Fernando Pessoa's Library
75 heteronyms and more
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.1 He also wrote in and translated from English and French. He was a prolific writer under his own name and at least seventy-five heteronyms (imaginary characters).2 Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos and Bernardo Soares are four of his most famous heteronyms - imaginary figures, each with their own biographies.3
Casa Fernando Pessoa is a house of literature in the city of Lisbon. It is a space that is dedicated to the dissemination of Pessoa’s work and the writer’s biography, as well as a meeting point motivated by programs relating to books and literature. Casa Fernando Pessoa is the house where the writer lived the last 15 years of his life. It has an exhibition on three floors about the poet's life and work and a library specialized in world poetry. It is a place of literature that crosses memory, literary creation, and reading.
The Catalogue of the Private Library of Fernando Pessoa is a monument to Pessoa’s book collecting and reading habits, and represents the outcome of a collaborative project.4 The philosophy behind the project was to demonstrate the affection that Pessoa had for books and their symbolic value, and to open up the collections, which were purchased by the Portuguese government in 1993 and deposited in the Casa Fernando Pessoa, for research5
No one realized how vast and varied a written universe was contained in the large trunk where Pessoa deposited his writings over the years.
The contents of that trunk – which today constitute the Pessoa Archives at the National Library of Portugal in Lisbon – include over 25,000 manuscript sheets of poetry, prose, plays, philosophy, criticism, translations, linguistic theory, political writings, horoscopes and assorted other texts, variously typed, hand-written or illegibly scrawled in Portuguese, English and French. Pessoa wrote in notebooks, on loose sheets, on the backs of letters, advertisements and handbills, on stationery from the firms he worked for and from the cafés he frequented, on envelopes, on paper scraps, and in the margins of his own earlier texts. To compound the confusion, he wrote under dozens of names, a practice – or compulsion – that began in his childhood. He called his most important personas ‘heteronyms’, endowing them with their own biographies, physiques, personalities, political views, religious attitudes, and literary pursuits.6
There is online access to those works from Fernando Pessoa’s Private Library that are in the public domain.
Most of the books that belonged to the writer are kept – and, in some cases, exhibited – at Casa Fernando Pessoa. This library is particularly important because of the marginalia, the notes that Fernando Pessoa left in many of the books, whether these were notes about his reading, parts of poems, or just notes about everyday matters.7
Zenith, Richard. Pessoa A Biography. 2021.
Jennings, Hubert D. and Carlos Pittella. Fernando Pessoa, the Poet with Many Faces: A biography and anthology. Providence, RI: Gavea-Brown, 2018.
FERNANDO PESSOA AND HIS HETERONYMS. Countless Lives. “Countless lives inhabit us. I don't know when I think or feel, Who it is that thinks and feels.” Written by Ricardo Reis, who was himself a creation of Pessoa's imagination; one of the "countless lives" he called his heteronyms.
Catalog. Concluded in 2009, a collaboration between the University of Lisbon, the Casa Fernando Pessoa and the Pessoa Estate.
A Biblioteca Particular de Fernando Pessoa/Fernando Pessoa's Private Library (2010). Edição de Jéronimo Pizarro, Patricio Ferrari e Antonio Cardiello. Lisboa: D. Quixote.
Zenith, Richard. Fernando Pessoa: The Poet of Many Masks
Ferrari, P. (2011). On the Margins of Fernando Pessoa’s Private Library. Luso-Brazilian Review, 48(2), 23–71.
Cmon Kathleen, first Montaigne now Pessoa--get out of my head! ;)
(I don't go more than a few weeks without dipping into either the Essais or The Book of Disquiet)
"The best way of beginning to dream is through books. Novels are very useful for beginners. The first step: learn to surrender totally to your reading and live alongside the characters in a novel. It is a sign of progress to feel that your own family and its griefs are insignificant and repellent compared with those fictional characters." --Bernardo Soares
"Pessoa wrote in notebooks, on loose sheets, on the backs of letters, advertisements and handbills, on stationery from the firms he worked for and from the cafés he frequented, on envelopes, on paper scraps, and in the margins of his own earlier texts. To compound the confusion, he wrote under dozens of names, a practice – or compulsion – that began in his childhood. He called his most important personas ‘heteronyms’, endowing them with their own biographies, physiques, personalities, political views, religious attitudes, and literary pursuits."
😳🤨🤔🤓‼💯♻✌🏻🦸🏻♂️💓😜👻💨
elm
... it hadn't occurred to me that you give them *names* and legends ...