After looking for him in the poems, we search for him in the prose. The
pursuit of the Other in Pessoa's work is never-ending, writes Edwin
Honig. Essential to understanding the great Portuguese poet are the
essays written about (and by) his heteronyms--Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo
Reis, and Alvaro de Campos--the several pseudonyms under which he wrote
an extraordinary body of poetry. In Always Astonished, Pessoa and his
several selves debate and discuss one another's work, revealing how
Portuguese modernism was shaped. Fernando Pessoa is one of the great
voices of twentieth-century literature, and these manifestos, letters,
journal notes, and critical essays range through aesthetics, lyric
poetry, dramatic and visual arts, and the psychology of the artist. He
gives us, too, a singularly heterodox political position in his strange
work of fiction, The Anarchist Banker.
Eloquent, volatile and obsessed with life--and death--(Pessoa is one of
the) modernist giants in whose shadow we live and who made our century
one of the extraordinary richness.--The New York Times
Fernando Pessoa is Portugal's most important contemporary poet. He
wrote under several identities, which he called heteronyms: Albet
Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis, and Bernardo Soares. He wrote
fine poetry under his own name as well, and each of his voices is
completely different in subject, temperament, and style.
