Fernando Pessoa

Here is the fourth in a series of volumes by Fernando Pessoa’s celebrated “heteronyms,” a coterie of writers that Pessoa created and conceived as distinct personalities, each with a unique literary style. Ricardo Reis was imagined as a melancholic doctor “with a darkish complexion,” a self-taught Hellenist who exiled himself in Brazil because he was a monarchist. In a 1914 letter to Pessoa, the writer Mário Sá-Carneiro described Reis’s odes as “admirable,” “a marvel of impersonality,” praising the way he “achieved a Horatian, classical novelty.’” Based on the definitive Tinta-da-China edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, this bilingual collection includes an illuminating introduction by Pessoa scholar Jerónimo Pizarro, facsimiles of original manuscripts, and prose excerpts written by Ricardo Reis on art, on life, and on the writings of Pessoa’s other heteronyms. Magnificently translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari, The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis is a must-have collection by one of Pessoa’s most refined heteronyms.

Álvaro de Campos is one of the most influential heteronyms created by Portugal’s great modernist writer Fernando Pessoa. According to Pessoa, Campos was born in Tavira (Algarve) in 1890 and studied mechanical engineering in Glasgow, although he never managed to complete his degree. In his own day, Campos was celebrated—and slandered—for his vociferous poetry imbued with a Whitman-inspired free verse, his praise of the rise of technology, and his polemical views that appeared in manifestos, interviews, and essays. Here in Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari’s translations are the complete poems of Campos. This edition is based on the Portuguese Tinta-da-china edition and includes an illuminating introduction about Campos by the Portuguese editors Jerónimo Pizarro and Antonio Cardiello, facsimiles of original manuscripts, and a generous selection of Campos’s prose texts.

Addendum to The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Patricio Ferrari and Margaret Jull Costa:

https://www.ndbooks.com/book/the-complete-works-of-alvaro-de-campos/notes/

Here, in Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari’s splendid new translations, are the complete poems of Alberto Caeiro, the imaginary master of the “heteronym” coterie created by the Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa. Pessoa conceived Caeiro around 1914 and may have named him loosely after his friend, the poet Mário de Sá-Carneiro. What followed was a collection of some of Fernando Pessoa’s greatest poems, grouped under the titles The Keeper of Sheep, The Shepherd in Love, and Uncollected Poems. This imaginary author was a shepherd who spent most of his life in the countryside, had almost no education, and was ignorant of most literature; yet he (Pessoa) wrote some of the most beautiful and profound poems in Portuguese literature. This edition of The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro is based on the magnificent Portuguese Tinta-da-china critical edition, published in Lisbon in 2016, and contains an illuminating introduction by the editors, Jerónimo Pizarro and Patricio Ferrari, some facsimiles of the original Portuguese texts, and prose excerpts about Caeiro and his work written by Fernando Pessoa as well as his heteronyms Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, and other fictitious authors such as Antonio Mora and I. I. Crosse.

The Book of Disquiet is the Portuguese modernist master Fernando Pessoa’s greatest literary achievement. An “autobiography” or “diary” containing exquisite melancholy observations, aphorisms, and ruminations, this classic work grapples with all the eternal questions. Now, for the first time the texts are presented chronologically, in a complete English edition by master translator Margaret Jull Costa. Most of the texts in The Book of Disquiet are written under the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper. This existential masterpiece was first published in Portuguese in 1982, forty-seven years after Pessoa’s death. A monumental literary event, this exciting, new, complete edition spans Fernando Pessoa’s entire writing life.

I don’t get indignant, because indignation is for the strong; I don’t resign myself, because resignation is for the noble; I don’t keep silent, because silence is for the great. And I am neither strong nor noble nor great. I suffer and I dream. I complain because I am weak and, because I am an artist, I amuse myself by weaving music about my complaints and arranging my dreams as best befits my idea of beautiful dreams.

My only regret is that I am not a child, for that would allow me to believe in my dreams and believe that I am not mad, which would allow me to distance my soul from all those who surround me.

(1913)

Everything interests me and nothing holds my attention. I listen to everthing while constantly dreaming; I notice the tiniest facial tics of the person I’m talking to, pick up minimal changes in the intonation of what they say; but when I hear, I do not listen, for I’m thinking about something else.

(1930)