Selected English Poems

Fernando Pessoa

Shearsman Books, 2007 - Poetry - 106 pages

Pessoa wrote a large number of poems in English, some of them in the guise of early heteronyms (such as Alexander Search and Charles Robert Anon) which prove to be fascinating precursors of the later, modernist work in Portuguese. While not the equal of the masterly Caeiro, Campos, Reis or Pessoa-himself, these poems deserve to be better known and at least available in the English-speaking world.Pessoa was educated in English in Durban, as the stepson of a Portuguese diplomat, and was completely bilingual. He translated several books from English for Portuguese publishing houses. The sometimes startlingly frank content of the earlier English poems (published privately in Lisbon) may well have prevented their wider dissemination in more prudish British circles. What is not so well-known is that Pessoa continued to write poetry in a bookish form of English throughout his life and this volume is an attempt to show the nature of that work to its originally intended audience: an anglophone readership.

Contents

• Introduction: 7
• from English Poems IIII: 13
• from The Mad Fiddler 19111917: 22

About the author

Fernando Pessoa, 1888 - 1935 Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was born in Lisbon. His father died when he was young and his mother married the Portuguese consul in Durban in South Africa where they lived from 1896 to 1951. During this time, Pessoa became fluent in English and was educated in Cape Town and Lisbon. Pessoa was employed as a business correspondent and also as a commercial translator. The bulk of his work was published in literary magazines, especially in his own Athena. His first book, "Antinous," appeared in 1918 and was followed by two other collection of poems, all written in English. In 1933, he published "Mensagem" his first book in Portuguese. "Livro Do Dessossogego (The Book of Disquiet)" the "factless autobiography" was written under the name of Bernardo Soares and appeared for the first time in 1982, almost fifty years after his death. After the republican revolution, in 1910, and consequent patriotic atmosphera, Pessoa created an alter ego, a heteronym, named Álvaro de Campos, supposedly a Portuguese naval engineer, born in Tavira and graduated in Glasgow. Translator Richard Zenith notes that Pessoa eventually established at least seventy-two heteronyms. According to Pessoa himself, there were three main heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis. The heteronyms possess distinct biographies, temperaments, philosophies, appearances and writing styles. Pessoa died on November 30, 1935 in Lisbon. Other writings that were published posthumously and translated into several languages include "Poesias de Fernando Pessoa" (1942), Poesias de Alvaro de Campos" (1944), Poemas de Alberto Caeiro" (1946), and "Odes de Ricardo Reis" (1946).

Bibliographic information

• Title: Selected English Poems
• Author: Fernando Pessoa
• Editor: Tony Frazer
• Publisher: Shearsman Books, 2007
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: May 23, 2008
• ISBN: 1905700261, 9781905700264
• Length: 106 pages
• Subjects: Poetry / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Poetry / European / General; Poetry / European / Spanish & Portuguese; Poetry / General