Once Alberto Caeiro had appeared, I instinctively and subconsciously tried to find disciples for him. From Caeiro’s false paganism I extracted the latent Ricardo Reis, at last discovering his name and adjusting him to his true self, for now I actually saw him. And then a new individual, quite the opposite of Ricardo Reis, suddenly and impetuously came to me. In an unbroken stream, without interruptions or corrections, the ode whose name is “Triumphal Ode,”* by the man whose name is none other than Álvaro de Campos, issued from my typewriter.
And so I created a nonexistent coterie, placing it all in a framework of reality. I ascertained the influences at work and the friendships between them, I listened in myself to their discussions and divergent points of view, and in all of this it seems that I, who created them all, was the one who was least there. It seems that it all went on without me. And thus it seems to go on still. If one day I’m able to publish the aesthetic debate between Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos, you’ll see how different they are, and how I have nothing to do with the matter.
When it came time to publish Orpheu, we had to find something at the last minute to fill out the issue, and so I suggested to Sá-Carneiro that I write an “old” poem of Álvaro de Campos’s—a poem such as Álvaro de Campos would have written before meeting Caeiro and falling under his influence. That’s how I came to write “Opiary,”* in which I tried to incorporate all the latent tendencies of Álvaro de Campos that would eventually be revealed but that still showed no hint of contact with his master Caeiro. Of all the poems I’ve written, this was the one that gave me the most trouble, because of the twofold depersonalization it required. But I don’t think it turned out badly, and it does show us Álvaro in the bud.
I think this should explain for you the origin of my heteronyms, but if there’s any point I need to clarify—I’m writing quickly, and when I write quickly I’m not terribly clear—let me know, and I’ll gladly oblige. And here’s a true and hysterical addendum: when writing certain passages of Álvaro de Campos’s Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro, I have wept real tears. I tell this so that you’ll know whom you’re dealing with, my dear Casais Monteiro!
A few more notes on this subject... I see before me, in the transparent but real space of dreams, the faces and gestures of Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos. I gave them their ages and fashioned their lives. Ricardo Reis was born in 1887 (I don’t remember the month and day, but I have them somewhere) in Oporto. He’s a doctor and is presently living in Brazil. Alberto Caeiro was born in 1889 and died in 1915. He was born in Lisbon but spent most of his life in the country. He had no profession and practically no schooling. Álvaro de Campos was born in Tavira, on October 15th, 1890 (at 1:30 P.M., says Ferreira Gomes,* and it’s true, because a horoscope made for that hour confirms it). Campos, as you know, is a naval engineer (he studied in Glasgow) but is currently living in Lisbon and not working. Caeiro was of medium height, and although his health was truly fragile (he died of TB), he seemed less frail than he was. Ricardo Reis is a wee bit shorter, stronger, but sinewy. Álvaro de Campos is tall (5 ft. 9 in., an inch taller than me), slim, and a bit prone to stoop. All are clean-shaven—Caeiro fair, with a pale complexion and blue eyes; Reis somewhat dark-skinned; Campos neither pale nor dark, vaguely corresponding to the Portuguese Jewish type, but with smooth hair that’s usually parted on one side, and a monocle. Caeiro, as I’ve said, had almost no education—just primary school. His mother and father died when he was young, and he stayed on at home, living off a small income from family properties. He lived with an elderly great-aunt. Ricardo Reis, educated in a Jesuit high school, is, as I’ve mentioned, a doctor; he has been living in Brazil since 1919, having gone into voluntary exile because of his monarchist sympathies. He is a formally trained Latinist, and a self-taught semi-Hellenist. Álvaro de Campos, after a normal high school education, was sent to Scotland to study engineering, first mechanical and then naval. During some holidays he made a voyage to the Orient, which gave rise to his poem “Opiary.” He was taught Latin by an uncle who was a priest from the Beira region.
How do I write in the name of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I’m going to write in his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation that suddenly takes concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a sudden impulse to write and don’t know what. (My semiheteronym Bernardo Soares, who in many ways resembles Álvaro de Campos, always appears when I’m sleepy or drowsy, such that my qualities of inhibition and logical reasoning are suspended; his prose is an endless reverie. He’s a semiheteronym because his personality, although not my own, doesn’t differ from my own but is a mere mutilation of it. He’s me without my logical reasoning and emotion. His prose is the same as mine, except for a certain formal restraint that reason imposes on my own writing, and his Portuguese is exactly the same—whereas Caeiro writes bad Portuguese, Campos writes it reasonably well but with mistakes such as “me myself instead of “I myself,” etc., and Reis writes better than I, but with a purism I find excessive. What’s hard for me is to write the prose of Reis—still unpublished—or of Campos. Simulation is easier, because more spontaneous, in verse.)
At this point you’re no doubt wondering what bad luck has caused you to fall, just by reading, into the midst of an insane asylum. The worst thing is the incoherent way I’ve explained myself, but I write, I repeat, as if I were talking to you, so that I can write quickly. Otherwise it would take me months to write.
I still haven’t answered your question about the occult. You asked if I believe in the occult. Phrased in that way, the question isn’t clear, but I know what you mean and I’ll answer it. I believe in the existence of worlds higher than our own and in the existence of beings that inhabit those worlds. I believe there are various, increasingly subtle levels of spirituality that lead to a Supreme Being, who presumably created this world. There may be other, equally Supreme Beings who have created other universes that coexist with our own, separately or interconnectedly. For these and other reasons, the External Order of the Occult, meaning the Freemasons, avoid (except for the Anglo-Saxon Freemasons) the term “God,” with its theological and popular implications, and prefer to say “Great Architect of the Universe,” an expression that leaves open the question of whether He is the world’s Creator or merely its Ruler. Given this hierarchy of beings, I do not believe that direct communication with God is possible, but we can, according to the degree of our spiritual attunement, communicate with ever higher beings. There are three paths toward the occult: the path of magic (including practices such as spiritism, intellectually on a par with witchcraft, likewise a form of magic), which is an extremely dangerous path in all respects; the mystical path, which is not inherently dangerous but is uncertain and slow; and the path of alchemy, which is the hardest and most perfect path of all, since it involves a transmutation of the very personality that prepares it, not only without great risks but with defenses that the other paths don’t have. As for “initiation,” all I can tell you is this, which may or may not answer your question: I belong to no Initiatic Order. The epigraph to my poem “Eros and Psyche,”* a passage taken (and translated, since the original is in Latin) from the Ritual of the Third Degree of the Portuguese Order of the Knights Templar, indicates no more than what in fact occurred: that I was allowed to leaf through the Rituals of the first three degrees of that Order, which has been extinct, or dormant, since around 1888. Were it not dormant, I would not have cited that passage from the Ritual, since Rituals in active use should not be quoted (unless the Order isn’t named).
I believe, my dear colleague, that I have answered your questions, albeit with some confusion here and there. If you have other questions, don’t hesitate to ask them. I will answer as best I can, though I may not answer so promptly, for which I offer my apologies in advance.
Warm regards from your friend who greatly admires and respects you,
Fernando Pessoa
&nb
sp; P.S. (!!!)
14 January 1935
Besides the copy I usually make for myself when I type a letter that contains explanations of the sort found herein, I’ve made a second copy that will always remain at your disposal, in case the original gets lost or you need this copy for some other reason.
One other thing ... It might happen in the future that for some study of yours or some other such purpose you will need to quote a passage from this letter. You are hereby authorized to do so, but with one reservation, and I beg leave to underscore it. The paragraph about the occult, on page 7 of my letter, should not be reproduced in published form. In my desire to answer your question as clearly as possible, I knowingly overstepped the bounds that this subject naturally imposes. I had no qualms about doing so, since this is a private letter. You may read the paragraph in question to whomever you like, provided they also agree not to reproduce its contents in published form. I can count on you, I trust, to respect this negative wish.
I still owe you a long-overdue letter about your latest books. I reiterate what I believe I wrote in my last letter: when I go to spend a few days in Estoril (I think it will be in February), I’ll catch up on that part of my correspondence, writing not only you but similar letters to various other people.
Oh, and let me ask you again something you still haven’t answered: did you get my chapbooks of poems in English, which I sent you some time ago?
And would you, “for my records” (to use business jargon), confirm for me as soon as possible that you’ve received this letter? Many thanks.
Fernando Pessoa
[Another Version of the Genesis of the Heteronyms]
Ever since I was a child, I’ve felt the need to enlarge the world with fictitious personalities—dreams of mine that were carefully crafted, envisaged with photographic clarity, and fathomed to the depths of their souls. When I was but five years old, an isolated child and quite content to be so, I already enjoyed the company of certain characters from my dreams, including a Captain Thibeaut, the Chevalier de Pas, and various others whom I’ve forgotten, and whose forgetting—like my imperfect memory of the two I just named—is one of my life’s great regrets.
This may seem merely like a child’s imagination that gives life to dolls. But it was more than that. I intensely conceived those characters with no need of dolls. Distinctly visible in my ongoing dream, they were utterly human realities for me, which any doll—because unreal—would have spoiled. They were people.
And instead of ending with my childhood, this tendency expanded in my adolescence, taking firmer root with each passing year, until it became my natural way of being. Today I have no personality: I’ve divided all my humanness among the various authors whom I’ve served as literary executor. Today I’m the meeting-place of a small humanity that belongs only to me.
...
This is simply the result of a dramatic temperament taken to the extreme. My dramas, instead of being divided into acts full of action, are divided into souls. That’s what this apparently baffling phenomenon comes down to.
I don’t reject—in fact I’m all for—psychiatric explanations, but it should be understood that all higher mental activity, because it’s abnormal, is equally subject to psychiatric interpretation. I don’t mind admitting that I’m crazy, but I want it to be understood that my craziness is no different from Shakespeare’s, whatever may be the comparative value of the products that issue from the saner side of our crazed minds.
I subsist as a kind of medium of myself, but I’m less real than the others, less substantial, less personal, and easily influenced by them all. I too am a disciple of Caeiro, and I still remember the day—March 13th, 1914—when I “heard for the first time” (when I wrote, that is, in a single burst of inspiration) a good many of the early poems of The Keeper of Sheep and then went on to write, without once stopping, the six Intersectionist poems that make up “Slanting Rain” (Orpheu 2), the visible and logical result of Caeiro’s influence on the temperament of Fernando Pessoa.
Lisbon, 20 January 1935
My dear friend and colleague,
Many thanks for your letter. I’m glad I managed to say something of genuine interest. I had my doubts, given the hasty and impulsive way I wrote, caught up in the mental conversation I was having with you.
...
You are quite right about the absence in me of any kind of evolution in the true sense. There are poems I wrote when I was twenty that are just as good—so far as I can judge—as the ones I write today. I write no better than I did, except in terms of my knowledge of Portuguese, which is a cultural rather than poetic particular. I write differently. This can perhaps be explained by the following ...
What I am essentially—behind the involuntary masks of poet, logical reasoner and so forth—is a dramatist. My spontaneous tendency to depersonalization, which I mentioned in my last letter to explain the existence of my heteronyms, naturally leads to this definition. And so I do not evolve, I simply JOURNEY. (This word is typed in capital letters because I mistakenly hit the shift key, but it’s correct, so I’ll let it stand.) I continuously change personality, I keep enlarging (and here there is a kind of evolution) my capacity to create new characters, new forms of pretending that I understand the world or, more accurately, that the world can be understood. That is why I’ve likened my path to a journey rather than to an evolution. I haven’t risen from one floor to another; I’ve moved, on a level plane, from one place to another. I’ve naturally lost a certain simplicity and naiveté present in my adolescent poems, but that’s not evolution, it’s just me getting older.
These hastily written words should give you some inkling into the quite definite way in which I concur with your view that in me there has been no true evolution.
As to the forthcoming publication of my books, there are no obstacles to worry about. When I decide I want to publish Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos, I can do so immediately. But I’m afraid that books of this sort won’t sell. That’s my only hesitation. The publication of the large book of poems [of Fernando Pessoa] is likewise guaranteed, and if I’m more inclined to publish it rather than some other, it’s because it has a certain intellectual advantage, as well as a better chance of success. I think, for different reasons, that it will also not be especially hard to publish “The Anarchist Banker” in English.
...
Warm regards from your friend and admirer
Fernando Pessoa
THE BOOK OF DISQUIET
Bernardo Soares
Inspiration works in unpredictable ways. An image one sees, a phrase one hears, a smell that jogs a memory, a conversation, news of a crime, a sudden and novel idea—all can be the starting point of a poem, a painting, or a symphony, or even of an entire philosophical system. Fernando Pessoa’s largest and most stunning work of prose, which will endure as one of the twentieth century’s literary emblems, was born from just a word: disquiet. It lit up in Pessoa in 1913, on the 20th of January. The surviving manuscript of a poem written that day contains, in the margin, a notation penned in large letters—“The title Disquiet”—and underlined with a confident flourish. That’s not quite true, because Pessoa was writing in Portuguese, not English. The magic word for his title was actually desassossego, one of those words that in translation-disquiet, disquietude, restlessness—never has the same force, or mystery, as the original. Not even the Spanish desasosiego rings with the same enchantment, and the French translator, not happy with inquietude, invented the word intranquillité, which, curiously enough, has since entered the French vocabulary.
In August of 1913 Pessoa published his first piece of creative prose, “In the Forest of Estrangement,” signed by his own name and identified as “from The Book of Disquiet, in preparation.” During the next sixteen years he published no more of the book, but the nervous germ of its key word kept working, and text kept spinning out ofPessoa. In September of 1914 he wrote a friend in the Azores that his “pathological production” was g
oing “complexly and tortuously forward. “And in a letter to the same friend sent two months later, he clarified the nature of the pathology: “My state of mind compels me to work hard, against my will, on The Book of Disquiet. But it’s all fragments, fragments, fragments.”
In fact the early texts of The Book of Disquiet are mostly unfinished. They are full of beautiful writing, but also full of blank spaces for words and phrases that were needed to complete an idea, round out a picture, or prolong a certain verbal rhythm. Sometimes, on the contrary, Pessoa left various alternate wordings for a phrase he wasn’t quite happy with. Some texts are really just notes for a text; others are sets of related but disconnected, disordered ideas. When he went back to revise his Book, Pessoa would find words for the blank spaces, choose between alternate versions, fill out the sketchy passages, put order where it was needed, and make the whole work cohere. But he hardly ever went back; he kept churning out text. Pessoa was untidy in nearly all of his written world, but in The Book of Disquiet that untidiness became a kind of premise, without which the book couldn’t be true to its restless, agitated heart.
The early texts glow with a post-Symbolist aesthetic, as suggested by some of their titles: “Imperial Legend,” “Our Lady of Silence,” and “Symphony of the Restless Night.” The disquiet has less to do with the narrator’s psychological state than with the hesitant, fluttering, almost weightless world of symbols that the likewise diaphanous prose describes. “Peristyle,” one of the oldest and most fragmentary texts, is typical, and Pessoa considered making it the gateway to his Book. It begins: “It was in the silence of my disquiet, at the hour of day when the landscape is a halo of Life and dreaming is mere dreaming, my love, that I raised up this strange book like the open doors of an abandoned house.” Further on the narrator addresses his abstractly female, forever virgin “love” with these words: “Swan of rhythmic disquiet, lyre of immortal hours, faint harp of mythic sorrows—you are both the Awaited and the Departed, the one who soothes and also wounds, who gilds joys with sadness and crowns griefs with roses.” In “Our Lady of Silence,” the narrator asks another (or is it the same?) idealized, sexless woman to be “the Invisible Twilight, with my disquiet and my yearnings as the shades of your indecision, the colors of your uncertainty.” And in “Sentimental Education” he rather enjoys his “exquisite exhaustion tinged with disquiet and melancholy.” Disquiet, in these ethereal atmospheres, has a strangely material quality.
The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa Page 29
