Such poetical niceties, however, being visible only to the experienced critic, the ordinary man of poetical tastes is sometimes, when called upon to criticize a poem, placed in an undesirable situation. For instance, about a week ago a young friend of mine called upon me and asked my opinion of a poem which he had written. He handed me a paper. I made a few, and futile, attempts at understanding the effusion, but quickly corrected them by inverting the position of the paper, as better sense could thus be obtained. Being fortunately forewarned that the paper before me contained a poem, I began at once, though without caution, to heap eulogies on the excellent blank verse. Coloring with indignation, my friend pointed out that his composition was rhymed, and, moreover, that it was in what he called the Spenserian stanza. Though not a bit convinced by his impudent invention of a name (as if Spencer* had ever written poetry!), I continued to examine the composition before me, but, getting no nearer to the sense, I contented myself with praising it, and especially commending the originality of the treatment. On handing back the paper to my friend, as he glanced at it to show me something particular, his face suddenly fell and looked puzzled.
“Hang it,” said he, “I gave you the wrong paper. This is only my tailor’s bill!”
Let the poetical critic take as a lesson this most unhappy episode.
On that bane of poetical feeling, blank verse, I shall only touch lightly; but as several friends of mine have repeatedly asked me for the formula or recipe for its production, I hereby communicate the directions to those of my readers who are so far gone. To tell the truth there is not, in the whole range of poetry, anything easier to produce than blank verse.
The first thing to do is to procure yourself ink, paper, and a pen; then write down, in the ordinary commonplace language that you speak (technically called prose), what you wish to say, or, if you be clever, what you think. The next step is to lay hands upon a ruler graduated in inches or in centimeters, and mark off, from your prose effusion, bits about four inches or ten centimeters long: these are the lines of your blank verse composition. In case the four-inch line does not divide into the prose effort without remainder, either the addition of a few Alases or Ohs or Ahs, or the introduction of an invocation to the Muses will fill in the required space. This is the modern recipe. Of course I do not know directly that such is the method that modern poets employ. On examining their poems, however, I have found that the internal evidence is conclusive, pointing everywhere to such a method of composition.
As to the scansion of your blank verse—never mind it; at first, whatever its kind, the critics will find in it the most outrageous flaws; but if in time you wriggle into poetical greatness, you will find the same gentlemen justify everything you have done, and you will be surprised at the things you symbolized, insinuated, meant.
Before taking leave of this part of my essay, I beg to point out to the reader that in this the age of motorcars and of art for the sake of art, there is no restriction as to the length of a line in poetry. You can write lines of two, three, five, ten, twenty, thirty syllables or more—that is of the least importance; but* when the lines of a poem contain more than a certain number of syllables, that composition is generally said to be written in prose. This difficulty of finding what is the number of syllables that is the limit between poetry and prose makes it modernly impossible well to establish which is one, which the other. Internal distinction is of course impossible. After some study I have found that that may generally be considered poetry where every line begins with a capital letter. If the reader can find another distinction I shall be very pleased to hear of it.
Now, although I advise you to write, as far as possible, in English, I must likewise admonish you to use such words as are not easily understood; this is a most essential part of poetry, for it causes you to have the praise of the reading public and the speedy approbation of the entangled critic. Sometimes, however, the critic prefers to be silent and pretend to treat your book with contempt; in your next work do you point out to the public that the contempt of the critic arises from his ignorance, and you will invariably be right.
And though it may seem strange that in the age of Kipling any man should dare to mention grammar, I must beg the patient reader to enter with me upon this subject. I wish merely to say that grammar is, in poetry, absolutely unnecessary; the darker and more uncertain the parts of your sentence (if you are so unpoetical as to write in sentences or periods), the more impressive will be your verse, the more evident your philosophic depth.
I now come to that most important part of verse, which consists in the metaphors, the epithets, the similes—in fact, the whole dress of poetry. Poetry, like a society woman, is better seen dressed.
Similes are found everywhere, a writer on composition informs us; the gentleman is right—they are. I should confine myself, however, to informing the would-be poet that it is not advisable to find them in books that are very much read (nor can they there be much found). I should think it safe, however, for him to take them from old poets, now forgotten. To suggest a few names, unknown to present-day readers: Publius Vergilius Maro, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, and, more modern, John Milton, John Dryden, and Alexander Pope. As nobody nowadays is acquainted with any of these, similes gathered from their works will appear quite new.
Metaphors are obtainable in the same way.
As to epithets, I cannot but recommend the purchase of a dictionary of quotations where these ornaments can be found. They are, of course, set words and phrases. For instance, your mistress’s mouth is always “perfumed” and her lips “cherry”; her eyes will always be “dreamy” and her hair composed of “silken threads” wherein your heart is “entwined.” Your face must be always “pale with care” and your frame “wasted by woe”; you must always be awake half the night dreaming of your cruel fate and the other half asleep dreaming of her. Your lady’s form must be more beautiful than that of Venus; this is not improper to state, for thanks to the costumes of modern society, you will have been able to observe it. Your lady must likewise be of a virgin purity, and though this and the statement before might not seem to fit well together, you must remember the age we live in and the strange scientific phenomena that are ever making us gasp. You can begin to write love poetry at twelve or thirteen, when you will know life well.
Before concluding I wish to say a few words on a subject of no small importance to the poet, though not directly concerning the structure or life of his composition. I would merely point out that to attain a full reputation as a poet, the beginner must of course have his portrait published in fashionable papers and must see that paragraphs about himself, his habits, his whims and eccentricities are published in suitable journals. Now it must be clear that, for this to be well done, the learner must look like, and act as, a poet, information about which things I here shall tender unasked. First, as regards personal appearance, I think no one can deny that a thin, stooping gait is indispensable. Moreover, clothes too large for the wearer, an unwashed face and uncombed hair, a hat put on wrong side foremost, and a general air of shabbiness and misery are everywhere allowed to be marks of a poetic temperament. As to the face of the poet, it must be ornamented by long hair falling on the shoulders, by dark eyes, arched eyebrows, and a pale and sallow complexion. It is absolutely indispensable that the bard should have a Greek nose with a knob at the end of it, or, in default of this, a nose with the bridge somewhat sunken but not lacking the inevitable knob. The Grecian nose cannot be easily attained, but if your nose be arched and you wish it to be of the second poetic type, a way has been found to obtain it and also to remedy a prominent chin, a thing which must not appear in a poetic face. The way suggested is a “communion of spirits” with the wife of an athletic friend. For this method, however, I cannot say much in advantage inasmuch that, of the two friends of mine who tried it, one lost all semblance of a face and the other bolted before the crucial moment. On this subject there is but little to add, unless it be that the mouth ought to be either small, lar
ge, or regular—a poetic feature which I think all of us possess. Finally, a poet with physiognomic leanings once told me that a great characteristic of a great poet was long and pointed ears,* a fact I consider true, for a friend of mine once told me that between the poet and the ass there is only a small difference, namely that the wiser of them walks on four legs.
FROM FRANCE IN 1950 Jean Seul de Méluret
According to a short résumé that Pessoa drafted in English, his French heteronym was born on August 1, 1885, and specialized in writing poetry, satire, and “scientific works with a satirical or moral purpose.” If his unfinished book Des Cas d’Exhibitionnisme might fit in the last category, since it analyzes cases of “nudités publiques” in Paris music halls and elsewhere from a psychological point of view, his satiric article “La France en 1950” has no scientific pretensions. Conceived in 1907 or 1908, it zigzags between the bawdy and the bizarre, activating a rarer side of Pessoa’s imagination. A “List of Publications” from circa 1913 designates the essay as “La France en 1950—par un Japonais,” which seems to mean that Pessoa’s French persona adopted, in turn, a Japanese persona, and in the project plans for Europa, the Intersectionist magazine from 1914 that never got off the ground (see pp. 60–61), we find an alternate title that would have pushed Seul’s satire yet farther into the future: “La France à l’an 2000.” Jean Seul was also supposed to write a satire about French pimps under the title “Messieurs les Souteneurs,” but no traces of it have been found. Seul was based in Lisbon, not France, which perhaps explains the frequent grammatical errors in his French. He wrote a number of poems before 1910, though not many complete ones.
Pessoa, under his own name, wrote essays in French throughout his life (few of which have been transcribed and published), and in 1923 he published three French poems in a Portuguese magazine. Toward the end of his life he again resorted to French to write a group of love poems.
Here there are no normal people, just people who are doubly abnormal, people who are doubly inverted sexually, such that they’re on their way back to normality. I’m told that even a certain monsieur I know, who appears to be utterly normal, is in fact quadrupally abnormal. Since two negatives make a positive......
The other day a Monsieur Sleeps-in-the-bed-of-4-women Giraud was imprisoned for the crime of refusing to commit incest. He [tried to defend] himself by proudly pointing out that, since he’s the brother of all humanity, all women are his sisters, so that whenever he sleeps with a woman, he’s sleeping with his sister.
A man named_______, manager of the Volupté Surhumaine insurance company, recently lost part of his left testicle. He derived a pleasure from this loss that would at one time have been called perverse, and so it became the fashion to lose a [piece] of this bodily part, but people are advised not to overdo this pleasure.
Illustrious men are much studied nowadays, and the considerable talents of various renowned writers have merited major monographs in recent years, but instead of discussing the literary part of their oeuvre, the studies concentrate more and more on determining the probable length of their penises.
A certain gentleman was accused of not raping a two-month-old baby.
...
He replied that he was thinking of doing something better than mere rape when he was arrested. He had no intention of committing an offense against decency [...].
The other day I visited a girls’ school called the Institut Sans Hymen. I’m told it was founded by a benefactress who had fourteen thousand lovers and who apparently died from her over-zealous dedication.
The girls in this boarding school are very well trained. They learn as many vices as possible, and it’s touching to see how easily the cute little sluts catch on.
The punishments, it’s true, are rather severe. For instance, one girl who cried out when a classmate used her for some sadistic act was sentenced by a disciplinary committee to having from only three to six lovers, and to wearing dresses that allowed only the upper part of her body to be seen! It’s shocking!
...
Dishes are washed with the blood of small children who have been raped and had their throats cut. The dishes aren’t wiped dry. I’ve been told that this sensual delight is a bit dated.
Ejaculations have been obtained by eating the bodies of infants.
Animal sperm as a beverage has fallen out of fashion.
Some idiot may find this satire to be indecent and immoral. It would be just like an idiot to think that way, for today’s top scientists have verified that idiots think stupidly and do stupid things.
This satire has made deliberate use of gross obscenity.
...
Shame on whoever finds this satire amusing. Fie on whoever laughs at it!
RANDOM NOTES AND EPIGRAMS
Pessoa loved the pithy phrase, the short but complete commentary. It features prominently in the works of Bernardo Soares, the Baron ofTeive, and Alvaro de Campos, as well as in Pessoa’s papers and notebooks, showing up in the margins or even in the middle of texts to which it may have no relation. Sometimes, on the contrary, an aphorism leads to more elaborate written reflections. Pessoa’s miniature literary productions also appear in isolation—on slips of paper and the backs of envelopes—and occasionally in series, filling up a whole page. Most of the epigrams, observations, and memoranda included in this section have never been published. They have not been extracted from larger texts but were found in the archives as they are presented here: as autonomous sentences or paragraphs, or in a sequence of brief to very brief passages separated from each other by horizontal bars. Each number corresponds to a “manuscript,” which in some cases is just a scrap of paper. Items 1, 5, 6, 11, 17, and 18 were written in English; the rest have been translated from Portuguese.
1.
When I consider how real and how true the things of his madness are to the madman, I cannot but agree with the essence of Protagoras’ statement that “man is the measure of all things.”
2.
Man is an animal that almost exists.
3.
There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.
The difference between God and us must lie, not in attributes, but in the very nature of our existence. Since each thing is what it is, God must be not only what He is but also what He isn’t. This confuses us about who He is.
The aristocrat is the man who doesn’t obey, and since his nature is disobedient, he degenerates into disobeying even his own convictions, his very own self. That is why aristocracies tend, with full awareness and sincerity, to be highly moral in theory and utterly corrupt in practice.
...
Total aristocratization = anarchy. Individualism has its limits. Some people cannot be individualized.
4.
Life is such a solemn thing, and its problems so serious, that no one has the right to laugh. Anyone who laughs is stupid—temporarily, at least. Happiness is the communicative form of stupidity.
5.
Evil is everywhere on earth, and one of its forms is happiness.
* * *
I say to you: Do good. Why? What do you gain by it? Nothing, you gain nothing. Neither money, nor love, nor respect and perhaps peace of mind. Perhaps thou gainest none of these. Why then do I say: Do good? Because you gain nothing by it. It is worth doing for this.
6.
God is God’s best joke.
7.
God is an economic concept. In his shadow the priests of all religions fashion their metaphysical bureaucracies.
(Álvaro de Campos)
8.
Whether or not they exist, we’re slaves to the gods.
(Bernardo Soares)
9.
Pure agnosticism is impossible. The only true agnosticism is ignorance. To be an agnostic is to be persuaded by reason that there are limits to our understanding. But whereas an observer can stop observing, one who reasons cannot stop. So that when by reason we’ve proved the limitation or non-limi
tation of this or that faculty, we cannot say, “Let’s stop here,” but must keep on reasoning in order to deduce the consequences of that limitation or non-limitation. That is what all “agnostics” do, consciously or unconsciously.
10.
I doubt, therefore I think.
11.
I am not conscience-stricken, but consciousness-stricken.
12.
We all have Futurist moments, as when, for example, we trip on a stone.
13.
In the theater of life, those who play the part of sincerity are, on the whole, the most convincing in their roles.
The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa Page 26
