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On June 13, 1888, Fernando Pessoa, Portuguese poet and writer (The Book of Disquiet), was born in Lisbon, Kingdom of Portugal (d. 1935). From the article:
"Poet Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa was born in Lisbon, Portugal. His father died when Pessoa was five years old, and the family moved with his mother’s new husband, a consul, to Durban, South Africa, where Pessoa attended an English school. At thirteen Pessoa returned to Portugal for a year-long visit, and returned there permanently in 1905. He studied briefly at the University of Lisbon, and began to publish criticism, prose, and poetry soon thereafter while working as a commercial translator.
During his life, most of Pessoa’s considerable creative output appeared only in journals, and he published just three collections of poetry in English—Antinous (1918), Sonnets (1918), and English Poems (1921)—and one collection in Portuguese, Mensagem (1933).
In 1914, the year his first poem was published, Pessoa found the three main literary personas, or heteronyms, as he called them, which he would return to throughout his career: Alberto Caeiro, a rural, uneducated poet of great ideas who wrote in free verse; Ricardo Reis, a physician who composed formal odes influenced by Horace; and Álvaro de Campos, an adventurous London-based naval engineer influenced by poet Walt Whitman and the Italian Futurists. Pessoa published under his own name as well, but considered that work the product of an “orthonym,” another literary persona. While other notable writers of his generation used literary personas, such as Pound’s Mauberley and Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge, Pessoa alone gave his heteronyms a full life separate from his own, assigning and adopting in turn each persona’s psychology, aesthetics, and politics. Pessoa’s insistence on identity as a flexible, dynamic construction, and his consequent rejection of traditional notions of authorship and individuality, anticipated the concerns of the post-Modernist movement.
Later in life, Pessoa created the “semi-heteronym” Bernardo Soares, whose expansive, unbound fictional journal written over a period of 20 years (and assembled with little guidance after Pessoa’s death) became The Book of Disquietude, as well as philosopher and sociologist António Mora, essayist Baron of Teive, critic and Caeiro scholar Thomas Crosse and his brother/collaborator I.I. Crosse, poet Coelho Pacheco, astrologer Raphael Baldaya, and many others, for a total of at least 72 heteronyms.
Pessoa died in Lisbon in 1935 of cirrhosis of the liver, and only after his death did his work gain widespread publication and acclaim. In The Western Canon, critic Harold Bloom included Pessoa as one of just 26 writers responsible for establishing the parameters of western literature."
"Poet Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa was born in Lisbon, Portugal. His father died when Pessoa was five years old, and the family moved with his mother’s new husband, a consul, to Durban, South Africa, where Pessoa attended an English school. At thirteen Pessoa returned to Portugal for a year-long visit, and returned there permanently in 1905. He studied briefly at the University of Lisbon, and began to publish criticism, prose, and poetry soon thereafter while working as a commercial translator.
During his life, most of Pessoa’s considerable creative output appeared only in journals, and he published just three collections of poetry in English—Antinous (1918), Sonnets (1918), and English Poems (1921)—and one collection in Portuguese, Mensagem (1933).
In 1914, the year his first poem was published, Pessoa found the three main literary personas, or heteronyms, as he called them, which he would return to throughout his career: Alberto Caeiro, a rural, uneducated poet of great ideas who wrote in free verse; Ricardo Reis, a physician who composed formal odes influenced by Horace; and Álvaro de Campos, an adventurous London-based naval engineer influenced by poet Walt Whitman and the Italian Futurists. Pessoa published under his own name as well, but considered that work the product of an “orthonym,” another literary persona. While other notable writers of his generation used literary personas, such as Pound’s Mauberley and Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge, Pessoa alone gave his heteronyms a full life separate from his own, assigning and adopting in turn each persona’s psychology, aesthetics, and politics. Pessoa’s insistence on identity as a flexible, dynamic construction, and his consequent rejection of traditional notions of authorship and individuality, anticipated the concerns of the post-Modernist movement.
Later in life, Pessoa created the “semi-heteronym” Bernardo Soares, whose expansive, unbound fictional journal written over a period of 20 years (and assembled with little guidance after Pessoa’s death) became The Book of Disquietude, as well as philosopher and sociologist António Mora, essayist Baron of Teive, critic and Caeiro scholar Thomas Crosse and his brother/collaborator I.I. Crosse, poet Coelho Pacheco, astrologer Raphael Baldaya, and many others, for a total of at least 72 heteronyms.
Pessoa died in Lisbon in 1935 of cirrhosis of the liver, and only after his death did his work gain widespread publication and acclaim. In The Western Canon, critic Harold Bloom included Pessoa as one of just 26 writers responsible for establishing the parameters of western literature."
Fernando Pessoa
Posted from poetryfoundation.org
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Fernando Pessoa: An Englishly Portuguese, Endlessly Multiple Poet
Richard Zenith presented a lecture on Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal's most important literary figures of the 20th century and a towering figure in moderni...
Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that June 13 is the anniversary of the birth of Portuguese poet and writer Fernando António Nogueira Pêssoa
Fernando Pessoa: An Englishly Portuguese, Endlessly Multiple Poet
Richard Zenith presented a lecture on Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal's most important literary figures of the 20th century and a towering figure in modernism.
Speaker Biography: Richard Zenith noted literary critic and translator of Portuguese literature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r788Xw6xU0U
Background from poets.org/poet/fernando-pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
1888–1935
On June 13, 1888, Fernando António Nogueira Pessôa was born in Lisbon, Portugal. When he was scarcely five years old, his father died. His mother remarried a year and a half later to the Portuguese consul in Durban, South Africa. Pessoa attended an English school in Durban, where he lived with his family until the age of seventeen. When he was thirteen he made a year-long visit to Portugal, returning there for good in 1905. He began studying at the University of Lisbon in 1906 but dropped out after only eight months. During the following years he stayed with relatives or in rented rooms, making his living by translating, writing in avant-garde reviews, and drafting business letters in English and French. He began publishing criticism in 1912, creative prose in 1913, and poetry in 1914. This was also the year when the alter egos he called heteronymsAlberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Camposcame into existence. In 1915 he dropped the circumflex from his surname.
The majority of Pessoa's poems, heteronymic or otherwise, appeared in literary journals and magazines. He published his first book of English poems, Antinous in 1918, followed by Sonnets (1918) and English Poems (1921), but released only a single book of Portuguese poems, Mensagem, in 1933. He died November 30, 1935, in Lisbon from cirrhosis of the liver. Pessoa avoided the literary world and most social contact; it wasn't until years after his death that his work garnered a wide readership.
Literary alter egos were popular among early twentieth-century writers: Pound had Mauberley, Rilke had Malte Laurids Brigge, and Valéry had Monsieur Teste. But no one took their alter ego as far as Pessoa, who gave up his own life to confer quasi-real substance on the poets he designated at heteronyms, giving each a personal biography, psychology, politics, aesthetics, religion, and physique. Alberto Caeiro was an ingenuous, unlettered, unemployed man of the country. Ricardo Reis was a doctor and classicist who wrote Horace-like odes. Álvaro de Campos, a naval engineer, was a bisexual dandy who studied in Glasgow, traveled to the Orient, and lived outrageously in London. In an English text, Pessoa wrote, "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 Álvaro de Campos things must simply be felt." In later years, Pessoa also gave birth to Bernardo Soares, a "semiheteronym" who authored the sprawling fictional diary known as The Book of Disquietude; António Mora, a prolific philosopher and sociologist; the Baron of Teive, an essayist; Thomas Crosse, whose critical writings in English promoted Portuguese literature in general and Alberto Caeiro's work in particular; I. I. Crosse, Thomas's brother and collaborator; Coelho Pacheco, poet; Raphael Baldaya, astrologer; Maria José, a nineteen-year-old hunchback consumptive who wrote a desperate, unmailed love letter to a handsome metalworker who passed under her window on his way to work each day; and so on.
At least seventy-two names besides Fernando Pessoa were "responsible" for the thousands of texts that were actually written and the many more that he only planned. Although Pessoa also published some works pseudonymically, he distinguished this from the "heteronymic" project: "A pseudonymic work is, except for the name with which it is signed, the work of an author writing as himself; a heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by him, just as the utterances of some character in a drama would be."
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Antinous (1918)
Sonnets (1918)
English Poems (1921)
Mensagem (1933)
Poesias de Fernando Pessoa (1942)
Poesias de Álvaro de Campos (1944)
Odes de Ricardo Reis (1946)
Poemas dramáticos (1952)
Poemas inéditas: 1919-1930 (1956)
O manuscrito de O Guardador de Rebanhos de Alberto Caeiro (1986)
Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems (1998)
Poems of Fernando Pessoa (1998)
Prose
Cartos de amor de Fernando Pessoa (1978)
Livro do dessassogego por Bernardo Soares (1982)
Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)"
FYI LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SFC William Farrell SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSgt Brian Brakke 1stSgt Eugene Harless SSG William Jones SSG Diane R.
Fernando Pessoa: An Englishly Portuguese, Endlessly Multiple Poet
Richard Zenith presented a lecture on Fernando Pessoa, one of Portugal's most important literary figures of the 20th century and a towering figure in modernism.
Speaker Biography: Richard Zenith noted literary critic and translator of Portuguese literature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r788Xw6xU0U
Background from poets.org/poet/fernando-pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
1888–1935
On June 13, 1888, Fernando António Nogueira Pessôa was born in Lisbon, Portugal. When he was scarcely five years old, his father died. His mother remarried a year and a half later to the Portuguese consul in Durban, South Africa. Pessoa attended an English school in Durban, where he lived with his family until the age of seventeen. When he was thirteen he made a year-long visit to Portugal, returning there for good in 1905. He began studying at the University of Lisbon in 1906 but dropped out after only eight months. During the following years he stayed with relatives or in rented rooms, making his living by translating, writing in avant-garde reviews, and drafting business letters in English and French. He began publishing criticism in 1912, creative prose in 1913, and poetry in 1914. This was also the year when the alter egos he called heteronymsAlberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Camposcame into existence. In 1915 he dropped the circumflex from his surname.
The majority of Pessoa's poems, heteronymic or otherwise, appeared in literary journals and magazines. He published his first book of English poems, Antinous in 1918, followed by Sonnets (1918) and English Poems (1921), but released only a single book of Portuguese poems, Mensagem, in 1933. He died November 30, 1935, in Lisbon from cirrhosis of the liver. Pessoa avoided the literary world and most social contact; it wasn't until years after his death that his work garnered a wide readership.
Literary alter egos were popular among early twentieth-century writers: Pound had Mauberley, Rilke had Malte Laurids Brigge, and Valéry had Monsieur Teste. But no one took their alter ego as far as Pessoa, who gave up his own life to confer quasi-real substance on the poets he designated at heteronyms, giving each a personal biography, psychology, politics, aesthetics, religion, and physique. Alberto Caeiro was an ingenuous, unlettered, unemployed man of the country. Ricardo Reis was a doctor and classicist who wrote Horace-like odes. Álvaro de Campos, a naval engineer, was a bisexual dandy who studied in Glasgow, traveled to the Orient, and lived outrageously in London. In an English text, Pessoa wrote, "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 Álvaro de Campos things must simply be felt." In later years, Pessoa also gave birth to Bernardo Soares, a "semiheteronym" who authored the sprawling fictional diary known as The Book of Disquietude; António Mora, a prolific philosopher and sociologist; the Baron of Teive, an essayist; Thomas Crosse, whose critical writings in English promoted Portuguese literature in general and Alberto Caeiro's work in particular; I. I. Crosse, Thomas's brother and collaborator; Coelho Pacheco, poet; Raphael Baldaya, astrologer; Maria José, a nineteen-year-old hunchback consumptive who wrote a desperate, unmailed love letter to a handsome metalworker who passed under her window on his way to work each day; and so on.
At least seventy-two names besides Fernando Pessoa were "responsible" for the thousands of texts that were actually written and the many more that he only planned. Although Pessoa also published some works pseudonymically, he distinguished this from the "heteronymic" project: "A pseudonymic work is, except for the name with which it is signed, the work of an author writing as himself; a heteronymic work is by an author writing outside his own personality: it is the work of a complete individuality made up by him, just as the utterances of some character in a drama would be."
Selected Bibliography
Poetry
Antinous (1918)
Sonnets (1918)
English Poems (1921)
Mensagem (1933)
Poesias de Fernando Pessoa (1942)
Poesias de Álvaro de Campos (1944)
Odes de Ricardo Reis (1946)
Poemas dramáticos (1952)
Poemas inéditas: 1919-1930 (1956)
O manuscrito de O Guardador de Rebanhos de Alberto Caeiro (1986)
Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems (1998)
Poems of Fernando Pessoa (1998)
Prose
Cartos de amor de Fernando Pessoa (1978)
Livro do dessassogego por Bernardo Soares (1982)
Always Astonished: Selected Prose (1988)"
FYI LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SFC William Farrell SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSgt Brian Brakke 1stSgt Eugene Harless SSG William Jones SSG Diane R.
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