The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (9 page)

Thomas Crosse, a translator and essayist who was responsible for taking Portuguese culture to the Anglo-American world, had the special mission of promoting the work of Alberto Caeiro. He was supposed to produce an English version of Caeiro’s poetry but never got beyond his “Translator’s Preface
.”

Pessoa spent considerably less ink on prefatory and critical texts to promote Ricardo Reis and Alvaro de Campos, though the latter was rather good at promoting himself, through his polemical articles and letters that appeared in the Portuguese press. I. I. Crosse, whose piece on Campos’s rhythmical skills is published here, was presumably the brother of Thomas. I. I. also wrote an essay titled “Caeiro and the Pagan Revolution.” Both brothers wrote exclusively in English. (Yet a third brother, A. A. Crosse, competed for cash prizes in the puzzle and word games featured in various English newspapers.) Pessoa, whose only full brother died in infancy, was fond of providing brothers for his heteronyms, and it is Frederico Reis who offers us a sympathetic account of brother Ricardo’s “sad Epicureanism.” Frederico also authored a pamphlet (as of this writing still unpublished) about the so-called Lisbon School of poetry, explaining that it was Portugal’s only truly cosmopolitan movement. The protagonists of the school were—not surprisingly—Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Álvaro de Campos
.

I met my master Caeiro under exceptional circumstances, as are all of life’s circumstances, especially those which in themselves are insignificant but which have outstanding consequences.

After completing, in Scotland, almost three quarters of my course in naval engineering, I went on a voyage to the Orient. On my return, I disembarked at Marseilles, unable to bear the thought of more sailing, and came by land to Lisbon. One day a cousin of mine took me on a trip to the Ribatejo,* where he knew one of Caeiro’s cousins, with whom he had some business dealings. It was in the house of that cousin that I met my future master. That’s all there is to tell; it was small like the seeds of all conceptions.

I can still see, with a clarity of soul that memory’s tears don’t cloud, because this seeing isn’t external. ... I see him before me as I saw him that first time and as I will perhaps always see him: first of all those blue eyes of a child who has no fear, then the already somewhat prominent cheekbones, his pale complexion, and his strange Greek air, which was a calmness from within, not something in his outward expression or features. His almost luxuriant hair was blond, but in a dim light it looked brownish. He was medium to tall in height but with low, hunched shoulders. His visage was white, his smile was true to itself, and so too his voice, whose tone didn’t try to express anything beyond the words being said—a voice neither loud nor soft, just clear, without designs or hesitations or inhibitions. Those blue eyes couldn’t stop gazing. If our observation noticed anything strange, it was his forehead—not high, but imposingly white. I repeat: it was the whiteness of his forehead, even whiter than his pale face, that endowed him with majesty. His hands were a bit slender, but not too, and he had a wide palm. The expression of his mouth, which was the last thing one noticed, as if speaking were less than existing for this man, consisted of the kind of smile we ascribe in poetry to beautiful inanimate things, merely because they please us—flowers, sprawling fields, sunlit waters. A smile for existing, not for talking to us.

My master, my master, who died so young! I see him again in this mere shadow that’s me, in the memory that my dead self retains....

It was in our first conversation.... Apropos I don’t know what, he said, “There’s a fellow here named Ricardo Reis whom I’m sure you would enjoy meeting. He’s very different from you.” And then he added, “Everything is different from us, and that’s why everything exists.”

This sentence, uttered as if it were an axiom of the earth, seduced me with a seismic shock—as always occurs when someone is deflowered—that penetrated to my soul’s foundations. But contrary to what occurs in physical seduction, the effect on me was to receive all at once, in all my sensations, a virginity I’d never had.

My master Caeiro wasn’t a pagan; he was paganism. Ricardo Reis is a pagan, António Mora is a pagan, and I’m a pagan; Fernando Pessoa himself would be a pagan, were he not a ball of string inwardly wound around itself. But Ricardo Reis is a pagan by virtue of his character, António Mora is a pagan by virtue of his intellect, and I’m a pagan out of sheer revolt, i.e. by my temperament. For Caeiro’s paganism there was no explanation; there was consubstantiation.

I will clarify this in the weak-kneed way that indefinable things are defined: through example. If we compare ourselves with the Greeks, one of the most striking differences we find is their aversion to the infinite, of which they had no real concept. Well, my master Caeiro had the same nonconcept. I will now recount, with what I dare say is great accuracy, the astounding conversation in which he revealed this to me.

Elaborating on a reference made in one of the poems from
The Keeper of Sheep
, he told me how someone or other had once called him a “materialist poet.” Although I don’t think the label is right, since there is no right label to define my master Caeiro, I told him that the epithet wasn’t entirely absurd. And I explained the basic tenets of classical materialism. Caeiro listened to me with a pained expression, and then blurted out:

“But this is just plain stupid. It’s the stuff of priests but without any religion, and therefore without any excuse.”

I was taken aback, and I pointed out various similarities between materialism and his own doctrine, though excluding from this his poetry. Caeiro protested.

“But what you call poetry is everything. And it’s not even poetry: it’s seeing. Those materialists are blind. You say they say that space is infinite. Where did they ever see that in space?”

And I, confused: “But don’t you conceive of space as being infinite? Can’t you conceive of space as being infinite?”

“I don’t conceive of anything as infinite. How can I conceive of something as infinite?”

“Just suppose there’s a space,” I said. “Beyond that space there is more space, and then more space, still more, and more, and more.... It never ends....”

“Why?” asked my master Caeiro.

I reeled in a mental earthquake. “Then suppose it ends!” I shouted. “What comes after?”

“If it ends,” he replied, “nothing comes after.”

This kind of argumentation, which is both childish and feminine, and therefore unanswerable, stumped my brain for a few moments, until finally I said, “But do you
conceive
of this?”

“Conceive of what? Of something having limits? Small wonder! What doesn’t have limits doesn’t exist. To exist means that there’s something else, which means that each thing is limited. What’s so hard about conceiving that a thing is a thing and that it’s not always some other thing that’s beyond it?”

At this point I had the physical sensation that I was arguing not with another man but with another universe. I made one last attempt, with a far-fetched argument that I convinced myself was legitimate.

“All right, Caeiro, consider numbers.... Where do numbers end? Let’s take any number—34, for example. After 34 comes 35, 36, 37, 38, etc., and it keeps going like that forever. No matter how large the number, there’s always a still larger one....”

“But that’s all just numbers,” objected my master Caeiro. And then he added, looking at me with a boundless childhood in his eyes: “What is 34 in Reality?”

One day Caeiro told me something absolutely astonishing. We were talking, or rather, I was talking, about the soul’s immortality. I felt that this concept, even if false, was necessary for us to be able to tolerate
existence intellectually, to be able to see it as something more than a heap of stones with greater or lesser consciousness.

“I don’t know what it means for something to be necessary,” said Caeiro.

I answered without answering: “Just tell me this. What are you to yourself?”

“What am I to myself?” Caeiro repeated. I’m one of my sensations.”

I’ve never forgotten the shock that phrase produced in my soul. It has many implications, some of which are contrary to what Caeiro intended. But it was after all spontaneous—a ray of sunshine that shed light without any intention.

One of the most interesting conversations with my master Caeiro was the one in Lisbon where everyone in the group was present and we ended up discussing the concept of Reality.

If I remember correctly, we got on to this subject because of a tangential remark made by Fernando Pessoa apropos something that had been said. Pessoa’s remark was this: “The concept of Being does not admit of parts or degrees; something is or it isn’t.”

“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” I objected. “This concept of being needs to be analyzed. It seems to me like a metaphysical superstition, at least to a certain extent.”

“But the concept of Being isn’t open to analysis,” replied Fernando Pessoa, “due precisely to its indivisibility.”

“The concept may not be open to it,” I said, “but the value of that concept is.”

Fernando answered, “But what is the ‘value’ of a concept independently of the concept? A concept—an abstract idea, that is—is never ‘more’ or ‘less’ than it is, and so it cannot be said to have value, which is always a matter of more or less. There may be value in how a concept is used or applied, but that value is in its usage or application, not in the concept itself.”

My master Caeiro, who with his eyes had been attentively listening
to this transpontine* discussion, broke in at this point, saying, “Where there can be no more or less, there is nothing.”

“And why is that?” asked Fernando.

“Because there can be more or less of everything that’s real, and nothing but what’s real can exist.”

“Give us an example, Caeiro,” I said.

“Rain,” replied my master. “Rain is something real. And so it can rain more or rain less. If you were to say, ‘There can’t be more or less of this rain,’ I would say, ‘Then that rain doesn’t exist.’ Unless of course you meant the rain as it is in this precise instant; that rain, indeed, is what it is and wouldn’t be what it is if it were more or less. But I mean something different—”

“I already see what you mean,” I broke in, but before I could go on to say I can’t remember what, Fernando Pessoa turned to Caeiro. “Tell me this,” he said, pointing his cigarette: “How do you regard dreams? Are they real or not?”

“I regard dreams as I regard shadows,” answered Caeiro unexpectedly, with his usual divine quickness. “A shadow is real, but it’s less real than a stone. A dream is real—otherwise it wouldn’t be a dream—but it’s less real than a thing. To be real is to be like this.”

Fernando Pessoa has the advantage of living more in ideas than in himself. He had forgotten not only what he’d been arguing but even the truth or falseness of what he’d heard; he was enthused about the metaphysical possibilities of this new theory, regardless of whether it was true or false. That’s how these aesthetes are.

“That’s an extraordinary idea!” he said. “Utterly original! It never occurred to me.” (And how about that “it never occurred to me”? As if it were impossible for an idea to occur to somebody else before it occurred to him, Fernando!) “It never occurred to me that one could think of reality as that which admits of degrees. That’s equivalent to thinking of Being as a numerical idea rather than as a strictly abstract one....”

“That’s a bit confusing for me,” Caeiro hesitated, “but yes, I think that’s right. My point is this: To be real means there are other real things, for it’s impossible to be real all alone; and since to be real is to be something
that isn’t all those other things, it’s to be different from them; and since reality is a thing like size or weight—otherwise there would be no reality—and since all things are different, it follows that things are never equally real, even as things are never equal in size or weight. There will always be a difference, however small. To be real is this.”

“That’s even more extraordinary!” exclaimed Fernando Pessoa. “So you evidently consider reality to be an attribute of things, since you compare it to size and weight. But tell me this: What thing is reality an attribute of? What is behind reality?”

“Behind reality?” repeated my master Caeiro. “There’s nothing behind reality. Just as there’s nothing behind size, and nothing behind weight.”

“But if a thing has no reality, it can’t exist, whereas a thing that has no size or weight can exist....”

“Not if it’s a thing that by nature has size and weight. A stone can’t exist without size; a stone can’t exist without weight. But a stone isn’t a size, and a stone isn’t a weight. Nor can a stone exist without reality, but the stone is not a reality.”

“Okay, okay,” said Fernando impatiently, grabbing at uncertain ideas while feeling the ground give way beneath him. “But when you say ‘a stone has reality,’ you distinguish stone from reality.”

“Naturally. The stone is not reality; it has reality. The stone is only stone.”

“And what does that mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s like I said. A stone is a stone and has to have reality to be stone. A stone is a stone and has to have weight to be stone. A man isn’t a face but has to have a face to be a man. I don’t know the reason for this, nor do I know if a reason for this or for anything exists....”

“You know, Caeiro,” said Fernando pensively, “you’re formulating a philosophy that’s a bit contrary to what you think and feel. You’re creating a kind of personal Kantianism, making the stone into a noumenon, a stone-in-itself. Let me explain....” And he proceeded to explain the Kantian thesis and how what Caeiro had said more or less concurred with it. Then he pointed out the difference, or what he
thought was the difference: “For Kant these attributes—weight, size (not reality)—are concepts imposed on the stone-in-itself by our senses, or rather, by the fact we observe it. You seem to be suggesting that these concepts are as much things as the stone-in-itself, and this is what makes your theory hard to grasp, while Kant’s theory—whether true or false—is perfectly understandable.”