Fernando Pessoa

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Fernando Pessoa (1928)

Fernando Pessoa [ fɨɾˈnɐ̃du pɨˈsoɐ ] (born June 13, 1888 in Lisbon ; † November 30, 1935 ibid), actually Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet , writer , employee of a trading house and humanities scholar . He wrote his works mainly under the three heteronyms Alberto Caeiro , Ricardo Reis , Álvaro de Campos and the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares . Other heteronymous pessoas were the brothers Charles James and Alexander Search.

Alongside Luís de Camões, Pessoa is considered the most important poet in Portugal; he is one of the most important poets in the Portuguese language and one of the most important authors of the 20th century.

Life

Pessoa sculpture in
front of the Café A Brasileira
in the Chiado district of Lisbon

Pessoa was five years old when his father died of consumption . Two years later the mother married the Portuguese consul in Durban / South Africa . There Pessoa spent much of his youth and thus came into contact with English culture. At the age of 17, he returned to his native Lisbon and began studying literature , which he did not finish. After working for three months at Felix, Valladas & Freitas Ltd. , an unsuccessful tool trade on rua da Assumpção 42, in which his cousin Mario Freitas da Costa was a co-owner, Pessoa worked as a trade correspondent and led an inconspicuous life until his death.

The only known relationship with a woman began in 1920 in his cousin's office, where 19-year-old Ophelia Queiroz applied for a position as a secretary, which Pessoa insisted on getting her. A little later, the two entered into a brief engagement and Pessoa wrote the young woman a total of 48 letters in 1920 and again in 1929.

A peculiarity of the author Pessoa is the use of heteronyms . In contrast to the usual pseudonyms, these stand for different fictional authors with their own biographies, their own writing styles, topics, motifs and philosophical contexts. The English translator Pessoas, Richard Zenith, counts 72 different names, although it is not always clear which of them stand for heteronyms and which are pseudonyms - either for Pessoa itself or for one of the heteronyms.

The three most important heteronyms are Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis. Pessoa describes the three as follows:

“Ricardo Reis was born in Porto in 1887 (I don't remember the month and day, but somewhere I have the dates); he is a doctor and currently in Brazil. Alberto Caeiro was born in 1889 and died in 1915; he was born in Lisbon but lived in the country for most of his life. He had no job and almost no education. Álvaro de Campos was born in Tavira on October 15, 1890 (at 1:30 pm […]). He is [...] a shipbuilding engineer (studied in Glasgow), but now he is unemployed here in Lisbon. "

Álvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and Fernando Pessoa himself call Alberto Caeiro their master. The key work for the three is Alberto Caeiros O Guardador de Rebanhos ( The Keeper of the Herd ). This is a cycle of poems which, based on the subject of shepherd poetry, presents a philosophy that Pessoa, Campos and Reis call paganism .

Ricardo Reis follows this paganism in the form of a classicist neo- Hellenism . His poems, which he calls odes , are strongly rhythmized. Álvaro de Campos is less tied to an external form; his poems are often without a fixed rhythm, but there are also some sonnets . Thematically, they relate to an urban environment and often present their lyric self as a failed genius, e.g. As in the famous poem Tabacaria ( tobacco shop ). For him, as for Fernando Pessoa himself, v. a. the occultism the link to Caeiros' paganism.

The relationship between the four (including Pessoa itself) is not easy to decipher. This is e.g. Partly because of the complex, often seemingly contradicting structure of the texts. Such is the first sentence of The Keeper of the Herd cycle : I have never kept herds . But it is also due to the often misleading comments Pessoa made about the heteronyms. This is what Pessoa says about the writing style of the three:

"[...] Caeiro wrote poor Portuguese, Campos acceptable, but with lapses like 'I myself' instead of 'I myself' etc. Reis writes better than I [!], But with a purity that I find exaggerated."

With Pessoa's participation, Aleister Crowley staged his fake suicide at the “ Boca do Inferno ” near Cascais at the end of August 1930, after his lover Hanni Jaeger had left him .

Pessoa was very fond of alcohol , liked smoking and died of cirrhosis of the liver . He wrote his last sentence in English: I know not what tomorrow will bring ... (I don't know what tomorrow will bring ). Since 1985 his remains have been in the Portuguese national shrine, the Jeronimos Monastery in Belém . Verses from Caeiro, Reis and Campos are inscribed on his tomb, but none from Pessoa. The quote from Álvaro de Campos on the stele reads:

“No: I don't want anything. I already said that I don't want anything. Just don't come to any conclusions! The only conclusion is death. "

plant

During his lifetime, Pessoa was valued and recognized as a poet by only a few friends. Most of his manuscripts ended up in a chest unpublished. When Pessoa died, his work contained over 24,000 fragments. In addition to prose and poetry, dramatic sketches as well as political and sociological writings are part of an epoch-making legacy that has still not been fully processed and published.

Pessoa began his writing career by writing poetry in English and translating English poetry into Portuguese. Poems in Portuguese followed in several magazines. Finally, Pessoa founded the Orpheu magazine together with Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Luis de Montalvor , of which only two issues have appeared. The Book of Unrest ( Livro do Desassossego ) is considered to be his most important prose work. From around 1913 to 1934, Pessoa collected diary-like reflections and observations, which he wrote down on slips of paper and in notebooks. Already during his lifetime he intended to publish these notes under the title Book of Unrest . But it was only 47 years after his death that a first edition appeared in 1982. The current edition contains 481 self-contained sections, most of which Pessoa get on one throw. It is of dense, poetic accuracy of representation and is mainly about the perception and description of subtle things in everyday life and existence in general. In its intellectual brilliance and superiority, it is not without sadness and coldness.

Pessoa was friends with Aleister Crowley and, under this influence, wrote a number of political and esoteric writings that identify him as a radical anti-democratic thinker with strong messianic features.

reception

Pessoa sculpture
on the premises of the
German School Lisbon
in the Alvalade district in Lisbon

Fernando Pessoa is now considered one of the great writers of the 20th century and has become a father figure for many Portuguese writers.

The Nobel Prize winner José Saramago is dedicated to the author in his novel O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis (Eng. The year of the death of Ricardo Reis ). The Swiss Ammann Verlag , Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag and Verlag Klaus Wagenbach have published books by Pessoa in German.

In 1992, following on from his life's work, the Fernando Pessoa University was founded; In 1996, the first German-language Pessoa biography was published as a translation by Ángel Crespos La vida plural de Fernando Pessoa .

Two collections of his political writings, edited by Brunello De Cusitas , have appeared in recent years . The first collection, Scritti di sociologia e teoria politica , contains writings that Pessoa published while still alive. The second collection, Roma: Settimo Sigillo (1994) , contains the unpublished writings.

Biographies

Works

See also

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Fernando Pessoa  - Sources and full texts (Portuguese)
Wikiquote: Fernando Pessoa  - Quotes
Commons : Fernando Pessoa  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Fernando Pessoa, Ophélia Queiroz: Lettres à la fiancée . In: Lidia Breda (ed.): Petite Bibliothèque . Éditions Payot & Rivages, Paris 2006, ISBN 2-86930-450-1 , pp. 9 f., 135 .
  2. ↑ a b "I am who everyone is". Who Was Fernando Pessoa? Website ORF eins . Retrieved August 24, 2014.
  3. ^ Richard Zenith: Introduction. In: Fernando Pessoa: The Book of Disquietude. London 1991.
  4. ^ Letter from Fernando Pessoas to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, January 13, 1935, z. B. In: Adolfo Casais Monteiro: Poesia de Fernando Pessoa. Lisbon 2006, pp. 209ff.
  5. ↑ z. E.g .: Obras Completas de Fernando Pessoa. Volume III: Poemas de Alberto Caeiro. Lisbon 1997, p. 21.
  6. ^ Letter from Fernando Pessoas to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, January 13, 1935, z. B. In: Adolfo Casais Monteiro: Poesia de Fernando Pessoa. Lisbon 2006, p. 210.
  7. ↑ Marco Pasi: Aleister Crowley and the temptation of politics . Ares-Verlag , Graz 2006, ISBN 3-902475-14-5 . (At the same time: Milan, Univ. Degli Studi, Diss. 1993/1994) p. 194 ff. And chap. 1.
  8. ↑ Peter Hamm : The book of unrest. Fernando Pessoa met the melancholy mood of a decade with his late-discovered masterpiece. In: The time . August 9, 2012. Retrieved August 23, 2014.
  9. ↑ Maike Albath : The book of restlessness of the assistant accountant Bernardo Soares. Deutschlandfunk , July 7, 2003. Accessed August 24, 2014.
  10. ↑ Marco Pasi: Aleister Crowley and the temptation of politics . Ares-Verlag , Graz 2006, ISBN 3-902475-14-5 . (At the same time: Milan, Univ. Degli Studi, Diss. 1993/1994) p. 195.
personal data
SURNAME Pessoa, Fernando
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pessoa, Fernando Antônio Nogueira (full name); Caeiro, Alberto (heteronym); Reis, Ricardo (heteronym); Campos, Álvaro de (heteronym); Soares, Bernardo (semi-heteronymous)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese poet and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Lisbon
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1935
Place of death Lisbon