Mensagem

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Mensagem, cover title

Mensagem ( Message ) is the title of a volume of poetry by Fernando Pessoa published in 1934 .

The volume consists of three parts. The first part Brasão (coat of arms) consists of the subdivisions Os Campos (The Fields), Os Castellos (The Castles), As Quinas (The Shields), A Coroa (The Crown) and O Timbre (The Coat of Arms); each subdivision consists of several individual poems. The second part, Mar Portuguez (Portuguese Sea), consists of a total of twelve poems. The third part O Encoberto (The Veiled), which with this name refers directly to King Sebastian , is again divided into sub-chapters: Os Symbolos (The Symbols), Os Avisos (The Announcements), Os Tempos (The Times). These each consist of several poems. Mensagem contains a total of 44 short poems that can also be read as a coherent epic .

Mensagem begins with the verses:

"A Europe jaz, posta nos cotovellos: De Oriente a Occidente jaz fitando"

- Translation: Europe lies on your elbow and looks from the Orient to the Occident

In Pessoa's image of the lying Europe , Europe's head is the Iberian Peninsula and Portugal is the face.

With Mensagem, Pessoa follows on from the Portuguese national epic Die Lusiaden by Luís de Camões . While Camões describes Portuguese history from its legendary beginnings to the Age of Discovery, Pessoa continues the lamentation of the fall of Portugal after the disappearance of King Sebastian in 1578 in the tradition of so-called Sebastianism . Poems from the section Os Avisos are dedicated to the prophet Gonçalo Anes ( O Bandarra ) and the Jesuit priest António Vieira , which in the historical context of foreign rule (1580–1640: Portugal under the crown of Spain) the return of the missing king and a fifth kingdom under Portuguese Divine leadership. Pessoa elaborates on his conception of the Fifth Reich in his posthumous writings . According to this, the first four empires (Greece, Rome, Christianity, British Empire) were not really global; the fifth empire will be more important than the four before , since it is a “empire of culture and universal power in one”.

Mensagem is Pessoa's only work published in Portuguese during his lifetime . It appeared a year before the poet's death. It is only in this work that one can understand Pessoa's efforts to provide an editorial picture of his works. The book was edited by Pessoa in the old spelling that was valid until 1911 .

In Portugal, Mensagem is part of school reading, Pessoa's fame is essentially based on this volume of poetry, the tenth poem of the second part, Mar Portuguez, is one of the most famous poems in the Portuguese language.

expenditure

  • Fernando Pessoa: Esoteric Poems. Mensagem. English poems. translated and provided with an afterword by Georg Rudolf Lind. Ammann-Verlag, Zurich 1989. Paperback edition Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1994

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Mensagem 1994 pp. 60/61 Translation by Georg Rudolf Lind
  2. ↑ Pessoa quoted in the epilogue to Mensagem, 1994, p. 122