But the real meaning of initiation is that this visible world we live in is a symbol and a shadow, that this life we know through the senses is a death and a sleep, or in other words, that what we see is an illusion. Initiation is the dispelling—a gradual, partial dispelling—of that illusion. The reason for its secret is that most men are not adapted to understand it and will therefore misunderstand and confuse it if it be made public. The reason for its being symbolic is that initiation is not a knowledge but a life, and that man must therefore think out of himself what the symbols show, for thus he will live their life and not only learn the words in which they are shown.
...
Treatise on Negation
Raphael Baldaya
Identified in a letter by Pessoa as an astrologer with a long beard, the heteronym Raphael Baldaya was conceived in late 1915. He produced some pages for a Treatise on Astrology and was also supposed to write a small book, A New Theory of Astrological Periods, which Pessoa planned to sell through English newspapers. The advertisement drafted for the book promises that with the Baldaya method, costing just £5.00 postpaid, “the native’s fate may be read without directions.” Natal horoscopes were also available by mail for £5.00. “Absolute satisfaction guaranteed.”
The few works of Baldaya that actually got written are all in Portuguese and include philosophical as well as astrological writings.
1. The World is composed of two types of forces: forces that affirm and forces that negate.
2. The forces that affirm are the world’s creative forces, emanating successively from the One and Only, the center of Affirmation.
3. The forces that negate emanate from beyond the One.
4. The One and Only—of which God, i.e. God the Creator of the Universe, is merely a manifestation—is an Illusion. The whole of creation is fiction and illusion, even as Matter is a proven illusion of Thought, Thought an illusion of the Intuition, Intuition an illusion of the Pure Idea, and the Pure Idea an illusion of Being. And Being, in its essence, is Illusion and Falseness. God is the Supreme Lie.
5. The forces that negate are those that proceed from beyond the One and Only. To our Mind there is nothing outside the One and Only. But since it is possible to think that this One and Only doesn’t exist, since it is possible to negate it, it is therefore not the One and Only, the Supreme, the utterly Supreme (here terms are lacking). To be able to deny it is to deny it, and to deny it means it doesn’t exist.
6. The supreme negation is known as non-Being. Non-Being is unthinkable, since to think of non-being is not to think. And yet, since we employ the term non-being, it can in a certain way be thought of. Once we think of it, it becomes Being. This is how Being emerges: in opposition to Non-Being. Non-Being, speaking in human language, precedes it.
7. Matter, which is the greatest negation of Being, is for this reason the state closest to Non-Being. Matter is the least false of all the Illusions, the weakest of all lies. Hence its evident character. To the extent it manifests itself, Being negates itself; to the extent it negates itself, it creates Non-Being. Since Non-Being precedes Being, Being’s negation of itself is, if we may so speak, a creation.
8. We should be creators of Negation, negators of spirituality, makers of Matter. Matter is Appearance; Appearance is at once Being and Non-Being. (If Appearance is not Being, it is Non-Being. If it is Non-Being, it is not Appearance. To be Appearance, therefore, it must be Being.)
9. Negation consists in helping the Manifested to manifest itself yet more, until it dissolves into Non-Being.
10. There are two opposing principles: that of Affirmation, Spirituality, Mysticism, which is Christian (in our present civilization), and that of Negation, Materiality, Clarity, which is Pagan. Lucifer, the bearer of Light, is the nominal symbol of the Spirit that Negates. The revolt of the angels created Matter, the return to Non-Being, freedom from Affirmation.
11. All the worlds affirmed by theosophists do really exist, but they are within Illusion, which is, for as long as it lasts, Reality. God, from his point of view, exists, but God is deceived. Just as we think we exist, but for God have no existence except as part of him, meaning that we don’t exist in the absolute, so God thinks he exists but doesn’t. Being itself is but the Non-Being of Non-Being, the mortal affirmation of Life.
LETTER TO TWO FRENCH MAGNETISTS
The following is the unfinished draft of a letter (written in French) to Messrs. Hector and Henri Durville, Paris-based practitioners of therapeutic hypnotism. Hector Durville (1849–1924) was a professor at the Ecole Pratique de Magnetisme et Massage, an editor of the Journal du Magnetisme, and the author of numerous works on magnetic therapy, including one that was translated into English and published in Chicago: The Theory and Practice of Human Magnetism (undated). His son Henri also published books, most notably Cours de magnetisme personnel, magnetisme experimental & curatif, hypnotisme, suggestion (5th ed. Paris, 1920).
Lisbon, 10 June 1919
Gentlemen,
Would you please be so kind as to send me—by return of post, if possible—your complete catalogues, as well as information about the Institut du Magnétisme et du Psychisme Expérimental and specifically about your correspondence course in animal magnetism and self-hypnosis?
So that you can supply me with the right information, perhaps it will be helpful if I clarify at once what it is I’m looking for, and why. I will endeavor, therefore, to provide you with the necessary preliminary data. Needless to say, everything I write here concerns only my request for information on the above-mentioned correspondence course.
I would like to develop, as much as I can, whatever animal magnetism I may possess, and to develop it so as to give, if possible, an outer directional orientation to my life. Expressed in this way, it sounds complicated, but I hope to make it clear through the explanations that follow. I will first of all describe my temperament, and then explain what I know (not much, in fact) about the subject of magnetism.
From the psychiatric point of view, I’m a hysterical neurasthenic, but fortunately my neuropsychosis is rather weak. The neurasthenic element dominates the hysterical element, such that I exhibit no outwardly hysterical traits—no compulsion to lie, no emotional instability in my relationships with others, etc. My hysteria is a strictly inner phenomenon, affecting only me; in my life with myself I have all the instability of feelings and sensations and all the emotional fickleness and fluctuation of will that characterize protean neurosis. Except in the intellectual sphere, where I have arrived at what I take to be sure conclusions, I change my mind ten times a day; I can only feel certain about things that involve no emotion. I know what to think about such-and-such philosophical doctrine or literary problem, but I’ve never had a firm opinion about any of my friends or about anything concerning my outward activity.
A mental introvert, therefore, like most born neurasthenics, I nearly always suppress the outer—or dynamic—expression of these inner manifestations. I have to be very tired, or excited, for my emotionalism to spread to the outside. I am outwardly even-tempered: I’m nearly always calm and cheerful around others. As such, and since I have it under control, my emotionalism causes me no problem; in fact I quite like it, since it’s useful to the literary life which I lead alongside my practical life. I even cultivate, with quasi-decadent loving care, these charged yet subtle emotions that make up my inner life. I have no desire to change that aspect. My trouble lies elsewhere.
You have no doubt already spotted my weak point; a temperament like mine is cut to the quick not in the emotions and not in the intelligence, but in the will. This will suffers by way of the emotions and the intelligence, such as they exist in me. My extreme emotionalism unsettles my will; my extreme rationalism—fruit of an overly analytical and logical intelligence—crushes and debilitates this will that my emotions had already unsettled. Hence my abulia and parabulia. I always want to do three or four different things at once, but I ultimately do none of them and, what’s more, don’t want to do
any of them. The thought of action oppresses me like a curse; to perform an action is to do violence to myself.
Everything in me that’s exclusively intellectual is quite strong and quite healthy. My inhibitory will, which is the intellectual will, doesn’t waver; even when my emotions urge me on, I have the power of not doing. What I lack is the will to act, the will to influence the outside; doing is what’s hard for me.
Let’s look more closely at the problem. Concentration is at the heart of the will, and the only concentration I have is intellectual—in my reasoning, that is. When I reason, I’m in absolute control: no emotion, no outside idea and no development that’s incidental to my reasoning can disturb its calm and steady progress. But every other kind of concentration is difficult if not impossible for me.
Thus it’s only by a centrifugal application of this centripetal will that I can manage, usually, to act with continuity. But this procedure only works, of course, for certain kinds of action. Suppose I need to write a long letter, a complicated business letter. As the director of foreign transactions for a Portuguese firm, this is something I have to do almost every day, and the only way I can do it is by mentally classifying the contents of the letter, by rationally allocating the information to be conveyed. I perform the procedure quickly, and in a case like this it’s the best one there is, for the resulting letter is clearer and more convincing. But imagine trying to apply this method to an action that’s sheer action and not—like writing a letter—purely literary! The result would be absurd if it weren’t simply nonexistent, for in this case the mental act of coordinating is completely inhibitory, and the resulting action is not to act at all. There is no strategy for performing small actions; the reality of daily life isn’t a chess game.
The import of these observations should not be exaggerated. I’m not just a conscious cadaver. But my active will is insufficient, particularly when compared to my inhibitory will.
This state of mind, or rather, of temperament, is (need I say it?) eminently antimagnetic. My psychological life is like a course in demagnetism. So now you see why I’m writing you and why I’ve subjected you to these long and tedious considerations. I would like to strengthen my active will, but without giving my emotion or my intelligence any cause for complaint. As far as I know, the only method for strengthening the will without crushing the emotions and undermining the intelligence is to develop one’s animal magnetism.
[draft ends here]
SELECTED LETTERS TO OPHELIA QUEIROZ
Pessoa had one romantic relationship, with two chapters, but whether he was ever in love is an open and probably unanswerable question. In the fifty-one letters he wrote to Ophelia Queiroz over a nine-month period in 1920 and a four-month period in 1929–30, Pessoa declares his ardent affection and physical desire in strong enough terms to convince us (at least in the earlier letters) that he was smitten. Less clear is whether the Cupid who did the smiting belonged to the world of human passions or to the literary garden of Pessoa’s multiplied, mythologized self.
The letters from the first phase reveal a man with some talent in the art of seduction, though it’s hard to say what he wanted in the relationship. In the second phase the writer sometimes seems to be drunk, often claims to be mad, and reads like a man who’s groping—but not for Ophelia Queiroz. Although the two phases are equally represented here, with eight letters from each, about three quarters of Pessoa’s love letters were written in 1920. Both phases of the relationship were thwarted by a jealous Alvaro de Campos, who at one point wrote an entire letter telling Ophelia to forget about his friend Fernando, and so there was definitely—on Pessoa’s side—some high literary sport going on. Ophelia was not amused, but she was willing to play the game, writing a letter of reply to Alvaro in care of Fernando. The liaison was not only epistolary, for the two paramours did take walks, ride the streetcar together, and talk on the telephone, but Fernando refused to be presented to Ophelia’s family, he never mentioned her to his family, and intimate physical contact seems to have been limited to stolen kisses.
Ophelia Queiroz was nineteen years old when, toward the end of 1919, she was hired as a secretary at Felix, Valladas & Freitas, one of the Lisbon firms where Pessoa made his living by drafting letters in English and French. Almost immediately, she and Pessoa, who was thirty-one years old, began trading glances, followed by little notes and playful verses. Piecing together information from Ophelia’s letters to Pessoa and from an interview she gave when already in her seventies, we know that their first kiss occurred on January 22, 1920, during a power shortage after every-one else had left the office to go home. Ophelia was putting on her coat, when Pessoa, carrying a candle, approached and dramatically declared his love with words borrowed from Hamlet, after which he kissed her with passion, “like a madman” (she told the interviewer). In the weeks following, Pessoa’s behavior toward Ophelia was ambivalent, sometimes expressing strong affection—through words and perhaps more kisses—but at other times bordering on aloofness. Ophelia, bewildered, wrote a letter on February 28, asking Pessoa for a written statement of his intentions, for she wasn’t sure his declared love was “usincere and strong enough (...) to merit the sacrifice” she was making of a relationship with a much younger man who was actively courting her and promised her a future. And so began their correspondence.
[Phase 1: Pessoa in Love?] (March–November 1920)
1 March 1920
Ophelia:
You could have shown me your contempt, or at least your supreme indifference, without the see-through masquerade of such a lengthy treatise and without your written “reasons,” which are as insincere as they are unconvincing. You could have just told me. This way I understand you no less, but it hurts me more.
It’s only natural that you’re very fond of the young man who’s been chasing you, so why should I hold it against you if you prefer him to me? You’re entitled to prefer whom you want and are under no obligation, as I see it, to love me. And there’s certainly no need (unless it’s for your own amusement) to pretend you do.
Those who really love don’t write letters that read like lawyers’ petitions. Love doesn’t examine things so closely, and it doesn’t treat others like defendants on trial.
Why can’t you be frank with me? Why must you torment a man who never did any harm to you (or to anybody else) and whose sad and solitary life is already a heavy enough burden to bear, without someone adding to it by giving him false hopes and declaring feigned affections? What do you get out of it besides the dubious pleasure of making fun of me?
I realize that all this is comical, and that the most comical part of it is me.
I myself would think it was funny, if I didn’t love you so much, and if I had the time to think of anything besides the suffering you enjoy inflicting on me, although I’ve done nothing to deserve it except love you, which doesn’t seem to me like reason enough. At any rate ...
Here’s the “written document” you requested. The notary Eugénio Silva can validate my signature.
Fernando Pessoa
19 March 1920
at 4 A.M.
My dear darling Baby:
It’s almost four in the morning, and I’ve just given up trying to fall asleep, even though my aching body badly needs rest. This is the third night in a row this has happened, but tonight was one of the worst nights of my life. Luckily for you, darling, you can’t imagine what it was like. It wasn’t just my sore throat and the idiotic need to spit every two minutes that kept me from sleeping. I was also delirious, though I had no fever, and I felt like I was going mad, I wanted to scream, to moan at the top of my lungs, to do a thousand crazy things. It’s not only my physical illness that put me in such a state but the fact I spent all day yesterday fretting over the things that still need to be done before my family arrives.* And to top it off my cousin came by at half past seven with more than a little bad news, which I won’t go into now, darling, because fortunately none of it concerns you in the least.
Just my luck to be sick right when there are so many urgent things to do—things that no one but I can do.
See the state of mind I’ve been in lately, especially during the last two days? And you’e no idea, my adorable Baby, how constantly and insanely I’ve missed you. Your absence always makes me suffer, darling, even when it’s just from one day to the next, so think how I must feel after not having seen you for almost three days!
Tell me one thing, love: Why do you sound so depressed in your second letter—the one you sent yesterday by Osorio?* I can understand you missing me, just like I miss you, but you sounded so anxious, sad and dejected that it pained me to read your letter and feel how much you’re suffering. What happened to you, darling, besides us being separated? Something worse? Why do you speak in such a desperate tone about my love, as if you doubted it, when you have no reason to?
I’m all alone—I really am. The people in this building have treated me very well, but they’re not close to me at all. During the day they bring me soup, milk, or medicine, but they don’t ever keep me company, which I certainly wouldn’t expect. And at this hour of the night, I feel like I’m in a desert. I’m thirsty and have no one to give me a drink. I’m going crazy from this sense of isolation and have no one to soothe me, just by being near, as I try to go to sleep.
I’m cold. I’m going to lie down and pretend to rest. I don’t know when I’ll mail this letter or if I’ll add anything to it.
The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa Page 15
