Aspects of Portugal S.
2 total works
First published in 1982, this is the factless autobiography of Bernardo Soares, one of the 72 literary personae or heteronyms with which Fernando Pessoa created the theatre of his absence. The circular text returns again and again to a protagonist desperate to find out who he is.
With the great Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) we get at least four writers for the price of one. In an age when many poets - Pound and Eliot among them spoke through "personae" and masks, Pessoa invented characters, complete with their own styles and biographies, and spoke through them. At the heart of this book is a selection of poems that Pessoa wrote as his quietly lyrical self, as the pagan and bucolic Alberto Caeiro, as the neo-classical dilettante Ricardo Reis, as the wildly confessional Alvaro de Campos. Keith Bosley's translations reflect the diversity of voices of a major talent in the history of Modernism. "The Centenary Pessoa" also includes a substantial selection of Pessoa's prose, essay contributions from various hands including Octavio Paz and Eugenio Lisboa, a bibliography, and a fascinating iconography.