Fernando Pessoa is Portugal's most important contemporary poet. He wrote under several identities, which he called heteronyms: Albet Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Bernardo Soares. He wrote fine poetry under his own name as well, and each of his "voices" is completely different in subject, temperament, and style. This volume brings back into print the comprehensive collection of his work published by Ecco Press in 1986.

Poet, short-story writer, feverish inventor--Fernando Pessoa was one of the most innovative figures shaping European modernism. Known for a repertoire of works penned by multiple invented authors--which he termed heteronyms--the Portuguese writer gleefully subverted the notion of what it means to be an author. Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa offers an introduction to the fiction and the "profusion of selves" that populates the enigmatic author's uniquely imagined oeuvre. To guide readers through the eclectic work fashioned by Pessoa's heteronyms, K. David Jackson advances the idea of "adverse genres" revealing genre clashes to be fundamental to the author's paradoxical and contradictory corpus. Through the invented "coterie of authors," Pessoa inverted the usual relationships between form and content, authorship and text. In an inspired, paradoxical, and at times absurd mixing of cultural referents, Pessoa selected genres from the European tradition (Ricardo Reis's Horatian odes, Álvaro de Campos's worship of Walt Whitman, Alberto Caeiro's pastoral and metaphysical verse, and Bernardo Soares's philosophical diary), into which he inserted incongruent contemporary ideas. By creating multiple layers of authorial anomaly Pessoa breathes the vitality of modernism into traditional historical genres, extending their expressive range. Through examinations of "A Very Original Dinner," the "Cancioneiro," love letters to Ophelia Queirós, "The Adventure of the Anarchist Banker," Pessoa's collection of quatrains derived from Portuguese popular verse, the Book of Disquietude, and the major poetic heteronyms, Jackson enters the orbit of the artist who exchanged a normal life for a world of the imagination.

A selection of prose by “Portugal’s greatest writer of the twentieth century . . . as addictive, and endearing, as Borges and Calvino” (The Washington Post Book World). Building on the wonderful Fernando Pessoa & Co.: Selected Poems, which was acclaimed by Booklist as “a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century,” translator Richard Zenith has now edited and translated selections from Pessoa’s prose, offering a second volume of this forgotten master’s flights of imagination and melancholy wit. Though known primarily as a poet, Pessoa wrote prose in several languages and every genre—the novel, short stories, letters, and essays. The pieces collected here span intellectual inquiry, Platonic dialogue, and literary rivalries between Pessoa’s many alter egos—a diverse cast of literary voices he called ‘heteronyms’—who launch movements and write manifestos. There are appreciations of Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde, and Joyce; critical essays in which one heteronym derides the work of another; experiments with automatic writing; and works that toy with the occult. Also included is a generous selection from Pessoa’s masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, freshly translated by Richard Zenith from newly discovered materials. Fernando Pessoa was one of the greatest exponents of modernism. The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa is an important contribution to literature that brings back to life a forgotten but crucial part of the canon.

The purpose of this book is to shed light on the rather unexplored "English facet" of Fernando Pessoa, considered one of the major Portuguese poets of the twentieth century. The originality of this study also lies in its extensive use of unpublished documents. Out of the bulk of Pessoa's English writings, The Mad Fiddler has been selected; it offers not only poems of better quality than most of his writings in English but it also has the advantage of being a complete and coherent suite of " mystical " poems. A systematic comparative study of the themes in The Mad Fiddler and in the poems by the four Portuguese heteronyms reveals a claer continuity and shows that Pessoa's bilingual Poetry is based on his main ontological quest, which he tried to solve by means of his dramatic scattering into " masks ". After this comparative analysis, the individuality of The Mad Fiddler is defined. Following an overwiew of the unpublished English writings found in the Pessoan legacy, The Mad Fiddler is analysed by means of Pessoa's own unpublished comments. An investigation of Pessoa's private French library and of his un published Literary Appreciations proves how fully he understood the impact of Symbolism on the evolution of Modern Art. The Mad Fiddler could indeed be viewed as an English echo of Pessoa's interest in modern trends in Literature and as a kind of " English microcosm " of Pessoa's aesthetic theory.

A critical biography of the modernist Portuguese writer. As a young man Fernando Pessoa aspired to, as he put it, “be plural like the universe.” He would fulfill this desire by inventing over one hundred fictional alter-egos which he called heteronyms. Beginning with Pessoa’s early days in Portugal, this philosophical biography explores the life, work, and imaginative universe of this modernist pioneer. Bartholomew Ryan offers a detailed overview of Pessoa’s writings on radical politics, his ventures into esoteric realms, and his expertise in astrology. Along the way, Ryan unravels Pessoa’s real and literary relationships and explores his unfinished prose masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet. This is a compelling, timely exploration of Pessoa’s profound, innovative ideas.

A Critical Introduction proposes a new didactic and dynamic way of reading the great twentieth-century poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). The aim is to present a holistic vision of this complex poet, promoting his literary geniality in order to better understand his orthonymic-heteronymic poetry. A guiding motif is Pessoa's own Be as plural as the universe. In leading the reader through the poet's published literary work, Jerónimo Pizarro allows an intimate perspective, alongside an academic one, to better understand the workings of Pessoa's mind and life. Discussion centres on the dilemmas an editor faces when editing posthumously. A prime question revolves around the genesis of Pessoa's heteronyms and orthonyms. Understanding is revealed by a critical perspective on the unity that exists in all of Pessoa's literary work. Interpretations of the poems; explanation of the profundity of The Book of Disquiet; and his isms of Paulism, Caeirism, Intersectionism and Cessationism, are discussed and analysed. The issue of Pessoa's astrological predictions his birth year and the effects of this event on Portuguese national history is debated. A chapter is devoted to the effect that translating Omar Khayyám's Rubáiyát had on the poet. The work contains eleven texts written by Pessoa in English (including an autobiographical note from 1935), a substantive dual language bibliography, and is highly illustrated with facsimiles of the poet's own written material. A Critical Introduction is essential reading for all scholars and students of Pessoa's literary output and life circumstances. The work has been written to appeal to cultural studies (arts and aesthetics) enthusiasts in general at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, but given the engagement of new critical material it also provides a structured resource for future research.

This pioneering volume explores the extraordinary Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) and his relationship to philosophy. On the one hand, this book reveals Pessoa’s serious knowledge of philosophy and playful philosophical explorations and how he has the gift of synthesizing, appropriating, and subverting complex ideas into his art; and, on the other hand, the chapters shed new light on central aspects and problems of philosophy through the prism of Pessoa’s diverse writings. The volume includes sixteen new essays from an international group of scholars, analyzing Pessoa’s multifaceted poetic work alongside philosophical themes and movements, from conceptions of time, ancient and modern aesthetics, philosophy of language, transcendentalism, immanence, and nihilism; to Islamic philosophy, Indian philosophy, Daoism, neo-paganism, and the philosophy of the self. The breadth of his work provides a springboard for new thinking on the aesthetic and the spiritual, the logic of value and capitalist modernity, and ecological thought and postmodernism. The volume also includes the most complete English translation of Pessoa's text (written by his heteronym Álvaro de Campos) called "Notes for the Memory of my Master Caeiro."

Fernando Pessoa and the Lyric: Disquietude, Rumination, Interruption, Inspiration, Constellation is an in-depth exploration of Pessoa’s major innovations in lyric writing and thinking. This book is an original contribution to comparative literature and poetic theory that puts Pessoa side by side with several other poets. It delves into Pessoa’s poetic theory, with an emphasis on Livro do desassossego and the heteronymic drama, and discovers new approaches to reading and appreciating the lyric. Such Pessoan literary concepts as disquietude, rumination, interruption, inspiration, and constellation are carefully examined in relation to a number of different poets, yielding unprecedented results in comparative poetics.

Eighteen short essays by the most distinguished international scholars examine Pessoa's influences, his dialogues with other writers and artistic movements, and the responses his work has generated worldwide. Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa claimed that he did not evolve, but rather travelled. This book provides a state of the art panorama of Pessoa's literary travels, particularly in the English-speaking world. Its eighteen short, jargon-free essays were written by the most distinguished Pessoa scholars across the globe. They explore the influence on Pessoa's thinking of such writers as Whitman and Shakespeare, as well as his creative dialogues with figuresranging from decadent poets to the dark magician Aleister Crowley, and, finally, some of the ways in which he in turn has influenced others. They examine many different aspects of Pessoa's work, ranging from the poetry of the heteronyms to the haunting prose of The Book of Disquiet, from esoteric writings to personal letters, from reading notes to unpublished texts. Fernando Pessoa's Modernity Without Frontiers is a valuable introduction to this multifaceted modern master, intended for both students of modern literature and general readers interested in one of its major figures.