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Authors: Fernando Pessoa
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hold. I already weigh too much in the lap of my self-awareness. I’m completely immersed in the warm mud of what I think I feel. Something that seizes and watches us has entered through all my senses. My eyelids droop over all my sensations. My tongue is stuck to all my feelings. A deep sleep glues all my ideas of gestures together. Why did you look at me like that? ...
THIRD WATCHER
(in a very slow and faint voice)
Ah, it’s time, the time has come ... Yes, someone has woken up ... There are people waking up ... As soon as someone enters, all this will end ... Until then let’s imagine that all this horror was a long sleep we’ve been having... It’s already day . .. Everything’s going to end . .. And the conclusion of all this, sister, is that only you are happy, because you believe in the dream ...
SECOND WATCHER Why ask me about it? Because I told it? No, I don’t believe ...
A
rooster crows. The light brightens, as if suddenly. The three watchers, without looking at each other, remain silent
.
On a road not far off an indefinite wagon creaks and groans
.
11–12 October, 1913
To Fernando Pessoa
AFTER READING YOUR STATIC DRAMA
The Mariner
After twelve minutes
Of your play
The Mariner
,
Whose utter lack of meaning
Makes the sharpest of minds
Go dull and grow weary,
One of the watching women
Says with languid magic:
Only dreams last forever and are beautiful. Why are we still talking?
Exactly what I wanted
To ask those women ...
Á LVARO DE C AMPOS
THE MASTER AND HIS DISCIPLES
“The creation ofCaeiro and of the discipleship of Reis and Campos seems at first sight, an elaborate joke of the imagination. But it is not. It [is] a great act of intellectual magic, a magnum opus of the impersonal creative power.” So claimed Fernando Pessoa in a note datable to January
1930,
by which time the poet seems to have lost all his modesty. Or could it be that he was just stating a fact? Even if we may doubt that the creation ofCaeiro and his poetic disciples wasn’t, at some level, a hearty as well as elaborate joke, it would be hard to deny the magical quality of Pessoa’s intellectual trick. Having divided himself among invented others, whom he claimed were no longer him, Pessoa could promote them without—theoretically—any personal stake in the matter. And he spared no pains to do just that. Besides all the commentary and praise that he instructed the minor heteronyms to heap on the major ones, and Campos and Reis on Alberto Caeiro (the two “disciples” were rather more critical of each other), Pessoa drew up quite specific plans for publicizing Caeiro’s work in magazines and newspapers, both at home and abroad, and he even drafted some promotional articles. One of these, written in English and headed by a list of the British publications where it was to be sent (including
T. P.’s Weekly, Academy,
and
Athenaeum),
explains to its potential readers:
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in relation to its time is, if anything, less original than Alberto Caeiro’s astonishing volume—The
Keeper of Sheep (O Guardador de Rebanhos)—
which has just appeared in Lisbon
.
No one in Portugal’s literary milieu had ever heard of him. He appeared suddenly. And his contribution to Portuguese and European literature breaks away (...) from all traditions and currents that were valid in the past or are active today
.
Was Pessoa really planning to blitz the papers with promotional pieces like this one? Probably so, but planning very far ahead, for he would first have had to publish the book ofCaeiro that they promoted, and he seemed in no hurry to publish anything in the way of books. He seems to have realized that time was on his side, such that none of his efforts would be wasted. And in his literary afterlife, on which he bet everything he had or was, Pessoa’s publicity schemes are indeed having their impact.
As a marketing strategist for himself, Pessoa was (begging
THIRD WATCHER
(in a very slow and faint voice)
Ah, it’s time, the time has come ... Yes, someone has woken up ... There are people waking up ... As soon as someone enters, all this will end ... Until then let’s imagine that all this horror was a long sleep we’ve been having... It’s already day . .. Everything’s going to end . .. And the conclusion of all this, sister, is that only you are happy, because you believe in the dream ...
SECOND WATCHER Why ask me about it? Because I told it? No, I don’t believe ...
A
rooster crows. The light brightens, as if suddenly. The three watchers, without looking at each other, remain silent
.
On a road not far off an indefinite wagon creaks and groans
.
11–12 October, 1913
To Fernando Pessoa
AFTER READING YOUR STATIC DRAMA
The Mariner
After twelve minutes
Of your play
The Mariner
,
Whose utter lack of meaning
Makes the sharpest of minds
Go dull and grow weary,
One of the watching women
Says with languid magic:
Only dreams last forever and are beautiful. Why are we still talking?
Exactly what I wanted
To ask those women ...
Á LVARO DE C AMPOS
THE MASTER AND HIS DISCIPLES
“The creation ofCaeiro and of the discipleship of Reis and Campos seems at first sight, an elaborate joke of the imagination. But it is not. It [is] a great act of intellectual magic, a magnum opus of the impersonal creative power.” So claimed Fernando Pessoa in a note datable to January
1930,
by which time the poet seems to have lost all his modesty. Or could it be that he was just stating a fact? Even if we may doubt that the creation ofCaeiro and his poetic disciples wasn’t, at some level, a hearty as well as elaborate joke, it would be hard to deny the magical quality of Pessoa’s intellectual trick. Having divided himself among invented others, whom he claimed were no longer him, Pessoa could promote them without—theoretically—any personal stake in the matter. And he spared no pains to do just that. Besides all the commentary and praise that he instructed the minor heteronyms to heap on the major ones, and Campos and Reis on Alberto Caeiro (the two “disciples” were rather more critical of each other), Pessoa drew up quite specific plans for publicizing Caeiro’s work in magazines and newspapers, both at home and abroad, and he even drafted some promotional articles. One of these, written in English and headed by a list of the British publications where it was to be sent (including
T. P.’s Weekly, Academy,
and
Athenaeum),
explains to its potential readers:
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” in relation to its time is, if anything, less original than Alberto Caeiro’s astonishing volume—The
Keeper of Sheep (O Guardador de Rebanhos)—
which has just appeared in Lisbon
.
No one in Portugal’s literary milieu had ever heard of him. He appeared suddenly. And his contribution to Portuguese and European literature breaks away (...) from all traditions and currents that were valid in the past or are active today
.
Was Pessoa really planning to blitz the papers with promotional pieces like this one? Probably so, but planning very far ahead, for he would first have had to publish the book ofCaeiro that they promoted, and he seemed in no hurry to publish anything in the way of books. He seems to have realized that time was on his side, such that none of his efforts would be wasted. And in his literary afterlife, on which he bet everything he had or was, Pessoa’s publicity schemes are indeed having their impact.
As a marketing strategist for himself, Pessoa was (begging
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