have much to do with the objective style of Cesário Verde (Bréchon, 1996: 139-140).30 Pessoa expresses his admiration for Cesário Verde that, in spite of the fact that his work seems to «lack imagination, intelligence and even aesthetic sentiment» (Verde, 2006: 225), it possesses the most essential quality that constitutes great poetry, which is originality.31 This appreciation is echoed by Álvaro de Campos. In Dois Excertos de Odes [Excerpts from Two Odes], Campos writes: And how mysterious the unanimous end of the streets When the night falls, O my master Cesário Verde, Who wrote “Sentiment of a Westerner”! What profound restlessness, what longing for other things That aren’t countries or moments or lives! (2006: 164)32 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 30![Passa-se exactamente o contrário com Cesário Verde (1855-1886), totalmente ignorado em vida, que exprime no seu poema O Sentimento de um Ocidental uma forma de «saudade» intimista radicalmente diferente da saudade mais conspícua de Pascoaes. A arte de Cesário é objectiva, tanto que por vezes a integram na estética parnasiana; mas exprime a emoção, ora alegre, ora dolorosa, que lhe dá o espectáculo da realidade urbana ou campestre, o que faz da sequência dos seus poemas uma espécie de diário de um homem das ruas de Lisboa, um pouco como há-de ser, em prosa, o Livro do Desassossego de Bernardo Soares. A inspiracão bucólica de Caeiro e a citadina de Campos devem muito ao seu exemplo. A admiração de Pessoa por Cesário talvez não tenha sido imediata, mas foi profunda e duradoura. É a de um irmão pequeno pelo seu irmão mais velho, de quem se sente muito próximo.] 31 Full text: [Quem ler a obra de Cesário / admira-se / da admiração que a muitos causa. É que lida desprendidamente, e com a expectativa de encontrar grandeza, a obra de Cesário Verde com o que revela de nula imaginação, de nula inteligência, de sentimento circunscrito e até de falta de sentimento estético, assombra pelo que não tem de grande. O segredo está em que essa obra, pobre como é de quase tudo quanto constitui a grandeza poética, possui soberanamente e absorventemente uma qualidade constitutiva da grandeza – a originalidade. Para medir a grandeza de Cesário é preciso lê-lo depois de por ampla leitura se estar saturado e integrado no género poético no meio do qual a sua obra surge como um relâmpago. É depois de ler essas obras que se deve ler Cesário; e é reflectindo então em que foi no meio psíquico, onde aquelas eram representativas e/ usuais/, que irrompeu a obra de Cesário Verde.] ! 32 [E que misterioso o fundo unânime das ruas, / Das ruas ao cair da noite, ó Cesário Verde, ó Mestre, / Ó do «Sentimento de um Ocidental»! / Que inquietação profunda, que desejo de outras coisas, / Que nem são países, nem momentos, nem vidas.] (1986B: 110) ! 51 In Ode Marítima, Cesário Verde is described as the only person he could share the view in finding poetry inside the mundane and futile urban life. Life’s complexity! Though drawn up by people Who love, hate, have political passions and sometimes commit crimes, The invoices are so neat, so well written, so independent of all that! Some people look at an invoice and don’t feel this. Surely you felt it, Cesário Verde. And I feel it so humanly it makes me cry. Don’t try to tell me there’s no poetry in business and in offices! (2006: 193)33 Verde was also summoned up by Caeiro, in O Guardador de Rebanhos, in poem III: In the evening, leaning out my window, Watching the fields out front from under my brows, I read Cesário Verde’s book Until my eyes were burning. I felt so sorry for him! He was like a man from the country And he walked through the city like he was out on bail. But the way he looked at houses, And the way he saw the streets, And the way he had of taking things in, Was like someone looking at trees, Or lowering their eyes to the road where they go walking Or taking in the flowers in the fields . . . That’s why he had that great sadness He could never really say he had, But walked in the city like someone walking in the country, Sad, like pressing flowers in books And putting plants in jars… (2007C: 18)34 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 [Complexidade da vida! As facturas são feitas por gente / Que tem amores, ódios, paixões políticas, às vezes crimes - / E são tão bem escritas, tão alinhadas, tão independentes de tudo isso! / Há quem olhe para uma factura e não sinta isto. / Com certeza que tu, Cesário Verde, o sentias. / Eu é até às lágrimas que o sinto humanissimamente. / Venham dizer-me que não há poesia no comércio, nos escritórios!] (2007A: 270) ! 34 [Ao entardecer, debruçado pela janela, E sabendo de soslaio que há campos em frente. Leio até me arderem os olhos O livro de Cesário Verde. Que pena que tenho dele! Ele era um camponês Que andava preso em liberdade pela cidade. Mas o modo como olhava para as casas, E o modo como reparava nas ruas, ! 52 Pessoa demonstrated a tendency of searching for and constructing his own literary genealogy, and this historical attitude led him to discover unknown or underappreciated poets. He was by no means a self-absorbed artist solely interested in promoting himself. On the contrary, he was a feverish advocate of others, including contemporary artists of whom he found value, such as António Botto and Raul Leal,35 just to name a few. Whether it was defending the freedom of personal expression or exposing hidden values by dedicating prefaces for others, history proves that his insight was keen and foresightful. His aspiration was to overcome the provincialism of Portugal, broaden its literary horizons and attain a cosmopolitan vision: We are not Portuguese writing for Portuguese; we leave that to journalists and political leaderwriters. We are Portuguese writing for Europe, for all civilisation; we are nothing as yet, but even what we are now doing will one day be universally known and recognised. We have no fear that it will be otherwise. It cannot be otherwise; we realise sociological conditions the outcome of which is inevitably that. We work away from Camões, from all the tedious nonsenses of Portuguese tradition, towards the Future. (1966A: 117) 2. Pessoa and Co. 2.1. Heteronyms It seems that Pessoa lived a discrete and lonely life, but inside his invented world he was never alone. He was accompanied by numerous “heteronyms”. The word heteronym existed before Pessoa, but he “reinvented” the term, referring to imaginary literary characters, which are different from mere pseudonyms as they have their own identity, unique physiques, biographies and writing styles. Pessoa kindly explained how this mysterious habit would !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! E a maneira como dava pelas coisas, É o de quem olha para árvores, E de quem desce os olhos pela estrada por onde vai andando E anda a reparar nas flores que há pelos campos... Por isso ele tinha aquela grande tristeza Que ele nunca disse bem que tinha, Mas andava na cidade como quem anda no campo E triste como esmagar flores em livros E pôr plantas em jarros...] (1946: 25) ! 35 In 1922, the Olisipo (publisher founded by Pessoa) published a book of poems entitled Canções [Songs] by António Botto. The homoerotic contents raised scandals. In the defense of Botto, Pessoa wrote an article in the magazine Contemporânea No. 3, (Sep. 1922), praising Botto for expressing homosexual love as a true aesthete. In 1923 he also defended Raul Leal, who had been attacked by a student organization for defending Botto. ! 53 develop, in one of his most quoted letter – the so called “genesis of heteronyms”– sent to his friend Adolfo Casais Monteiro (13 Jan. 1935), ten months before he died. What he did not mention in this letter was the presence of his great uncle Manuel Gualdino da Cunha (future husband of Pessoa’s great-aunt Maria Xavier Pinheiro) who was very close with the infant Pessoa, which may have played an important role in developing this habit while playing “persona-inventing” games and building stories. At the age of six, Pessoa started to write letters to himself signed by a person called Chevalier de Pas, shortly followed by Dr. Pancrácio and Charles Robert Anon. Alexander Search, one of the most important “preheteronyms”, surged later when Pessoa became a student at Lisbon University (1905~7). Search was an English poet but born in Lisbon just like Pessoa. He represents the “identitysearching” period when Pessoa tries to adapt to his homeland’s reality after spending his youth in South Africa. Pessoa continued to create numerous alter egos: some of them only have a name accompanied by brief descriptions or memos; some of them are developed with astonishing details and demonstrate distinguishable styles. Depending on how one defines the term heteronym, we may count over 130, but if we strictly respect the definition given by Pessoa, we may consider 3~6 legit candidates.36 Among them is the “Caeiro-Reis-Campos Trio” (maybe a quartet, if we also include Pessoa-himself as another heteronym) that Pessoa spared a privileged position. In a letter to Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues (1915) he affirmed: «everything that I have written under the names of Caeiro, Reis and Álvaro de Campos is serious. Through all three of them I let a deep conception pass, different in each but in each the concern about the mysterious importance of the simple fact of existing» (1985: 43).37 According to Pessoa, Ricardo Reis was born in 1887, Fernando Pessoa in 1888, Alberto Caeiro, 1889, and Álvaro de Campos in 1890. However, – also according Pessoa– it seems that they all came into the mind of him almost simultaneously on March 8, 1914. It !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 36 Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, António Mora, “Pessoa himself” and Bernardo Soares (so-called “semiheteronym”, but a significant presence). 37 [(Por isso) é sério tudo o que escrevi sob os nomes de Caeiro, Reis, Álvaro de Campos. Em qualquer destes pus um profundo conceito da vida, diverso em todos três, mas em todos gravemente atento à importância misteriosa de existir.] ! 54 was the famous “Triumphal day” of his life.38 This creative turning point would be followed, at the next year, with the birth of the triquarterly magazine Orpheu, where Pessoa’s works under his heteronym would be first published. (Campos appears in Orpheu in 1915, Reis and Caeiro later in the five issues of Athena, the self-founded magazine in 1924) The term “orthonym” –meaning “true name”–, which refers to Pessoa himself, was also invented at this period. Pessoa later shaped up the relationship between the core heteronyms into a more intricate interacting system, in which each of them engage in debates and get influenced by one another. One of the best examples is Notas para a Recordação do Meu Mestre Caeiro [Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro] by Álvaro de Campos. The invention of heteronyms is undoubtedly the most studied and commented part of Pessoa’s entire literary legacy, but in the early days some considered it as a playful or childish trait. Pessoa defended the idea: (…) the mental origin of my heteronyms lies in my relentless, organic tendency to depersonalization and simulation. (…) Ever since I was a child, it has been my tendency to create around me a fictitious world, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances that never existed. (I can’t be sure, of course, if they really never existed, or if it’s me who doesn’t exist. In this matter, as in any other, we shouldn’t be dogmatic.) Ever since I’ve known myself as “me,” I can remember envisioning the shape, motions, character and life story of various unreal figures who were as visible and as close to me as the manifestations of what we call, perhaps too hastily, real life. This tendency, which goes back as far as I can remember being an I, has always accompanied me, changing somewhat the music it enchants me with, but never the way in which it enchants me. (…) Such things occur to all children? Undoubtedly— or perhaps. But I lived them so intensely that I live them still; their memory is so strong that I have to remind myself that they weren’t real. (2001: 254-255)39 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 38 Until today, there are disputes over the “authenticity” of the so called “Triumphal day” – whether it really existed. Since Pessoa’s description wasn’t entirely consistent with the remaining proofs, it is widely believed to be “exaggerated” or even “falsified”, allegedly as a motive of mystification. However, Luciana-Stegagno Picchio, a respected Pessoan (She met Roman Jakobson while teaching in Harvard and together they wrote in 1968 “Les Oxymores Dialectiques de Fernando Pessoa” [Fernando Pessoa's Dialectic Oxymorons]) and herself a philologist, proposed that in order to read Pessoa, “one should use two different measures or interpretative levels, in a game of ‘double truth’ like the one used by the 15 century humanist philosophers. If philology has robbed us the triumphal day, Pessoa believed in it - and without it his poetry cannot be understood.” (Picchio, 1968: 63) This argument came out as a counter argument against those who said the “Triumphal day” was falsified. ! 39 [(…) a origem mental dos meus heterónimos está na minha tendência orgânica e constante para a despersonalização e para a simulação. (…) Desde criança tive a tendência para criar em meu torno um mundo fictício, de me cercar de amigos e conhecidos que nunca existiram. (Não sei, bem entendido, se realmente não existiram, ou se sou eu que não existo. Nestas coisas, como em todas, não devemos ser dogmáticos). Desde que me conheço como sendo aquilo a que chamo eu, me lembro de precisar mentalmente, em figura, movimentos, carácter e história, várias figuras irreais que eram para mim tão visíveis e minhas como as coisas daquilo a que chamamos, porventura abusivamente, a vida real. Esta tendência, que me vem desde que me lembro de ser um eu, tem-me acompanhado sempre, mudando um pouco o tipo de música com que me encanta, mas não alterando nunca a sua maneira de encantar. (…) Coisas que acontecem a todas as crianças? Sem dúvida — ou talvez. Mas a tal ponto as vivi que as vivo ainda, pois que as relembro de tal modo que é mister um esforço para me fazer saber que não foram realidades] (1999A: 340-342). ! 55 Adolfo Casais Monteiro (the recipient of this letter) and Jorge de Sena were the early critics who took the idea of heteronyms seriously, maybe to the level of which Pessoa wished them to do. However, there were also considerable counterarguments. First, José Augusto Seabra argued that «it has been precisely the problem of heteronyms (…) which by almost monopolizing the attention of Pessoa’s experts has contributed in great part to distract them from that first reading to which the poet invited them» (Seabra, 1993: 14).40 Mário Sacramento also suggested to «forget once and for all the jargon of orthonyms, heteronyms, drama-in-people, etc. If all this was necessary (and it was) so that his work may exist today as it is, it is time for us to take away this scaffolding, recognizing that the house did not, after all, remain “yet to build” (…)» (Sacramento, 2011: 174-175).41 By the same token, Jacinto Prado Coelho thinks that heteronyms should be treated as one writer: «I shall consider the work of Fernando Pessoa, whether orthonymous or heteronymous, as one simple whole and will proceed to analyze the themes that are at the core of the author’s spiritual life. Thus I shall attempt to open the way for the discovery of the psychic unity in the polymorphic form, if such a unity (…) actually exists» (Coelho, 1969: 79-80).42 As interpretative opinions usually surge in reaction to prevalent tendencies and eventually form a thesis/antithesis dialect, it is simply the reader’s decision to choose a stance, or not choose any stance at all. (…) When we arrive at the conclusion that everything is vacuous, that everything is equally indifferent or indifferently equal, then no one method, approach, or mode of expression is more legitimate or illegitimate than another. (…) we have entered the realm of Intertextuality, in which all styles from all ages are equally valid, if not (opinions here vary) equally valuable. Bizarrely but truly, the deconstructionists’ ideal is embodied in this early twentieth century writer (…). (1998: 28, in Introduction by Richard Zenith) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 [Ora tem sido precisamente o problema dos heterónimos (…) que ao quase monopolizar a atencão dos exegetas de Pessoa tem contribuido em grande parte para os distrair desta primeira leitura que o poeta os convidava.] 41 [Sublinhemos esses nomes, esqueçamos de uma vez para sempre todo o jargão de ortónimo, heterónimos, drama em gente, etc. Se tudo isso foi necessário (e foi) para que a sua obra hoje exista tal qual é, vai sendo tempo de lhe tiramos esses andaimes, reconhecendo que a casa não ficou afinal “por fabricar”.] 42 [considero a obra de FP, ortónimo ou heterónimo, como um todo, analisando os motivos que me parecem no âmago da vida espiritual do autor. Tento assim abrir caminho para descobrir a unidade psíquica na polimorfia se tal unidade (…) efectivamente existe.] ! 56 As Richard Zenith remarks above, at least everybody would agree in the point that without the creation and development of the heteronym system, the singularity of Pessoa’s literature would not be the same of what we know. The urge to constantly hide behind his literary masks, create an imaginary stage of drama with personalities, and instigate opinions into the non-acting-actors, which contradict each other and their creator himself, seems to be crucial and even inevitable for this poet. Among the 35 Sonnets, the poem VIII remarkably renders this obsession. How many masks wear we, and undermasks, Upon our countenance of soul, and when, If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks, Knows it the last mask off and the face plain? The true mask feels no inside to the mask But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes. Whatever consciousness begins the task The task's accepted use to sleepness ties. Like a child freighted by its mirrored faces, Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing, Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces And get a whole world on their forgot causing; And, when a thought would unmask our soul's masking, Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking. (2007B: 160)43 2.1.1. Alberto Caeiro In Pessoa’s letter on January 13, 1935, describing the genesis of his heteronyms, he claims that Alberto Caeiro, the Master of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms was born in himself. Indeed, the 8th of March in 1914 «was the triumphal day of my life, and I can never have another one like it» (2001: 256)44 when he wrote «thirty-some-odd poems at once, in a kind of ecstasy I’m unable to describe» (Ibid).45 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Also available in: The Project Gutenberg EBook of “35 Sonnets by Fernando Pessoa”, Release Date: November 30, 2006 [Ebook 19978] https://archive.org/stream/sonnets19978gut/19978-pdf_djvu.txt 44 [E escrevi trinta e tantos poemas a fio, numa espécie de êxtase cuja natureza não conseguirei definir] (1999A: 343). 45 [Foi o dia triunfal da minha vida, e nunca poderei ter outro assim] (Ibid). ! 57 Alberto Caeiro, the «only nature poet» (1946: 88)46 according to Pessoa, apparently has verses that are similar to the conventions of pastoral poetry, but his flocks are his thoughts, not sheep. In the first lines of the first poem of O Guardador de Rebanhos [The Keeper of Sheep], which he considers as «the best I have done» (1957: 97),47 he illustrates this peculiar style of “abstractive naturalism”: I never kept sheep, But it’s as if I’d kept them. My soul is like a shepherd (…) (2008: 27)48 Caeiro is «presented in this initial poem as a thought experiment, an as if self. Therefore, Caeiro’s world is an as if world» (Mendes, 1999: 8). His poetry has a clear message: learn to “desaprender” [unlearn], and to see things just the way they are. As Jorge de Sena duly labeled him, Caeiro was the “indisciplinador de almas” [in-disciplinarian of souls] (1959: 171-192). His poetry is marked with pure innocence, simplicity and positive ways of thinking. Caeiro’s perception of truth is clearly stated in the verse of the Poem XLVII: «Nature is parts without a whole. / This is perhaps the mystery they speak of» (2008: 47).49 Although Pessoa still had a nostalgic concern towards the unity, Caeiro believed solely in dispersed truths, the things we can see with our unlearned eyes. (Caeiro’s antiphilosophical attitude brought scholars to compare him with Baruch Spinoza.50) Caeiro’s recurrent emphasis on seeing things just as they are also lead some critics to compare his thoughts with Buddhism, especially the school of Zen. It is true that his poetry shares certain qualities with Zen: Caeiro criticizes metaphysics and Intellectualism, deemphasizes abstract notions and pursues intuitive direct knowledge, which all coincide with !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 46 [(Além disso, fui) o único poeta da Natureza.] 47 [o melhor que eu tenho feito] (in a letter to João Gaspar Simões dated February 25, 1933) 48 [Eu nunca guardei rebanhos,. Mas é como se os guardasse. Minha alma é como um pastor, (…)] (2007A: 33) 49 [A natureza é partes sem um todo. Isto é talvez o mistério de que falam.] (2007A: 72) 50 For example, see: Christopher C. Lund, Fernando Pessoa: The Spinoza Connection, Santa Barbara Portuguese Studies, Volume IV: 1997, Published by the Center for Portuguese Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with the support of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and the Instituto Camões, Lisbon. ! ! 64 destiny of acceptance was in fact, the Fado that Reis sang in verse. No wonder this sad poet ponders heavily on death. When he runs various debates with Campos over poetry, Reis remarks that «the more cold the poem is, the more true it is» (1996A: 391).66 Maybe this constant contemplation on the idea of Death turned his poetical veins even colder. 2.2. Orthonym / Pessoa Himself It is well known that the Portuguese word “Pessoa” means “person” and is derived from the Latin word “persona”, an actor's mask. In French, “personne” can also mean “nobody”. (For example, when you say “Il y a personne”, it means, “There is nobody”). In accordance with his symptomatic name, Pessoa created – whether inadvertently or not– arguably the most self-effacing heteronym, Pessoa himself. In a letter to João Gaspar Simões (28 July 1932), Pessoa proposed a specific title Cancioneiro [Songbook] for the project of his second book of his poems, after publishing Mensagem [Message]. He thought that any «equally unexpressive» title would suit these «loose and unclassifiable» poems (1957: 90).67 This description can perfectly serve to render the “uncategorizable” poems written by the orthonym Pessoa. Practically every poem that has not been attributed to his heteronyms could fall under this category. For example, there was a moment he mulled over Alberto Caeiro as the writer of “Intersectionist” poems, but for an unknown reason the orthonym Pessoa eventually took the role. Thus, when we account for the poet “Pessoa himself” or the orthonym, we are automatically dealing with various, flexible, interchangeable poetic identities. What would have been the necessity to depersonalize even himself to another heteronym? And why did Álvaro de Campos say, when describing the relations of the heteronym coterie in the Notas para a Recordação do Meu Mestre Caeiro [Notes on the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 66 [quanto mais fria a poesia, mais verdadeira] 67 [(…) Cancioneiro (ou outro título igualmente inexpressivo), onde reuniria (em Livros I a III ou I a V) vários dos muitos poemas soltos que tenho, e que são por natureza inclassificáveis salvo de essa maneira inexpressiva.] ! ! 65 Memory of My Master Caeiro], «the most curious is the case of Fernando Pessoa, who doesn’t exist, strictly speaking»? (1990A: 369)68 If we intend a rather pathological interpretation on this matter, we may recall the “multiple personality theory”, first suggested by the sociologist Erving Goffman, who argued that «there is no abiding self or personality, just an appearance generated afresh to meet each new social circumstance» (in Elkind, 1975: 30). To recognize multiple personalities inside oneself is regarded as a psychological disease, but in the time of Pessoa such a diagnosis was not as common compared to nowadays. Maybe that pathological “ignorance” allowed Pessoa to venture further. However, it is still mindboggling to witness how Pessoa broke that psychological taboo, or social convention, when the idea that every individual should have an abiding self with coherence would not have been any less rigid than today. For some critics he «anticipated in art by 60 years the multiple-personality theory in science» (Monteiro, 1981: 96). Nevertheless, maintaining multiple egos would not have been an easy task, even for Pessoa. On the contrary, he was almost obsessively worried of becoming insane, and demonstrated various symptoms of breakdown. Joanna Courteau argues in The Quest for Identity in Pessoa's Orthonymous Poetry that the poet “Pessoa himself” allowed the poet to resolve this problem in his own way: «Pessoa is well aware that such constant attentiveness to the various voices within could prove to be frustrating and exhausting to the person having this experience. So he choses the orthonymous poetry as the tool with which to analyze and convey such frustration» (in Monteiro, 1981: 96). No wonder that the recurring themes are about indecisive minds facing contradictions and the absence or void of firm centrality. This uncertainty as an ever-troubling identity crisis could be read in one of his untitled poems: I don’t know how many souls I have. I have changed at every moment I always feel self-estranged. I never seen or found myself. From being so much, I have only soul. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 68 [Mais curioso é o caso do Fernando Pessoa, que não existe, propriamente falando.] ! ! 66 A man who has soul has no calm. (…) (2008: 269)69 In a similar way, he describes the infinite and unfathomable extension of the self: (…) All is unreal, anonymous and fortuitous. Don’t be curious of this ample world. It is less extensive than its bottom. And that which you know not now nor will ever know Is that which is most real and most profound. (1973: 97)70 Besides of the poems that deal with identity matters, there are lyric poems. One of the notable is the Ceifeira [Reaper] (1914). In a 1915 letter to Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues, Pessoa confesses: «I especially love the last poem, the Ceifeira, where I managed to give a Paulistic note in simple language. I love myself for having written…» (1985: 43)71, and transcribes a part of the poem. Ah, to be you while being I! To have your glad unconsciousness And be conscious of it! (…) (2008: 263)72 It is widely commented that this poem bears a close inter-textual kinship to Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper (1807). In comparison with Wordsworth, we are able to observe an interesting similarity as well as a sharp difference, in which the initial ideas of “depersonalization” (and later, “Sensationism”) are hatched. Even though we agree that Ceifeira was apparently inspired by The Solitary Reaper, it also contains the typical Pessoan idea of something lacking, and the longing for the impossible. Wordsworth wants to know what the solitary reaper is singing about: for Pessoa, this is a matter of indifference. He wants to be the singer and yet himself at the same time. He wants to be, like the reaper, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 69 [Não sei quantas almas tenho. / Cada momento mudei. / Continuamente me estranho. / Nunca me vi nem acabei. / De tanto ser, só tenho alma. / Quem tem alma não tem calma. (…)] (2006C: 210-211) ! 70 [Tudo é irreal, anónimo e fortuito. / Não sejas curioso do amplo mundo. / Ele é menos extenso do que fundo. / E o que não sabes nem saberás nunca / É isso o mais real e o mais profundo.] 71 [Amo especialmente a última poesia, a da Ceifeira onde consegui dar a nota paúlica em linguagem simples. Amo-me por ter escrito…] 72 [Ah, poder ser tu, sendo eu! / Ter a tua alegre inconsciência / E a consciência disso! (...)] (1985: 43) ! 67 blithely unaware. And the appeal to sky, field, and song with which the Portuguese poem ends, is quite lacking in Wordsworth. (Rickard, 1971: 47-48) In contrast with: the Wordsworthian ‘I’, who is wholly caught up in the emotion of the song, clearly Pessoa’s singing reaper is a pretext for a commentary on the poet, whose divided self becomes the primary focus. And yet ironically, (…) Ela canta (Ceifeira) is as graceful and beautiful as the reaper’s song. (…) His typology of sentiment gives primacy to the Romantic ideal of spontaneity, but his lyrics are not spontaneous poems. In Ela canta, the pure emotion of the reaper is contrasted with the poets’ feeling/thinking self. (Sadlier, 1998: 63-64) As we will elaborate in chapter 4.3, Pessoa’s self-created “Sensationism” stresses the importance of being highly conscious of feelings. In Ceifera we can observe not only the rupture with Romanticist ideals but also his growing interests in intellectualization. If we accept the idea that Fernando Pessoa was another heteronym, how many were they? Richard Zenith poses a question: «Could it be that, just as there were various heteronyms, so too there were various orthonyms - Fernando Pessoa the existentialist, Fernando Pessoa the patriot, Fernando Pessoa the occultist, Fernando Pessoa the rhymester (…)?» (1998: 216). Although the categorization cannot be rigorous, the poems written under the name of Pessoa could be roughly grouped as the following: Post-symbolic (ex. Pauis), lyric (in Cancioneiro), folklore (Quadras ao Gosto Popular), esoteric (A Múmia, No Túmulo de Christian Rosenkreutz) and nationalistic poems (Mensagem, Sim, é o Estado Novo). As we saw, the question about how should we deal with heteronyms is an open one. Pessoa frequently changed his mind of attributing names and often remained indecisive. Nearing the end of his time, the poet even considered abandoning the idea of heteronyms, saying: «I don’t know if I told you once that the heteronyms (…) should be published by myself under my own name (it is already too late, and therefore absurd, for an absolute ! 68 disguise)» (1957: 90).73 But before he fully elaborates that idea, he dies rather abruptly. No one knows what was going on in his mind. Was it skepticism or was it a mental “fatigue” that drew away his enthusiasm from his imaginary coterie? No matter how Pessoa treated it, his literary invention attained a certain autonomous state: «the Caeiro-Pessoa-Reis-Campos quartet is outside history, outside tradition, and belong to no particular place. Their poetic universe is what they have created themselves» (Kotowicz, 1996: 61, italic added). 3. The Orpheu Orpheu was a literary magazine founded in 1915 by Pessoa, his poet friend Mário de Sá-Carneiro and other writers and artists. It is widely regarded to have introduced Portuguese Modernism almost single-handedly during its brief life —only two issues were published. A combination of various coincidences enabled Orpheu to come out to the world. Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro first met in 1912, and soon become closest friends. Sá-Carneiro went to Paris, but the First World War enforced him as well as many Portuguese artists residing in Paris to return (i.e. Mário de Sá-Carneiro, José Pacheco and Santa-Rita Pintor). They exchanged ideas in the cafés of Lisbon and eventually formed a group of modernists. The provocative writer and visual artist Almada Negreiros was another key figure of this coterie. In 1915, the poet and critique Luís de Montalvor (pseudonym of Luís da Silva Ramos) arrived from Brazil after two years of residence, with a project in mind of launching a literary magazine called “Orpheu”. Although Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro intended to publish a magazine named “Lusitânia” or “Europa” one year before, they agreed with Montalvor’s idea. They added the collaboration of the Brazilian poet Ronald de Carvalho, which would contribute to build a more international image of the magazine. Contents of the opening issue were a mixture of Symbolism and Decandentism with a glimpse of Futurism. To only comment about poetry, the Indícios de Ouro [Traces of Gold] by Mário de Sá-Carneiro and two poems by Álvaro de Campos were most notable and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 73 [Não sei se alguma vez lhe disse que os heterónimos (segundo a última intenção que formei a respeito deles) devem ser por mim publicados sob o meu próprio nome (já é tarde, e portanto absurdo, para o disfarce absoluto).] ! ! 69 original. One of the two Campos’s contributions was Opiário [Opiary], a Decadent poem dedicated to Sá-Carneiro. The creation of this poem seems to be a result of rather circumstantial reasons, according to Pessoa: When it came time to publish Orpheu, we had to find something at the last minute to fill out the issue, and so I suggested to Sá-Carneiro that I write an “old” poem of Álvaro de Campos—a poem such as Álvaro de Campos would have written before meeting Caeiro and falling under his influence. That’s how I came to write “Opiary”, in which I tried to incorporate all the latent tendencies of Álvaro de Campos that would eventually be revealed but that still showed no hint of contact with his master Caeiro. Of all the poems I’ve written, this was the one that gave me the most trouble, because of the twofold depersonalization it required. But I don’t think it turned out badly, and it does show us Álvaro in the bud. (2001: 257)74 The genuineness of Campos would be revealed in the Ode Triunfal [Triumphal Ode]. The opening strophe of Ode Triunfal begins vehemently demonstrating its new aesthetic attitude towards the full-fledged era of machine-driven industrialization. By the painful light of the factory’s huge electric lamps I write in fever. I write gnashing my teeth, rabid for the beauty of this, For this beauty completely unknown to the ancients. (2008: 139)75 To be precise, Pessoa was not the first to make a literary commentary about machines in Portuguese literature, but until this ode appeared, their “unknown beauty” was never earnestly discovered.76 «It was necessary to wait until Campos, so that the machine would no longer remain as a pretext, metonymy, but become a revelation, truth of human body (…)» (Eiras, 2015: 42).77 Whilst being dazzled by the progress of technology, Campos does not !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 [Quando foi da publicação de Orpheu, foi preciso, à última hora, arranjar qualquer coisa para completar o número de páginas. Sugeri então ao Sá-Carneiro que eu fizesse um poema “antigo” do Álvaro de Campos — um poema de como o Álvaro de Campos seria antes de ter conhecido Caeiro e ter caído sob a sua influência. E assim fiz o Opiário, em que tentei dar todas as tendências latentes do Álvaro de Campos, conforme haviam de ser depois reveladas, mas sem haver ainda qualquer traço de contacto com o seu mestre Caeiro. Foi dos poemas que tenho escrito, o que me deu mais que fazer, pelo duplo poder de despersonalização que tive que desenvolver. Mas, enfim, creio que não saiu mau, e que dá o Álvaro em botão…] (1999A:344). 75 [À dolorosa luz das grandes lâmpadas eléctricas da fábrica / Tenho febre e escrevo. / Escrevo rangendo os dentes, fera para a beleza disto, / Para a beleza disto totalmente desconhecida dos antigos] (2007A: 227). 76 The interpretation of Ode Triunfal in this text heavily relies on the reading of Platão no Rolls-Royce: Ensaio sobre Literatura e Técnica (2015) by Pedro Eiras. See chapter II, Uma “Ode triunfal” com avaria ao fundo. 77 [Será preciso esperar por Campos para a máquina deixar de ser pretexto, metonímia, e tornarse revelacão verdade do corpo humano (…).] !!!! ! 70 entirely succumb to it by offering simplified eulogy. Instead, he disrupts the chronological time scheme and evokes the classics. Gaping deliriously at the engines as at a tropical landscape — Great human tropics of iron and fire and energy — I sing, and I sing the present, and the past and future too, Because the present is all the past and all the future: And Plato and Virgil exist in the machines and electric lights For the simple reason that Virgil and Plato once existed and were human, (2008: 139)78 But this was not enough. His aspiration craves a total embodiment with the machine: «Ah, if I could express my whole being like an engine! / If I could be complete like a machine!» (2008: 139).79 However, the “becoming” to this quasi-machine seems to result in a failure, which is expressed by an array of noisy mechanical onomatopoeia accompanied by expressive typographical display. This “audio-visual” technique can also be observed in the Ode Marítima [Maritime Ode], which comes out in the second issue of Orpheu. With an evidently modernist cover design compared to the Symbolist outlook of the first issue, Orpheu 2 established its uncompromising provocative attitude, and displayed various influences of contemporary European literary currents. Besides Ode Marítima, Pessoa himself contributed with Chuva Oblíqua [Oblique Rain], which would be the exemplary text of “Intersectionism”. Also a poem of Ângelo de Lima80 was included, who was at that time hospitalized in Rilhafoles Hospital (now Hospital Miguel Bombarda in Lisbon). Pessoa makes sure that Orpheu is not associated with one single ism, but «is a review of all kinds of advanced literature, from a quasi-Futurism to what we here call Intersectionism» (1993A: 182), in a letter he wrote to Frank Palmer, an English editor. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 78![Em febre e olhando os motores como a uma Natureza tropical / Grandes trópicos humanos de ferro e fogo e força / Canto, e canto o presente, e também o passado e o futuro, / Porque o presente é todo o passado e todo o futuro / E há Platão e Virgílio dentro das máquinas e das luzes eléctricas / Só porque houve outrora e foram humanos Virgílio e Platão,] (2007A: 228) 79 [Ah, poder exprimir-me todo como um motor se exprime! / Ser completo como uma máquina!] (Ibid.) 80 Dr. psychiatrist Miguel Bombarda declared the patient Ângelo de Lima to be “alienated and untouchable” (it would be a schizophrenic paranoid, according to current terminology). => Further information: see 1915 - O Ano do Orpheu (2015), coordenação Steffen Dix, Lisboa, Tinta da China. ! 71 We can observe this attitude in relation with Futurism. In a letter to the director of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, written by Álvaro de Campos, he draws a clear line: «to place the contributors of Orpheu within Futurism is not even knowing how to say nonsense, which is in itself extremely lamentable» (1996A: 412).81 Later, Pessoa did collaborate with the magazine Portugal Futurista (1917), the one and only issue directed by Santa-Rita Pintor, by writing the inflammatory prose Ultimatum in the name of Álvaro de Campos, which was scandalous enough so that the police immediately seized the magazine from the newsstands.82 But this was rather an appropriation of Pessoa to offer Campos an opportunity to demonstrate and exercise his Sensationist potential, than a “Futurist manifesto”. Some consider Ultimatum as «a play of combat, not a work of Futuristic creation. The Futurism of Fernando Pessoa would reside in Orpheu, the Ode Triunfal and the Ode Marítima» (Simões, 1950: 415).83 Two published issues of Orpheu were enough to raise attention and controversy. The enthusiasm of Pessoa is palpable in his letter to Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues (4 April 1915): We are the issue of the day in Lisbon; I’m telling you without exaggeration. The scandal is enormous. We are pointed out in the streets, all the people – even non literary – talk about Orpheu. (…) The biggest scandal has been caused by (the poem) 16 by Sá-Carneiro and the Triumphal Ode. (1999: 161)84 What Pessoa felt was by no means a subjective perception. It prompted reactions of outrage and ridicule in the press and the literary establishment. In the article of A Capital it reads: What we can conclude from reading the poems subscribed by Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Ronald de Carvalho, Álvaro de Campos and the others, is that they belong to a category of individuals whom science defines !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 81 [Englobar os colaboradores do Orpheu no futurismo é nem sequer saber dizer disparates, o que é lamentabilíssimo.] 82!Portugal supported the Allies in the war, and while Pessoa-Campos’s ranting manifesto was not pro-German, it heaped as much abuse on the British, French, and other Allied leaders as on Wilhelm II and Bismarck. 83 [Ultimatum é uma peça de combate, não uma obra de criação futurista/ o futurismo de FP ficará no Orpheu, Ode Triunfal e Ode Marítima.] 84 [Somos o assunto do dia em Lisboa; sem exagero lho digo. O escândalo é enorme. Somos apontados na rua, e toda a gente -- mesmo extra literária -- fala no Orpheu. (…) O escândalo maior tem sido causado pelo 16 do Sá-Carneiro e a Ode Triunfal.] ! ! 72 and classifies inside the lunatic asylum, but can be more dangerous when they get out from there. (Júdice, 1986: 61)85 The headlines of numerous news articles vividly prove the temper of the reception: «FURIOUS CRITIQUE» (Eco, 9 April) «MAD LITERATURE: The Portuguese “Futurist” – a success of…. Laughter» (A Vanguarda, 6 April) «Babbling» (O Alentejo, 15 April) «SUPPOSTED CRIME OF “ORPHEU”» (O Jornal, 13 April) «PARANOIC POETS» (Ilustração Portuguesa, 19 April) «VARIATIONS… ABOUT AN OLD THEME» (Terra Nossa, 18 April) «ARTISTS OF RIHLHAFOLES» (A Capital, June 28) «VERY PAULIC: Literature of astral lunatic asylum» (O Mundo, 5 July) «Unsympathetic Futurism: The poets of “Orpheu” aren’t, after all, more than children with bad sentiments» (A Capital, 6 July) (Júdice, 1986: 59-111)86 One could wonder how a small literary magazine was able to cause such a scandal during an age of political upheaval, but the relative exiguity of the Portuguese cultural space and its major conservatism had been decisive for the Orpheu to cause a perturbation similar to an earthquake that shook the mentality, carrying out a collapse of sacred aesthetic values, largely due to the potential and originality of the double impelling force of this movement: Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro.87 Notwithstanding, the magazine could not sustain long, even though it did sell fairly well. As we have seen, Pessoa was enthusiastic with its success of creating an echo. As SáCarneiro left again to Paris, he assumed the responsibility to continue the project: to organize !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 85 [Júlio de Matos: No já referido artigo d’A Capital, lia-se: «O que se conclui da leitura dos chamados poemas subscritos por Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Ronald de Carvalho, Álvaro de Campos e outros é que eles pertencem a uma categoria de indivíduos que a ciência definiu e classificou dentro dos manicómios, mas que podem sem maior perigo andar fora deles».] 86![«A CRÍTICA FURIOSA» / «MALUQUEIRA LITERÁRIA: Os “futuristas” portugueses – Um êxito de…gargalhada» / «PAROLEIROS» / «O SUPOSTO CRIME DO “ORPHEU”» / «POETAS PARANOICOS» / «VARIAÇÕES… SOBRE UM VELHO TEMA» / «ARTISTAS DE RIHLHAFOLES” / «MUITO PAULICO: Literatura de manicômio astral» / «Antipático futurismo. Os poetas do Orpheu não passam, afinal, de criaturas de maus sentimentos”»] ! 87 A text by Richard Zenith, in a pamphlet of EXPOSIÇÃO: Os caminhos de Orpheu | 24 March - 27 June 15 2015 | 18h30 (Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Sala de Exposições, Lisbon) ! 73 and edit Orpehu 3. If the previous two volumes were a mixture of Symbolism, Paulism and Futurism, the project of the third edition would be the “Sensationist Orpheu”. By October, the third edition was prepared and ready to be published, but at the last minute, Sá-Carneiro wrote a hasty letter88 to Pessoa, asking him to cease the printing. He lamented that there was no money to sustain the project.89 Was this abrupt message really a cause of financial reasons, or because of the scandal caused by the letter90 of Campos, or Sá-Carneiro’s depressive return to Paris, or the faded interest of some collaborators? No one would be able to tell the truth. What we know is that in the span of four months, this magazine changed the landscape of Portuguese literature. After Orpheu, it was never the same. Some critiques compare it with the English vorticist magazine Blast, edited by Wyndham Lewis and with the collaboration of Ezra Pound. The importance of Orpheu cannot be measured apart from the continuous literary achievements by their core members. They became the key figures of the innovation of Portuguese literature themselves. However, almost all of their core members would meet their tragic fates soon. Sá-Carneiro committed suicide in Paris (1916), Santa-Rita Pintor died of tuberculosis (1918), Amadeo de Souza Cardoso died in the same year of Spanish Flu “La Grippe”, and Ângelo de Lima died in 1921 at the same Rilhafoles Hospital where he was hospitalized for almost 20 years. Although the magazine lived an ephemeral life, Pessoa never doubted the longevity of its daring experimental spirit. The year of his death, in 1935, he wrote: «Orpheu has ended. Orpheu continues» (2009: 95).91 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 88 Full text in Cartas de Mário de Sá-Carneiro a Fernando Pessoa (2001) Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim, p. 209. ! 89 The previous two issues were financed by Sá-Carneiro’s father, who would have been likely troubled by the magazine’s negative public reception. 90 In a letter addressed to the newspaper!A Capital, Álvaro de Campos openly mocked the politician Alfonso Costa, who had recently suffered a severe traffic accident. This incident raised negative reactions, even from his peers. 91 [Orpheu acabou. Orpheu continua.] ! 80 Although Pessoa left numerous writings related to this topic, it is increasingly difficult to outline a clear-cut idea about what Sensationism is, since many of the texts were unfinished and many others lack coherence. This does not mean that it is impossible to cherry-pick some of his words and arbitrarily construct a theory, but such an attempt would not fully represent or reflect the “chaotic” nature of the original texts and fragments. As a result, it seems that the ideas of Sensationism were just enough to inspire him and his colleagues. Let’s try to conceive what these ideas were, beginning with the meaning of sensation by Pessoa. The only true reality is sensation. The only absolute reality is the difference between sensation and feeling □. (2009: 179)107 The premise of sensation as the only existing reality, as the only basis for all art is very frequently repeated throughout various texts. Then, what does the act of “feeling” [sentir] (or sensing) mean? To feel is to create. But what is feeling? Feeling is thinking without ideas, hence understanding, since the Universe has no ideas. Holding opinions is not feeling. All our opinions come from other people. (2009:176)108 We know that when Pessoa refers to feeling or, sensing a sense, it is never confined to a single sense. It implies a set of senses, often times a synaesthetic experience. Strange as it may seem, it’s possible to hear with the eyes, to see with the ears, to see and hear and taste smells, to taste colors and sounds, to hear tastes, and so on, indefinitely. (2009: 177)109 Often compared with Pessoa, the American poet Wallace Stevens similarly remarks that «poetry is a sense» (Stevens, 1997: 902), saying that «with my whole body I taste these !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 107 [A única realidade da vida é a sensação. A única realidade absoluta é a differença entre a sensação e sentir □] 108 [Sentir é criar. / — Mas o que é sentir? / Sentir é pensar sem ideias, e por isso sentir é compreender, visto que o Universo não tem ideias. / Ter opiniões é não sentir. / Todas as nossas opiniões são dos outros.] 109 [(…) embora parece estranho, e possivel ouvir com os olhos, ver com os ouvidos, ver e ouvir e palpar aromas, saber o gusto a cores, e a sons, ouvir sabores, e ouvir indefinidamente (…).] ! 81 peaches» (Id: 206) in A Dish of Peaches in Russia. But we should note that Pessoa’s own “feeling experience of reality” can be extremely unreal and abstract, if we remind that Pessoa was a feverish advocate of experiencing without real experience. One of the best examples would be the idea of traveling without dislocating. After all, the best way to travel is to feel. Feel everything in every possible way. Because in fact, all the things are excessive. (1993: 34)110 His sensations could be easily evoked by indirect experience. A minimum amount of real experience was enough to trigger and amplify his sensations, and the conscience of this sensation would expand them into another dimension, thanks to his unusually strong intensity of sensing. Give Pessoa a minimum experience and he could augment and transform it with his explosive imagination. «I grew to be a mere apt machine for the expressions of moods which became so intense that grew into personalities and made my very soul the mere shell of their casual appearance, (…)» (2009: 157). Reality was, for Pessoa, what Madeleines were for Marcel Proust. So when Pessoa refers to a process of sensation it means a certain “abstract experience” related to feeling rather than a simple physical and immediate sensing act. One of the most essential formulas of Sensationism is the following: 1. The basis of all art is sensation. 2. In order to convert a mere meaningless emotion to an artistic emotion, or an emotion that is susceptible to become artistic, the sensation must be intellectualized. An intellectualized sensation follows two consecutive processes: the first is the consciousness of that sensation, (…) it is, afterwards, a consciousness of that consciousness, (…). Thus, we have: The pure sensation, as such. The consciousness of the sensation, which gives that sensation a value and, therefore, an artistic stamp. The consciousness of that consciousness of the sensation, whereof results an intellectualization of an intellectualization, that is, the power of expression. (1966A: 192, italics added)111 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 110 [Afinal, a melhor maneira de viajar é sentir. Sentir tudo de todas as maneiras. Sentir tudo excessivamente. Porque todas as coisas são, em verdade excessivas.] 111 [1. A base de toda a arte é a sensação. 2. Para passar de mera emoção sem sentido à emoção artística, ou susceptível de se tornar artística, essa sensação tem de ser intelectualizada. Uma sensação intelectualizada segue dois processos sucessivos: é primeiro a consciência dessa sensação, (…) é, depois, uma consciência dessa consciência, (…). Temos, pois: A sensação, puramente tal. A consciência da sensação, que dá a essa sensação um valor, e, portanto, um cunho estético. A consciência dessa consciência da sensação, de onde resulta uma intelectualização de uma intelectualização, isto é, o poder de expressão.] ! 82 The crucial point is, not merely perceiving a sensation but intellectualizing it; having consciousness of the consciousness of this sensation. This emphasis on intellectualization is understandable since we are aware of Pessoa’s idea of “depersonalization” and his intention to overcome the limits of the Romanticists by keeping distance with personal emotion. Let us compare with William Wordsworth (1770-1850), one of the most representative Romanticists. It is well known that poetry is, for Wordsworth, the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.» (apud Waugh, 2006: 55) (Quoted from Wordsworth, In Preface: 361) Although Wordsworth stresses his characteristic concept “overflow of emotion”, we cannot simplify that his aim was merely to express raw and direct sensations. Even Wordsworth articulates a preoccupation of involving a rather “conscious” procedure, which requires calmness, a mode of contemplation. However, the modernists differentiated from this, particularly in the case of Pessoa, by applying the state of “consciousness of the consciousness of senses”. One can argue that Pessoa’s version of “objectifying” creates perhaps relatively less “rupture” with the Romantics than the case of T.S. Eliot, the inventor of the term “objective correlative” who manifested that «poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality» in Tradition and the Individual Talent (chapter II) (Eliot, 2010: 92). Pessoa shared the tendency with other contemporary high-modernists of preferring synthesis or appropriation of traditions rather than a radical breakup with them, but every modernist executed his beliefs in different ways. José Palla e Carmo compares three modernist poets, Pessoa, Eliot and Ezra Pound, and argues that the common ground of the three was the rejection of Romanticism. Pound clearly did that, with his Imagist followers; Pessoa developed a long fight against soppy sentimentalism; Eliot, in spite of his !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! ! 83 conversion to Marian Catholicism, never completely lost the dryness, sometimes discretely sardonic, of the New England puritans from whom he descended. (Carmo, 1977: 29)112 Let us continue to analyze the abovementioned “two steps of consciousness on sensations”. Álvaro de Campos said, «the superior poet says what he really (or actually/truly) feels. A mediocre poet says what he decides to feel. The inferior poet says what he ought to feel» (1980: 275).113 Supposedly, the superiority of “really feeling” would refer to the Sensationist way of feeling. The two latter inferior levels of “deciding what to feel” and “feel what one should feel” may also involve certain consciousness, but perhaps only a primary level (first stage) of consciousness. So, the second stage of consciousness would mean that intellectualization is a process beyond decision-making, or a duty sensing level. It means a highly conscious state of mind, free from the conventions of morality and judgment. As a reference, Pessoa showed that it is important to discern the notion between consciousness and thinking, while criticizing Descartes. It reads: «It is true that Descartes has no strong sense of what conscious(ness) is, in the metaphysical sense he mixes it with thought» (1968: 113). But his usage of words (feeling, sensation, consciousness, etc.) often comes out from his personalized terminology, or can be quite inconsistent. It is also unclear why he had to name the ism “Sensationism” in the first place, if “intellectualizing” was the prime focus. He did provide a short explanation. «Why call it Sensationism? Because it departs from Sensation as its base material; and not, as other arts, from physical things (class[icism]), ☐» (2009: 150).114 But as we see, this is another unfinished text. At least we are certain that there was no mistake in the naming (as he translated it into English as “Sensationist movement” himself), but I would argue that the name does not perfectly match with the concept, which could be sometimes counter-intuitive. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 112 [ponto comum aos três foi o repúdio do romantismo. Pound fê-lo claramente, com os seus sequazes imagistas; Pessoa desenvolveu uma longa luta contra o sentimentalismo piegas; e Eliot, não obstante a sua conversão a um Catolicismo Mariano, nunca perdeu por completo a secura, por vezes discretamente sardónica, dos puritanos da Nova Inglaterra de que descendia.] 113 [O poeta superior diz o que efectivamente sente. O poeta médio diz o que decide sentir. O poeta inferior diz o que julga que deve sentir.] 114 [Por que chamar-lhe Sensacionismo? Porque parte da Sensa[cão] como base material; e não, como as outras artes, das cousas physicas (class[cism]o), ☐]! ! 84 Another approach to understand Sensationism is to examine it in relation with other isms, since Pessoa drew various “guidelines” to maintain certain distance from each of them. Pessoa was never known to give his full endorsement to any particular current. As he never found himself comfortable dwelling in a single ism, he opted to create various ones of his own. In other words, Sensationism was a certain “work in progress” that attempted to identify itself through the course of constant comparisons with other isms, whether it was associating or disassociating with them. In The Portuguese Sensationists – written by Thomas Crosse – he claims, «the Sensationists are, first of all, Decadents. They are the direct descendants of the Decadent and Symbolist movements» (2015: 126). But in a letter to a British Publisher (1916?), Pessoa writes: We (Sensationists) descend from three older movements – French “Symbolism”, Portuguese transcendentalist pantheism, and the jumble of senseless and contradictory things of which Futurism, Cubism and the like are occasional expressions, thought, to be exact, we descend more from the spirit than from the letter of these. (…) We intellectualized their processes. The decomposition of the model they realize we have carried into what we believe to be the proper sphere of that decomposition — not things, but our sensations of things. (2009: 402-403) Isn’t Pessoa here, once again objectifying everything by exercising the Sensationist two-step formula? Isn’t he being conscious of what he feels with other isms, and then being conscious of this consciousness of feeling? If yes, other isms were, for him, mere objects to exert his sensations, materials for the sake at attaining his isms’ perfection. Either dialectically, or eclectically, he rejects the negatives and accepts the positives of any given isms in order to situate Sensationism in its proper position in history. According to Pessoa, Sensationism «rejects Classicism of its limited (clear) visions, (…) disagrees that a work of art should always have to be simple», but «accepts its Construction, the intellectual preoccupation» (2015: 87). Of Romanticism, he assumed that «the Romanticists weren’t thinkers» (Patrício, 2012: 384),115 and rejected «its notion of the moment of inspiration» but, «accepts the pictorial preoccupation, the sympathetic and synthetic sensibility in regard of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 115 [os romanticos não eram pensadores.] ! 85 things» (2009: 166-167). Although he criticized Romanticism, it is not difficult to point out certain similarities. Even in the modernist dandy Álvaro de Campos’s poetry, one can find his Romantic side. For example, in his poem Aniversário [Birthday], he cries with emotion: «What I am today (and the home of those who loved me shiver through my tears) (…)» (2007A: 377).116 And also in a poem that starts with the line “Cruzou por mim, veio ter comigo, numa rua da Baixa” [We crossed paths on a downtown Lisbon street, and he came up to me] (2006: 266), he repeatedly expresses direct self-pity: «Poor Álvaro de Campos! / So isolated in life! (…) I am the one who knows. Poor thing!» (2007A: 429-430).117 Pessoa also believed in the idea of the “genius” which is a typical Romantic characteristic. His relation with Romanticism was more of a continuity than rupture. He struggled with the “anxiety of influence” of Romanticism and fought with the Romanticism that was always present inside of him. On the other side, Sensationism is sometimes regarded as the Portuguese equivalent of Avant-garde. But some Pessoans such as Jerónimo Pizarro emphasize the significant difference between the two118, invoking Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974). For example, Pessoa does not share the common Vanguardist attributes such as attacking the institution of art, nor the disbelief in the “organicity” of a work of Art. Among his texts we can certify until present, there is no evidence that Pessoa tried to come to a rupture with the institution of art. Moreover, Pessoa firmly believed in the organicity of the artwork, although at times he would express frustration at failing to achieve it, only to end up with endless fragments. Pizarro stresses the term “Vanguardist” should only be adopted in an “etymological” sense, since «we are led to confirm the absence of any historical and original Vanguardist movement in Portugal» (2009: 13, in Introduction by Jerónimo Pizarro).119 Fernando Cabral Martin also affirms that Sensationism !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 116 [O que eu sou hoje (e a casa dos que me amaram treme através das minhas lágrimas) (…)] 117 [Coitado do Álvaro de Campos! / Tão isolado na vida! (…) Eu é que sei. Coitado dele!] For more information about this issue, see: Resíduos românticos na poesia de Álvaro de Campos by José Emanuel Coelho Vieira. 118 See the preface of “Sensacionismo e outro ismos', Fernando Pessoa, Jeronimo Pizzaro” especially pp. 13-19 119 [(…) somos levados a confirmer a ausência de movimentos de vanguarda historica originais em Portugal.] ! 86 served as a common name (circulated very limitedly in public, as a matter of fact) for the diversity of the Orpheu poets in 1915, a designation so broad, which was able to assemble Alfredo Guisado, Álvaro de Campos, Raul Leal and Almada Negreiros. (…) it is not really a name of a Vanguardist movement, but a brand of a heterogeneous group, (…). (2015: 9, in Introductory notes by Fernando Cabral Martins)120 Concerning Futurism, Pessoa clarifies that the only legit Futurist is Santa-Rita Pintor (Id: 123). He demonstrates indifference to the idea of framing or labeling artists with isms, and defends each of their unique individuality. (Id: 124) As we have previously observed in the chapter of Orpheu, Pessoa was consistent in keeping distance with Futurism. Furthermore, Pessoa argued that Sensationism differentiates itself with all the past and present isms, because of its distinguishable “fusing” nature. The fundamentals of Sensationism 1. — Sensationism distinguishes itself from all the literary attitudes by being open, and not restrictive. Whereas all the literary schools start from a certain number of principles and establish itself on certain bases, Sensationism does not establish itself on any base. Every literary or artistic school thinks that art must be a certain thing; Sensationism thinks art should not be a certain thing. Thereby, whereas every literary current is, generally speaking, characteristic of excluding others, Sensationism is characteristic of admitting all the others. In this manner, it is the enemy of all, for all of them are limited. Sensationism accepts all, under the condition of not accepting any of them separately. (2009: 183)121 In conclusion, Sensationism was, roughly speaking, an idea that focuses on sensations, but through a specific process of intellectualization, which aims to create a synthesis of all the past & ongoing currents with a cosmopolitan attitude. Obviously, this definition is unsatisfactory. Every time one tries to establish a thesis about Sensationism, it is easy to find an antithesis inside the vast pool of fragmented texts, which would contradict it. As we mentioned, this unfinished state and lack of coherence are the major difficulties that impede !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 120 [(O Sensacionsimo acaba também) por servir de nome comum (…) para a diversidade dos poetas de Orpheu em 1915, uma designação tão ampla que seria capaz de reunir Alfredo Guisado, Álvaro de Campos, Raul Leal e Almada Negreiros. Sensacionismo, deste modo, não é bem o nome de um movimento de Vanguarda, mas a marca de um grupo heterogéneo, (…)] 121 [Os Fundamentos do Sensacionismo. 1. — O Sensacionismo difere de todas as atitudes literárias em ser aberto, e não restrito. Ao passo que todas as escolas literárias partem de um certo número de princípios, assentam sobre determinadas bases, o Sensacionismo não assenta sobre base nenhuma. Qualquer escola literária ou artística acha que a arte deve ser determinada coisa; o sensacionismo acha que a arte não deve ser determinada coisa. Assim, ao passo que qualquer corrente literária tem, em geral, por típico excluir as outras, o Sensacionismo tem por típico admitir as outras todas. Assim, é inimigo de todas, porisso que todas são limitadas. O Sensacionismo a todas aceita, com a condição de não aceitar nenhuma separadamente.] ! 87 us to gain a clear notion of Sensationism as a relevant theory. Maybe Pessoa’s own intention has been incongruent, which is highly understandable regarding the poet’s self-contradicting nature. When we realize «the radical state of incompletion and the inorganicity of the work of Fernando Pessoa such as it came upon us, it is interesting (…) to conclude that the poetics of Sensationism is less than poetics but, in a way, rather a fiction of poetics» (2015: 12, in Introductory notes by Fernando Cabral Martins).122 Although nobody could ever be able to conclude what the poet really intended to achieve with this ism, we know that he put enormous effort in numerous attempts to systematize it, only to fall short123, perfectly resonating Samuel Beckett’s famous phrase in his prose piece Worstward Ho: «Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better» (Beckett, 1983: 7). The meaning of the Sensationism project lies in the urge to analyze his contemporary movements, to fuel and stimulate his self-invented literary vehicle and foster it to its highest operating level, rather than the pursuit of consistent and perfected literary theory per se. As Pessoa said, a movement without results is no movement. Indeed, the Sensationist movement had been influential and productive, although it did not last long. What are the poems which could be considered as “Sensationist poems”? To make a list, it will be useful to discern the two different usages of the name Sensationism: (1) The name to summon up Portuguese “Sensationists” poets who participated in Orpheu; (2) The name of Pessoa’s personally developed theory. Regarding the former, Pessoa affirms that «the Sensationist movement counts only the following works: A Confissão de Lúcio [Lúcio’s Confession], Céu em Fogo [Burning Sky], Dispersão [Dispersion](12 poems) both by Mário de Sá-Carneiro and poems by Alfredo Pedro Guisado, Elogio da Paisagem [Praise of the Landscape] of Pedro de Menezes» (2009: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 122 [quando se conhece o estado de radical inacabamento e inorgnicidade da obra de Fernando Pessoa tal como chegou até nós, é interessante (…) concluir que a poética do Sensacionismo é menos uma poética do que, de algum modo, uma ficção de poética.]! 123 The “incapacity to complete things” was a common trait of Pessoa. We will discuss it in the chapter 7.3, “Fragmentation”. Pessoa was more focused on creating things than bringing them into perfection. ! 88 160). Also As Três Princesas Mortas num Palácio em Ruínas [Three Dead Princesses in a Palace in Ruins] (1916) of João Cabral do Nascimento in another essay published in the literary magazine Exílio [Exile] under the title Sensationist Movement, is considered as an example of Sensationist poems by Pessoa. Regarding the latter, it is quite consensual to consider the Ode Triunfal of Álvaro de Campos representatively Sensationist, as it served as the initial impulse to this new tendency. Below is the passage from a declaration by the directors of Orpheu, Pessoa and Sá-Carneiro, who associated Sensationism with Álvaro de Campos. The terms «Sensationist» and «Intersectionist», which, with good reason, they apply to the artists of ORPHEU, do not actually match. Álvaro de Campos is the only Sensationist; Fernando Pessoa the only Intersectionist, and only in one collaboration — the «Chuva Oblíqua» in ORPHEU 2. (1993A: 138)124 The two odes, Ode Triunfal and Ode Marítima, were the «key to the poetic revolution of Orpheu, which did not include any more daring or unbridled collaborations than these» (Dix/Pizarro: 2011: 32). It is also possible to include Campos’ other poems such as Saudação a Walt Whitman [Salutation to Walt Whitman] and Acordar a cidade de Lisboa, [To wake up Lisbon city] Afinal, a melhor maneira de viajar é sentir [At the end, the best way to travel is to feel], Mestre, meu mestre querido [Master, my dear master], Minha alma partiu-se como um vaso vazio [My soul is broken like an empty vase] and Lisbon Revisited. Generally speaking, the most convincing product of Sensationism would be Orpheu itself, the organ of the Sensationist movement and «the sum and synthesis of all modern literary movements» (2015: 126), as Thomas Crosse wrote in The Portuguese Sensationists. In my personal opinion, O Guardador de Rebanhos [The Keeper of Sheep] is the best example. Alberto Caeiro’s poems could be, as a whole, a critical take on Intellectualism, which constantly denounces the “western” consciousness and rationalization. What is the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 124![Os termos «sensacionista» e «interseccionista», que, com maior razão, se aplicaram aos artistas de ORPHEU, também não têm cabimento. Sensacionista é só Álvaro de Campos; interseccionista foi só Fernando Pessoa, e em uma só colaboração — a «Chuva Oblíqua» em ORPHEU 2.] ! ! 89 most conscious consciousness of consciousness? Wouldn’t it be a “critical mind” on consciousness itself? To conclude, Sensationism was Pessoa’s self-invented “melting pot” of myriads of literary currents and movements. On whether we should agree to regard it as a theoretical leverage to overcome Saudosismo, led by Teixeira de Pascoaes, we are assured that his vision aimed beyond national rivalry: to change and influence the world literary landscape of Europe and perhaps, America. (…), all this inventing, innovating, reviving, and reformulating happened more or less synchronically, with the various styles and doxies overlapping each other in a time span of less than ten years. Endowed with an uncommon capacity for absorption, digestion, and organic adaptation, Pessoa hedonistically tried out all that was going in the aesthetical marketplace, creating his own house blends and reworking old recipes. Some of the isms such as Paulismo and Intersectionsim he quickly cooked up and quickly discarded, while the rest became more or less important parts of his artistic repertoire, in which the rhetorical and the colloquial, the solemn and the humorous, the patriotic and the seditious, the absurd and the inexorably rational, the highbrow and the lowbrow could all exist together democratically, (…) (1998: 32, in Introduction by Richard Zenith) Additionally, there are opinions that summarize this era of his philosophical experiments into three periods, suggesting that «it is possible to see these three isms as phases that correspond to a pre-analytical, an analytical and a synthetical period» (Dix/Pizarro, 2011: 28). 5. English Poems We know that Pessoa died only having published one book in Portuguese. In fact, he published four poetry books in English, although they were all self-published. Beginning from his youth in Durban, deep influence of English poetry marked his early formation and the most immediate result of it would come to light when he comes back to Lisbon: the name Alexander Search could have been created earlier, but his first poem is dated 1904. Search was born on the same day, year and place as Pessoa (13 June 1888, Lisbon). He also had his own name card. The mission assigned to Search was the following. ! 96 6. Esoteric and Nationalistic Phase 6.1. Esoteric Poems In the Biographical notes (30 March 1935) – written by Pessoa himself, only seven months before his death –, it reads: Religious Beliefs: Christian Gnostic, therefore entirely opposed to all organized churches, mainly the Roman Catholic Church. Devotee of the Secret Christian Tradition, for reasons that will become apparent further on, which maintains close ties with the Secret Tradition in Israel (The Holy Kabbalah) as well as with the occult quality of the Masonry. Initiatory position: Initiated, by direct communication between Master and Disciple, in the three lower levels of the (apparently extinct) Order of the Templars in Portugal.133 In another letter, written in the same year he openly states: I believe in the existence of worlds higher than our own and in the existence of beings that inhabit those worlds. I believe there are various, increasingly subtle levels of spirituality that lead to a Supreme Being, who presumably created this world. There may be other, equally Supreme Beings who have created other universes that coexist with our own, separately or interconnectedly. (2001: 259)134 Pessoa’s characteristic pluralistic imagination which fortifies his belief in other “Supreme Beings”, would on one hand reject any monotheistic religions, and on another hand absorb the “oppressed” beliefs under the name of “pagan” and “occult”. The beginning of his interest in esoteric philosophy seems to have been ignited by coincidence, when he undertook the job of translating six lengthy books of theosophy during 1915-1916, for alimentary reasons (Martins, 2014:193), but the consequence of this close reading left a profound impact on his psyche. In a letter to Mário de Sá-Carneiro (6 December 1915) he confesses: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 133 [Posição religiosa: Cristão gnóstico e portanto inteiramente oposto a todas as Igrejas organizadas, e sobretudo à Igreja de Roma. Fiel, por motivos que mais adiante estão implícitos, à Tradição Secreta do Cristianismo, que tem íntimas relações com a Tradição Secreta em Israel (a Santa Kabbalah) e com a essência oculta da Maçonaria. / Posição iniciática: Iniciado, por comunicação directa de Mestre a Discípulo, nos três graus menores da (aparentemente extinta) Ordem Templária de Portugal] (2007: 134-5). 134![Creio na existência de mundos superiores ao nosso e de habitantes desses mundos, em experiências de diversos graus de espiritualidade, subtilizando até se chegar a um Ente Supremo, que presumivelmente criou este mundo. Pode ser que haja outros Entes, igualmente Supremos, que hajam criado outros universos, e que esses universos coexistam com o nosso, interpenetradamente ou não] (1999A:346). ! ! 97 If, afterwards, you notice that Theosophy, since it admits all the religions, has a character entirely similar with paganism, which admits all the gods in its Pantheon, you will have the second element (clue?) of my serious crisis of soul. (…) Theosophy terrifies me by its mystery and by its occultist grandeur, disgusts me by its humanitarianism and essential apostolism (Do you understand?), attracts me for resembling too much with “transcendental paganism” (…), disgusts me for resembling too much with Christianity, which I don’t admit. And the abysmal horror and attraction is realized in beyond-the-soul. (1986A: 122)135 The word “transcendental paganism” resonates with the notion of “transcendental pantheism”, which he mentioned in his critical essay in 1912. It seems that this discovery triggered further reading, which brought him to an enigmatic realm governed by myriads of gods. In a piece of The Book of Disquiet, through the voice of Bernardo Soares, he described these mystical experiences. After studying metaphysics and sciences □, I went on to mental occupations that were more threatening to my nervous equilibrium. I spent frightful nights hunched over tomes by mystics and cabbalists which I never had the patience to read except intermittently, trembling and □. The rites and mysteries of the Rosicrucians, the symbolic □ the Cabbala and the Templars, □ – all of this oppressed me for a long time. My feverish days were filled with pernicious speculations based on the demonic logic of metaphysics – magic, □ alchemy – and I derived a false vital stimulus from the painful and quasi-psychic sensation of being always on the verge of discovering a supreme mystery. I lost myself in the delirious subsystems of metaphysics, systems full of disturbing analogies and pitfalls for lucid thought, vast enigmatic landscapes where glimmers of the supernatural arouse mysteries on the fringes. (2002: 217)136 Pessoa voluptuously absorbed esoteric ideas without prejudice or judgment. He was confident that, «Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Theosophy, Spiritism, Occultism - everything leads to the same conclusion: the meaning of the world, the explanation of life and of death !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 135 [Se, depois, reparar em que a Teosofia, porque admite todas as religiões, tem um carácter inteiramente parecido com o do paganismo, que admite no seu Panteão todos os deuses, V. terá o segundo elemento da minha grave crise de alma. (…) A Teosofia apavora-me pelo seu mistério e pela sua grandeza ocultista, repugna-me pelo seu humanitarismo e apostolismo (V. compreende?) essenciais, atrai-me por se parecer tanto com um «paganismo transcendental» (é este o nome que eu dou ao modo de pensar a que havia chegado), repugna-me por se parecer tanto com o cristianismo, que não admito. E o horror e a atracção do abismo realizados no além-alma.] ! 136 [Do estudo da metafísica, das ciências □, passei a ocupações de espírito mais violentas para o equilíbrio dos meus nervos. Gastei apavoradas noites debruçado sobre volumes de místicos e de cabalistas, que nunca tinha paciência para ler de todo, de outra maneira que não intermitentemente, trêmulo e □. Os ritos e as razões dos Rosa-Cruz, a simbólica □ da Cabala e dos Templários, □ — sofri durante tempos a opressão de tudo isso. E encheram a febre dos meus dias especulações venenosas, da razão demoníaca da metafísica — a magia, □ a alquimia — extraindo um falso estímulo vital de sensação dolorosa e presciente de estar como que sempre à beira de saber um mistério supremo. Perdi-me pelos sistemas secundários, excitados, da metafísica, sistemas cheios de analogias perturbantes, de alçapões para a lucidez, grandes paisagens misteriosas onde reflexos de sobrenatural acordam mistérios nos contornos] (1998A: 251). ! 98 itself belong to those initiated into the mysteries of the Occult» (Simões, 1950: 549).137 At the same time, Pessoa immersed into Astrology and became a medium by receiving astral communications. The majority of his communications were received during 1916 and 1917 (2003: 209). His aunt Anica, who was also deeply interested in occultism, played an important role in stimulating this unusual obsession by being an attentive correspondent for him. Thematically, these automatic writings mainly deal with two preoccupations: about the imminent loss of his virginity, or his fate as a poet. Pessoa also made acquaintance with the famous warlock Aleister Crowley, and helped him to simulate a scandalous suicide stunt upon Crowley’s visit to Lisbon (1930) at the “Boca do Inferno”[Mouth of Hell] in Cascais, which generated wide attention from the newspapers. Interestingly, Pessoa and W. B. Yeats (1865– 1939) both «displayed a sustained interest in occultism that encompassed different esoteric currents, comprising hermitism, magic, alchemy, astrology and theosophy» (Castro, Mariana Gray de, 2013:157), although there was no direct communication between the two contemporary Modernist poets. These esoteric knowledges and experiences are unmistakable in his poems such as, Abdicação [Abdication] (1913), A Múmia [The Mummy] (1917), O Último Sortilégio [The Last Sortilege] (1930), Iniciação [Initiation] (1932), Eros e Psique [Eros and Psyche] (1934), and also the Demogorgon (1928) by Álvaro de Campos, just to point out a few. 6.2. MENSAGEM Along with his interest in the occult, his nationalistic sentiments would grow deeper. Political turmoils might have heavily weighed on Pessoa to be concerned about the fate of his nation. Between 1910 and 1935, Pessoa «witnessed a series of important events in Portuguese social and political history: the demise of the monarchy, the establishment of the Republic, the rise and fall of Sidónio Pais, and the ultimate creation of the Estado Novo» (Sadlier, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 137 [Gnosticismo, neoplatonismo, teosofismo, espiritismo, ocultismo - tudo conduz à mesma conclusão: que o sentido do mundo e a explicação da vida e da própria morte pertencem aos iniciados nos mistérios do oculto.] ! ! 99 1998:27). Occultism and Nationalism would combine and reinforce each other inside Pessoa to result a chimeric effect: a remarkable mystical epic Mensagem, which consists of 44 short poems organized in three parts: Brasão [Coat-of-Arms], Mar Português [Portuguese Sea] and O Encoberto [The Hidden One]. The epic travels through the Golden Age of Discovery, the sea monsters of Os Lusíadas [The Lusiads] (by Camões), the myth of King Sebastião (1554– 1578), and his vision of a Portuguese renaissance in the doctrine of the Fifth Empire. A nonPortuguese reader might need notes and references to understand this modernist interpretation of Portuguese history and legends138, and to appreciate its aesthetic form and architecture of verses. Mensagem –published in 1934, one year before his death– was the first and only book in his mother tongue ever published in his lifetime. He explains why: «I began the publication of my works with that book simply because it was the first one, for whatever reason, that I managed to organize and have ready. Since it was all ready, I was urged to publish it, and so I did. I didn’t do it, please note, with my eyes on the prize (…)» (2001: 252).139 However, it actually won the second prize offered by the National Office of Propaganda. Pessoa agreed with Adolfo Casais Monteiro, who considered this début rather uncharacteristic, on the point that the poems did not fully represent the versatility of his poetry. The poet humbly agrees: I completely agree with you that a book like Mensagem was not a felicitous publishing début. I am, to be sure, a mystical nationalist, a rational Sebastianist. But I am many other things beside that, and even in contradiction to it. And because of the kind of book it was, Mensagem did not include those things. (2001: 252)140 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 138 Pessoa was intrigued by the myth of King Sebastião, the penultimate Portuguese monarch, who embarked on an ill-advised ‘crusade’ in Morocco, only to be routed At the Battle of Alcácer Quibir (Battle of the Three Kings). After the defeat, his body was believed to have disappeared (or unidentified), and the majority of Portuguese people expected the King to return on a foggy morning as the “Encoberto” (Hidden One) in order to rescue Portugal from its decline and once again glorify its Empire. And the 5th Empire is this: according to Father António Vieira (1608–1697), a respected priest and poet, there are only five empires in world history: the spiritual Greek, the Roman, the Christian, the European, and the Portuguese. ! 139 [Comecei por esse livro as minhas publicações pela simples razão de que foi o primeiro livro que consegui, não sei porquê, ter organizado e pronto. Como estava pronto, incitaram-me a que o publicasse: acedi. Nem o fiz, devo dizer, com os olhos postos no prémio possível do Secretariado, (…)] (1999A:338). ! 140 [Concordo absolutamente consigo em que não foi feliz a estreia, que de mim mesmo fiz com um livro da natureza de Mensagem. Sou, de facto, um nacionalista místico, um sebastianista racional. Mas sou, à parte isso, e até em contradição com isso, muitas outras coisas. E essas coisas, pela mesma natureza do livro, a Mensagem não as inclui.] (Ibid.) ! ! 100 Mensagem remained as the last book that Pessoa saw through the press before he died. Initially, it attracted little attention, but now remains as one of the most famous and representative masterpieces of Pessoa. Although Mensagem won a literary competition sponsored by the “National” Office of “Propaganda” –under the theme of “Nationalism”– and although it could evoke certain “patriotic” sentiments in Portuguese students who often learn it in their textbooks, the “message” cannot be reduced to mere patriotism or nationalism. Possibility of being, then, the “poder ser” of one of the poems141 in Mensagem, is what Pessoa’s epic of the modern consciousness is all about. It is as much the poet’s search for meaning in the modern world, a world grown increasingly unstable by vertiginous change and shifting uncertainty, (…). In Mensagem, as in many of the philosophic, sociological, and political writings (…), Pessoa’s concerns are identical: what is it like to be Portuguese in the twentieth century, when the once great empire had been reduced to nothing? (Santos, 2003:104) Likewise, we could revisit one of the most frequently quoted phrases of Pessoa (actually from Bernardo Soares), «My nation is the Portuguese language» (2002: Text 259)142, and understand it in a more universal and broader sense, rather than confining it to a patriotic statement. Language becomes a unique “space” where one can dwell when precarious realities shake our stability. Michel Foucault made a similar remark when he confesses the hardships experienced during his residence in Sweden, in a rare interview with Claude Bonnefoy (1969): «the only real homeland, the only soil on which we can walk, the only house where we can stop and take shelter, is language, the one we learned from infancy» (Foucault, 2013:32). If we interpret Pessoa’s ambitiously aspired Portuguese cultural “empire” within a nationalistic, political or realistic frame, we will fail to envision his endlessly expanding “messianic imagination” which formed a crucial part of his poetic quest. The last paragraph of the Biographical Notes shows the peculiar character of his nationalistic attitude most clearly: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 141![Que jaz no abismo sob o mar que se ergue? / Nós, Portugal, o poder ser. / Que inquietação do fundo nos soergue? / O desejar poder querer (In Tormenta)] (2006C: 377). 142 [Minha pátria é a língua portuguesa] (1998A: Trecho 259). ! ! 101 Patriotic position: Follower of a mystical nationalism from which all roman catholic infiltration would be abolished, to create, if possible, a new Sebastianism to spiritually replace it, if it can be considered that there ever was any spirituality in Portuguese Catholicism. He was a nationalist who guided himself by this motto: “Everything for Humanity; nothing against the Nation.143 The last line, which is nothing else but «an obvious gibe at Salazar's famous “Nothing against the Nation; everything for the Nation”», sums up «his brand of patriotism» (2001: 159, in Introductory notes by Richard Zenith). 7. Poetic Issues 7.1. Depersonalization “La vraie vie est absente.” – Rimbaud In an attempt to offer a definition of a poet, the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) revealed his unique idea of the “chameleon poet”, a self-less/characterless/identity-less being, in his letter (27 October 1818) to his friend Richard Woodhouse. As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the chameleon Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none; no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.144 (italics added) As a poet possesses no fixed identity or personality, he is free to camouflage with identities and bodies of others, just like chameleons imitate the colors of their environment, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 143 [Posição patriótica: Partidário de um nacionalismo místico, de onde seja abolida toda a infiltração católico-romana, criandose, se possível for, um sebastianismo novo, que a substitua espiritualmente, se é que no catolicismo português houve alguma vez espiritualidade. Nacionalista que se guia por este lema: «Tudo pela Humanidade; nada contra a Nação».] ! 144 http://www.john-keats.com/briefe/271018.htm ! 102 and represent them by their own means. Stéphane Mallarmé also shows a similar tendency of emptying or erasing the Subject in his “impersonalization”, in a letter to Henri Cazalis (14 May 1867): «That will let you know that I am now impersonal and no longer the Stephane that you knew – but a capacity possessed by the spiritual Universe to see itself and develop itself, through what was once me» (Mallarmé, 1988: 74).145 Four years later, the idea that a poet cannot be identified in terms of the concept of a fixed “I”, or a single “subject”, would culminate when Arthur Rimbaud wrote the famous line in a Letter to Georges Izambard (13 May 1871), manifesting, «I is another»146, which is, according to Hugo Friedrich, the trigger to open modern poetry: «(…) that feature of modern poetry primarily associated with Rimbaud, who initiated the abnormal separation of the poetic subject from the empirical self» (Divers, 2002: 36).147 It was indeed a characteristic trait of the age, opposed to the conventional subjective (personal) approach of poetry. The Modernist poet T.S. Eliot articulated the same preoccupation yet in a different way in Tradition and the Individual Talent (1921): «The emotion of art is impersonal» (Eliot, 1999: 22) and the only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an objective correlative; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. (in Matthiessen, 1947: 58, italic added) Eliot criticized Shakespeare that, «Hamlet (the man) is dominated by an emotion which is inexpressible, because it is in excess of the facts as they appear. We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much for him» (in Unger, 1961: 36). This peculiar experiment of vacuuming one’s identity and simulating the Other also had precursors in Portuguese literature before the appearance of Pessoa. «Since 1869 when !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 145 [C’est t’apprendre que je suis devenu impersonnel, et non plus Stéphane que tu as connu, – mais une aptitude qu’a l’Univers Spirituel à se voir et à se développer, à travers ce qui fut moi.] (Mallarmé, 1995: 343) 146![Je est un autre.] ! 147 The original source is from Die Struktur der modernen Lyrik : Von Baudelaire bis zur Gegenwart, Hamburg, Rowohlts, 1956: 52. ! 103 Eça de Queirós and Antero de Quental had invented and launched the nonexistent poet Carlos Fradique Mendes, there was something of a tradition of resorting to mystification when starting a literary movement» (Monteiro, 1981: 29), and «closer to Pessoa's time, Cesário Verde’s female impersonation Margarida, in a first-person poem Cadências Tristes [Sad Cadences] was published in 1874» (Castro, Mariana Gray de, 2013: 205). However, Pessoa did not simply inherit all these preoccupations but propelled them forward. He decisively took the path of objective (impersonal) approach and adopted invented voices to remain detached from conventional poetry. In one way or another, all the great and not-so-great Modernists tried, in contrast to the Romantics, to create a text behind which the author as everyday person would vanish even when drawing on autobiographical sources and feelings. We may say that they were often imagining ardently in verse the lives they didn’t have in real life. As we know, nobody took this aim to greater extremes of definite and magnificent realization than did Pessoa. The alter-egos of Valery-Larbaud, André Gide, Proust, Joyce, Rilke, Antonio Machado, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, and others with their equivalent theories may have given us masterpieces, but they never went to the extreme that made Pessoa a legend even before this purpose was fully understood or before it was accepted as the deadly serious poetic creation it in fact was. (Monteiro, 1981: 23) In Pessoa, the notion of the poet without identity was unprecedentedly welcomed: The more the identity is void, the better are the potentials of poetic creations. His invention of the heteronyms sets, poetic subjects with complex consciousness, embodiments of plurality and multiplicity were perfect examples of the impersonalized I, which was in his own term a development of “depersonalizing” process. We remember how Pessoa associated the origin of heteronyms with his «relentless, organic tendency to depersonalization and simulation» (2001: 254)148. Through depersonalization, Pessoa wanted to establish a hierarchy in poetic creation. After explaining the three levels of lyric poetry, he suggests the most superior level, in which depersonalization should be applied: The fourth level of lyric poetry is, the much more rare, in which the poet, even more intellectual yet equally imaginative, enter in full depersonalization. He doesn’t only feel, but lives, the states of the soul that he doesn’t directly has. In a good number of cases, this would fit in dramatic poetry, properly !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 148 [(…) minha tendência orgânica e constante para a despersonalização e para a simulação] (1999A: 340). ! 104 saying, as Shakespeare did, a substantially lyric poet elevated to a dramatic poet by the appalling level of depersonalization that he attained. (1966: 67)149 Pessoa developed the idea of a dramatic poet in his peculiar creative process called “desdobramento” [Unfolding] of personalities. If we could call him a dramaturge, his dramatic composition was «a drama in people instead of acts» (Monteiro, 2000: 66)150, or «a drama not divided in acts, but divided in people» (2006: 23, in Introduction by Richard Zenith). The term “dramatic” was adopted not in the sense that Pessoa literally created poetry in the form of theatre by describing actions one by one, but in the sense that the multiple unfoldings of the characters form a theatre of personalities and generate a dramatic effect. This idea of multiple unfoldings could be interpreted as a rejection to the “Cartesian theatre”. As the poet enjoys assigning grades on things, there is also a “hierarchy” of unfoldings, because «the unfolding of I is, many times, a phenomenon of masturbation» (1990: 421).151 In these unfoldings of personalities or, rather, inventions of different personalities, there are two grades or types, (…) by distinct characteristics. In the first grade, the personality distinguishes by ideas and proper sentiments, different of mine, as such, in the most lower level of this grade, it distinguishes itself by ideas, put in rationality or argument, which isn’t mine, or, if they are, I don’t know them. The Anarchist Banker is the example of the inferior grade; the Book of Disquiet and the personality of Bernardo Soares are the superior grade. (1966A: 105)152 In a letter to his friend Mário Beirão (1 Feb. 1913), he shows a clear example of his unfolding habit. «The curious phenomenon of unfolding is a thing that I habitually have, but I !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 149 [O quarto grau da poesia lírica é aquele, muito mais raro, em que o poeta, mais intelectual ainda mas igualmente imaginativo, entra em plena despersonalização. Não só sente, mas vive, os estados de alma que não tem directamente. Em grande número de casos, cairá na poesia dramática, propriamente dita, como fez Shakespeare, poeta substancialmente lírico erguido a dramático pelo espantoso grau de despersonalização que atingiu.] 150 [É um drama em gente, em vez de em actos.] ! 151 [O desdobramento do eu é um fenómeno em grande número de casos de masturbação.] 152![Nestes desdobramentos de personalidade ou, antes, invenções de personalidades diferentes, há dois graus ou tipos, que estarão revelados ao leitor, se os seguiu, por características distintas. No primeiro grau, a personalidade distingue-se por ideias e sentimentos próprios, distintos dos meus, assim como, em mais baixo nível desse grau, se distingue por ideias, postas em raciocínio ou argumento, que não são minhas, ou, se o são, o não conheço. O Banqueiro Anarquista é um exemplo deste grau inferior; o Livro do Desassossego e a personagem Bernardo Soares são o grau superior.] ! ! 105 never have felt it in this level of intensity. As a proof of a calm kind, I transcribe here»153, and then follows the poem Abdicação: O night eternal, call me your son And take me into your arms. I’m a king Who relinquished, willingly, My throne of dreams and tedium. My sword, which dragged my weak arms down, I surrendered to strong and steady hands, And in the anteroom I abandoned My shattered scepter and crown. My spurs that jingled to no avail And my useless coat of mail I left on the cold stone steps. I took off royalty, body and soul, And returned to the night so calm, so old, Like the landscape when the sun sets (2006:278).154 Cabral Martins suggests that the true unfolding of this poem «consists in the fact that there exists a new consciousness that manifests, that distinguishes itself of consciousness. This unfolding opens a space, neither here nor there, neither visible nor invisible. But it isn’t a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 153![O fenómeno curioso do desdobramento é coisa que habitualmente tenho, mas nunca o tinha sentido neste grau de intensidade. Como prova do género calmo do soneto, aqui lho transcrevo:] ! 154!Toma-me, ó noite eterna, nos teus braços E chama-me teu filho. Eu sou um rei que voluntariamente abandonei O meu trono de sonhos e cansaços. Minha espada, pesada a braços lassos, Em mão viris e calmas entreguei; E meu cetro e coroa — eu os deixei Na antecâmara, feitos em pedaços Minha cota de malha, tão inútil, Minhas esporas de um tinir tão fútil, Deixei-as pela fria escadaria. Despi a realeza, corpo e alma, E regressei à noite antiga e calma Como a paisagem ao morrer do dia (2006C: 51-52). ! ! 112 Pessoa inverts the argument of Coleridge and subtly attacks the weak part of this enigmatic narrative: the fact that the Person of Porlock is anonymous.169 According to Pessoa’s interpretation, the interruption does not come from the outer world but from inside, from ourselves: we are our own intruders. This visitant – perennially incognito because, being us, “is not someone”; that intruder – perennially anonymous because, being alive, is “impersonal” – every one of us have to receive, because of our weakness, between the start and the term of the poem, entirely composed, that doesn’t allow us to keep writing. And what is of all of us, whether great artists or puny ones, really survive – are fragments of what we don’t know what would be; but what would be, if it would be something at all, the same expression of our soul.170 Mariana Gray de Castro argues that «Pessoa stole171 Coleridge’s ideas and expressions about genius, inspiration, creativity and interruption, in the process transforming one of these elements in order to construct his own original image of poetic creation» (Castro, de Mariana, 2014: 58). Irene Ramalho Santos affirms the appropriation of Pessoa, that he relates it all in his account of the genesis of the heteronyms: as Master Caeiro suddenly “happens” in him (just like a “visitor”, an “unexpected intruder” or “fatal interruption”) Caeiro, Reis, Campos, the orthonymic Pessoa (as well as all the other “persons books”) become the most daring dramatization of interruption as a poetic strategy. (Santos, 2003: 237) It would be wiser to be more careful in adopting the word “strategy”, but indeed, for Pessoa –a man obsessed with simultaneous flooding of ideas–, the man knocking the door must have been time and again Pessoa himself, and as he was many Pessoas, the interruption would have multiplied. Perhaps Pessoa’s heteronyms were themselves inspirations that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 169 English poet Thomas De Quincey speculated, in his autobiographical account Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, that the mysterious figure was Coleridge's physician, Dr. P. Aaron Potter, who regularly supplied the poet with laudanum. But this was never verified. 170![Esse visitante – perenemente incógnito porque, sendo nós, “não é alguém”; esse interruptor – perenemente anónimo porque, sendo vivo, é “impessoal” – todos nós o temos que receber, por fraqueza nossa, entre o começo e o termo do poema, inteiramente composto, que não nos damos licença que fique escrito. E o que de todos nós, artistas grandes ou pequenos, verdadeiramente sobrevive – são fragmentos do que não sabemos que seja; mas que seria, se houvesse sido, a mesma expressão da nossa alma] (Ibid.). ! 171 “Steal” in a sense when T.S. Eliot says, «Mature poets steal. The best ones transform their sources into something better, or, at least, something different.»: from Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919) (Eliot, 1975: 153). ! 113 knocked on the door – like muses – and set the poet on fire.172 Whether the “People from Porlock” have forced him to create countless “interrupted” fragments or not, Pessoa certainly knew how to steal inspirations from his unwelcomed visitors. 8. Influences 8.1. The Presencistas The Coimbra based Presença was one of the most influential literary magazines published in Portugal in the 20th century. Launched on 10th of March 1927, Presença published 54 issues until it ended in 1940. The generation of the so-called “2nd Modernism” of Portuguese literature (as the “Orpheu generation” is recognized as the first) was represented by three key figures: José Régio, Adolfo Casais Monteiro and João Gaspar Simões. They were the first generation to appreciate the writings of Pessoa, and served as intimate epistolary interlocutors of the poet. After Pessoa died, they became the key circulators of his works. In the year 1927, José Régio «in the opening article of Presenca’s very first issue, considers Fernando Pessoa to be among the few Portuguese writers of those days who were “alive”, (…) contrasted strongly with those who, according to the same author, were creating “bookish”, dead literature» (Monteiro, 1981: 34-35). In an article entitled Da Geração Modernista (April 1927), José Régio analyzed three writers whom he considered leaders of the generation that had published Orpheu, namely Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada Negreiros, for the first time from the view point of the young generation from Coimbra. In 1942, seven years after Pessoa’s death, Adolfo Casais Monteiro edited the first posthumous poetry anthology of Pessoa (published by Editora Confluência) which contained approximately 100 poems of Pessoa’s heteronyms, and at the same year Luis de Montalvor and João Gaspar Simões edited a more complete version (published by Editora Ática) including poems of orthonym Pessoa (Vieira/Zenith, 2011: 234). Since this year, Ática resumed the work to actively publish and circulate Pessoa’s works to a wider public. In 1950, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 172 This idea is quoted from a personal conversation with Richard Zenith. ! 114 João Gaspar Simões published the first biographical work of Pessoa, Vida e Obra de Fernando Pessoa. 8.2. Other Portuguese poets The poet, literary critic and novelist Jorge de Sena’s (1919-1978) groundbreaking commentaries and editorial works of Pessoa contributed to the early reception of the poet. He also incorporated Pessoa’s influence into his own literary creation, as Richard Zenith remarks in the 28 Portuguese Poets – discussing the newly blossoming poets during and after World War II–, «Nearly all of them learned something from Pessoa, but only on one of the poets presented here – the protean Jorge de Sena, (…) – seems to have been in competition with him. Although he applied the lesson of fingimento for transforming personal feeling into material suitable for making works of art, Sena countered it with a poetics of witness and testimony linked decisively to real life» (Zenith, 2014: 18). Poems of the celebrated Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (1919-2004) were largely influenced by Pessoa. She reminds that «Fernando Pessoa would say, “a poem happened to me”. My fundamental way of writing is very close to this “happening”» (Andresen, 2012: 52).173 Pessoa is evoked in many of her poems: Dual, Homenagem a Ricardo Reis (1972); Em Hydra, evocando Fernando Pessoa (1977), O Nome das Coisas, Ciclades (1977) and Fernando Pessoa ou Poeta em Lisboa (1973). They are now published in an anthology named Os Poemas sobre Pessoa (2012). Eugénio de Andrade (1923-2005) organized an anthology of Pessoa. Even though he was a huge admirer of Pessoa, he recognized the poet’s presence was somehow overshadowing the following generation. Andrade thought that «as a problem of surviving, one should write “turning the back towards him”» (Cruz, 2008: 53).174 He did not have to wait long to see his mission being explicitly carried out, precisely by his contemporary poet. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 173 [Fernando Pessoa dizia: «Aconteceu-me um poema.» A minha maneira de escrever fundamental é muito próxima deste «acontecer».] 174![Eugénio de Andrade, por exemplo, não obstante a sua enorme admiração pelo mestre modernista, achara que, por uma questão de sobrevivência, teria de escrever “de costas voltadas para ele”, (…).] ! 115 The provocative surrealist painter Mário Cesariny (1923-2006) wrote Louvor e simplificação de Álvaro de Campos [Praise and simplification of Álvaro de Campos] (1953), and O Virgem Negra: Fernando Pessoa Explicado às Criancinhas Naturais e Estrangeiras [The Black Virgin] (1989). The latter highlights the homoerotic facet of Pessoa, which offers us an interesting aspect of the poet through the irreverent eyes of an “eccentric” artist. According to António Feijó, «for Cesariny, all the poetry of Pessoa, is a badly sutured suppuration of disease caused by a homoerotic love, of whose etiology is an incapacity of desublimation. Pessoa, the “black virgin”, suffered from a incapacity of inhabiting the body, of incarnating it» (Feijó, 2015: 115).175 Ruy Belo (1933~ ) writes in Da poesia que posso [Of the poetry that I can]: «Fernando Pessoa is the living poet that I care the most» (Belo, 2004: 337).176 Pessoa was certainly “alive” in Belo’s poetry, as Gastão Cruz (himself an admirable poet and critic) said, «Probably no other poet was, beyond Pessoa, in the 20th century of Portugal, so “seriously attentive to the mysterious importance of existence” as Ruy Belo, who obsessively pondered on the issue of death» (Cruz, 2008: 51).177 Also, the writings of prominent poets like Manuel António Pina, Gastão Cruz, Fiama Hasse Pais Brandão, Ana Luísa Amaral and Adília Lopes bear the vivid presence of the poet. (END) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 175![Toda a poesia de Pessoa é para Cesariny a supuração mal suturada de uma doença de amor, homoerotico, cuja etiologia é uma incapacidade de des-sublimação. Pessoa, o ‘virgem negra’, sofre da incapacidade de habitar o corpo, de o encarnar.] / Further reading: Eugénio de Andrade elaborated this idea, earlier in 1985. See: “Encontro com Fernando Pessoa”, in Revista PERSONA 11/12, Porto, Publicação do Centro de Estudos Pessoanos, pp.3-5. ! 176![Fernando Pessoa é o poeta vivo que me importa mais.] 177 [Provavelmente nenhum outro poeta, além de Pessoa, esteve, no século XX português, tão “gravemente atento à importância misteriosa de existir” como Ruy Belo.] ! ! 116 BIBLIOGRAPHY Works Cited: BOOKS by Fernando Pessoa: Pessoa, Fernando (1944) Cartas de Fernando Pessoa a Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues, Lisboa, Confluência [3ª ed. Lisboa, Livros Horizonte, 1985]. ___. (1946) Poemas de Alberto Caeiro (Nota explicativa e notas de João Gaspar Simões e Luiz de Montalvor), Lisboa, Ática [10ª ed. 1993]. ___. (1957) Cartas de Fernando Pessoa a João Gaspar Simões (Introdução, apêndice e notas do destinatário), Lisboa, Europa-América [2ª ed. Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional - Casa da Moeda, 1982]. ___. (1959) Da Poesia Portuguesa (Conferência proferida em 12 de Dezembro 1946 no Ateneu Comercial do Porto), Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1966) Páginas de Estética e de Teoria Literárias (Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho), Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1966A) Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação (Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho), Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1968) Textos Filosóficos (Estabelecidos e prefaciados por António de Pina Coelho), 2 vols., Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1971) Fernando Pessoa, Selected Poems (Translated and Introduction by Peter Rickard), Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ___. (1973) Novas Poesias Inéditas, Lisboa, Ática [4ª ed. 1993]. ___. (1974) Obra em prosa, Rio de Janeiro, José Aguilar. ___. (1979) Sobre Portugal: Introdução ao Problema Nacional, Sebastianismo e Quinto Império (Recolha de textos de Maria Isabel Rocheta e Maria Paula Morão, Introdução organizada por Joel Serrão), Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1980) Textos de Crítica e de Intervenção, Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1984) Orpheu, nº 3 (Preparação do texto, introdução e cronologia de Arnaldo Saraiva), Lisboa, Ática [1ª publ. 1916]. ___. (1985) Cartas de Fernando Pessoa a Armando Côrtes-Rodrigues (Introdução de Joel Serrão), Lisboa, Confluência [3ª ed. Lisboa, Livros Horizonte, 1944]. ___. (1986) Obra Poética e em Prosa (Organização, introduções e notas de António Quadros) 3 vols., Porto, Lello & Irmão. ___. (1986A) Escritos Íntimos, Cartas e Páginas Autobiográficas (Introdução, organização e notas de António Quadros), Lisboa, Europa-América [1ª publ. in Presença , nº 49. Coimbra, 1937]. ___. (1986B) Melhores Poemas de Fernando Pessoa (Edição de Teresa Rita Lopes), São Paulo, Global Editora [4a ed. 2014]. ___. (1990) Pessoa por Conhecer II - Textos para um Novo Mapa (Edição de Teresa Rita Lopes), Lisboa, Estampa. ! 117 ___. (1992) Poemas de Álvaro de Campos, Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, Série Menor (Edição de Cleonice Berardinelli), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (1993) Livro de Versos, Fernando Pessoa (Introdução, transcrição, organização e notas de Teresa Rita Lopes), Lisboa, Estampa. ___. (1993A) Pessoa Inédito (Orientação Teresa Rita Lopes), Lisboa, Livros Horizonte. ___. (1994) Poemas de Ricardo Reis, Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, Série Maior, vol. III. (Edição de Luiz Fagundes Duarte), Lisboa, Imprensa NacionalCasa da Moeda. ___. (1995) Poesia Inglesa (Organização e tradução de Luísa Freire, Prefácio de Teresa Rita Lopes), Lisboa, Livros Horizonte. ___. (1996) Páginas de Estética e de Teoria e Crítica Literárias (Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho), Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1996A) Páginas Íntimas e de Auto-Interpretação (Textos estabelecidos e prefaciados por Georg Rudolf Lind e Jacinto do Prado Coelho), Lisboa, Ática. ___. (1997) Álvaro de Campos – Livros de Versos (Introdução, transcrição, organização e notas de Teresa Rita Lopes), Lisboa, Editorial Estampa Lda. ___. (1998) Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems (Translated and edited by Richard Zenith), New York, Grove Press. ___. (1999) Correspondência 1905-1922 (Edição de Manuela Parreira da Silva), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (1999A) Correspondência 1923-1935 (Edição de Manuela Parreira da Silva), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (1999B) Crítica, Ensaios, Artigos e Entrevistas (Edição de Fernando Cabral Martins), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2000) Heróstrato e a Busca da Imortalidade (Edição de Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2000A) Poesia Inglesa - I (Organização e tradução de Luísa Freire), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2001) Selected prose of Fernando Pessoa (Translated and edited by Richard Zenith), New York, Grove Press. ___. (2002) The Book of Disquiet (Translated by Richard Zentih), New York, Penguin Classics. ___. (2003) Escritos Autobiográficos, Automáticos e de Reflexão Pessoal (Edição e Posfácio de Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2003A) Prosa de Ricardo Reis (Edição de Manuela Parreira da Silva), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2004) Poemas de Fernando Pessoa 1931-1933, Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, Série Maior, vol. I, Tomo IV (Edição de Ivo Castro), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (2005) Poemas de Fernando Pessoa 1915-1920, Edição Crítica de Fernando Pessoa, Série Maior, vol. I, Tomo II (Edição de João Dionísio), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (2006) A Little Larger Than Entire Universe: Selected Poems of Fernando Pessoa (Translated and edited by Richard Zenith), USA; UK, Penguin. ! 118 ___. (2006A) Prosa Publicada em Vida, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #3 (Edição Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2006B) Escritos Sobre Génio e Loucura, Edição Crítica, Vol.VII - Tomos I e II (Edição Jerónimo Pizarro), Lisbon, lmprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (2006C) Poesia do Eu, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #2 (Edição Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim [2a ed. 2008]. ___. (2007) Prosa Íntima e de Autoconhecimento, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #5 (Edição Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2007A) Poesia dos Outros Eus, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #4 (Edição Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim [2a ed. 2010]. ___. (2007B) Poesia Inglesa, Obra Essencial de Fernando Pessoa #6 (Edição Richard Zenith, tradução Luísa Freire), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2007C) The Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro (Translated by Chris Daniels), Shearsman Books. ___. (2008) Forever Someone Else; Selected Poems (Translated and edited by Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. [3rd ed. 2013] ___. (2009) Sensacionismo e Outros Ismos, Edição Crítica, Série Maior, Vol. X (Edição Jerónimo Pizarro), Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. ___. (2010) Poesia Completa de Ricardo Reis, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras. ___. (2012) Teoria da Heteronímia (Edição Fernando Cabral Martins e Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2013) O Livro do Desassossego (Edição de Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. ___. (2014) The Transformation Book or Book of Tasks (Edition, Notes and Introduction by Nuno Ribeiro and Cláudia Souza), New York, Contra Mundum Press. ___. (2015) Sobre Orpheu e o Sensacionismo (Edição Fernando Cabral Martins e Richard Zenith), Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. BOOKS about Fernando Pessoa & Others: Andresen, Sophia de Mello Breyner (2012) Os Poemas sobre Pessoa (Antologia organizada por Maria Andresen de Sousa Tavares), Alfragide, Editorial Caminho. Badiou, Alain (2005) Handbook of Inaesthetics (Translated by Alberto Toscano), Stanford, Stanford University Press. Beckett, Samuel (1983) Worstward Ho, Beckett Short No. 4, London, John Calder. Belo, Ruy (2004) Todos Os Poemas, Vol. I, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. Bhabha, Homi (1994) The Location of Culture, Routledge [2nd ed 2004]. Bloom, Harold (1980) Poetry and Repression: Revisionism from Blake to Stevens, Yale University Press. Bréchon, Robert (1996) Estranho Estrangeiro, Lisboa, Quetzal. ! 119 Castro, Ivo (1990) Editar Pessoa, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda. Castro, Mariana Gray de (2013) Fernando Pessoa's Modernity without Frontiers: Influences, Dialogues, Responses (Edited by Mariana Gray de Castro), Woodbridge, Tamesis. Classe, Olive (2000) Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English (Edited by Olive Classe) 2 vols, London and Chicago, Fitzroy Dearborn. Coelho, Jacinto do Prado (1969) Diversidade e Unidade em Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa/São Paulo, Editorial Verbo. ___. (1979) Dicionário de Literatura Portuguesa: in Modernismo, 3ª ed, 2.º vol., Porto, Figueirinhas. Crespo, Ángel (1984) Estudios sobre Pessoa, Barcelona, Bruguera. De Man, Paul (1993) Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism, Baltimore [1996]. Dix, Steffen / Pizarro, Jerónimo (2011) Portuguese Modernisms: Multiple Perspectives on Literature and the Visual Arts (Edited by Steffen Dix and Jerónimo Pizarro), Oxford, Legenda. Eiras, Pedro (2015) Platão no Rolls-Royce: Ensaio sobre Literatura e Técnica, Porto, Afrontamento. Eliot, T.S. (1957) On Poetry and Poets, London, Faber and Faber Limited [1979]. ___. (1999) Selected Essays, London, Faber and Faber Limited. ___. (2010) The Waste Land and other poems (Edited by Joseph Black), Peterborough, Broadview Press. Elkind, David (1975) Encountering Erving Goffman, Human Behavior. Feijó, António M. (2015) Uma Admiração Pastoril pelo Diabo, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda. Foucault, Michel (2013) Speech Begins After Death: In Conversation with Claude Bonnefoy (Edited by Philippe Artières, Translated by Robert Bononno), Minnesota, University of Minnesota. Gil, José (2010) A Arte como Linguagem: A «Última Lição», Lisboa, Relógio d'Água. Gombrowicz, Witold (1973) A Kind of Testament (Translated by Alastair Hamilton), London, Dalkey Archive Press [2007]. Júdice, Nuno (1986) A Era do Orpheu, Lisboa, Editorial Teorema. Kotowicz, Zbigniew (1996) Voices of a nomadic soul, Shearsman Books [2nd ed. 2008]. Lind, Georg Rudolf (1970) Teoria Poética de Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Inova. Lourenço, Eduardo (1974) Tempo e Poesia:“Orpheu” ou a Poesia Como Realidade, Porto, Editorial Inova. Mallarmé, Stéphane (1988) Selected Letters of Stéphane Mallarmé (Eidted and translated by Rosemary Lloyd), Chicago, University of Chicago Press. ___. (1995) Correspondance Complète, 1862-1871, suivi de Lettres sur la Poésie 1872-1898 (Ed. Bertrand Marchal), Paris, Gallimard/Folio. Martins, Fernando Cabral (2008) Dicionário de Fernando Pessoa e do Modernismo Português, Lisboa, Editorial Caminho. ! 120 ___. (2014) Introdução ao Estudo de Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa, Assírio & Alvim. Matthiessen, F. O. (1947) The Achievement of T. S. Eliot: An Essay on the Nature of Poetry, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Monteiro, George (1981) The Man Who Never Was: Essays on Fernando Pessoa, Providence, R.I., Gavea-Brown. ___. (2000) Fernando Pessoa and Nineteenth-century Anglo-American Literature, Kentucky, University Press of Kentucky. Nicholls, Peter (1995) Modernisms: A Literary Guide, California, University of California Press. Patrício, Rita (2012) Episódios: Da Teorização Estética em Fernando Pessoa, V. N. Famalicão, Húmus. Pizarro, Jerónimo (2012) Pessoa Existe? (Coleção: Ensaistica Pessoana), Lisboa, Ática. Sá-Carneiro, Mário de (1996) Poemas Completos (Edição Fernando Cabral Martins), Assírio & Alvim [2001]. Sacramento, Mário (2011) Fernando Pessoa: Poeta da Hora Absurda, USA, Nabu Press. Sadlier, Darlene Joy (1998) An Introduction to Fernando Pessoa: Modernism and the Paradoxes of Authorship, Gainvesville, University Press of Florida. Santos, Maria Irene Ramalho (2003) Atlantic Poets: Fernando Pessoa's Turn in Anglo-American Modernism, NH, Dartmouth College, UPNE. ___. (2007) Poetas do Atlântico: Fernando Pessoa e o Modernismo Anglo-Americano, Porto, Edições Afrontamento. Seabra, José Augusto (1993) Fernando Pessoa Ou o Poetodrama, Lisboa, Perspectiva. Silva, Agostinho da (2006) Agostinho da Silva: Ele Próprio, Corroios, Zéfiro. Simões, João Gaspar (1950) Vida e Obra de Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa, Livraria Bertrand [1971]. Stevens, Wallace (1997) Collected Poetry and Prose (Edited by Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson), New York, Library of America. Terlinden-Villepin, Anne (1990) Fernando Pessoa: The Bilingual Portuguese Poet, Brussels, Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis. Unger, Leonard (1961) T.S. Eliot: Moments and Pattern. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota press. [1966]. Verde, Cesário (2006) Cânticos do Realismo e Outros Poemas – 32 Cartas (Edição Teresa Sobral Cunha), Lisboa, Relógio D’Água. Vieira, Joaquim / Zenith, Richard (2008) Fotobiografias de Século XX - Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores. ___. (2011) Fotobiografia de Fernando Pessoa, São Paulo, Companhia das Letras. Waugh, Patricia (2006) Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Wilde, Oscar (1991) Plays, Prose, Writings and Poems, New York, Everyman’s Library. ! 121 Zenith, Richard (2014) “Introduction”, in 28 Portuguese Poets: A Bilingual Anthology (Translated by Richard Zenith and Alexis Levitin), Dublin, Dedalus Press. ARTICLES, THESES & JOURNALS: Almeida, Onésimo T. (2008) “Fernando Pessoa and Antero de Quental (with Shakespeare in between)”, in Portuguese Studies, Pessoa: The Future of the Arcas, Vol. 24, No. 2, Maney Publishing. Barbosa, Míriam Bastos (2010) “O Discurso Ortonímico na Heterogeneidade de Fernando Pessoa”, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Alegre (Preparada pela Biblioteca do CCH / UENF). Bréchon, Robert (2005) “Un Demi-Siecle De Traductions Françaises de Pessoa”, in Revista Lusófona de Línguas, Culturas e Tradução, URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10437/418. Carmo, José Palla e (1977) “Uma Trindade, Ezra, Eliot, Pessoa”, in Revista Colóquio / Letras. Ensaio, No. 95, Jan., p. 29. Castro, Mariana Gray de (2014) “Pessoa, Coleridge, Homens de Porlock e Dias Triunfais: Sobre Génio, Inspiração, Interrupção e Criação Poética” in Revista Estranhar Pessoa, Editorial Pedro Sepúlveda e Jorge Uribe, No. 1, Out. Coelho, Jacinto do Prado (1972) “Fragmentos Inéditos de Fernando Pessoa” in Colóquio-Letras, No. 8, Julho, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. http://coloquio.gulbenkian.pt/bib/sirius.exe/issueContentDisplay?n=8&p=49&o=r Cruz, Gastão (2008) “Ruy Belo e A Importância Misteriosa de Existir”, in Revista de Filología Románica, Vol. 25, pp. 47-53. Dix, Steffen / Pizarro, Jerónimo (2008) Introduction, in Portuguese Studies, Pessoa: The Future of the Arcas, Vol. 24, No. 2, Maney Publishing. Howes, R.W (1983) “Fernando Pessoa, Poet, Publisher and Translator”, in British Library Journal, 9, 2, Autumn 1983, pp. 161-70. Lokensgard, Mark A. (1999) “Crabbedness and the Backwards Advance to Portugal: Hyphenation in and the Poetic Impulse of Fernando Pessoa's 35 Sonnets, in Portuguese Studies, Vol. 15. Lourenço, Eduardo (1991) “Fernando Pessoa or The Absolute Foreigner”, translated by David Alan Prescott, in The Journal of Literary Translation, Vol. XXV, New York, Spring. McHale, Brian (2009) “Beginning to Think about Narrative in Poetry”, in Narrative, The Ohio State University, Vol. 17, No. 1, January 2009, pp. 11-27 Mendes, Victor J. (1999) “Introduction”, in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies 3 Fall, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Picchio, Luciana-Stegagno (1968) “Filologia vs Poesia? Eu defendo o 'Dia Triunfal'”, in Encontro Internacional do Centenário de Fernando Pessoa, Lisboa, Secretaria de Estado da Cultura [1990], pp.63. Sena, Jorge de (1946) “Sobre um artigo esquecido de Fernando Pessoa” (Ensaio parcialmente integrado no Prefácio e numa Nota in Fernando Pessoa Páginas de doutrina estética), in Revista Mundo Literário, pp. 7-8.