The Presence of Pessoa: English, American, and Southern African Literary Responses by George Monteiro (review)

picture ... is never as rewarding as the bits and scraps, nooks and crannies, accidents and windfalls ofthe text" (165). In Krell's case, these "nooks and crannies" need not undermine an established larger picture to be significant. On the contrary , coupled with the structural clarity of Krell's argument and his choice of lesser-known texts, Krell's illumination of"dire" forces lurkingwithin the natural philosophies ofGerman Idealism and Romanticism makes his work an interesting and useful contribution to our understanding ofthese thinkers and the period , rfc George Monteiro. The Presence ofPessoa: English, American, and SouthernAfrican Literary Responses. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998. l60p. David Callahan University of Aveiro, Portugal This book attempts to introduce us to a variety ofwritings in English that appear to bear the impress ofPortuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa is a figure who occasions either the strongest admiration or, more usually, the utmost indifference in the English-speaking world, and Monteiro's is one more effort by an enthusiast to suggest ways in which we might become converted — that is, by seeing how compelling or intriguing a range of writers in English have found Pessoa. While Monteiro's enthusiasm and wide-reading carry us with him part of the way, ultimately I feel that the effort falls short. The first problem is the total absence ofthe last thirty years ofliterary criticism in Monteiro's approach, redolent ofthe hit-or-miss impressionistic approach that used to pass for literary criticism. Even if Monteiro is hostile to the tendencies introduced during this period, they need to be faced up to in some form and not simply ignored. Much sophisticated work has been done on intertextuality, translation , cross-cultural reading and responding and the ways in which gaps, echoes, and shadows in texts might be operating, and a work such as this would have profited from attention to them. The second problem is the severely reduced size ofà\e book, which seriously hampers Monteiro's exertions. In only 105 pages of text he tries to introduce Pessoa, who through his multiple heteronyms is a world ofpoets all by himself, and then show how the following figures have mediated him in their work: Roy Campbell, Edouard Roditi and Thomas Merton, Edwin Honig, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg,JoyceCarol Oates,Charles Eglington, Michael Hamburger , John Wain, Andrew Harvey, and Dennis Silk. Inevitably these writers are SPRING 2000 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * 117 treated in reduced and summary fashion, in which assertion and lengthy quotation serve instead ofanalysis and argument. As sketches ofthe writers dealt with in terms ofthose aspects related to one or more ofPessoa's heteronyms, they are illuminating in an introductoryway, but no more. Anyone familiar with the work ofanyofthesewriterswill find little ofinterest in almost every case. In this breathless rush through, perhaps the chapter that handles Ferlinghetti's debt to Pessoa's O banqueiro anarquista is more focused and absorbing than the others. Take one example, that ofSouth African poet Roy Campbell. Because appreciation ofPessoa isanabsolute good in Monteiro's view, anyslightingofCampbell by critical tradition is in some way an assault on Pessoa and needs to be rebuffed. Monteiro's assertion that there was some sort of unfair "holding Campbell . . . closely accountable for his politics, offering caricature and general accusation rather than analysis or aesthetic evaluation" (20) is nothing less than breathtakingly dismissive ofthe fact that Campbell traded in the most vituperative caricature and general accusation himself, and moreover that he was not simply any right-wing poet but the poet who breezily wrote in 1 939 that Lorcas death had been necessary! Nonetheless, Stephen Spender was to defend him in public, even after having been punched in the face on stage by Campbell, by telling the audience that genius needed to be pardoned such excesses. In Valentine Cunninghams benchmark summary of the period in which Campbell's reputation was largely made, British Writers ofthe Thirties, Campbell is in fact paid extensive attention. He may not be so much the forgotten and slandered figure Monteiro would have us believe. We also read of Campbell's referencing of Camóes's Adamastor, but Monteiro accepts the traditional, conservative reading ofCamôes and his epic as heroic, when in South...