“Unable to sleep. . . .” In the penultimate verse, after writing the Portuguese equivalent of “think about her,” the author crossed out the preposition.
Uncollected Poems. “Miscellaneous poems that don’t form a whole” is the more exact meaning of Poemas Inconjuntos, the Portuguese title for this third section of Caeiro’s work. The following poems were published in the magazine Athena 5, in 1925: “The astonishing reality of things,” “When spring arrives,” “If, after I die . . . ,” “You speak of civilization . . . ,” “Truth, falsehood . . . ,” “Hillside shepherd . . . ,” “Between what I see . . . ,” and “You say I’m something more.”
“What’s my life worth? . . .” Variant of “who after all is savvy” in the final verse: “who is of the same opinion.”
“I’m not in a hurry. . . .” Variants of the last verse: “And we live as wanderers, far from our body [reality].”
“Live, you say, in the present.” Variants of “the time that measures them” in v. 4: “the time we assign to them”; “the time where they are.” Variant of “in my awareness of what exists” in v. 9: “in my scheme.”
RICARDO REIS
The twenty-eight poems of Ricardo Reis published by Pessoa in magazines were designated as “odes,” and they share many thematic and formal characteristics with those of Horace. Twenty of them were published in Athena 1, in 1924, as the heteronym’s “First book of Odes,” and other such books were supposed to follow. Reis’s odes rigorously follow a metrical pattern—with verses of ten and six syllables predominating—but do not rhyme. (There were but a couple of Reis poems, not included here, that rhymed.) Syntax is often crunched, or inverted—a characteristic less apparent in the translations, since English is less flexible when it comes to word order. Virtually all the poems published here are classifiable as Horatian-style odes, with the exception of “The Chess Players,” whose twelve stanzas (suggestive, perhaps, of the triadic structure of Pindar’s odes) are of unequal length.
The following odes were published in Athena 1, in 1924: “I love the roses . . . ,” “Remember, with quick steps . . . ,” “Lost from the way . . . ,” “Securely I sit . . . ,” “I want the flower . . . ,” “The new summer . . . ,” “How short a time . . . ,” “Now plowing . . . ,” and “Don’t try to build. . . .”
“Each thing, in its time. . . .” Variant of vv. 11-12: “Let’s not push our voice / Higher than a secret.” Variant of the last three verses of the sixth stanza: “We picked with a different consciousness / And a different way / Of looking at the world.” Variant of the penultimate verse of the sixth stanza: “And a different knowledge.”
“We’ve always had. . . .” Variant of the word “confident” in v. 1: “troubled.” Variant of the last two verses: “To wherever they want / And we don’t want.”
“A verse repeating. . . .” Variant of the first stanza: “A verse repeats / A cool breeze, / Summer in the grass, / And the deserted courtyard / Vacantly endures the sun.”
“I don’t want. . . .” Variant of vv. 1-3: “I don’t want the presents / By which you pretend, sincerely, / To give what you give me.”
“I want the flower. . . .” Pessoa-qua-Campos, in a prose piece that “outs” Ricardo Reis, cites this ode as evidence that Lydia and the classicist’s other ethereal muses were a cover for his real romantic interest: young men. The Portuguese word rendered here as “ungenerous” is masculine in gender, meaning that the beloved whom Reis addressed was, at least in this ode, a man.
“The new summer. . . .” The Latin epigraph appears on the manuscript but was not published with the ode in Athena, perhaps because Caeiro had not yet been publicly revealed. (Reis’s public début was in the first issue of Athena, in 1924, Caeiro’s in the fourth issue of the same magazine, in 1925.)
“Hour by hour. . . .” Variant of the last two verses: “Let us wrap, in the cup of our cold hands, / The flame of the uncertain hour.”
“Already over my vain brow. . . .” Published in Presença 10, in 1928.
“Fruits are given. . . .” Variant of vv. 9-10: “Ah, against great opposition you’ll conquer / Nothing unique or your own. Life is insuperable.”
“To nothing. . . .” Published in Presença 6, in 1927.
“The fleeting track. . . .” Published in Presença 10, in 1928.
“When, Lydia. . . .” Published in Presença 31-32, in 1931.
“Hesitant, as if. . . .” Published in Presença 31-32, in 1931.
“Nothing of nothing. . . .” Variant of v. 6: “Decreed laws, tall statues, finished odes—.”
“To be great. . . .” Published in Presença 37, in 1933.
“All I ask the gods. . . .” Crossed out on the manuscript, which typically means that the author made a typed copy, perhaps with revisions, but in this case no typed copy is known to have survived.
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
Álvaro de Campos was the most prolific of the poetic heteronyms. Pessoa’s longest poem, “The Maritime Ode,” was signed by the naval engineer, whose initial task—according to plans drawn up by his inventor—was to produce five “futurist odes.” The only odes completed were “The Triumphal Ode” and “The Maritime Ode.” “Time’s Passage” and “Salutation to Walt Whitman,” both left as numerous, unconnected pieces, may be considered odes in Campos’s futurist manner, and there are other, fragmentary odes whose various pieces date mostly from 1914-16. In 1923 Campos, after a fallow period as a poet, returned to active duty with a less flamboyant style. His poems tended to become shorter as time went on, and the late poem that begins “How long it’s been . . .” (p. 254) complains about the fact.
“Opiary.” This poem, fictionally dated 1914, was actually written in 1915, for publication in the inaugural issue of the magazine Orpheu, where it was dedicated to Mário de Sá-Carneiro. In his 13 January 1935 letter to Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Pessoa explained: “When it came time to publish Orpheu, we had to find something at the last minute to fill out the issue, and so I suggested to Sá-Carneiro that I write an ‘old’ poem of Álvaro de Campos—a poem such as Álvaro de Campos would have written before meeting Caeiro and falling under his influence. That’s how I came to write ‘Opiary,’ in which I tried to incorporate all the latent tendencies of Álvaro de Campos that would eventually be revealed but that still showed no hint of contact with his master Caeiro. Of all the poems I’ve written, this was the one that gave me the most trouble, because of the twofold depersonalization it required. But I don’t think it turned out badly, and it does show us Álvaro in the bud.”
Pessoa translated about five stanzas of the poem into English. He preceded his translation with the following note: “The word ‘Opiary,’ of course, does not exist in English. But neither does ‘Opiário’ (of which ‘opiary’ is the exact translation) exist in Portuguese. The translator has followed the neologism of the original.”
“Plon and Mércure,” mentioned in the eleventh stanza, were French publishing houses, the latter especially prestigious. The first verse of the eighth stanza from the end, translated here as “How many people like me toe the Line,” could be differently interpreted, giving “How many like me are making a cruise.”
“Triumphal Ode.” Published in Orpheu 1, in 1915. According to Campos’s “biography,” he wrote the poem in London in June of 1914, upon his return from the Orient. It was indeed written in that month, but in Lisbon. It was the first Campos poem produced by Pessoa.
“Excerpts from Two Odes.” In the manuscript the title, which is Pessoa’s, is followed by a parenthetical indication: “conclusions to two odes, naturally.” Pessoa apparently gave up on the idea of writing the rest of the two odes, whose “conclusions” read as polished, complete poems. Cesário Verde (1855-1886), mentioned in the first stanza of the second “excerpt,” was the most modern Portuguese poet of his generation. “Sentiment of a Westerner,” his greatest poem, evokes the urban reality of nineteenth-century Lisbon with vivid, concrete imagery. Verde, an important influence on the p
oetry of cosmopolitan Campos, is also named in a poem of Caeiro and in passages from The Book of Disquiet.
“Maritime Ode.” Published in Orpheu 2, in 1915, with a dedication to Santa-Rita Pintor (1889-1918), a painter and member of the Orpheu group. The town of Almada, mentioned in the last third of the poem, lies on the far side of the Tagus River in relation to Lisbon.
“Salutation to Walt Whitman.” As explained in the Notes on the Selection, Editing, and Translation (pp. xli-xliv), Pessoa wrote more than twenty passages for this unfinished poem. The majority of the passages are not even complete units in themselves, being sprinkled with blank spaces for missing words and unfinished sentences. Most are handwritten, and certain phrases and even entire stanzas have not thus far been convincingly deciphered. The “Salutation” presented here excludes the sketchier material and those portions of the text for which reliable transcriptions have not been established. Diamonds have been placed between the separate passages, whose order is my own responsibility. Omitted phrases or sections (where the manuscripts are partly or wholly illegible) are indicated by three dots ( . . . ); lacunae in the original text are indicated by five dots (....). Other editorial interventions are indicated in the notes that follow.
“Portugal, Infinity. . . .” Rua do Ouro, mentioned in the fourth stanza, is one of the main streets in downtown Lisbon.
“And so it’s to you. . . .” In the manuscript there is a blank space after the word translated as “carriage” in the fourth verse; the author no doubt intended to complete it with an adjective.
“Gateway to everything!” An unfinished verse following the seventh verse of the third stanza has been suppressed.
“Time for our vitality. . . .” Variant of the last verse: “When does it leave?”
“Hup-hup? . . . ” The phrase “caresser of life,” in v. 12, is from Whitman’s Song of Myself, section 13. The closing parenthetical mark at the end of the ninth verse in the last stanza is there by conjecture; the author opened but neglected to close the parenthesis.
“All along the wharf. . . .” Undated but presumed to be a relatively early poem.
“Lisbon Revisited (1923).” Published in the magazine Contemporânea , in 1923.
“Lisbon Revisited (1926).” Published in Contemporânea, in 1926.
“If you want to kill yourself. . . .” Written ten years to the day after the suicide of Pessoa’s closest friend, the writer Mário de Sá-Carneiro.
“Clouds.” Variant of “symmetrical” in v. 9: “synthetic.”
“Squib.” Published in Presença 18, in 1929. A manuscript copy of the poem bears the title “Futurist Squib.” David Lloyd George (1863-1945), from Wales, was head of Britain’s Liberal Party and served as prime minister from 1916 to 1922. Aristide Briand (1862-1932), French premier in World War I, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926.
“Note.” Published in Presença 20, in 1929.
“Yes it’s me. . . .” Variant of “adult tears” in the ninth verse from the end: “dead tears.”
“Ah, a Sonnet . . .” Published in Presença 34, in 1932.
“My heart. . . .” Undated, but apparently a companion to the previous sonnet. My reading of the manuscript differs from the published versions in the fifth and twelfth verses.
“Speak softly. . . .” Variant of “flesh” in v. 9: “foam.”
“The stillness of midnight. . . .” Variant of “speak to me” in v. 17: “arouse me.”
“Homecoming.” In the manuscript the title is followed by the parenthetical phrase, in English, “end of the book.”
“Là-bas, Je Ne Sais Où . . .” The title means “Over there, I don’t know where.”
FERNANDO PESSOA-HIMSELF
A Portuguese term akin to “Pessoa-himself ” was used by the poet to distinguish the “orthonym”—the literary persona called Fernando Pessoa—from the heteronyms. The persona called Pessoa had, in turn, various “subpersonalities,” such as Pessoa the lyrical poet (whose “lyricism” was largely concerned with existential issues), Pessoa the esoteric poet, Pessoa the experimentalist, Pessoa the nationalist, or mystical nationalist, Pessoa the popular poet, and Pessoa the humorist. These last two facets, not represented in the present volume, gave rise to several hundred traditional folk quatrains, as well as some light and humorous verse, sometimes written for family members.
Songbook. In a letter from 1932 to João Gaspar Simões, his future biographer, Pessoa expressed his intention of publishing, in a large volume titled Songbook, “a number of my many miscellaneous poems, which are too diverse to be classified except in that inexpressive way.” We don’t know how diversified such a volume might have been, but it would probably have included his esoteric and metaphysical poems, which are usually rhymed and metered, like his more obviously lyric poetry, and it may well have included free-verse poems written for the most part in the 1910s (“Slanting Rain,” “Diary in the Shade”) or toward the end of his life (“Freedom,” “Un Soir à Lima”). For all its “inexpressive” generality, the title Songbook evokes a specific leitmotif of the orthonymic poetry, in which there are frequent mentions of music, musical instruments, and musicians.
“O church bell. . . .” This and “Swamps of yearnings . . . ,” the first poems published by Pessoa as an adult, in 1914, appeared as a diptych under the general title “Twilight Impressions.” “O church bell . . .” was republished in 1925, with several changes in the third stanza, reflected in my translation. The third stanza, as originally written and published, could be translated as:
However closely you touch me
When, unhappy, I wander past,
You are to me like a dream—
Your ringing is forever distant.
Pessoa wrote João Gaspar Simões that the “village” of the poem was Chiado, the centrally located neighborhood of Lisbon where Pessoa was born and spent his first five years; the “church bell” was of the Chiado church where he was baptized.
“Abdication.” Published in 1920.
“Swamps of yearnings. . . .” This poem first circulated among Pessoa’s friends under the title “Swamps,” which gave rise to the term Paulismo (paul is the Portuguese word for swamp), an exacerbated post-symbolist aesthetic typified in the poem and cultivated for several years by Pessoa and some of his literary compeers, especially Mário de Sá-Carneiro. Published in 1914 with “O church bell . . .” (see the penultimate note).
“Slanting Rain.” Published in Orpheu 2, in 1915. Álvaro de Campos explains, in his “Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro,” that Fernando Pessoa, after meeting Alberto Caeiro and hearing him recite The Keeper of Sheep, “went home in a fever (the one he was born with) and wrote the six poems of ‘Slanting Rain’ in one go. . . . They were a direct result of the spiritual shock he experienced mere moments after that meeting occurred.” The poems were published with the subtitle “Intersectionist Poems,” intersectionism being the name of yet another short-lived artistic “movement” conceived and promulgated by Pessoa, who imagined the principle being applied to various types of art, and even beyond the arts. In his own intersectionist poetry, of which “Slanting Rain” is the best example, diverse spatial, temporal, and psychological planes intersect, without fusing. It can be thought of as a literary equivalent to Cubism.
“She sings, poor reaper. . . .” Published in 1916 and, with revisions, in 1925 (Athena 3, dated December 1924). The translation is of the final version.
“Passerby.” The poem assumed its final shape, on which the translation is based, on 21 August 1921. It was classified by Pessoa, in a publication project, as one of his “Songs of Lisbon.”
“Diary in the Shade.” An atypical poem, written in free verse and attributed by some Pessoa scholars to Álvaro de Campos. I and others attribute it to Pessoa-himself. My reading of the original manuscript, for the last quarter of the poem, differs considerably from the published version (in Poemas de Álvaro de Campos, ed. Cleonice Berardinelli, Lisbon: INCM, 1992).
“The Scaffold
.” Published in Presença 31-32, in 1931.
“Her very being surprises. . . .” The woman referred to in this unusually erotic poem is undoubtedly Hanni Jaeger, the young and attractive American girlfriend of the English magus Aleister Crowley. (See the Chronology for the years 1929-30.) The couple arrived in Lisbon eight days before this poem was written.
“There’s no one who loves me. . . .” Variant of the final verse: “Feeling is another emotion.”
“I come to the window. . . .” Variant of the final verse: “And no one gives me anything.”
“Autopsychography.” Published in Presença 32, in 1932.
“I’m guided only by reason. . . .” Published in 1932.
“Initiation.” Published in Presença 35, in 1932.
“What I write’s not mine. . . .” The manuscript contains, in parentheses, two possible closing couplets, one of which I’ve used for the English translation. Using the other couplet, the last three verses could be translated as:
From the dust I am
And made me into a cloud in a moment
Of thinking.
Pessoa might, in the end, have rejected the parenthetical additions, ending the poem with the fourteenth verse (“From the dust I am”).
“Senhor Silva.” Classified by Pessoa, in a publication project, as one of his “Songs of Lisbon.”
“I daydream. . . .” My reading of the manuscript differs in the eleventh verse from the published version.
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe Page 27