Fernando Pessoa: 10 fundamental poems analyzed and explained

One of the greatest authors of the Portuguese language, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), is known especially for his heteronyms. Some of the names that quickly come to mind belong to his main heteronyms: Álvaro de Campos, Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Bernardo Soares.

In addition to conceiving a series of poems with the above heteronyms, the poet also signed verses with his own name. He is one of the key figures of modernism, and his prolific verses never lose their validity and always deserve to be remembered.

Next, we select some of the most beautiful poems of the Portuguese writer. We hope everyone enjoys this reading!

1. Poem in a straight line, by the heteronym Álvaro de Campos

Perhaps the most consecrated and internationally recognized verses of Pessoa are those of the "Poem in a straight line", an extensive creation with which to this day we deeply identify.

The following verses were written between 1914 and 1935. During the reading, we realize how the heteronomous conceives society and criticism, observing and differentiating himself from those around him.

Here we find a series of denunciations of the masks, the falsehood and hypocrisy of society that are still in force. The poet confesses to the reader his maladjustment to a contemporary world that works through appearances.

The poem creates a panorama of the poetic subject, and also of the Portuguese society of which the author was a part.

I've never met anyone who would have been ground to
sticks.
All my acquaintances have been champions in everything.
And I, so often despicable, so many times unclean,
so many times vile,
I, so many times irrefutably parasite,
unforgivably dirty
I, who have not had the patience to bathe so many times,
I, who have been ridiculous, absurd so many times,
that I have publicly stumbled on the carpets of the
ceremonies,
that I have been grotesque, mean, submissive and arrogant,
that I have suffered offenses and I have kept quiet,
that when I have not kept quiet, I have been even more ridiculous;
I, who have found the hotel maids comical,
I, who have noticed winks among the porters,
I, who have done financial mischief and borrowed
without paying,
I, who, at the time of the slaps, crouched
slapping out of reach;
I, who have suffered the anguish of the little things
ridiculous,
I realize that I have no peer at this in the whole
world.
All the people I know who talk to me
never did anything ridiculous, never suffered an affront,
he was never but prince - all of them princes - in life ...
I wish I could hear someone's human voice
that he confess not a sin, but an infamy;
that he should tell, not a violence, but a cowardice!
No, they are all the Ideal, if I hear them and they speak to me.
Who is there in this wide world that confesses to me that
ever been vile?
Oh princes, my brothers,
Milks, I'm sick of demigods!
Where are there people in the world?
Am I the only vile and wrong being on earth?
They may not have been loved by women,
they may have been betrayed; but ridiculous, never!
And I, who have been ridiculous without being betrayed,
How am I going to talk to those superiors of mine without hesitation?
I, who have been vile, literally vile,
vile in the mean and infamous sense of vileness.

2. Lisbon revisited (1923), by the heteronym Álvaro de Campos

The long poem "Lisbon revisited" was written in 1923. In him we find a poetic voice extremely pessimistic and misplaced with respect to the society in which he lives.

The verses are marked by exclamations that are translated into rebellion and denial: the poetic self sometimes assumes what it is not and does not want. The subject makes a series of rejections to his society. We identify an angry and failed poetic self, rebellious and disappointed.

Throughout the poem, we see some pairs of opposites that are consolidated to lay the foundations of the writing, that is, we see how the text is constructed from the contrast between past and present, childhood and adulthood, the life we ​​used to live and the current.

No: I don't want anything.
I already said I don't want anything.

Don't come to me with conclusions!
The only conclusion is to die.

Don't come to me with aesthetics!
Don't talk to me about morals!
Get rid of metaphysics!
Don't tout me complete systems, don't line me up with conquests
Of the sciences (of the sciences, my God, of the sciences!) -
Of the sciences, of the arts, of modern civilization!

What wrong did I do to all the gods?

If you have the truth, keep it for yourself!

I am a technician, but I have technique only within technique.
Other than that, I'm crazy, with every right to be.
With every right to be, did you hear?

Don't bother me, for God's sake!

Did they want me married, futile, everyday and taxable?
Did they want me the opposite of this, the opposite of anything?
If I were someone else, I would please everyone.
So, as I am, be patient!
Go to hell without me
Or let me go to hell alone!

Why do we have to go together?
Don't touch me on the arm!
I don't like being touched on the arm. I want to be alone,
I already said I'm a loner!
Ah, what annoying wanting it to be from the company!

Oh blue sky - the same one from my childhood -
Eternal empty and perfect truth!
Oh soft ancient and mute Tajo,
Little truth where the sky is reflected!
Oh bitterness revisited, Lisbon of yesteryear today!
You give me nothing, you take nothing from me, you are nothing for me to feel!

Leave me alone! I do not delay, I never delay ...
And while the Abyss and Silence take I want to be alone!

3. Autopsychography of Fernando Pessoa

Written in 1931, the short poem “Autopsychography” was published the following year in the magazine Presence, an important medium for Portuguese modernism.

In just twelve lines, the poet rambles about his relationship with himself and writing. In reality, writing appears as an attitude that directs the subject, as an essential part of the constitution of his identity.

Throughout the verses, the poem deals with both the moment of literary creation and the reception by the reading public, giving an account of the writing process (creation - reading - reception) and involving all the participants of the action (author - reader).

The poet is a fake.
Pretend so completely
that even pretends that it is pain
the pain that you really feel.

And those who read what she writes,
feel, in pain read,
not the two that the poet lives
but the one they have not had.

And so it goes on his way,
distracting reason
that train with no real destination
which is called heart.

4. Tobacco shop, from the heteronym Álvaro de Campos

One of the best-known poems of the heteronym Álvaro de Campos is “Tabaquería”, an extensive poem that narrates the the poet's relationship with himself in the face of a fast-paced world, and his relationship with the city at the time historical.

The lines below are just a fragment of this long and beautiful poetic work written in 1928. With a pessimistic gaze, we see the poet approach the issue of disillusionment from a nihilistic perspective.

The lonely subject feels empty, although he assumes that he too has dreams. Throughout the verses we observe a gap between the current situation and the one that the subject would like; between what he is and what he would like. From these differences the poem is built: in the verification of his real place and the lament for the great distance that separates him from his ideal.

I'm nothing.
I will never be anything.
I can not want to be anything.
Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

Windows of my room,
quarter of one of the millions in the world that nobody knows who they are
(And if they did, what would they know?)
Windows that overlook the mystery of a street constantly crossed by people,
street inaccessible to all thoughts,
real, impossibly real, certain, unknown certain,
with the mystery of things under stones and beings,
with that of death that traces damp stains on the walls,
with that of destiny that drives the car of everything down the street of nothing.

Today I am convinced as if I knew the truth,
lucid as his was about to die
and had no more brotherhood with things than that of a farewell,
And the train line of a convoy parades in front of me
and there's a long whistle
inside my skull
And there is a jolt in my nerves and my bones creak in the snatch.

Today I am perplexed, as one who thought and found and forgot,
today I'm divided between the loyalty that I owe
To the tobacco shop across the street, like a real thing on the outside,
and the feeling that everything is a dream, as a real thing inside.

I failed at everything.
(...)
I have embraced in my hypothetical chest more humanities than Christ,
I have secretly thought of more philosophies than those written by any Kant.
But I am and will always be the one in the attic,
even if I don't live in it.
I will always be the one who was not born for that.
I'll always be just the one with some qualities
I will always be the one who waited for the door to be opened in front of a wall that had no door,
the one who sang the song of Infinity in a chicken coop,
the one who heard the voice of God in a blinded well.
Believe in me? Not in me or in anything.
Nature spill its sun and rain
on my burning head and let its wind ruffle me
and after what comes comes or has to come or has not to come.
Heart slaves of the stars,
we conquer the world before getting out of bed;
we wake up and it becomes dull;
we go out into the street and he becomes oblivious,
it is the earth and the solar system and the Milky Way and the Undefined.

(...)
The Owner of the Tobacco Shop appears at the door and settles against the door.
With the discomfort of a man with a crooked neck,
With the discomfort of a crooked soul, I see it.
He will die and I will die.
He will leave his label and I will leave my verses.
At a certain point the label will die and my verses will die.
Later, at another time, they will die the street where the sign was painted
and the language in which the verses were written.
Then the giant planet where all this happened will die.
On other planets of other systems something like people
will continue to do things like verses,
similar to living under a store sign,
always one thing versus another,
always one thing as useless as the other,
always the impossible as stupid as the real,
always the mystery of the bottom as true as the mystery of the surface,
always this or that thing or neither one thing nor the other.

(...)
(If I married the washerwoman's daughter
maybe she would be happy).
Having seen this, I get up. I approach the window.
The man leaves the Tobacco Shop (does he keep the change in his trouser bag?),
ah, I know him, he is Estevez, who ignores metaphysics.
(The Owner of the Tobacco Shop appears at the door).
Moved by a divinatory instinct, Estevez turns and recognizes me;
he waves to me and I yell at him Goodbye, Estevez! and the universe
it is rebuilt in me without ideal or hope
and the owner of the tobacco shop smiles.

5. This from Fernando Pessoa

Signed by Fernando Pessoa himself, and not by his heteronyms, "Esto", published in the magazine Presence in 1933, it is a metaliterary poem, that is, a poem that deals with his own process of creation.

The poet allows the reader to observe the machinery of the construction of the verses, getting closer and creating affinity with the audience. It is clear how in the verses the subject seems to use the logic of reason to construct the poem: the verses arise with the imagination and not with the heart. As evidenced in the last lines, the poet delegates to the reader the enjoyment obtained through writing.

They say I pretend or lie
in everything I write. Not.
I just feel
with imagination.
I don't use my heart.

What I dream and what happens to me,
what I lack or ends
it's like a terrace
that gives to something else yet.
That thing is really cute.

That's why I write in the middle
of what is not standing,
free from my tie,
serious than it is not.
Feel? Feel who reads!

6. Triumphal ode, from the heteronym Álvaro de Campos

Through thirty stanzas (only some of them are presented below) we see typically modernist characteristics: the poem shows the anguish and novelties of its time.

Published in 1915 in Orpheu, the historical moment and social changes motivate his writing. We observe, for example, how the city and the industrialized world go through a painful modernity.

The verses underline the passage of time where good changes carry negative aspects. It indicates how man leaves his sedentary and contemplative being, to be productive, immersed in daily speed.

In the painful light of the great electric lamps of the factory,
I have a fever and I write.
I write gnashing my teeth, fierce for this beauty,
This beauty totally unknown to the ancients.
Oh wheels, oh gears, r-r-r-r-r-r eternal!
Strong retained spasm of the mechanisms in fury!
In fury outside and inside of me
For all my dissected nerves
By all the taste buds out of everything I feel!
My lips are dry, oh great modern noises,
To hear them too close,
And my head burns to want to sing with an excess
Of expression of all my sensations,
With a contemporary excess of you, oh machines!
In fever and looking at the engines like a tropical Nature
-Great human tropics of iron and fire and strength-
I sing, and I sing the present, and also the past and the future,
Because the present is all the past and all the future
And there are Plato and Virgil inside the machines and the electric lights
Just because Virgil and Plato existed and were human,
And pieces of Alexander the Great maybe from the fiftieth century,
We agree that they must have a fever in the brain of Aeschylus of the hundredth century,
They walk on these transmission belts and these pistons and these flywheels,
Roaring, grinding, hissing, squeezing, ironing,
Making an excess of caresses to the body in a single caress to the soul.
Ah, to be able to express everything to myself as an engine expresses itself!
Be complete as a machine!
To be able to go through life triumphant like a late model car!
To be able to at least physically penetrate all of this,
Tear me all open, become porous
To all the perfumes of oils and heats and coals
Of this stupendous, black, artificial and insatiable flora!
Fraternity with all the dynamics!
Promiscuous fury of being part-agent
From the iron and cosmopolitan rolling
Of the mighty trains
From the cargo-transporting task of the ships,
From the lubricious and slow turning of the cranes,
From the disciplined tumult of factories,
And the hissing and monotonous quasi-silence of the transmission belts!
(...)
News passez à-la-caisse, great crimes-
To two columns, go to the second page!
The fresh smell of printing ink!
The recently posted posters, wet!
Vients-de-paraitre yellow like a white ribbon!
How I love you all, all, all,
How I love them in all ways
With the eyes and with the ears and with the smell
And with touch (what it means to feel them for me!)
And with the intelligence that they vibrate like an antenna!
Ah, all my senses are jealous of you!
Fertilizers, steam threshers, agricultural progress!
Agricultural chemistry, and commerce almost a science!
(...)
Masochism through machinations!
Sadism of I do not know what modern and me and noise!
Up-the hockey jockey you won the Derby,
Bite your two-colored cap between your teeth!
(To be so tall that he couldn't get through any door!
Ah, looking is in me, a sexual perversion!)
Eh-la, eh-la, eh-la cathedrals!
Let me break my head in your corners,
And be lifted off the street full of blood
Without anyone knowing who I am!
Oh tramways, funiculars, metropolitans,
Join me to the spasm!
Hilla, hilla, hilla-ho!
(...)
Oh iron, oh steel, oh aluminum, oh corrugated iron plates!
Oh docks, oh ports, oh trains, oh cranes, oh tugboats!
Hey, big train derailments!
Eh-la mine gallery collapses!
Eh-la delicious shipwrecks of the great ocean liners!
Eh-la-oh revolution, here, there, there,
Alterations of constitutions, wars, treaties, invasions,
Noise, injustices, violence, and perhaps the end soon,
The great invasion of the yellow barbarians across Europe,
And another sun in the new Horizon!
What does all this matter, but what does all this matter
To the bright red contemporary noise,
To the cruel and delicious noise of today's civilization?
All this silences everything, except the Moment,
The Moment of the naked trunk and hot as an oven
The stridently loud and mechanical Moment,
The dynamic moment of all the bacchantes
Of iron and bronze and the drunkenness of metals.
The trains, the bridges, the hotels at dinner time,
The rigging of all species, iron, gross, minimal,
Precision instruments, crushing, digging,
Ingenios, drills, rotary machines!
Eia! Eia! Eia!
Eia electricity, sick nerves of Matter!
Eia wireless-telegraphy, metallic sympathy of the Unconscious!
The barrels, the canals, Panama, Kiel, Suez!
Eia all the past within the present!
Eia the whole future already within us! Eia!
Eia! Eia! Eia!
Iron fruits and tree tools - cosmopolitan factory!
I do not know what I exist within. I turn, I go around, I wits
I get hooked on all the trains
They hoist me on all the docks.
I turn inside all the propellers of all the ships.
Eia! Eia-ho eia!
Eia! I am mechanical heat and electricity!
Eia! And the rails and the powerhouses and Europe!
Eia and hooray for me and everything, machines to work, eia!
Climb with everything above everything! Hup-la!
Hup-la, hup-la, hup-la-ho, hup-la!
He-la! He-ho h-o-o-o-o-o!
Z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z!
Ah, not me all the people everywhere!

7. Omen of Fernando Pessoa

It was signed by Fernando Pessoa himself and published in 1928, towards the end of the poet's life. While most love poems pay homage and praise to such a noble sentiment, here arises a disconnected voice, unable to establish emotional ties, finding in love a problem, not a blessing.

Made up of twenty verses divided into five stanzas, we find a subject who wishes to live love in its fullness, but he does not know how to handle the feeling. Unrequited love, which, in fact, is not adequately communicated, is an immense source of anguish for those who love in silence.

It is curious how a poetic voice that composes beautiful verses is unable to express itself before the woman it loves. With a pessimistic and defeatist imprint, the poem speaks to all of us who have fallen in love one day and have not had the courage to say it for fear of rejection.

Love, when it is revealed,
she is not known to reveal.
He knows how to look at her
but she doesn't know how to speak.
Who wants to say what he feels,
she doesn't know what she's going to declare her.
She speaks: she seems to be lying.
Hush: she seems to forget.
Ah, more if she guessed,
if he could hear or look,
and if a look was enough
to know that they are loving her!
But whoever feels a lot is silent;
who wants to say how much he feels
he is left without a soul or speech,
it remains only entirely!
But if I could tell you this,
what I dare not tell you,
I no longer have to talk to him
because I'm talking to him ...

8. Anniversary, of the heteronym Álvaro de Campos

A classic of Álvaro de Campos's poetics, “Aniversario” is a painful poem, with which we all feel identified. The pseudonym's birthday is the reason that causes the subject to travel back in time.

The verses, published in 1930, turn to the past and show a kind of nostalgia, longing for a time that will never return.

The realization appears that nothing remains in the same place: loved ones die, innocence is lost, although the childhood home still stands. The past is seen as an inexhaustible source of joy, while the present has a bitter and melancholic taste.

Here it is not just a record of banal longing, but the poetic self is dejected, empty, sad, full of a deep disappointment, a desire to go back in time and stay in the past.

At the time they were celebrating my birthday,
I was happy and no one had died.
In the old house, even my birthday was a centuries-long tradition,
and everyone's happiness, and mine, was assured with any religion.
At the time they were celebrating my birthday,
I had the great health of not understanding anything,
to be smart in the middle of the family,
and not having the hopes that others had for me.
When I became hopeful, I no longer knew how to be hopeful.
When I came to look at life, I lost the meaning of life.
Yeah what I assumed was to me
what I was of heart and kinship,
what I was of half a province sunsets,
what I was that they loved me and being the child.
What I was — oh my God! —What I only know today that I was…
That far...
(I can't even find it ...)
The time when they celebrated my birthday!
What I am today is like the humidity in the corridor at the end of the house,
that stains the walls ...
what I am today (and the house of those who loved me trembles through my tears),
what I am today is that they have sold the house.
Is that they have all died,
is that I have survived myself like a cold match ...
At the time they were celebrating my birthday ...
What a love of mine, as a person, that time!
Physical desire of the soul to be there again,
for a metaphysical and carnal journey,
with a duality of me for me ...
Eating the past like bread with hunger, no time for butter on your teeth!
I see everything again with a clarity that blinds me to how much there is here ...
The table arranged with more places, with better drawings on the earthenware, with more glasses,
the sideboard with many things - sweets, fruits, the rest in the shade under the elevated,
The old aunts, the different cousins, and all because of me,
at the time they were celebrating my birthday ...
Stop, my heart!
Do not think! Stop thinking in your head!
Oh my God, my God, my God!
Today I am not my birthday.
I endure.
Days are added to me.
I'll be old when I am.
And nothing more.
Anger at not having brought the stolen past in my backpack ...
The time when they celebrated my birthday!

9. The herd keeper, from the heteronym Alberto Caeiro

Written around 1914, but published for the first time in 1925, the long poem - quoted only a short passage below - was responsible for the emergence of the heteronym Alberto Caeiro.

In the verses, the poet presents himself as a humble person, from the countryside, who likes to contemplate the landscape, natural phenomena, animals and the environment around him.

Another important feature of this writing is the superiority of feeling over reason. We also see an exaltation of the sun, the wind, the earth and, in general, the essential elements of country life.

It is important to underline the question of the divine: if for many God is a superior being, throughout the verses we see how what governs us seems to be, for Caeiro, nature.

I
I never kept herds
But it is as if he kept them.
My soul is like a shepherd
Meet the wind and the sun
And walk hand in hand with the Seasons
Following and looking.
All the peace of Nature without people
He comes to sit next to me.
But I am sad like a sunset
For our imagination,
When the bottom of the plain cools
And the late night feels
Like a butterfly out the window.
But my sadness is calm
Because it is natural and fair
And it is what should be in the soul
When he already thinks that he exists
And her hands pick flowers without her knowing it.
Like a noise of cowbells
Beyond the curve of the road
My thoughts are happy
I only feel sorry to know that they are happy
Because if I didn't know
Instead of being happy and sad,
They would be happy and happy.
Thinking is uncomfortable like walking in the rain
When the wind grows and it seems that it rains more.
I have no ambitions or desires.
Being a poet is not an ambition of mine.
It's my way of being alone.
(...)

II
My gaze is clear as a sunflower
I have a habit of walking on the roads
Looking left and right
And from time to time backwards ...
And what I see every moment
It's what he's never seen before
And I realize very well ...
I know how to have the essential astonishment
That he has a child, yes, at birth,
Really repair his birth ...
I feel born at every moment
For the eternal novelty of the world ...
I believe in the world like a daisy
Because I see it. But i don't think about him
Because thinking is not understanding ...
The world was not made for us to think about
(To think is to be sick in the eyes)
But to look at it and agree ...
I have no philosophy: I have senses ...
If I speak of Nature it is not because I know what she is,
If not because I love her, and I love her for that,
Because whoever loves her never knows what she loves
She doesn't even know why she loves, nor what it is to love ...
Loving is eternal innocence
And the only innocence is not thinking ...

III
At dusk, leaning against the window,
And knowing sideways that there are fields in front,
I read until my eyes burn
The Cesario Verde Book.
What a pity I have for him. He was a peasant
That he was a prisoner in freedom around the city.
But the way he looked at the houses
And the way he watched the streets
And the way she was interested in things
It is the one who looks at the trees
And of those who look down the street where they go
And he's looking at the flowers in the fields ...
That's why I had that great sadness
that never says well that he had
But he walked in the city like one who walks in the country
And sad how to dissect flowers in books
And put plants in jars ...

IV
The storm fell this afternoon
By the shores of heaven
Like a huge scree ...
As if someone from a high window
Shake a big tablecloth
And the crumbs all together
They made a noise when they fell,
The rain was pouring down from the sky
And blackened the roads ...
When lightning shook the air
And they fanned the space
Like a big head that says no
I don't know why - I wasn't afraid.
I started to pray to Santa Barbara
As if I were someone's old aunt ...
Ah! is that praying to Santa Barbara
I felt even simpler
Of what I think I am ...
I felt familiar and home
(...)

V
There is enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.
What do I think of the world?
What do I know what I think of the world!
If I got sick I would think about that.
What idea do I have of things?
What is my opinion about the causes and effects?
What is it that I have meditated on about God and the soul
And about the creation of the World?
I do not know. For me to think about that is to close my eyes
And not think. Is to draw the curtains
From my window (but it has no curtains).
(...)
But if God is the trees and the flowers
And the mountains and the moonbeam and the sun,
What do I call God for?
I call it flowers and trees and mountains and sun and moonbeam;
Because if He was made, for me to see,
Sun and moonbeam and flowers and trees and mountains,
If He appears to me like trees and mountains
And moonbeam and sun and flowers,
It is that He wants me to know Him
like trees and mountains and flowers and moonbeam and sun.
And that's why I obey it
(What more do I know about God than God about himself?),
I obey him by living, spontaneously,
Like someone who opens their eyes and sees,
And I call it moonbeam and sun and flowers and trees and mountains,
And I love him without thinking about him
And I think about it seeing and hearing,
And I am with Him at all times.

10. I don't know how many souls I have, by Fernando Pessoa

A vital question for the poetic voice appears in the opening lines of "I don't know how many souls I have." Here we find a multiple poetic self, restless, dispersed, although solitary, which is not known with certainty and is subject to continuous change.

The poem arises from the theme of identity, which is built with the turns of the personalities of the poetic subject.

Some questions raised by the poem are: Who am I? How did I become what I am? Who was I in the past, and who will I be in the future? Who am I in relation to others? and How do I insert myself into the landscape?

With a constant euphoria, marked by anxiety, the poet tries to answer the questions posed.

I don't know how many souls I have.
Every moment I changed.
I continually miss myself.
I was never seen or found.
From so much being, I only have the soul.
He who has a soul is not calm.
He who sees is only what he sees,
who feels it is no longer who he is.
Attentive to what I am and what I see,
they turn me, not me.
Every dream or wish
it is not mine if it was born there.
I am my own landscape,
the one who witnesses his landscape,
diverse, mobile and alone,
I don't know how to feel where I am.
So, stranger, I'm reading,
like pages, my being,
without foreseeing what follows
nor remember yesterday.
I write down what I read
what I thought I felt.
I reread and say, "Was it me?"
God knows, because he wrote it.

(Translated and adapted by Claudia Gomez Molina).

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