The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (37 page)

I’ll stop here. I’ll reread this letter, make any necessary corrections, and mail it. Besides, I’ve been implored to quit typing at once by a friend who, even more of a drunk than I, has just arrived and who doesn’t enjoy getting drunk by himself. The “I’ll reread this letter” means I’ll reread it later, or tomorrow. I don’t expect to correct more than the misunderstandings between me and the typewriter. If something isn’t clear, let me know and I’ll explain. And you won’t forget, of course, that I’ve written this without forethought, putting it on paper as fast as the typewriter can accommodate my stream of thought.

No, I haven’t forgotten about the possible error I mentioned with respect to your idea of how I understand music emotionally. I skipped this point because I know nothing about it, except to say that
this yearning for music is yet another curious feature of my dramatic spirit. It depends on the time, the place, and the part of me that’s pretending in that given time and place.

Nor have I forgotten, of course, that somewhere in this letter I wrote something about “sharpening my psychological knife” and “cleaning or changing the lenses of my critical microscope.” I note with satisfaction that, in speaking of Freud, I’ve employed a phallic image and a yonic image. These he would surely have understood. What he would conclude, I don’t know. And in any case, to hell with him!

And now, definitively, I’m tired and thirsty. I apologize for however my words may have distorted my ideas and for whatever my ideas may have taken from falseness or indecision.

Warmest regards from your good friend and admirer,

Fernando Pessoa

Lisbon, 28 July 1932

My dear Gaspar Simões,

Thank you for your letter. I am sending my reply to Coimbra, since it still isn’t August, and should you already be in Figueira,* it will be forwarded to you.

I see there’s still time for me to send work for the next issue of
Presenga
, and you can count on it. I’ll send Casais Monteiro the note I mentioned (it’s very short) along with another contribution, also short. I hope to send a previously unpublished piece by Sá-Carneiro.

...

I’m beginning—slowly, as it’s not something that can be done quickly—to organize and revise my writings, so that I can publish one or two books at the end of the year. They will probably both be poetry collections, as I doubt I can have anything else ready by then—ready, that is, by my standards.

My original intention was to begin the publication of my works with three books, in the following order: (1)
Portugal
, a small book of
poems* (41 in all) whose second part is “Portuguese Sea” (published in
Contemporânea
4); (2)
The Book of Disquiet
(by Bernardo Soares, but only secondarily, since B. S. is not a heteronym but a literary personality); (3)
Complete Poems of Alberto Caeiro
(with a preface by Ricardo Reis and, at the end of the volume, Álvaro de Campos’s
Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro)
. A year after the publication of these books, I planned to bring out, either by itself or with another volume,
Songbook
(or some other equally inexpressive title), which would have included (in Books I—III or I-V) a number of my many miscellaneous poems, which are too diverse to be classified except in that inexpressive way.

But there is much to be revised and restructured in
The Book of Disquiet
, and I can’t honestly expect that it will take me less than a year to do the job. And as for Caeiro, I’m undecided. He also needs some revising, but not much. Otherwise his work may be said to be complete, though a few “uncollected poems” and alterations to the early poems
(The Keeper of Sheep)
are scattered among my papers. But once I locate these scattered elements, the book can be quickly completed. It has one drawback: the near impossibility of commercial success, so that it will have to be published at some sacrifice. Whether to make that financial sacrifice will depend, of course, on my financial condition at the time. As I go about revising and organizing my writings I will, in any case, find and collect what belongs to Caeiro.

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that the heteronyms (according to my final will on the matter) should be published by me under my own name (it’s too late, and hence absurd, to pretend they’re completely independent). They will form a series titled
Fictions of the Interlude
, unless I think of some better name in the meantime. And so the title of the first volume would be something like
Fernando Pessoa—Fictions of the Interlude—!. Complete Poems of Alberto Caeiro
(1889–1915). And so on for the succeeding volumes, including a curious one—very hard to write—containing the aesthetic debate between me, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos, and perhaps other heteronyms, for there are several (including an astrologer) who have yet to appear.

In fact I will probably include, in the first book of the heteronyms, not only Caeiro and the
Notes
of Álvaro de Campos but also three or five Books of Ricardo Reis’s
Odes
. That way the volume will contain what’s essential for understanding the beginnings of the “school”: the works of the Master and some poems from his direct disciple, as well as something (the
Notes)
from his other disciple. There is also a purely practical matter that makes me lean toward such a volume: Caeiro and the
Notes
by themselves would make neither a small book, such as
Portugal
is, nor a normal-sized book (about 300 pages), such as my
Songbook
. With the inclusion of Ricardo Reis (a logical complement, as I’ve explained), the volume will attain this normal length.

My current plan, subject to change, is to publish
Portugal
and the
Songbook
this year, if possible, or at the beginning of next year. The first of the two titles is almost ready, and of all my books it has the best chance of success. The second title is ready; I just need to select and order the poems.

Since I know these things don’t bore you, and since this is all, in a way, an answer (a rather extended one) to your query about when I’ll publish, I’ve let myself write at some length.

Along with all I’ve mentioned, I have perhaps two or three pamphlets or long articles to write or conclude. Even if these are written in Portuguese, I’ll probably translate them into English and publish them first (in magazines, no doubt) in England. All of this is tentative, however.

Warm regards from your good friend and admirer,

Fernando Pessoa

Like João Gaspar Simões, Adolfo Casais Monteiro (1908–72) was an editor (beginning in
1931)
of the magazine
Presenga,
an ardent admirer and student ofPessoa’s work, and one of his most important literary interlocutors in the
1930s.
He was the recipient, in fact, ofPessoa’s longest and most famous letter, written on January
13, 1935.
From the P.S. to that letter, it’s clear that it was intended for posterity, and though Pessoa may have written it as fast as he could type, as claimed in the seventh paragraph, his story of the heteronyms was certainly not “off the cuff.” Over the years he had been carefully plotting and refining it. A version of the story written around
1930—
placed here after the letter
—
offers some rather different details about how it all happened and when
.

Lisbon, 11 January 1930

My dear colleague,

Thank you so much for sending me a copy of your book
Confusão
[Confusion], for the kind words you wrote in it, and for the poem you dedicated to me.

Your book reveals a keen sensibility and a still immature use of it. Before an impression can be converted into the raw material of art, it must first be transformed—not
partially
but
entirely
—into an intellectual impression, an impression of the intelligence. And by intelligence I mean not our personality’s highest expression but its
abstract
expression. In other and simpler words: only when an
individual is transformed by the intelligence into a small universe will he have, in the impression thereby produced, the raw material with which to make what we call art.

What we feel is only what we feel. What we think is only what we think. But that which, felt or thought, we think again
as someone else
is naturally transformed into art and, cooling down, acquires form.

Don’t trust what you feel or think until you’ve stopped feeling or thinking it. Then you’ll use your sensibility in a way that naturally works to your own and everyone else’s benefit.

I sincerely enjoyed your book. And these remarks, naturally limited by my particular point of view, are intended only as a critique which, though it may be erroneous, at least has the advantage of being sincere, and the pleasure of being laudatory.

With kind regards from your ever grateful colleague,

Fernando Pessoa

Lisbon, 13 January 1935

My dear friend and colleague,

Thank you very much for your letter, which I shall answer at once and in full. But before I begin, I must apologize for this paper that’s meant for carbon copies. It’s the best I could do, as I’ve run out of good paper and it’s Sunday. But inferior paper is preferable, I think, to putting off writing you.

Let me say, first of all, that I would never see “ulterior motives” for anything you might write in disagreement with me. I’m one of the few Portuguese poets who hasn’t decreed his own infallibility, and I don’t consider criticism of my work to be an act of “lèse divinity.” Though I may suffer from other mental defects, I haven’t the slightest trace of persecution mania. And besides, I’m already well aware of your intellectual independence, which (if I may say so) I heartily endorse and admire. I’ve never aspired to be a Master, for I don’t know how to teach, and I’m not sure I would even have anything to
teach, nor do I fancy myself a Leader or Chief,* for I don’t know how to scramble an egg. So don’t ever let what you might say about me worry you. I’m not one to look for trouble where there is none.

I completely agree with you that a book like
Mensagem
(Message) was not a felicitous publishing début. I am, to be sure, a mystical nationalist, a rational Sebastianist.* But I am many other things besides that, and even in contradiction to it. And because of the kind of book it was,
Message
did not include those things.

I began the publication of my works with that book simply because it was the first one, for whatever reason, that I managed to organize and have ready. Since it was all ready, I was urged to publish it, and so I did. I didn’t do it, please note, with my eyes on the prize offered by the National Office of Propaganda,* though that wouldn’t have been a serious intellectual sin. My book wasn’t ready until September, and I even thought it was too late to compete for the prize, for I didn’t realize that the deadline for submissions had been extended from the end of July to the end of October. Since copies of
Message
were already available by the end of October, I submitted the copies required by the Office of Propaganda. The book exactly met the conditions (nationalism) stipulated for the competition. I entered it.

When in the past I’ve sometimes thought about the order in which my works would one day be published, no book like
Message
ever headed the list. I was torn between whether to start off with a large book of poems—about 350 pages in length—that would encompass the various subpersonalities of Fernando Pessoa himself or whether to begin with a detective novel (which I still haven’t finished).

I’m convinced, as you are, that
Message
was not a felicitous literary début, but I’m convinced that under the circumstances it was the best début I could have made. That facet of my personality—in a certain way a minor facet—had never been adequately represented in my magazine publications (except for the book’s section titled “Portuguese Sea”), and for that very reason it was good that it be revealed, and that it be revealed now. Without any planning or
premeditation on my part (I’m incapable of premeditation in practical matters), it coincided with a critical moment (in the original sense of the word “critical”) in the transformation of the national subconscious. What I happened to do and others urged me to complete was accurately drawn, with Ruler and Compass, by the Great Architect.

(No, I’m not crazy or drunk, but I am writing off the cuff, as fast as this typewriter will let me, and I’m using whatever expressions come to mind, without regard to their literary content. Imagine—for it’s true—that I’m just talking to you.)

I will now deal directly with your three questions: (1) plans for the future publication of my works, (2) the genesis of my heteronyms, and (3) the occult.

Having been led by the aforementioned circumstances to publish
Message
, which shows just one side of me, I intend to proceed as follows. I’m now finishing up a thoroughly revised version of “The Anarchist Banker”; this should be ready in the near future, and I hope to publish it forthwith. If successful, I will immediately translate it into English and try to get it published in England. The new version should have European possibilities. (Don’t take this to mean an imminent Nobel Prize.) Next—and I shall now respond directly to your question, which concerned my poetry—I plan to spend the summer collecting the shorter poems of Fernando Pessoa himself into one large volume, as indicated above, and will try to publish it before the year is out. This is the book you’ve been waiting for, and it’s the one I myself am anxious to bring out. This book will show all my facets except the nationalist one, which
Message
has already revealed.

You will have noticed that I’ve referred only to Fernando Pessoa. I’m not thinking at this point about Caeiro, Ricardo Reis or Álvaro de Campos. I can’t do anything about them, in terms of publishing, until (see above) I win the Nobel Prize. And yet—it makes me sad to think of this—I placed all my power of dramatic depersonalization in Caeiro; I placed all my mental discipline, clothed in its own special music, in Ricardo Reis; and in Álvaro de
Campos I placed all the emotion that I deny myself and don’t put into life. To think, my dear Casais Monteiro, that all three of them, in terms of publication, must defer to Fernando Pessoa impure and simple!