The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (35 page)

Metaphors are obtainable in the same way.

As to epithets, I cannot but recommend the purchase of a dictionary of quotations where these ornaments can be found. They are, of course, set words and phrases. For instance, your mistress’s mouth is always “perfumed” and her lips “cherry”; her eyes will always be “dreamy” and her hair composed of “silken threads” wherein your heart is “entwined.” Your face must be always “pale with care” and your frame “wasted by woe”; you must always be awake half the night dreaming of your cruel fate and the other half asleep dreaming of her. Your lady’s form must be more beautiful than that of Venus; this is not improper to state, for thanks to the costumes of modern society, you will have been able to observe it. Your lady must likewise be of a virgin purity, and though this and the statement before might not seem to fit well together, you must remember the age we live in and the strange scientific phenomena that are ever making us gasp. You can begin to write love poetry at twelve or thirteen, when you will know life well.

Before concluding I wish to say a few words on a subject of no small importance to the poet, though not directly concerning the structure or life of his composition. I would merely point out that to attain a full reputation as a poet, the beginner must of course have his portrait published in fashionable papers and must see that paragraphs about himself, his habits, his whims and eccentricities are published in suitable journals. Now it must be clear that, for this to be well done, the learner must look like, and act as, a poet, information about which things I here shall tender unasked. First, as regards personal appearance, I think no one can deny that a thin, stooping gait is indispensable. Moreover, clothes too large for the wearer, an unwashed face and uncombed hair,
a hat put on wrong side foremost, and a general air of shabbiness and misery are everywhere allowed to be marks of a poetic temperament. As to the face of the poet, it must be ornamented by long hair falling on the shoulders, by dark eyes, arched eyebrows, and a pale and sallow complexion. It is absolutely indispensable that the bard should have a Greek nose with a knob at the end of it, or, in default of this, a nose with the bridge somewhat sunken but not lacking the inevitable knob. The Grecian nose cannot be easily attained, but if your nose be arched and you wish it to be of the second poetic type, a way has been found to obtain it and also to remedy a prominent chin, a thing which must not appear in a poetic face. The way suggested is a “communion of spirits” with the wife of an athletic friend. For this method, however, I cannot say much in advantage inasmuch that, of the two friends of mine who tried it, one lost all semblance of a face and the other bolted before the crucial moment. On this subject there is but little to add, unless it be that the mouth ought to be either small, large, or regular—a poetic feature which I think all of us possess. Finally, a poet with physiognomic leanings once told me that a great characteristic of a great poet was long and pointed ears,* a fact I consider true, for a friend of mine once told me that between the poet and the ass there is only a small difference, namely that the wiser of them walks on four legs.

According to a short résumé that Pessoa drafted in English, his French heteronym was born on August 1
, 1885,
and specialized in writing poetry, satire, and “scientific works with a satirical or moral purpose.” If his unfinished book
Des Cas d’Exhibitionnisme
might fit in the last category, since it analyzes cases of “nudités publiques” in Paris music halls and elsewhere from a psychological point of view, his satiric article “La France en
1950”
has no scientific pretensions. Conceived in
1907
or
1908,
it zigzags between the bawdy and the bizarre, activating a rarer side of Pessoa’s imagination. A “List of Publications” from circa
1913
designates the essay as “La France en
1950—
par un Japonais,” which seems to mean that Pessoa
’s
French persona adopted, in turn, a Japanese persona, and in the project plans for
Europa,
the Intersectionist magazine from
1914
that never got off the ground (see pp. 60–61), we find an alternate title that would have pushed Seul’s satire yet farther into the future: “La France à l’an 2000.” Jean Seul was also supposed to write a satire about French pimps under the title “Messieurs les Souteneurs,” but no traces of it have been found. Seul was based in Lisbon, not France, which perhaps explains the frequent grammatical errors in his French. He wrote a number of poems before 1910, though not many complete ones
.

Pessoa, under his own name, wrote essays in French throughout his life (few of which have been transcribed and published), and in 1923 he published three French poems in a Portuguese magazine. Toward the end of his life he again resorted to French to write a group of love poems
.

Here there are no normal people, just people who are doubly abnormal, people who are doubly inverted sexually, such that they’re on their way back to normality. I’m told that even a certain monsieur I know, who appears to be utterly normal, is in fact quadrupally abnormal. Since two negatives make a positive......

The other day a Monsieur Sleeps-in-the-bed-of-4-women Giraud was imprisoned for the crime of refusing to commit incest. He [tried to defend] himself by proudly pointing out that, since he’s the brother of all humanity, all women are his sisters, so that whenever he sleeps with a woman, he’s sleeping with his sister.

A man named_______, manager of the Volupté Surhumaine insurance company, recently lost part of his left testicle. He derived a pleasure from this loss that would at one time have been called perverse, and so it became the fashion to lose a [piece] of this bodily part, but people are advised not to overdo this pleasure.

Illustrious men are much studied nowadays, and the considerable talents of various renowned writers have merited major monographs in recent years, but instead of discussing the literary part of their oeuvre, the studies concentrate more and more on determining the probable length of their penises.

A certain gentleman was accused of not raping a two-month-old baby.

...

He replied that he was thinking of doing something better than mere rape when he was arrested. He had no intention of committing an offense against decency [...].

The other day I visited a girls’ school called the Institut Sans Hymen. I’m told it was founded by a benefactress who had fourteen thousand lovers and who apparently died from her over-zealous dedication.

The girls in this boarding school are very well trained. They learn as many vices as possible, and it’s touching to see how easily the cute little sluts catch on.

The punishments, it’s true, are rather severe. For instance, one girl who cried out when a classmate used her for some sadistic act was sentenced by a disciplinary committee to having from only three to six lovers, and to wearing dresses that allowed only the upper part of her body to be seen! It’s shocking!

...

Dishes are washed with the blood of small children who have been raped and had their throats cut. The dishes aren’t wiped dry. I’ve been told that this sensual delight is a bit dated.

Ejaculations have been obtained by eating the bodies of infants.

Animal sperm as a beverage has fallen out of fashion.

Some idiot may find this satire to be indecent and immoral. It would be just like an idiot to think that way, for today’s top scientists have verified that idiots think stupidly and do stupid things.

This satire has made deliberate use of gross obscenity.

...

Shame on whoever finds this satire amusing. Fie on whoever laughs at it!

Pessoa loved the pithy phrase, the short but complete commentary. It features prominently in the works of Bernardo Soares, the Baron ofTeive, and Alvaro de Campos, as well as in Pessoa’s papers and notebooks, showing up in the margins or even in the middle of texts to which it may have no relation. Sometimes, on the contrary, an aphorism leads to more elaborate written reflections. Pessoa’s miniature literary productions also appear in isolation—on slips of paper and the backs of envelopes—and occasionally in series, filling up a whole page. Most of the epigrams, observations, and memoranda included in this section have never been published. They have not been extracted from larger texts but were found in the archives as they are presented here: as autonomous sentences or paragraphs, or in a sequence of brief to very brief passages separated from each other by horizontal bars. Each number corresponds to a “manuscript,” which in some cases is just a scrap of paper. Items 1
, 5,
6, 11, 17, and 18 were written in English; the rest have been translated from Portuguese
.

When I consider how real and how true the things of his madness are to the madman, I cannot but agree with the essence of Protagoras’ statement that “man is the measure of all things.”

Man is an animal that almost exists.

There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.

The difference between God and us must lie, not in attributes, but in the very nature of our existence. Since each thing is what it is, God must be not only what He is but also what He isn’t. This confuses us about who He is.

The aristocrat is the man
who doesn’t obey
, and since his nature is disobedient, he degenerates into disobeying even his own convictions, his very own self. That is why aristocracies tend, with full awareness and sincerity, to be highly moral in theory and utterly corrupt in practice.

...

Total aristocratization = anarchy. Individualism has its limits. Some people cannot be individualized.

Life is such a solemn thing, and its problems so serious, that no one has the right to laugh. Anyone who laughs is stupid—temporarily, at least. Happiness is the communicative form of stupidity.

Evil is everywhere on earth, and one of its forms is happiness.

* * *

I say to you: Do good. Why? What do you gain by it? Nothing, you gain nothing. Neither money, nor love, nor respect and perhaps peace of mind. Perhaps thou gainest none of these. Why then do I say: Do good?
Because
you gain nothing by it. It is worth doing for this.

God is God’s best joke.

God is an economic concept. In his shadow the priests of all religions fashion their metaphysical bureaucracies.

(Álvaro de Campos)

Whether or not they exist, we’re slaves to the gods.

(Bernardo Soares)

Pure agnosticism is impossible. The only true agnosticism is ignorance. To be an agnostic is to be persuaded by reason that there are limits to our understanding. But whereas an observer can stop observing, one who reasons cannot stop. So that when by reason we’ve proved the limitation or non-limitation of this or that faculty, we cannot say, “Let’s stop here,” but must keep on reasoning in order to deduce the consequences of that limitation or non-limitation. That is what all “agnostics” do, consciously or unconsciously.

I doubt, therefore I think.

I am not conscience-stricken, but consciousness-stricken.

We all have Futurist moments, as when, for example, we trip on a stone.

In the theater of life, those who play the part of sincerity are, on the whole, the most convincing in their roles.

How hard it is for an intelligent person to be sincere! It’s like an ambitious person being honest.

The multiplication of the I is a frequent phenomenon in cases of masturbation.

Be plural like the universe!

Art is the highest and most subtle form of sensuality. The relations between the artist and his public are analogous to those of a man and woman in sexual intercourse. Artistic creation is a demonstration of power, domination; artistic contemplation is a passive pleasure.

That’s why the ardent aesthete is generally a sexual invert. This is especially true for the aesthete who creates, since creating implies an exacerbation of one’s aesthetic sensibility, to the point where it overflows into love.

Art for art’s sake is, really, only art for the artist’s sake.

A strong artist kills in himself not only love and pity but the very seeds of love and of pity. He becomes inhuman out of his great love of humanity—that love that prompts him to create art for man.

Genius is the greatest curse with which God can bless a man. It must be undergone with as little groaning and whining as possible, with as great a consciousness as possible of its divine sadness.

João Gaspar Simões
(1903–1987)
was a founding editor of
Presença,
the Coimbra-based magazine that published some of the mature Pessoa’s most stunning works, including the poems “Autopsychography” and “The Tobacco Shop,” passages from
The Book of Disquiet, and the prose piece titled “Environment”. Pessoa was a well-respected writer in his lifetime,
but only the group around
Presença,
established in
1927,
seemed to realize just how important he was, and they urged him to organize and publish his works. Gaspar Simões, a major Portuguese literary critic and the author of a groundbreaking biography of Pessoa that appeared in
1950,
maintained a lively correspondence with the poet, who wrote him over forty letters between
1929
and 1934
.