Hello, brave ones. Today we are going to learn more about one of my favorite writers of all time, Fernando Pessoa. Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon on June 13, 1888. He was educated in South Africa, having attended high school in Durban, where he received a traditional English education, which made him a bilingual poet, that is, capable of speaking two languages natively. He settled permanently in Lisbon starting in 1905. His life path is associated with events and circumstances marked by failure. And isn't it true that those various negative things made him one of the greatest writers of all time. Take this lesson into your own lives. Among these things are the death of his father in July 1893, his failed university path, both in the arts and philosophy, his successive depressive crises, and his failure in entrepreneurship, as he tried to create the IBIS company, a printing press that allegedly closed shortly after opening. The well-known romantic frustrations with his affair with Ofélia, and projects and innovations that never materialized. because he had the desire to open an astrology clinic and also his professional inconsistency, having held more than 20 jobs. Also his frequenting of various cafes where he began his addiction to alcohol, and wandering through rented rooms in the city center , though today one can still visit the Fernando Pessoa house-museum on Rua Coelho da Rocha. And finally, his death from liver failure at 47 years old. Despite all this disillusionment that marked his life, Pessoa possessed a vast and solid culture, with knowledge of philosophy ranging from the Greeks of classical antiquity to contemporary French thinkers, and from English and American literature to French and Portuguese, including Camões, Antero de Quental, Cesário Verde, or Guerra Junqueiro. Who knows, if he were alive today, maybe he would make videos for fun. One of the great scholars of Pessoa's work was Robert Bréchon, who stated that the poet went through his school life, as well as his later professional life, as a stowaway. His colleagues, teachers, and even his parents esteemed him, sometimes admired him, but ignored him. This is quoting Robert. On the other hand, it would be Pessoa himself who stated, "I have crossed life like a ghost of my own life." Simply put, this is the same as saying that Pessoa always stayed in the shadows, being very introverted. However, his literary personality distances itself from these existential failures, even if motivated by them, as it shows the constant search for a dream. The poet says: "I feel multiple. " I feel I live others 'lives within me incompletely, as if my being participated in all men, incompletely in each, by a sum of non-selves synthesized into a fake self. This sentence expresses the desire to face many personalities, which will be translated in his writing by the presence of many names. If I were to say that I felt multiple lives other than my own inside me, I would probably be institutionalized. But anyway. Returning to Portugal in 1905, Pessoa lives through a series of historical and political events in Portuguese history, from the fall of the monarchy to the implementation of the Republic and the Estado Novo dictatorship. This caused the cultural landscape to stagnate. Therefore, Pessoa feels it is his duty to commit himself to the rehabilitation of Portuguese letters. To do this, he stops writing in English and begins writing exclusively in Portuguese starting in 1908. He debuts in the world of letters with a series of articles titled "The New Portuguese Poetry" published in 1912. That year, Pessoa meets Mário de Sá-Carneiro, who is important in the initiation of modernism in Portugal. In 1914, he writes "Oblique Rain," a set of six poems that constitute an important landmark in the history of modernism. This set of poems shows an approach of poetry to cubism, which consists of an art of intertwining images of dream and reality. It is, therefore, a form of art that aims to eliminate all subjectivity of emotions and feelings to only convey the objectivity of things. In 1915, together with Mário de Sá-Carneiro and other writers, they launch the only two issues of the magazine "Orfeu," which inaugurates modernism in Portugal. Further on, between 1929 and 1932, he publishes the work "The Book of Disquiet.""Message," another of his great works, is published in 1934, a year after Salazar assumed the leadership of the country's government, establishing a system of total control of public life, what we know as the Estado Novo. As you know, he is the author of a vast body of work characterized by plurality, diversity, and writing with countless faces and different themes. Authored by the poet himself, that is, the orthonym, and by other poets, other selves, the heteronyms. There are over 75 heteronyms and semi-heteronyms. There is a tendency in Fernando Pessoa for depersonalization, which is demonstrated by the creation of these various selves. In practice, this means that he wrote poems signing as other people and even assuming the personality of another individual completely different from his own. We will explore the work of Fernando Pessoa, the orthonym, but also some of his heteronyms. Continuing with the theme of Fernando Pessoa, we will address his works as an orthonym, that is, written by himself as a writer. Living primarily through intelligence and imagination, the poetic discourse of Pessoa is characterized by learning to feel things only literally, that is, by feigning feelings. Pessoa would feign even the feelings he actually experienced. Just imagine that he could take all his negative emotions and master them after ending a relationship with his girlfriend. There are some fundamental themes common to several of Pessoa's poems. The theory of pretense, the pain of thinking, the nostalgia for childhood due to the longing for the time when he was happy, the fragmentation of the self combined with existential tedium, the awareness that the perceptible world is a copy of another world inaccessible to human beings, constant anxiety, social maladjustment, and the rejection of science as a way to explain the reality of things. Beyond these themes present in almost all his works, the author's way of writing is also characteristic. In terms of style, he uses symbolic and esoteric language, frequently resorts to adjectives, and employs various comparisons and metaphors. Lastly, at a sonic level, there is rhythmicity. In Fernando Pessoa's poems, he uses alliterations, that is, the repetition of the same sound in several words or phrases, and, of course, rhymes. Let's now look at some examples of his works to better understand how the themes we just listed are addressed. The poems " Autopsicografia" and "Isto" establish Pessoa's true poetic art, initiating a process of learning not to feel that prioritizes rational knowledge over affective knowledge. In " Autopsicografia," the poetic subject starts with the statement: "The poet is a feigner," identifying poet and feigner, shifting the act of creating poetry from the sphere of lived emotions to the sphere of feigned or thought-out emotions. Thus, his writing presupposes a process of intellectualizing emotion. Another theme is the pain of thinking. The constant search for rationality leads the poet to live an intimate tragedy that makes him unhappy, wanting to feel in a rational way. This drama is explicit in poems like "Ela Canta Pobremente" or "Gato que brincas na rua ." For Pessoa, intelligence is the realization that it is effectively impossible for human beings to reach absolute knowledge, which provokes in the poet the pain of ignorance that prevents his happiness by acknowledging the limitations that characterize our species. In practice, Pessoa suffers from overthinking. Typically, we see many positive aspects in intelligence, but the excess of intelligence or thought, in his case, causes him to enter a negative spiral of overthinking . In other words, Fernando Pessoa lived a dichotomy that consists of the need to perceive the world in a rational way and, at the same time, the certainty that this reality will not allow him to achieve happiness, causing great suffering and anguish. It is this evidence that emerges in the poem "Ela canta, pobre ceifeira," marked by two dualities: consciousness and unconsciousness, happiness and unhappiness. Representing instinct, the reaper feels the fullness that comes from the happiness of existing without resorting to questioning or the intellectualization of feelings. The poet expresses the desire to feel that way, while not wanting to abdicate his rationalization. In short, unlike the reaper, the poet does not achieve happiness, because in him, everything is thought. Another thematic line in Fernando Pessoa's poetry is the longing for a happy time. For Pessoa, childhood is often represented through a mythical , symbolic universe, linked to tales and legends. Dissatisfied with the present and incapable of living in fullness, Pessoa takes refuge in a childhood, but one subjected to a process of intellectualization. Basically, since he is so unhappy as an adult, he tends to suffer from longing for the happy time of childhood, where he was more naive. The poems that illustrate this fascination with childhood are "Quando as crianças brincam" or "Não sei, amei outrora." In this last poem, the first voice is the princess's, through which the poet expresses the dream of having been happy. There is also a second voice, the nurse's voice, which assumes the dimension of adult consciousness, that is, where he positions himself at the moment. Nostalgia for childhood coincides with the longing for a happy time, allied to this unconsciousness that disappears when we become adults. Lastly, we have the theme of the fragmentation of the self and existential weariness. The constant tendency toward intellectualization leads Pessoa to a process of self-analysis. Doubt, in defining his identity, and the anguish of self-ignorance, lead the poet to be unable to live life, plunging into existential boredom. You know those days when it would have been better not to have gotten out of bed, because everything feels like a drama? That was exactly how Pessoa felt, dissatisfied with the present. Pessoa longs for experiences and new ways of living, states of illusion, dreams that make impossible things possible, just as he says himself. The poem "Viajar! Perder países!" translates the desire to travel that reflects this permanent dissatisfaction. Nowadays, most young people who experience boredom dedicate themselves to playing Fortnite, for example. Who knows if Fernando Pessoa wouldn't be a gaming YouTuber today. In summary, at a thematic level, Pessoa's poetic art is marked by the theory of pretense, the intellectualization of emotions and feelings, obsession, self-analysis, the suffering resulting from the pain of thinking, the distance between dream and reality, the inability to enjoy life's fullness, the evocation of childhood as a symbol of this unhappiness and lost happiness, the fragmentation of the self, existential anguish, inner loneliness, and melancholy. At a formal level, it is characterized by simple language, but rich in repetitions, internal, crossed, and paired rhymes, and short stanzas, typically quatrains or quintains, always with rhythmic and musical softness. The fact that Pessoa loved writing everything in quatrains makes his poems have more rhythm and even sound like music. The process of orthonymy began in 1914, a day considered by the poet to be triumphal, as it revealed his tendency to multiply into various personalities. Pessoa envisions in each one a fragment of a totality to which he aspires, because each one, in their own way, suffers from the same anguish of existing. In other words, it is as if Pessoa used and created people he would like to be. And wrote in their names, the heteronyms. These various unreal figures to which Pessoa confers reality assume, through the poet's imagination, a true identity. The first one we will talk about is Alberto Caeiro. He was born in Lisbon in 1889 and died of tuberculosis in 1915, having lived most of his life in the countryside. He was of medium height, with a fragile appearance, blond, fair-skinned, and with blue eyes. He had no profession and only completed primary school. He was orphaned at a very young age and lived with an elderly great-aunt of limited means. Caeiro appeared to Fernando Pessoa in 1914, and Pessoa claims this was the triumphal day of his life, as he considers him the master, because he is the only one who can achieve peace, tranquility, and serenity by refusing thought and prioritizing feeling. This is seen in the phrase: "I have no philosophy, I have senses." Caeiro represents the opposite of Fernando Pessoa Orthonym, the remedy for his anxiety and anguish. For Caeiro, the only way to achieve happiness is not to think. Does it make sense now that Pessoa creates other people? It is because, in this case, he is creating a person completely different from himself that he would even like to be. Thus, he manages to assume different personalities. Alberto Caeiro proposes deculturalization to the extent that he denies the view of reality subjected to the analysis of thought, arguing that existing is merely in accordance with natural laws. Caeiro's poems are gathered into three groups. The Keeper of Flocks, The Amorous Shepherd, and Uncollected Poems . The texts of The Keeper of Flocks show Caeiro intends to be the discoverer of nature, denying that nature has hidden meanings. Things are what they are, and it is up to the poet to accept them as they are, without thinking. For Caeiro, the world is clear, evident, it simply is. With Caeiro, we learn how to unlearn. We accept life and death without mysteries , stripped of all thought and subjectivity. The most recurring themes in his first set of texts, The Keeper of Flocks, are the subject's full identification with nature, always privileging sensory perception such as elements of the soil or the wind. The attempt to annul the act of thinking, which we can see in the phrase: "My thoughts are happy, I only regret knowing that they are happy." Also the fact that thinking is a source of unhappiness, saying: "Thinking bothers like walking in the rain." The revelation of a subject at peace with himself, without ambitions. And the reference to the act of writing as something natural. He says: "I write verses on a paper that is in my mind, I feel a pen in my hand and I see a clipping within me." There is also a simplicity of language through comparisons, where he says: "My gaze is clear like a sunflower." And lastly, the real is the only means of achieving happiness. He expresses this by saying: "I feel my whole body lying in reality, I know the truth and I am happy." Therefore, for the main characteristics of Alberto Caeiro's poetry, we have as lines of meaning the defense of objectivity. Nothing exists beyond what we capture through the senses, with a predominance of sensation over thought. In other words, man must renounce thought, as it implies obscuring the meaning of things. There is also a total communion between man and nature. The human being must submit to natural laws and should not rationalize processes that already exist naturally, such as death. There is a presence of neopaganism, that is, an idea of absolute communion with nature resulting from this pagan vision of existence, consisting of a total disbelief in what lies beyond life, that is, transcendence. There is a strong skepticism, as for him to think about things is not to understand them. And there is also a bit of stoicism, that is, a passive acceptance of everything. Life should be viewed like the life of other beings that exist in the universe. There are sunny days and rainy days. This is the supreme truth, and only those who realize it and possess tranquility through it will be able to grasp it. At a stylistic level, we can summarize it by the use of simple language, an objective lexicon, almost absent adjectives, many metaphors and comparisons, a predominance of parallelism, and verb forms in the present tense. Finally, Caeiro has a characteristic sound marked by a slow rhythm, contributing to this calm acceptance of things through an alternation of vocal interjections and open vowels, with an absence of rhymes. In short, he is the master of all Pessoa's poetic subjects, including the ortonym himself. He is a shepherd by metaphor. He has a peaceful relationship with himself and with life . He observes with a naive and pure gaze and has an intimate relationship with nature. He shows a predominance of visual sensations and feeling over thinking, with a constant focus on experiencing the present. Álvaro de Campos is the second heteronym of Fernando Pessoa that we will address. He was born in Tavira on October 15, 1890. White and dark-skinned, with a clean-shaven face and straight hair parted to the side, he wears a monocle and is strongly reminiscent of a Portuguese Jew. He is tall, thin, slightly stooped, graduates in naval engineering, and has a cosmopolitan path between London, Scotland, and the Orient. Álvaro de Campos would emerge whenever Fernando Pessoa felt the impulse to write. Campos's texts reconstruct the poetic journey of the engineer, seduced successively by opium , marked in the decadentist phase, and by futuristic delirium, which we see in the futurist phase. To, finally, dwell on melancholy and discouragement, which we will then see in the intimist phase. Deep down, we all have a little bit of Campos inside us. He represents a person with different states, from the most hysterical to the deepest discouragement. Therefore, this bipolarity continues to be something very common that everyone has within themselves. Initially claiming to be bored with life, resorting to opium, which is a drug as a remedy, he transforms into a prophet of the industrial era and the violence of modern life. His excessively long poems express a multitude of varied emotions in a disorderly way. For this reason, what Pessoa Orthonym does not express, Campos speaks in an explosion of shouts and exclamations, as in his Odes, "Ode Triunfal" and "Ode Marítima," which we will see later. Let us move on to the analysis of Campos's evolution in each phase of his writing. The first phase is the decadentist, and in this phase, it consists of only a single poem, " Opiário," which reveals a poetic subject unadapted to the world and to life. It presents a disenchantment with the pointlessness of life, denouncing a Portuguese fatalism through the phrase: "You belong to a kind of Portuguese who , after India was discovered, were left without work." And also a thirst for new sensations that we can see in the phrase: "at the sleepy touch of morphine, shimmering transparencies are born." After this depressive phase, Campos begins a period of excitement, just like each of us when we finish our national exams. This phase of excitement is known as the futurist phase. "Ode Triunfal," the most representative text of this phase, constitutes an explosive and excessive eulogy to technological civilization. Campos moves from the decadent phase to the futurist one, fascinated by excessive forms with an exacerbated and clearly provocative song to progress and modern civilization. In this phase, Campos's poems translate the exaltation of technology, progress, and energies associated with strength, movement, and the speed that defined the industrial age. The lexicon that introduces semantic fields from the domain of this new civilization, as well as the interjections, exclamatory sentences, enumerations, onomatopoeia, and the exuberant rhythm, value the intensity of sensation as a phenomenon of knowledge of this modern life and translate the poet's desire to feel everything in every way, just as he himself says. Thus, in short, we have a successive and intense vision of reality, causing in the poetic subject a state of near-hallucination that is translated when he says "in fury within me." Furthermore, there is also a perception of reality based on an excess of visual, auditory, olfactory sensations, etc. And he says this through the phrase: "expression of all my sensations." Comparing him to Caeiro , we can state that in Campos, nature is replaced by a vision of the modern, super-civilized world, with which the subject establishes an euphoric and exalted connection. He even says: "if only I could physically penetrate all this, tear myself apart, open myself completely to all the perfumes and heats and coals." Campos's sensationism is inspired by Caeiro's, as we see in the prevalence of these sensations. However, Caeiro expresses them in a calm and tranquil way, while Campos lets himself be carried away by the excesses of futurism. Alongside "Ode Triunfal," there is also "Ode Marítima ," which is another of the emblematic poems of the futurist phase. In this poem, however, the poet expresses not only the apology of sensation but also the perception of a conscious being who awakens to reality. He is characterized by the gaze of one who wanders, all undefined, and who subsequently ambles through maritime life, provoking a mixture of melancholic sensations that herald a phase that is much more intimate, through the phrase: "traces a semicircle of I know not what emotion in the silent hearing of my soul." And as all good things come to an end, Campos moves from a euphoric phase to a period in which he enters a more depressive state. It is the intimate phase. And this final stage of Campos's journey makes him Pessoa's twin brother . Following the excess of the futurist phase comes this phase marked by disenchantment, boredom, and an existential crisis. In poems like " Lisbon Revisited" or "Birthday," Campos is the one who, dominated by thought, is incapable of feeling. He experiences existential tedium and looks at childhood as a time of happiness and paradise forever lost. Campos is characterized by his antisocial facet and his rejection of this materialistic society, refusing the entire system it entails. He says: "No, I want nothing." "I have already said that I want nothing." In the "Lisbon Revisited" poem. Furthermore, he demonstrates in this poem a refusal of life's mediocrity, saying: "They want me married, futile, everyday, and taxable. " In other words, he shows himself discontented with a life that is predefined from the start. He also shows an exacerbated individualism, saying: "I want to be alone, I want to be by myself." Another very characteristic poem of this phase is " This Old Anguish," where the core themes of this part, such as the disenchantment with a lost childhood, are present. He says: "Poor thing, I see the house of my lost childhood." And there is still a long-standing existential anguish, translated into " this anguish I have carried within me for centuries, with this malaise creating folds in my soul." In short, the main lines of meaning for Álvaro Campos in the poems of his first decadent phase are the expression of disenchantment and a search for new sensations. The second, futurist phase is marked by the avant-garde, by sensationism, and by a sentimental and emotional explosion with the exacerbated expression of emotions. In the final, more intimate phase, there is a melancholy regarding lost childhood. There is much pessimism and boredom, an inability to feel, an opposition between him and society, and total disenchantment. In terms of form and style, Campos exhibits a technical vocabulary, uses loanwords and neologisms, that is, the use of words from other languages or the creation of new ones. He presents multiple adjectives, metaphors, hyperboles, and various verb forms in the present tense . His sonority is marked by onomatopoeia and by some play on sounds , with a predominance of open sounds. The last heteronym we will address is Ricardo Reis. He is born in 1887 in Porto and is educated at a Jesuit college. He is shorter and sturdier than Caeiro and, like him, is clean-shaven. He graduates in medicine and goes into voluntary exile in Brazil starting in 1919 because he is a monarchist. Ricardo Reis, also a disciple of Caeiro, whom he admires for the calm and serenity with which he faces life, seeks to attain his master's peace and balance. Thus, Ricardo Reis's texts maintain a balance typical of the classical spirit, achieved through a harmony between Epicureanism and Stoicism. First of all , what are these two concepts? Epicureanism consists of an ideal aimed at tranquility of the soul, achieved by not fearing death, seeking the simple pleasures of life, and avoiding pain. On the other hand, Stoicism proposes its own rules of life to reach happiness and wisdom by mastering emotions and accepting the universal order of things, including death. Unlike Caeiro, the poetry of Ricardo Reis is entirely cerebral. With him, we learn to live as if each moment were our last, refusing emotional commitments so that nothing disturbs our serenity and we may live without pain. In other words, Reis is what we call a heart of stone, because he does not show emotions that might compromise him and always lives serenely. It is the adoption of this philosophy that advises serenity, a certain indifference, approaching a state of ataraxia, which means an absence of restlessness. Reis argues that everything is ephemeral and life is the momentary postponement of death, leading him to seek the experience of the soft pleasure of the moment, translated by the phrase "a cup of wine soberly quenched his thirst." It is a nihilistic view of the world and man, but one that generates neither revolt nor anguish. Reis peacefully accepts this human condition, recognizing its limiting and fatalistic nature. Even because he says: "For only in the illusion of freedom does freedom exist. ""All that remains, therefore, is to abdicate, to have nothing in one's hands," quoting him, "to arrive at death empty-handed in order to possess oneself." Life is thus for Reis a constant walking, translated by metaphors such as the river, of course or flight, which reflects this inevitable fleeing and flowing of life toward the fatal encounter. As a modern man, Reis assumes that man can do nothing to alter his destiny. Thus, death should not be a cause for suffering and precisely because life passes, we should not make commitments. There is also a didactic quality to his poetry, that is, a need to teach those who read him. Reis tells us all this with a teacher's discourse, as if he were teaching us that we should not suffer for unnecessary things, because life is a path already destined. The gods themselves are subject to a higher will. For this poet, the only certainty is that we cannot escape our destiny, which will inevitably culminate in death, which can be translated by the phrase "the little we last." Thus, Reis proposes enjoying the moment, the carpe diem, since the future is unknown and life is ephemeral. He translates this through the phrase: "There are nights before and after the little we last." Furthermore, Reis cultivates individualism, which leads him to distance himself from others. Following the Epicurean lesson, he abdicates violent pleasures in favor of tranquility and renounces any useless action to avoid pain. He says: "What we take from this useless life, it matters not if it is glory, fame, love, science , or life itself." In other words, by refusing all these feelings, he achieves peace and serenity. In short, the fundamental lines present in the work of Ricardo Reis are: the renunciation of violent emotions (the poet rationalizes emotions and rejects their value), an acknowledgment of the futility of action, the presence of fatalism through the awareness of a destiny superior to man, the calm acceptance of destiny, and the presence of paganism, where even the gods are subject to this force of destiny to which every man is subject. He is governed by the philosophies of Epicureanism and Stoicism. That is, the human being can never be totally happy. One must avoid strong pleasures and accept pain as something we will inevitably have to feel. Tranquility is our only means of happiness and freedom . There is also an exercise of self-discipline, renouncing strong emotions; a defense of carpe diem through living the present moment; a refusal of the individual's insertion into society, due to the belief in the futility of action and this opposition that exists between him and all the modernism that exists in society; an awareness of the uselessness of any effort to change, due to his attitude of renouncing and not wanting to change , because he is resigned to the situation and accepts his destiny. And finally, as I said before, there is a didacticism, because he seems to be constantly teaching us a life lesson. In turn, the stylistic characteristics consist of the use of a more erudite vocabulary, resorting to archaisms, terms that are no longer used today. A colloquial tone, with the poet always addressing a "you"(tu), that is, his audience. Nouns used as attributes, strophic and metric forms, always of classical influence, use of Latinisms, and recourse to hyperbata, or the dropping of one or more phonemes at the end of a word. The author also uses sound repetition, with a predominance of closed nasal sounds and very frequent rhymes.