The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (48 page)

“
Salutation to Walt Whitman
”: One of Campos’s long “odes” from the 1910s. Part of it is published in Edwin Honig and Susan Brown’s
Poems of Fernando Pessoa
(New York: Ecco Press, 1986).

[
On the Work of Ricardo Reis
]: The translation is based on a reading of the manuscript [21/110] that differs, in the last paragraph, from the one published in
Páginas Íntimas
.

Page 57

“
the god who was missing
”: From the eighth poem in Caeiro’s
The Keeper of Sheep
.

page 58

SENSATIONISM AND OTHER ISMS: The two notebooks cited in the second paragraph of the introduction are catalogued as 144C and 144D
²
in the archives. In the latter notebook Pessoa initially defined
Paulismo
as “the insincere cultivation of artificiality” but then wrote the word “sincere” above “insincere,” which he did not cross out. The items to be included in
Europa’s
first two issues can be found on a table of contents typed by Pessoa [48G/32].

page 61

Preface to an Anthology of the Portuguese Sensationists
: This English-language text was untitled and unsigned, according to the note that accompanied its first publication in 1952 (the whereabouts of the original manuscript are unknown), but one of the paragraphs edited out of the version published here indicates that it was a preface for an anthology of the Portuguese Sensationist writers it discusses. The editors of
Páginas Íntimas
attributed the preface to Álvaro de Campos, based on the first-person remarks toward the end. But Campos, according to his biography, returned for an extended visit to Portugal in early 1914, not in 1915 (which is when the prefacer says he arrived, the same year
Orpheu
was published), and the reference to Portugal’s landscape seems to be that of a foreigner rather than of someone who, like Campos, was born and raised in Portugal. Campos, moreover, never wrote more than brief notes in English, even though he was fluent in the language. The preface writer is doubtless Thomas Crosse, whose translation projects included the work of the Portuguese Sensationists, according to a note in the archives [143/5].

page 62

his static drama The Sailor
: I.e.,
The Mariner
.

Maurice Maeterlinck
(1862–1949) was a Belgian Symbolist playwright and poet whose dramatic work influenced Pessoa’s.

“
Naval Ode
”: I.e., “Maritime Ode.”

page 63

“
Salutation to Walt Whitman,” in the third Orpheu
: The third issue of
Orpheu
, though it never saw print (until sixty-seven years later, in 1984), was typeset in 1917, but without Campos’s “Salutation to Walt Whitman.” This means that Crosse’s preface, which mentions Sá-Carneiro’s suicide on April 26, 1916, was probably written later that year or in early 1917.

page 64

All Sensations are Good
...: The original Portuguese was published in
Pessoa Inédito
.

[
Intersectionist] Manifesto
: The original Portuguese was published in
Pessoa Inédito
. The word “Manifesto,” followed by a colon, appears at the top of the text, which seems to be notes toward an Intersectionist manifesto.

page 66

Sensationism
: The original is a hastily penned sketch for an article that Pessoa planned to write for
Orpheu
. Less than half of it was published, with various errors of transcription, in
Páginas Íntimas
. The translation here is of the complete text, which takes up eight pages [20/116–119], the last two of which contain sentences that develop ideas presented earlier. Those sentences have been integrated at the appropriate points.

page 67

“
criticism” fulfills its Danaidean role
: At the behest of their father Danaus, all but one of the fifty Danaides murdered their bridegrooms and were condemned in Hades to pouring water into a bottomless vessel.

page 69

only number of Portugal Futurista
: Published in November of 1917, the single-issue magazine also contained poems by Fernando Pessoa (including “The Mummy,” translated in
Fernando Pessoa & Co
.) and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, poetry and prose by José de Almada-Negreiros, a previously unpublished poem of Apollinaire (in French), a Portuguese translation of Marinetti’s manifesto
The Music Hall
, and artwork by Santa Rita Pintor and Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso.

5th of December
, 1917: Date of a
coup d’état
that replaced Portugal’s democratic government with a military dictatorship led by Sidonio Pais. Ineffectual as a head of state but endowed with charisma, Pais achieved quasi-legendary status after his assassination in December of 1918, and in 1920 Pessoa wrote and published a long poem titled “To the Memory of the President-King Sidónio Pais.” In that poem as well as in Pessoa’s larger program of “mystical nationalism,” the deceased leader served as an ideal symbol—a modern King Sebastiao. See the section P
ORTUGAL AND THE
F
IFTH
E
MPIRE
.

page 70

should be translated
(...)
since November 1917, it is due
: “should be translated, and the fact that, though it has been in print since September (?) 1917, I only now translate it, is due” in the original.

and (all things well considered)
: “or even, all things well considered,” in the original.

Christism
: Christianity. See the note on p. 333.

page 71

Campos was born in Lisbon on the 13th of October
, 1890: In later texts, including his January 13, 1935, letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro (in this volume), Pessoa wrote that Campos was born in the Algarvian town of Tavira on October 15, 1890.

page 72

Intersectionist manifesto in Europa
(...)
Sensationist manifesto in Orpheu
: On the table of contents for
Europa
cited earlier in these Notes, the
Ultimatum
is attributed to Pessoa, who also referred to it in a letter dated October 4, 1914. In Pessoa’s personal notes it is named as one of two manifestos to be published in
Orpheu
[48D/5].

“
The Futurist
(. ..)
cant make it
our”: [88/8]. None of the early drafts of the
Ultimatum
has been published.

Jean Jaurès
(1859–1914), an important leader in the French Socialist party, was assassinated by a zealous nationalist for opposing war with Germany.

Ernest Renan
(1823–92) was a French philologist, critic, and historian.

Maurice Banès
(1862–1923), a French nationalist politician and writer, reorganized the “Ligue des Patriotes” in 1914 and wrote numerous patriotic articles during the war.

Action
: Refers to Action Franchise, a right-wing political movement whose views were propagated in a newspaper of the same name, founded in 1899.

Paul Bourget
(1852–1935) was a French novelist, poet, and the author of
Essays of Contemporary Psychology
.

Majuba and Colenso
: South African towns where the British were defeated by the Boers in (respectively) 1881 and 1899.

Empire Day
: May 24, the birthday of Queen Victoria, formerly a holiday to commemorate the help England received from its colonies during the Boer War of 1899-1902. Now called Commonwealth Day.

Kilkenny cat
: One of a pair of Irish cats fabled to have fought until only their tails remained.

page 73

Gabriele D’Annunzio
(1863–1938) changed his last name from Rapagnetta. He married a duke’s daughter and had subsequent liaisons with a countess, a marchioness, and the actress Eleonora Duse.

Maurice Maeterlinck
: See the note above, on p. 324.

Pierre Loti
(1850–1923) was a novelist and member of the French Academy.

Edmond Rostand
(1868–1918) wrote social dramas, including
Cyrano de Bergerac
. The
tand-tand-tand
mimics the sound of a drum.

Wilhelm II
(1859–1941) was crowned kaiser of Germany in 1888. Aggressive and energetic, his absolutist form of leadership prompted Chancellor Bismarck to resign in 1890. He continued Bismarck’s program of unifying, modernizing, and militarizing Germany. His politics of nationalist expansion, founded on the notion of German superiority, was perhaps the single greatest cause of World War I.

Otto von Bismarck
(1815–96) became chancellor of Germany when Wilhelm I was proclaimed kaiser, in 1871. He was the statesman who did most—by means of war, diplomacy, and effective political administration—to create a strong, unified, and industrialized Germany.

David Lloyd George
(1863–1945), from Wales, was head of Britain’s Liberal Party and served as prime minister from 1916 to 1922.

Eleutherios Venizelos
(1864–1936), Greek premier who supported the Allies in World War I, in opposition to King Constantine I, who backed the Central Powers.

Aristide Briand
(1862–1932), French premier in World War I, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.

Eduardo Dato Iradier
(1856–1921), leader of the Spanish Conservative Party, was prime minister in 1914-18 and again in 1920–21.

Paolo Boselli
(1838–1932) was the Italian prime minister in 1916–17.

page 74

Horatio Herbert Kitchener
(1850–1916) was the British commander-in-chief in the Boer War and then in India. Appointed secretary of war in 1914, he brilliantly organized Britain’s army but drowned on a ship sunk by German submarines while on his way to Russia for a diplomatic mission.

K-brand doorjamb
: Seems to evoke Austria’s subservience to the German kaiser.

Von Belgium
: Belgium, from 1914 to 1917, was ruled by the autocratic German general Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bissing.

sanbenitos
: The sackcloth garments worn by condemned heretics at the autos-da-fe of the Spanish Inquisition.

fighting spirit buried in Morocco
: Spain, granted a protectorate in Morocco in 1912, suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Riff tribesmen who continuously rose up in arms.

humiliated in Africa
: The English Ultimatum of 1890 obliged Portugal to renounce its claims to a vast territory—covering parts of modern-day Zambia and Zimbabwe—that would have linked Angola to Mozambique. The title of Campos’s manifesto is probably meant as a riposte to the English Ultimatum.

Pedro Álvares Cabral
(1467–C.1520) discovered Brazil in 1500 when he was attempting to round the southern tip of Africa.

page 74–5

Alfred Fouillée
(1838–1912), a French philosopher, two of whose books were in Pessoa’s personal library:
Esquisse psychologique des peuples européens
and
La philosophie de Platon: Théorie des idées et de I’amour
.

Charles Maurras
(1868–1952) was a right-wing French writer who ardently defended classical and French culture in newspaper articles and in his books, two of which were in Pessoa’s personal library.

Pitt
: William Pitt, the Elder (1708–78), was an important English political leader, but Pessoa is presumably referring to William Pitt, the Younger (1759–1806), the British prime minister who formed an international coalition to oppose Napoleon, who, however, won the Battle of Austerlitz as Pitt lay dying.

Gaius Gracchus
(153–121
B.C
.) was an eloquent, much respected tribune of Rome who tried without great success to implement the radical agrarian reforms promulgated by his assassinated brother, Tiberius Gracchus (163–133
B.C
.).

page 76

Émile Boutroux
(1854–1921), a French philosopher whose
Science et religion dans la philosophie contemporaine
was in Pessoa’s library.

Rudolf Christoph Eucken
(1846–1926), a German philosopher who wrote
The Meaning and Value of Life
.

page 77

Henry Bernstein
(1876–1953) and
Henry Bataille
(1872–1922) were two of the leading French dramatists of their day.

page 78

Charles Jonnart
(1857–1927), French diplomat and Allied high commissioner at Athens. He forced King Constantine I to abandon Greece in 1917.

Paul von Hindenburg
(1847–1934) led the German army and nation in World War I.

Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre
(1852–1931) was a French commander-in-chief during World War I.

poilus
: Literally “hairy,” and used colloquially to mean French soldiers, especially in World War I.