The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

Grove Press, 2001 - Fiction - 342 pages

A Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

Though known primarily as a poet, Fernando Pessoa, a writer of "remarkable genius" (Washington Post) wrote prose widely, in several languages and in every genre. Now newly expanded and revised by award-winning translator and Pessoa biographer Richard Zenith, The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa spans fiction and drama, playful intellectual inquiry, Platonic dialogue, and bitter intellectual scrapping between Pessoa and his many literary alter egos ("heteronyms"). In these pieces, the heteronyms launch movements and write manifestos, and one of them attempts to break up Pessoa's only known romantic relationship. Also included is a generous selection from Pessoa's masterpiece The Book of Disquiet. This is an important record of a crucial part of the literary canon.

"A modern master to rank alongside Joyce, Kafka, Beckett."-Sunday Times (UK)

"Beautifully translated, compact while appropriately diverse." --Los Angeles Times

" [A] delightful collection . . . [Pessoa] is the modernist's modernist: an inspired amalgam of Lewis Carroll, Aristophanes, Erasmus, Voltaire." --Washington Times

Contents

• ASPECTS: 1
• THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN AND HETERONYM: 6
• I was a poet animated by philosophy: 9
• The artist must be born beautiful: 10
• Three Prose Fragments: 11
• I Charles Robert Anon: 12
• An Unsent Letter to Clifford Geerdts: 14
• Two Prose Fragments: 15
• Rule of Life: 17
• THE MARINER: 18
• The MarinerA Static Drama in One Act: 20
• To Fernando Pessoa: 35
• THE MASTER AND HIS DISCIPLES: 36
• Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro: 38
• from Translators Preface to the Poems of Alberto Caeiro: 50
• On Álvaro de Campos: 55
• On the Work of Ricardo Reis: 56
• SENSATIONISM AND OTHER ISMS: 58
• Preface to an Anthology of the Portuguese Sensationists: 61
• All sensations are good: 64
• Intersectionist Manifesto: 65
• Sensationism: 66
• ULTIMATUM: 69
• Ultimatum: 72
• from What Is Metaphysics?: 88
• LETTER TO MÁRIO DE SÁCARNEIRO: 89
• RIDDLE OF THE STARS: 92
• Letter to His Aunt Anica: 98
• 30 Astral Communications: 103
• from Essay on Initiation: 120
• Treatise on Negation: 121
• LETTER TO TWO FRENCH MAGNETISTS: 124
• SELECTED LETTERS TO OPHELIA QUEIROZ: 128
• Pessoa in Love? MarchNovember 1920: 129
• Pessoa Insane? SeptemberOctober 1929: 139
• NEOPAGANISM: 147
• Without yet going into the metaphysical foundations: 148
• Humanitarianism is the last bulwark: 149
• Only now can we fully understand: 150
• We are not really neopagans: 151
• from Preface to the Complete Poems of Alberto Caeiro: 153
• When I once had occasion: 154
• Alberto Caeiro is more pagan than paganism: 155
• For modern pagans as exiles: 156
• PORTUGAL AND THE FIFTH EMPIRE: 158
• Any Empire not founded on the Spiritual Empire: 161
• The Fifth Empire The future of Portugal: 162
• Only one kind of propaganda can raise the morale: 163
• What basically is Sebastianism?: 164
• An imperialism of grammarians?: 165
• A foggy morning: 166
• THE ANARCHIST BANKER: 167
• PESSOA ON MILLIONAIRES: 197
• from American Millionaires: 198
• ENVIRONMENT: 200
• SELFDEFINITION: 201
• THE SEARCH FOR IMMORTALITY: 202
• from Erostratus: 205
• ON THE LITERARY ART AND ITS ARTISTS: 213
• Shakespeare: 215
• On Blank Verse and Paradise Lost: 216
• from Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers: 217
• from Concerning Oscar Wilde: 218
• The Art of James Joyce: 222
• FROM ESSAY ON POETRY: 224
• FROM FRANCE IN 1950: 231
• RANDOM NOTES AND EPIGRAMS: 234
• TWO LETTERS TO JOÃO GASPAR SIMÕES: 239
• Letter of 28 July 1932: 247
• THREE LETTERS TO ADOLFO CASAIS MONTEIRO: 250
• Another Version of the Genesis of the Heteronyms: 261
• Letter of 20 January 1935: 262
• THE BOOK OF DISQUIET: 265
• from The Book of Disquiet: 270
• FROM THE EDUCATION OF THE STOIC: 300
• FROM THE PREFACE TO FICTIONS OF THE INTERLUDE: 311
• LETTER FROM A HUNCHBACK GIRL TO A METALWORKER: 314
• NOTES: 319
• BIBLIOGRAPHY: 341

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa
• Author: Fernando Pessoa
• Editor: Richard Zenith
• Translated by: Richard Zenith
• Publisher: Grove Press, 2001
• ISBN: 0802139140, 9780802139146
• Length: 342 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Literary Collections / Essays; Literary Collections / European / General; Literary Collections / General