Self-analysis and thirty other Poems

Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon in 1888. Blessed (and burdened) with a family name that means both person and persona, the child who became Portugal’s greatest poet since Camões [and one of the greatest poets of the 20th century], took to addressing letters to himself that he attributed to an imaginary companion he recognized as “Le Chevalier de Pas.” Pessoa’s true life was the interior life of the poet and thinker. What happened to him in the streets of Lisbon, in the cafés, in the firms he served as correspondent or as the quondam lover of a young typist named Ophelia — all this pales before the reality of his interior life, lived in a far and distant land, the bulletins from which are his essays, stories and, above all, poems. In fact, so richly complex was that life that no single one of his many identities — and certainly not the one he called Fernando Pessoa himself (ele mesmo) — could glean his teeming brain. It took the whole complement of his heteronyms, especially Caeiro, Reis and Campos [all poets in their own right, with their own biographies and styles], to enact that drama-within-persons (drama em gente) that he called his life’s work. This edition includes poems by all three of his major heteronyms, as well as by Fernando Pessoa himself — four poets who wrote some of the undeniably salient poetry of our time. (Based on the Introduction by George Monteiro) The present collection is what one may call a “Pessoa for beginners” primer. It can serve as an introduction to readers who have heard of Pessoa’s poetry but do not exactly know where to start reading him, given his prodigious output. Onésimo Teotónio Almeida, Brown University