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Fernando Pessoa

Pessoa is a Portuguese word meaning both "person" and "people". Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, Portugal's most famous modernist poet, was born in Lisbon on the 13th June 1888. From the age of six, Fernando Pessoa is known to have began creating fictional, literary alter-egos, such as Chevalier de Pas, who would write letters of encouragment to the young Pessoa. By the time of his death in 1934, Pessoa had given birth to over seventy of these alter-egos, three of which have been individually proclaimed as major twentieth-century poets in their own right.

Whilst the use of pseudonyms had become fashionable amongst Modernist poets of the time, Pessoa went to great lengths to flesh out his imaginary characters. Referring to his creations as heteronyms (heterónimos) he would describe their personalities, physiques, temperaments even creating detailed biographies and horoscopes for his characters.

Many biographers of Pessoa have defined this drive to create multiple selfs in terms of a modernist crisis of identity, and Pessoa certainly dismissed the notion of a core, irreducible self. However, it's interesting to note that Pessoa had a strong interest in the theory and practice of spiritualism and Kabbalistic magic.

Having translated Aleister Crowleys Hymn to Pan into Portuguese, Pessoa would later help the self-styled "Great Beast of the Apocalypse" to fake his suicide in Cascais in the hope of shaking off Crowleys creditors. An unfinished novel by Pessoa entitled Boca do Inferno ("The Mouth of Hell", the clifftop in Cascais where Crowley faked his suicide) is still to be published. Viewing Pessoas alter-egos from this perspective, his relationship with his heteronyms appears similar to that of a medium channeling a pantheon of spirit guides.

Three of Pessoas heteronyms gained the most recognition - Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, each of which could have been proclaimed major twentieth-century poets in their own right.

Alberto Caeiro was an unemployed country man without any formal education, but whose poetry Pessoa regarded as far greater than his own. Caeiro's poetry is frequently described as Zen-like in its immediacy and unsentimental clarity, although he scorned the label of mystic.

Alvaro de Campos was the well-travelled futurist and sensualist who indulged in an adventurous lifestyle completely alien to Pessoas uneventful life translating and drafting business letters in English and French. Ricardo Reis was a doctor who wrote odes in an austere, melancholy style. In his writing Pessoa had Ricardo Reis emigrate to Brazil in 1919. Each of these characters would critique each others work, and argue about style, although Campos and Reis both agreed with Pessoa that Caeiro was the true master of poetry within their group.

In 1984 the acclaimed Portuguese author, José Saramago, revived the character of Ricardo Reis for his novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In the novel, the doctor returns to Lisbon in 1935 to visit the grave of Fernando Pessoa who has died the year before.

During his life Pessoa also worked on a piece of prose that was first published almost fifty years after his death, The Book of Disquiet. The heteronym attributed to this work, Bernardo Soares, is much closer to Pessoa's own personality and temperament than his other literary creations. The very introverted Soares records his mundane daily encounters, dreams and observations in a rather scattered diary with little narrative. The book was pieced together from Pessoa's notes and loose papers, and to this day there is no definitive edition. Pessoa did however write a preface for the book which he described as his "factless autobiography."