Fernando Pessoa and the Theatre of His Self

FernandoPessoa and the Theatre of His Self Richard Zenith NOT WIDELY KNOWN IN HIS own country and scarcely at all outside it at the time of his death in 1935, Fernando Pessoa (born 1888) is now generally regarded as Portugal's most original poet since Luis de Camies and one of the most original poets of any land writing in the twentieth century. This phenomenal increase in stature is related more or less directly to the increasing availability of the 25,000 + manuscript sheets left by Pessoa in a large trunk and housed today at the National Library in Lisbon. Pessoa was rapidly appreciated by the Portuguese-speaking world as much of his most important poetry saw print in the 1940s, and in the last decade or so he has become a literary byword across continental Europe, with both his poetry and prose being translated on a grand scale. His work has caught on more slowly in the English-speaking world, which is ironic when we consider that Pessoa, who spent much of his childhood in South Africa, wrote all of his early poems, a number of later poems, and most of his personal notations in English. Even his final recorded words, written the day before his death, were in English: "I know not what tomorrow will bring." A sizable portion of Pessoa's writings have yet to be published in the original, let alone in translation. Besides poetry, fiction and drama, Pessoa's legacy consists of philosophy, social and literary criticism, translations, linguistic theory, horoscopes and assorted other texts, variously typed, handwritten or illegibly scrawled in Portuguese, English and French. He wrote in notebooks, on loose sheets, on the backs of letters, advertisements and handbills, on stationery from the firms he worked at and from the 47 caf6s he frequented, on envelopes, on paper scraps, and in between the lines of his own prior texts. The Pessoa archives are a veritable labyrinth, and so it is not surprising that new and important texts are constantly turning up. The fragmentary state of the archives is emblematic of the author's literary project of depersonalization. "Be plural like the universe!" wrote Pessoa with a flourish on a scrap of paper left in his famous trunk of manuscripts, and he set the example, multiplying himself into three major "heteronyms" -Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Camposalong with dozens of lesser "dramatis personae" who wrote poetry, stories, essays and criticism, very often about each other. Teresa Rita Lopes, one of Portugal's most knowledgeable and astute Pessoa scholars, convincingly argues that the universe of Pessoa was a vast and ongoing theatre of himself, and she cites the protean poet's own words as evidence. He wrote, for example, that the heteronyms "should be considered as distinct from their author. Each one forms a drama of sorts; and together they form another drama.... The works of these three poets constitute a dramatic ensemble, with careful attention having been paid to their intellectual and personal interaction. . . . It is a drama in people, instead of in acts." The heteronyms were "born" in 1914 (they were given retroactive birth dates: 1889, 1887 and 1890, repsectively) and each was endowed with an individuated biography, psychology, politics, religion, and physique. Alberto Caeiro, considered the Master by the other two, was an ingenuous, unlettered man who lived in the country and had no profession. Ricardo Reis was a doctor and classicist who wrote odes in the style of Horace. Alvaro de Campos, a naval engineer, started out as an exuberant futurist with a Whitmanesque voice, but over time he came to sound more like a brooding existentialist. The pithiest description and distinction of the heteronyms was made by Pessoa in a text he wrote in English: "Caeiro has one discipline: things must be felt as they are. Ricardo Reis has another kind of discipline: things must be felt, not only as they are, but also so as to fall in with a certain ideal of classic measure and rule. In Alvaro de Campos things must simply be felt." Much of Pessoa's best verse was attributed to the heteronyms, but the majority of his poetry, including nearly his entire...