A Centenary Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa

• Publisher: Fyfield Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781847775603
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Poesia

Author of paradoxes as clear as water and, as water, dizzying: '... mysterious man who does not cultivate mystery, mysterious as the mid-day moon, taciturn phantom of the Portuguese mid-day - who is Pessoa?' asks Octavio Paz. This collection of the work of Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) answers that question. It is an essential introduction to the work of one of the most original European poets of the twentieth century. It includes translations of a broad selection of his poems and his extraordinary prose, and some of his original English writings. A major introductory essay by Octavio Paz, a critical anthology, two posthumous 'interviews' and illustrations from the Pessoa archive are also included, to reveal the world of Pessoa in all its richness.

POETRY

Selected and translated by KEITH BOSLEY

POETRY

FERNANDO PESSOA: 25

ALBERTO CAEIRO: 51

RICARDO REIS: 64

ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS: 78

INDEX OF ORIGINAL TITLES AND FIRST LINES: 112

FERNANDO PESSOA

Ulissabon, latter-day Ithaca

to one whose name means Person, many-sided

poet for whom a humdrum job provided,

stepson of Adamastor’s Africa.

At seventeen, home from English and Natal,

he stayed and after thirty years said ‘I

do not evolve, I travel’, soon to die,

his roots in Portuguese, not Portugal.

The child was father to companions who

became pessoas, masks for speaking through –

the seer glad not to know the names of things,

the bard of roses and mortality,

the noisy engineer: beside them, he

who wonders who he is and quietly sings.

K.B.

Drawing by David Levine

FERNANDO PESSOA

CONTENTS

from MESSAGE

The Castles: 26

Dom Sebastian, King of Portugal: 26

Sea of Portugal: 27

Slanting Rain: 27

Song: 31

from Way of the Cross: 31

The sudden hand of some mysterious ghost: 32

Christmas: 32

Light, short, sweet: 33

Poor old music!: 33

Blank sun of useless days: 34

Sleep upon my breast: 34

Far off, in moonlight: 35

Poor reaper, she is singing, singing: 35

His Mother’s Little Boy: 36

Seascape: 37

A Little Music: 37

After the Fair: 38

The stars give me a pain: 38

I look at the dumb lake: 39

She surprises just by being: 39

The Final Incantation: 40

Cat playing in the street: 41

No: don’t say a thing!: 42

Death is a bend in the road: 42

Autopsychography: 42

This: 43

Between sleep and dream: 43

In this world where we forget: 44

For a moment: 45

Freedom: 46

At the Tomb of Christian Rosencreutz: 47

To the blind and the deaf: 48

The moon (the English say): 50

from MESSAGE

Drawing by José de Almada Negreiros

The Castles

Resting upon its elbows Europe lies:

Stretching from East to West it lies at gaze,

Romantic locks hang down across its eyes,

Greek, full of memories.

The elbow on the left is tucked away;

The right stands at an angle in its place.

That one, where it comes down, marks Italy;

This one marks England where it distantly

Ends in the hand, upholder of the face.

Its eyes, as fateful as the sphinx’s, fall

Westward, towards the past that is to be.

The face with gazing eyes is Portugal.

Dom Sebastian, King of Portugal

Dom Sebastian, King of Portugal1

Mad, yes, mad, for I wanted to be great,

My assurance uncontained

Within me, my design undreamed by Fate;

Hence of me on the sand

What used to be, but not what is, remained.

My madness let the others take from me

And with it all the rest;

For without madness what can mankind be

More than a healthy beast,

A corpse that breeds before its juices waste?

1 Dom Sebastian: Sebastião (1554-78), whose death in the battle of Alcácer-Quibir (Al-Qasr al-kabir), Morocco, led to the end of Portugal’s Golden Age with annexation by Spain in 1580. Rumours of his survival generated the messianic cult of Sebastianismo, which persists to this day in some educated circles.

Sea of Portugal

O bitter sea, how much of all your gall

Is b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• POETRY
• THE BOOK OF DISQUIETUDE
• PROSE
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• About the Author
• Copyright