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  • just mercedes
    Feb 21 1:25 PM
    Reply
    Autopsychography

    by Fernando Pessoa (himself)


    The poet is a faker
    Who’s so good at his act
    He even fakes the pain
    Of pain he feels in fact.

    And those who read his words
    Will feel in what he wrote
    Neither of the pains he has
    But just the one they don’t.

    And so around its track
    This thing called the heart winds,
    A little clockwork train
    To entertain our minds.


    The poet who was others. Fascinating person.


    When Pessoa died in 1935, he left behind a steamer trunk brimful of manuscripts — 27,543, to be exact, written by some 86 different poets, male, female, young, old. Some of his heteronyms inspired others, wrote criticism of others; a few preceded Pessoa in death, and then, occasionally, some new poems would be found posthumously; the heteronyms founded many schools of poetry; they traveled the world, with many adventures, homosexual, polysexual; they wrote scholarly theses; they had lives and loves. The papers in the trunk are studied like an archaeological dig.

    A new book of Pessoa translations, with brilliant introductions to the book and each heteronym by Richard Zenith, was published in 1998: Fernando Pessoa & Co. (Grove Press). Fernando Pessoa was the true poet performer. He never left his room. He created word worlds.

  • cvillelisa
    February 21 ↑
    Reply


    This is why I love a board like this ... there is so much to learn and sharing these doors is so great.

    I didn't know Mr. Bloom considered Mr. Pessoa one of the greatest representations of 20th century poetry

    Imagine 27543 manuscripts. Wow. Thanks JM -- a new adventure for me.



  • just mercedes
    February 21 ↑
    Reply
    An exercise in the last workshop was to read poems by Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos and Fernando Pessoa, and try to attribute them, by the biographies of the poets, to the poet who wrote them.

    It wasn't until after struggling with this, and eventually coming to a concensus of opinion, that we learned that they were all, in fact, one man!

    I've been reading more of him. Fascinating character, I think.
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