Home > Fernando Pessoa

By day, Pessoa made a living as a translator. By night he wrote poetry -- but not just his poetry. He wrote poetry in the voice, style and manner of many fictional poets, referred to as heteronyms. He published under several of these names, and even published, or at least composed, criticism by certain heteronyms against other of his heteronyms. Each was not just a nom de plume, but rather a wholly formed individual with a prescribed birthdate and place, appearance, temperment, literary ideas, and philosophy. Some of the heteronyms hated others. If not for the work, Pessoa might only be considered an astoundingly strange madman. But the work of the individual heteronyms each represent interesting and distinct avenues of thought, technique and artistry. Any one set of poems would at least be a significant minor achievement and have earned Pessoa a place among writers. But as a body, the achievement has earned Pessoa an ever rising position of respect and interest.

Pessoa was born in Lisbon. His father died of tuberculosis when Fernando was still young. His mother then married the Portuguese consul in Durban, South Africa, and the family moved there. Pessoa was taught in English in both Durban and Cape Town, and his first works were written in English, influenced by William Shakespeare and John MiltonJohn Milton ( December 9, 1608— November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost''. His father, John Milton Sr. was a well-off scrivener, and his grandfather a wealthy landowner in Oxfordshire who, hewing to the ol.

Pessoa moved back to Lisbon when he was 17 in order to study at universityA university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. A university provides both tertiary and quaternary education. University is derived from the Latin universitas meaning corporation since the first medieval, but a student strike put an end to his studies and he went to work for a businessman, writing his correspondence. He began translatingTranslation is an activity comprising the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language — the source text — and the production of another, equivalent text in another language — the target text or translation''. Traditionally, translation has alw, and writing for the magazineThis article is about the magazine as a published medium. For other meanings, see magazine (disambiguation A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles on various subjects. some magazines Magazines are typically published weekly Orpheu. His first book of poems, Antinous, was published in English in 1918Events January January 8 President Woodrow Wilson announces his " Fourteen Points" for the aftermath of World War I. February February 3 The Twin Peaks Tunnel begins service in San Francisco as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world (11,920 feet long).. His first work in Portuguese the long patriotic poem, Mensagem (Message), did not appear until 1933Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s Years: 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 See also 1933 in aviation 1933 in film 1933 in literature 1933 in mu.

Much of his work was published in literary magazineA literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense — including the short story, poetry and essay — and also literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews, letters and gossip. From a position at thes, especially his own, Athena. The work which many consider his masterwork, Livro do Desassossego (The Book of Disquiet) was not published until 1982Events January January 6 William Bonin is convicted of being the "freeway killer". January 8 AT&T agrees to divest itself of twenty-two subdivisions January 11 Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, disappears in the Sahara du, almost 50 years after his death. It is what Pessoa called a "factless autobiography", and was published under the name Bernardo Soares , although sometimes under the name Vincente Gomes. It is a collection of manuscripts, supposedly written by Soares, describing the "author"'s life. These manuscripts were left in hundreds of seperate sections without a designated order. Each edition of the book that has been published begins at a different point and proceeds in a different order according to the publishers choice of how to organize the seperate passages. This can be seen as the intent to make explicit the role of the publisher in the formation of a piece of literature, as not all the editions describe how that version has been arrived at, hence one could assume that that was the authorially intended order until seeing a different publishers version of the book. It is the extention of the idea of the author from the ideology of the individual producer to a culturally produced object.

There are four main heteronyms, Ricardo Reis , Álvaro de Campos , Alberto Caeiro , and Fernando Pessoa. The first three heteronyms atest to there being no such man named Fernando Pessoa. The heteronym 'Fernando Pessoa' encourages this notion in his own writing. Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos both describe Alberto Caeiro as their unsurpassable master. Ricardo Reis wrote the introduction to the posthumously collected poems of Alberto Caeiro. Literary critics have sometimes taken the attitude of assimilating the various qualities of these heteronyms to formulate the notion of a singular ideological intent that could be attributed to the author. On the other hand there is the idea of allowing a desired plurality within the ideological institution of the author to exist. This is particularly relevant today, where the notion of the author in both literature and art is being disolved. A parallel can be made to Jorge Luis Borges story "Borges and I" and Michel Foucaults text "What is the Authour".

One can also pair Pessoa with many other writers of his time, which were attemting to have floating subjects which reflected an ambiguous author. James Joyce in Ullyses is working with this idea of the metaconscious author with fragmented reflections of himself layed out in his writing. T.S. Eliot in the Wasteland exhibits the same notion of the shifting or floating voice avoiding the stabilization of the narrator.

The novelty of Pessoa's project has been credited by some for his dramatic rise in popularity in the past twenty years. But others, especially Pen Award Winning translator Richard Zenith, believe that Pessoa's skill and artistry will indeed stand the test of time.

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