I wasn’t meant for reality, but life came and found me.

November 19, 2017 1:55 PM

Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese wrter with nearly 80 different literary alter egos or "heteronyms". Each of which had a biography, psychology, politics, religion, physical description; the main characters being interconnected and with their own horoscopes
"I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays," he once wrote and “a drama divided into people instead of into acts”.
“I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist,” he writes in one poem. “I’m the gap between what I’d like to be and what others have made of me. . . . That’s me. Period.
His occult interests led him to a correspondence and friendship with Aleister Crowley who enlisted him in faking his suicide.
(Previously).
posted by adamvasco (12 comments total)

When I think of the term heteronym, i think of words like Bass which when pronounced one way means fish and another means a musical instrument. I'm not sure it's synonymous with pseudonym, is it?
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:33 PM on November 19, 2017

Uncle Pork
Damnit, where did I put that $5?
posted by thelonius at 2:35 PM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm not sure it's synonymous with pseudonym, is it?

Looks like, no:

But in addition to the usual material produced by a writer, Pessoa is unique in that he also wrote other writers and poets. These he called heteronyms, coining the term to distinguish it from the common pseudonym. Pessoa was not simply writing poems and prose under a different name: the various heteronyms he created were individuals with their own history, biography, personal characteristics and unmistakable literary style.

Great post. If the 20th Century didn't exist, they'd have had to invent it.
posted by thelonius at 2:54 PM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh, god, I had a Pessoa phase my freshman year of college. My poor roommate.
posted by jameaterblues at 2:57 PM on November 19, 2017 [4 favorites]

I was introduced to Pessoa via "A Year in the Death of Ricardo Reis" where José Saramago writes about the life of one of Pessoa's heteronyms in the year after Pessoa's death. I didn't know about Pessoa's heteronyms until after I finished the book. Which is a testament to how well Saramago writes: getting dropped into the middle of a metafictional clusterfuck was still engaging enough to read to the end without ever really having any idea what was going on.
posted by Grimgrin at 3:20 PM on November 19, 2017 [3 favorites]

“If you cannot live alone, then you were born a slave.” This scribe of created existence, is my totem spirit animal. His brand of supreme indifference is a a river I watch closely for reflected news of the universe. Anyway, the world's longest and largest epitaph.
posted by Oyéah at 5:17 PM on November 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Pessoa schmessoa!

(Sorry. Couldn't help myself.)
posted by saulgoodman at 6:58 PM on November 19, 2017

Portuguese film by directror João Botelho and based on Pessoa's book The Book of Disquiet: Filme do Desassossego (The Film of Disquiet) (English subs, YT)
posted by Mister Bijou at 1:24 AM on November 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I discovered Pessoa on my first trip to Portugal about six years ago and was hooked by:
The poet is a feigner
Who's so good at his act
He even feigns the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.

I love this from the Poetry Society article : "By the way," he wrote a few weeks later, "although I'm writing you, I'm not thinking about you. I'm thinking about how much I miss the days when I used to hunt pigeons."
posted by perrouno at 1:35 AM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

posted by Ian A.T. at 6:36 AM on November 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

the big book is based on sorting and editing lots of fragments, so each translation is a different book really. I've read the Bridges one so i'm going to read the Jull Costa one at some point. I totally recommend, but before i had severe depression and a total breakdown, i found it pointlessly drifty and passive, stupidly so. It's like war and peace, it's a book that makes more sense the older you are. But if you've had a dreadful knock and most people and books don't seem to get it, they've never been through that, it's a good book then. Totally recommend, but more for the old and the defeated
posted by maiamaia at 3:55 AM on November 21, 2017

also, the really annoying bit, which in Bridges' english version is near the end, is the obviously early parts which are about being in a garden with a beautiful woman blah blah, that goes on way too long but it does end, don't worry or give up
posted by maiamaia at 3:57 AM on November 21, 2017