Fernando Pessoa's Heterónimos (Heteronyms)

Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese poet, philosopher, critic and one of the most significant names of western literature of the 20th century. Born in Lisbon, 1888, Pessoa when to live in South Africa when a child and attended an English School. Returned to Lisbon at the age of 20, Fernando Pessoa starts writing poems and critiques in magazines and works as a translator. He dies at the age of 47, alone and in misery.

In 1914, possibly due to his condition of schizophrenia, Pessoa creates is first three poetic "identities" or "personas". During his life Fernando Pessoa creates more than seventy "identities". To understand, Fernando Pessoa does not creates different names, under which he uses to present work, but rather the concept of "Heterónimo". Pessoa define those "identities" as his other's "I", and which he calls the "Heterónimo". When signing with is own name, Pessoa gives the definition of "Ortónimo". Back to the idea of what a "Heterónimo" is. What does it means that Fernando Pessoa has created "personas"? So lets explain using as reference three of the four more relevant "identities" in Pessoa's life. (Here I have to excuse myself because ones of those "identities", which name is Bernardo Soares, is to far more complex that the others and for that I think he shall have a full blog entry just for it.) So, Fernando Pessoa creates the popular shepherd Alberto Caeiro, the classic doctor Ricardo Reis and the futuristic London-based naval engineer Alvaro de Campos. He creates their names, professions and even the style of their poetry. But not only, Pessoa went deeper in to the details about his creations. Each "identity" has a birthday date, a zodiac sign, a biography its own signature, a all physical and psychological description and even a astral map made by himself.

My Interest in Pessoa work and his "Heterónimos" is because of the way that each one of them have a different voice, personality, style, language, and all be contained inside of one single person. Pessoa uses a different style of language, to express different Identities. His work could be said, is the fragmentation of a person identity. It reflect the idea of the mask that need to be used depending of context we are, cultural, social, political, familiar, love, dead, etc.

I want to explore the way that language forms and shapes identity and vice verse.

Alberto Caeiro Biography

Born in Lisbon, Portugal, April 16th, 1889

Genre

Poetry

Influence

Cesário Verde

Alberto Caeiro was born in Lisbon, in 1889 and died in 1915, but lived most of his life in the country with an old great aunt because he was orphaned from a young age. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. He finished his primary school education and had no profession. How did this heteronym come about? Fernando Pessoa tells us "one day he decided to play a trick on Sá-Carneiro — so he drew up a bucolic poet, of the complicated kind and had them meet, I can’t remember how, in some sort of real context. I spent some days trying to formulate the poet but achieved nothing. One day, on the verge of giving up – March 8th 1914 – I approached a high chest of drawers and, began to write something down on a piece of paper, while standing, as I like to do, whenever possible. And so, taken over by some strange, indescribable kind of trance, I wrote 30 something poems in one stretch. That was the most triumphant day of my life and I will never experience another like it. I began with the title The Keeper of Flocks. And what followed was the birth of someone within me, whom I immediately named Alberto Caeiro. Please excuse the absurdity of the phrase: my master will appear within me. But that was my immediate sensation." When Fernando Pessoa writes as Caeiro, he claims to do so "in pure and unexpected inspiration, not knowing or guessing what he will write." Source: Fernando Pessoa’s Letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, January 1935, in Correspondência 1923-1935, ed. Manuela Parreira da Silva, Lisbon, Assírio & Alvim, 1999. From http://casafernandopessoa.cm-lisboa.pt/index.php?id=4289&L=4

Astrology Chart

Poem

“I don’t have a philosophy: I have senses... If I talk about Nature, it’s not because I know what it is, But because I love it, and that’s why I love it, Because when you love you never know what you love, Or why you love, or what love is. Loving is eternal innocence, And the only innocence is not thinking.” ― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

Ricardo Reis Biography

Born in Lisbon, Portugal, Dezember 19th, 1887

Genre

Poetry

Influences

Horatio

“Around 1912, if I’m not mistaken (not greatly anyway), the idea came to me to write poems of a pagan nature. So I scribbled something down in irregular verse (different to the style of Álvaro de Campos, more irregular), and abandoned the idea. It was a badly woven twilight, a blurred portrait of the person who was composing it. (I hadn’t realised it yet, but that was when Ricardo Reis was born).” Fernando Pessoa writes in his letter dated Janeiro 13th 1935 to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, that Ricardo Reis was born in 1887 (although he couldn’t recall the exact date), in Oporto. He describes him as shorter, stronger and stiffer than Caeiro, besides being clean shaven. He had a Jesuit school education, was a doctor and had lived in Brazil since 1919, from where he had been self-expatriated for being a supporter of the monarchy. He had Latin and semi-Hellenic instruction. Fernando Pessoa admits he conferred to this heteronym and excessive purity and writing as Ricardo Reis mentions he “followed an abstract deliberation which immediately took the shape of an ode”.

Source: Fernando Pessoa’s Letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, January 13th 1935, in Correspondência 1923-1935, ed. Manuela Parreira da Silva, Lisbon Assírio & Alvim, 1999. From http://casafernandopessoa.cm-lisboa.pt/index.php?id=4290&L=4

Astrology Chart

Poem excerpt from Odes of Ricardo Reis

“With one eye on the past, some see which they cannot see, whilst others in the future see that which cannot be seen. Why go so far, look closer! What is freedom? The day is here! This is the hour, the moment; and this moment is who we are and that is that. Forever flowing, the eternal hour reveals our insignificance. In a single gasp we live and die, so size the day, for the day is simply who you are.”

Alvaro de Campos Biography

Álvaro de Campos was born in Tavira on October 15th 1890 at 1.30 pm. He had a normal high school education; and was later sent to Scotland to study Engineering, first mechanical, then naval. A holiday trip to the East resulted in the Opiário. An uncle from the Beiras region of Portugal, who was a priest, taught him Latin. Vaguely Jewish-Portuguese, pale olive skin, straight hair, usually side parted, wore a monocle.

In his letter, source for this text, to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, dated Janeiro 13th 1935, Fernando Pessoa writes on the birth of heteronomy as Campos, “when I felt a sudden impulse to write and didn’t know what of ”, he then adds “suddenly and moving in opposite direction to Ricardo Reis, a different character impetuously emerged. In a flash, at the typewriter, free of interruption or revision, Alvaro Campos’ “Triumphal Ode” was born — the Ode of this name and the man of the man he was”.

A little further he clarifies: “When Orpheu was published, I needed something, at the last minute, to achieve the number of pages. Sá-Carneiro therefore suggested I wrote and “old” poem by Álvaro de Campos written before meeting Caeiro and being influenced by him. I therefore wrote «Opiário», where I tried to apply all of Alvaro de Campos’ latent tendencies by which he would later come to be known for, but omitting any trace of contact from his master Caeiro. It was one of the hardest poems I have ever written, due to the double effort of depersonalisation that I had to develop. But, oh well, I think it came out alright, a budding Álvaro…”

Source from: http://casafernandopessoa.cm-lisboa.pt/index.php?id=4291&L=4

Astrology Schart