Will the real Fernando please stand up? - Ilan Stavans
On November 30th, 1935,
dozens of writers passed away.
They came from different backgrounds,
espoused divergent beliefs,
and wrote in a variety of styles.
Yet all of their work was stashed
in a single trunk
in an apartment in Lisbon, Portugal.
So, what mysterious string
tied all these writers together?
Well, the trunk belonged
to one enigmatic author, Fernando Pessoa,
who was, in fact, all of them.
Some authors use pseudonyms and pen names
to protect their identities
or bolster their artistic personas.
But Pessoa used what he called
“heteronyms” to write not as himself
but as other people he invented,
giving way to generative,
artistic experimentation.
He fleshed out their imagined lives,
devised their distinct quirks,
and cultivated their unique
literary voices.
Sometimes Pessoa's heteronyms
interacted with each other,
even criticizing one another's work.
Pessoa described himself as a “nomadic
wanderer through [his own] consciousness,”
“a kind of medium,”
“divided” among his heteronyms.
“But,” he wrote, “I’m less real
than the others,
less substantial, less personal,
and easily influenced by them all.”
Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa began writing as different people when he was around six years old, authoring letters as an imaginary Frenchman, Chevalier de Pas. When Pessoa’s stepfather moved their family to South Africa, Pessoa picked up new languages. He adopted several English-language heteronyms in high school and published booklets of poems featured by the British press. In 1905, Pessoa returned to Lisbon for good. He gained a reputation for his formal dress, affinity for the occult, and for being cordial and charming while always keeping people at arm’s length. Pessoa established art and literary journals and a publishing house. But while these public ventures failed to take off and Pessoa amassed debt and relocated frequently, his greatest experiments were unfolding in private. Scrawling in various languages on envelopes, book jackets and loose papers, Pessoa crafted a dreamy love letter as Maria José, a teenager with a spinal disorder who was infatuated with a metalworker; he scribbled detective stories as Horace James Faber; and analyzed astrological charts as Raphael Baldaya. He used three heteronyms most frequently. Alberto Caeiro was a shepherd-poet who used simple diction to describe the world as he saw it. Ricardo Reis, a doctor, favored the epic style of Classical poets. And Álvaro de Campos, a bisexual naval engineer and nomad, wrote poetry extolling the wonder and hardship of daily life. Using de Campos, Pessoa said he could channel all the emotions he denied himself. And at one point, de Campos claimed it was Pessoa who didn’t truly exist. During his lifetime, Pessoa published poems, letters, essays, and literary criticism— some as heteronyms, others under his own name. He also produced a handful of books, just one in Portuguese— a poetry collection about Portugal’s mythic history called “Message.” He gained local recognition, but the full scope of his creative endeavours only revealed itself when Pessoa died a year after the book’s release. From among almost 30,000 pages of unpublished work stashed in his trunk, critics eventually assembled “The Book of Disquiet” in 1982, which Pessoa spent two decades developing. It declares itself, in typically cryptic fashion, “the autobiography of someone who never existed.” Pessoa wrote it as the fictional diary of his so-called semi-heteronym, Bernardo Soares, whose personality he described as a “mere mutilation” of his own. Often frustrated by life’s demands, the book’s narrator explores how delving inwards through literature helps him escape reality’s confines. He continuously challenges conceptions of the self as a singular, reliable unit— instead grappling with identity as indefinite, each person a shifting sum of their parts. “My soul is a hidden orchestra,” the first entry reads. “I do not know what instruments, what violins and harps, drums and tambours sound and clash inside me. I know myself only as a symphony.”
Born in Lisbon in 1888, Pessoa began writing as different people when he was around six years old, authoring letters as an imaginary Frenchman, Chevalier de Pas. When Pessoa’s stepfather moved their family to South Africa, Pessoa picked up new languages. He adopted several English-language heteronyms in high school and published booklets of poems featured by the British press. In 1905, Pessoa returned to Lisbon for good. He gained a reputation for his formal dress, affinity for the occult, and for being cordial and charming while always keeping people at arm’s length. Pessoa established art and literary journals and a publishing house. But while these public ventures failed to take off and Pessoa amassed debt and relocated frequently, his greatest experiments were unfolding in private. Scrawling in various languages on envelopes, book jackets and loose papers, Pessoa crafted a dreamy love letter as Maria José, a teenager with a spinal disorder who was infatuated with a metalworker; he scribbled detective stories as Horace James Faber; and analyzed astrological charts as Raphael Baldaya. He used three heteronyms most frequently. Alberto Caeiro was a shepherd-poet who used simple diction to describe the world as he saw it. Ricardo Reis, a doctor, favored the epic style of Classical poets. And Álvaro de Campos, a bisexual naval engineer and nomad, wrote poetry extolling the wonder and hardship of daily life. Using de Campos, Pessoa said he could channel all the emotions he denied himself. And at one point, de Campos claimed it was Pessoa who didn’t truly exist. During his lifetime, Pessoa published poems, letters, essays, and literary criticism— some as heteronyms, others under his own name. He also produced a handful of books, just one in Portuguese— a poetry collection about Portugal’s mythic history called “Message.” He gained local recognition, but the full scope of his creative endeavours only revealed itself when Pessoa died a year after the book’s release. From among almost 30,000 pages of unpublished work stashed in his trunk, critics eventually assembled “The Book of Disquiet” in 1982, which Pessoa spent two decades developing. It declares itself, in typically cryptic fashion, “the autobiography of someone who never existed.” Pessoa wrote it as the fictional diary of his so-called semi-heteronym, Bernardo Soares, whose personality he described as a “mere mutilation” of his own. Often frustrated by life’s demands, the book’s narrator explores how delving inwards through literature helps him escape reality’s confines. He continuously challenges conceptions of the self as a singular, reliable unit— instead grappling with identity as indefinite, each person a shifting sum of their parts. “My soul is a hidden orchestra,” the first entry reads. “I do not know what instruments, what violins and harps, drums and tambours sound and clash inside me. I know myself only as a symphony.”
