Product Description
Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) - a poet who lived most his life in Lisbon, Portugal, and who died in obscurity there - has in recent years gained international recognition as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Now Richard Zenith has collected in a single volume all the major poetry of "one of the most extraordinary poetic talents the century has produced" (Microsoft Network's Reading Forum). Fernando Pessoa was as much a creator of personas as he was of poetry, prose, and criticism. He wrote under numerous "heteronyms," literary alter egos with fully fleshed identities and writing styles, who supported and criticized each other's work in the margins of his drafts and in the literary journals of the time. From spare minimalism to a revolutionary exuberance that recalls Leaves of Grass, Pessoa's oeuvre was radically new and anticipated contemporary literary concerns to an unnerving degree. The first comprehensive edition of Pessoa's poetry in the English language, Fernando Pessoa & Co. is a work of extraordinary depth and poetic precision. "Zenith's selection of Pessoa is a beautiful one-volume course in the soul of the twentieth century." -- Booklist ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

"...all this exceeds the logic imposed on things by reason..."
Pessoa, like all of us, had strong emotions. What we would call moods--restlessness, sensuality, fearfulness, anger, expansiveness--he would call "heteronyms". His heteronyms were moods that had become embodied and endowed with a persona. This is unusual enough. He also invented complex biographies for each personality--they had names, histories, accomplishments, tastes, and definite capacities and limitations. Where this goes beyond unusual and enters into the extraordinary is where these personalities each reveal a remarkable gift for poetry. That the poetry can reflect the individual nature of each heteronym, while retaining a universal appeal, is an unparalleled feat. There is really nothing else like this.

Richard Zenith has written a very good 30 page introduction to the poems in an effort to prepare the reader for the depth and breadth of the work that follows. A biographical sketch is provided, the major heteronyms are identified and characterized, and a philosophic assessment of Pessoa, both his influences and his impact, is attempted. But nothing will prepare you for reading a poem like The Tobacco Shop. Written by the alter ego Alvaro de Compos, it is brutally honest, wistful, bleak, and redemptive by turns. Compos, whose mission was "to feel all things in all ways",has fulfilled his ambition in this poem. He takes a blunt look at the emotional wreckage of his existence--life slams up against Fate, success slides into failure, genius leaks away into dream, fullness is revealed as emptiness and thus becomes fullness of an entirely different sort. It is this rare, magical, tentative, and all-inclusive human fullness that is Pessoa's gift. The gift is given repeatedly in this volume, and not just through the extravagant Compos.

Highly recommended for poets, students of human nature, and those readers who have a deep interest in international literature.

VISIONAIRE
" The poet is a faker
Who's so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact "

As a Portuguese native I am, I must say that Fernando Pessoa was not only a writer, but is to this day a myth, be it in Portugal or abroad. One that thinks that Pessoa "has more name than merit" (as someone said some reviews before) isn't to blame, since he's not Portuguese and so he cannot even imagine what is to read and UNDERSTAND Pessoa's thoughts and poems in Portuguese. To read Pessoa in English or other non-portuguese language would be something like reading Walt Whitman in Portuguese (which would be, in fact, MUCH SIMPLER TO TRANSLATE, since there's no english word that cannot be translated into any other language, unlike Portuguese who has several): the essential (that is : THE SPIRIT AND MANERISM OF THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE) would be lost.
I strongly advise anyone into poetry and visionarism or out of time characters to check out Pessoa. It will be a life long discovery, that's for sure.

Alberto Caeiro.....
Note: This is part of a critical essay I wrote, which is to be found online at: idol.2ya.com

I have no ambitions and no desires.
To be a poet is not my ambition,
It's my way of being alone.


--Alberto Caeiro: 'The Keeper of Sheep'

Alberto Caeiro is Pessoa's first great heteronym. Caeiro is perhaps my favorite heteronym of the three; although, it is true, I recognize Alvaro de Campos poetic achievement as superior-- Caeiro is nonetheless the most endearing.

The best summarization of Caeiro is given by Pessoa himself: "He sees things with the eyes only, not with the mind. He does not let any thoughts arise when he looks at a flower...the only thing a stone tells him is that it has nothing at all to tell him...this way of looking at a stone may be described as the totally unpoetic way of looking at it. The stupendous fact about Caeiro is that out of this sentiment, or rather, absense of sentiment, he makes poetry."

In a letter written to his friend Adolfo Casais Monteiro, Pessoa described the birth of this heteronym: "[It] was March 8th 1914--I approached a high chest of drawers, and, taking a sheet of paper, I began to write, standing up, as I always write whenever I can. And I wrote thirty or so poems at a stroke in a kind of ecstatic trance, the nature of which I will not be able to define to you. It was the day of triumph in my life and I shall never succeed in living another like that. I opened with the title 'The Keeper of the Flock' ('O Guardador de Rebanhos'); and what followed was that someone emerged from within me, and whom I christened that very moment Alberto Caeiro. Forgive me for the absurdity of the following sentence: my master emerged from within me."


What makes Caeiro such an original poet is the manner he apprehends reality. He does not question anything whatsoever; he calmly accepts the world as it is. Caeiro is indeed a child of sorts: the recurrent themes, as a critic notes, to be found in nearly all Caeiro's poems are wide-eyed child-like wonder at the infinite variety of nature. He is free of metaphysical entanglements (as Campos and Pessoa himself are). Central to his world-view is the idea that in the world around us, all is surface: things are precisely what they seem, there is no hidden meaning anywhere.

He manages thus to free himself from the anxieties that batter his peers; for Caeiro ''things simply exist and we have no right to credit them with more than that.'' Our unhappiness, he tells us, springs from our unwillingness to limit our horizons. Caeiro in this sense is wise: he attains happiness by not questioning, and by thus avoiding doubts and uncertainties.

For Caeiro apprehended reality solely through his eyes, through his senses. What he teaches us is that if we want to be happy we ought to do the same. Octavio Paz called him 'the innocent poet'; true, he is innocent by our standards, and yet: does not his wisdom--experience-- consist precisely in his 'innocence'? Paz made a shrewd remark on the heteronyms: "In each are particles of negation or unreality. Reis believes in form, Campos in sensation, Pessoa in symbols. Caeiro doesn't believe in anything. He exists."

Caeiro is a wonderful invention; is there a poet before him who thinks, or rather, sees as he does? Poetry before Caeiro was essentially interpretative; what poets did was to offer us an interpretation of their perceived surroundings; Caeiro does not do this: instead, he attempts to communicate his senses, his feelings to us, without any interpretation whatsoever.

Caeiro teaches us to apprehend Nature differently; he asks of us, simply, to see what is before us. Poets before him would have made use of intricate metaphors to describe what was before them; not so Caeiro: his self-appointed task is to bring these objects to the reader's attention, as directly and simply as possible. Caeiro sought a direct experience of the objects before him.

It does not surprise us that Caeiro has been called an anti-intellectual, anti-Romantic, anti-subjectivist, anti-metaphysical...an anti-poet, by critics; Caeiro simply--is. He is in this sense very unlike his creator Fernando Pessoa: Pessoa was besieged by metaphysical uncertainties; these were, to a large extent, the cause of his unhappiness; not so Caeiro: his attitude is decidedly anti-metaphysical; he avoided uncertainties precisely by clinging single-mindedly to a certainty: his belief that there is no meaning behind things. Things simply--are.

Caeiro represents a primal vision of reality, of things. He is the pagan incarnate. Indeed Caeiro, Richard Zenith tells us, was not simply a pagan but 'paganism itself'.

The critic Jane M. Sheets, sees the insurgence of Caeiro--who was Pessoa's first heteronym-- as essential in founding the later poetic personas: "By means of this artless yet affirmative anti-poet, Caeiro, a short-lived but vital member of his coterie, Pessoa acquired the base of an experienced and universal poetic vision. After Caeiro's tenets had been established, the avowedly poetic voices of Campos, Reis and Pessoa himself spoke with greater assurance."

From a Portuguease reader
I've read many of Pessoa's works and studied him at school. I remenber that after studying some very weel-know poets we reached Pessoa. I also remenber and i'll possibly never forget that after reading some of his poems i just exclaimed out loud "Ei, este gajo e um genio"-"ohh, this guy's a genious".
I write poetry for some years now and i'm always very critic about it. But Pessoa just seems to be ahead of our own critic, sometimes wondering in our own mind, How does he do that !?
Someone hear in Amazon was surprised by the reviews posted here and asked "Is he really that good, or is the translation not so good" Then he just asked if some portuguease reader could clarify it. Well i am portuguease and i tell you he is really that good or even better.
I try the best i can to be objective in my reviews but when we talk about Pessoa we talk about emotions and feelings. After all who can be indifferent to the work that some call the most beatifull writing in the world (Jean-Pierre Thibaudat) and others remember it as the most inspiring author of our time! If i have to be objective i shall say his poems gives me a shiver in my spine...his prose: a moment of silence with my innerself.
About coloquial language, at least the portuguese original texts are not, mostly if you compare them with other famous portuguese poets like Camoes or Bocage.
As to Caeiro`s poetry and other others heteronyms, it is simply his need to see things in a different perpective.
This is a man that recognized himself to have sacrificed his live, his soul, his hapinnes and his mental health to be remenbered, just so that someone, even if only a single person, would remember him. And here he is now...and here we are with him.
Pessoa is that kind of author that doesn?t carries his heart at his mouth and his cause at his pen, this is a very mental experience, a reflexion on basic feelings and senses, such a deep vision on subjectivism that just a man that baunces between the thin line of genious and madness would achieve.
It astonishes...

Shoddy translation
I don't speak Portuguese, but I've read Pessoa in Italian translation, and I consider his poetry remarkably powerful.I would think that, based on linguistic similarities, Italian translations in general would be more faithful to the original Portuguese than English would be.
I bought this edition of Pessoa, translated by Richard Zenith, and was so terribly disappointed by the shoddiness of the translation that I was forced to write this review to defend Pessoa.Zenith fails miserably in conveying the sheer haunting power of Pessoa.Zenith's English is too colloquial for the task.Portuguese is not like Russian or Arabic:one would have to work fairly hard to make a translation this bad; or be awfully enamored of one's own poetical abilities, instead of being a faithful conduit of the original language.
You ought to read Pessoa, but find a better translation. ... Read more

Product Description
Writing obsessively in French, English, and Portuguese, Fernando Pessoa left a prodigious body of work, much of it under "heteronyms"—fully fleshed alter egos with startlingly different styles and points of view. Offering a unique sampling of all his most famous voices, this collection features poems that have never before been translated alongside many originally composed in English. In addition to such major works as "Maritime Ode of Campos" and his Goethe-inspired Faust, written in blank verse, there are several stunning poems that have only come to light in the last five years. Selected and translated by leading Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, this is the finest introduction available to the breadth of Pessoa’s genius. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Universe Expansion
Always looking for books that will expand my universe I must say the books by this author fit the bill nicely.The title says it all.We are released from our limitations to the extent we bring other great thinkers and their thoughts and ideas into our life.Look inside,read a page,reflect and you will want to have a copy to expand your universe too.

Life changes when you read Pessoa...
This is the poetry I long to read everything I pick up a book of poetry. I really can't stand American poetry (Lowell, Creeley, Merwin, especially). There is something overly Eastern-Ivy-school Pompous or plain irrelevant about their work. It is very difficult to penetrate their writings and I found it rarely rewarding when I understood their works - or whatever I understood.... They write, from what I have gleaned, without their hearts and overburden their writings with mind, intellect, a callous intelligence.

Pessoa, like Neruda, Hernandez, Lorca and other Iberian/Latin American poets write with a genuine simplicity and beauty. In translation, there is feeling, depth, philosophy and simplicity - which is what I enjoy, what edifies me. I want layers and this wonderful collection has layers. Whether writing as himself or as his 'alter-egos', Pessoa is the great idyllic poet, the great poet of resignation, weariness, tenderness, melancholy and withdrawal, viewing the world from his various abodes of personality.

Maybe there is a time and place for American poetry of the twentieth century - I much prefer the nineteenth century giant, Walt Whitman (who heavily inspired Pessoa, Neruda and other Portuguese/Spanish poets). At this point, a book like this is a boon, making poetry accessible, beauty available as opposed to being imprisoned in Ivy-tower constructions. (As a side note, Pessoa never graduated from a university - he attended a few courses and continued his education through personal studies... highly admirable.)

Discover this great-but-little-known-genius. His "Book of Disquiet" is the prose version of his poetry, the same philosophy, same beauty, the same melancholy transposed into a quasi-journal narrative. Your life willcertainly be changed.

sometimes sad, sometimes scary, but always stunning...
The verses in this selection are hideously delicious and entertainingly sad. Pessoa is great. As W. S. Merwin put it, there's nobody like him - well, on earth.

Some may complain that Richard Zenith's translation is too colloquial, but who knows, probably this is the way the original is.

Buy this book and read The Book of Disquiet (Penguin Classics). It's a life-changing expereince. ... Read more

Product Description
Fernando Pessoa was many writers in one. The Portuguese author attributed his work to literary alter egos that he called "heteronyms," each of which had a fully developed identity. When Pessoa died, he left behind a trunk filled with disorderly scraps of unpublished poems and unfinished works, among which was The Book of Disquiet. Published for the first time some fifty years after his death, this unique collection of short, aphoristic paragraphs comprises the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one of Pessoa's alternate selves. Part intimate diary, part prose poetry, part descriptive narrative, captivatingly translated by Richard Zenith, The Book of Disquiet is one of the greatest works of the twentieth century.

Edited and Translated with an Introduction by Richard Zenith ... Read more

Customer Reviews (18)

A beautiful oppression
I wouldn't advise dipping into this book if you're feeling happy---it's sure to knock you off your cloud. I would also advise against reading it if you're feeling melancholy---it will plunge you into the pits of despair. Only if you're feeling a nameless oppression and to wish to see your existential condition examined from a beautifully written literary perspective, would I suggest these musings of Bernardo Soares.

You can safely approach this work if you do so with the curious equanimity of an anthropologist visiting the country called Inertia for the first time---the dreariness is so extreme that it's fascinating as a field study, but fortunately for you, you can pack up and leave at any time. Poor Fernando Pessoa couldn't leave, and had to invent the remarkable persona of Bernardo Soares to express the anguished monotony of his days.Bernardo is an accountant, a loner, and bored out of his mind. Nothing happens in his external life, but his internal universe is complex, rich, and full of extraordinary insight. He is a "...a prose writer who poeticizes, a dreamer who thinks, a mystic who doesn't believe..." according to Richard Zenith, the competent translator. When you sit with Bernardo in stunned exhaustion as he labors long and uselessly to express his thousand forms of angst, you realize: nowhere else will you find the torment and tediousness of mundane existence so tenderly articulated. Bernardo goes about this with the determined insistence of a somnambulist. Pessoa has said that Bernardo was the heteronym that he used where he was drowsy, and Bernardo is indeed given to uninhibited and endless reverie.

At 450 pages of small print, it is a unique form of self-punishment to read more than twenty pages at one sitting. It can also be some of the most rewarding reading you will ever do. The journal-like entries are numbered, so it's easy to pick up where you left off if you want to read in increments. It's also good to read this in conjunction with one of Pessoa's volumes of poetry, where the other heteronyms offer rational and emotional relief, rounding out the work of this astonishing and little-known genius.

Fernando Pessoa, literary masterpiece!
Fernando Pessoa should be mandatory reading for World Literature classes.
Thru his writings he courageously, poetically and beautifully expresses what most of us feel uncomfortable with, let alone ponder or rip apart - the deep recesses of our minds and the not so pleasant frailties of the human soul.Carving from within and expressing his deepest feelings with outstanding poetic beauty, Pessoa loved life enough to leave us this (and other) outstanding literary legacies.Thru them, forever, he remains eternal, stunning us with the uniqueness of his soul.

Fernando...thank you for your brilliant mind, heart and for passionately living, writing and loving the city you and I shared from birth, the "muse" that forever inspired us both = beautiful Lisbon!

Fernando Pessoa was an exquisite hard to find gem, and totally Portuguese,to this day he still shyies away from the spotlight, yet deserving the notoriety of a MAJOR writer.This is mandatory reading for the masses....

A great book
I bought this item and was not displeased. The condition of the book was great and it arrived within the stated arrival time.

The book itself is incredible. I would recommend it to anyone who likes creative writing or philosophy, especially Dostoyevsky.

Not so hard to put down
Okay, so I've read only 50 pages or so, and I'm finding the book very easy to put down, and I'm still waiting for him to turn a corner (as another reviewer puts it) and totally change his miserable attitude. As far as I can tell so far, this is just Pessoa scribbling all his depressing thoughts in a journal--no plot OR poetry so far that I can detect, and I'm a lover of modern poetry. I am going to finish it though, just to see if it will change my life, as so many claim it will, but why do I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be one big wallow through all 500 pages?

Philosophy as Poetry for the Mind ...
Considering my great love of philosophy, it's no wonder a friend recommended this book to me. Pessoa takes all the passionate techniques of fiction and poetry writing and paints, in vivid detail, a journey into the deepest depth of alienation.

Written in journal style, here we have the distillation of every single emotion possible. While admitting to a very deliberate non-life, Pessoa, a self-proclaimed prisoner of tedium, somehow captures all of the subtle and extraordinarily painful nuances of living -- detached, self-deprecating, opinionated, at times pompous and pretentious, yet we can feel Pessoa as he deconstructs his own soul and in reflection deconstructs humanity.

Vivid imagery, poetic prose, and a dire and lamentable viewpoint, this book stirs every emotion, stirs every thought to the logical and illogical at the same time. His musings address a wide variety of topics from love, politics, language, and writing to the day-to-day drudgery of a job, world travel, insomnia, self-doubt, and dreamy landscapes. Truth. What this book expresses is truth -- fitful, sleepless, a waling nightmare -- this is the truth of life exposed to its most intimate layers of grief and suffering. The writing, lucid contemplation at one turn and stream of consciousness at the next, is poetic in its rhythm yet cruel and villainous in its bite.

This book is Existentialism at is finest.
... Read more

Product Description
The Washington Post Book World has written that Fernando Pessoa was "Portugal's greatest writer of the twentieth century [though] some critics would even leave off that last qualifying phrase" and "one of the most appealing European modernists, equal in command and range to his contemporaries Rilke and Mandelstam." The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of 2001, spans playful philosophical inquiry, Platonic dialogue, and bitter intellectual scrapping between Pessoa and his many literary alter egos ("heteronyms"). The heteronyms launch movements and write manifestos, and one of them attempts to break up Pessoa's only known romantic relationship. Also included is a generous selection from Pessoa's masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet, freshly translated by Richard Zenith from newly discovered materials. The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa is an important record of a crucial part of the literary canon. "Zenith's selection is beautifully translated, compact while appropriately diverse." -- Benjamin Kunkel, Los Angeles Times "[Pessoa] is one of those writers as addictive, and endearing, as Borges and Calvino." -- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Notesof a genius
This book is full of genius and madness, which are nearly indistinguishable from one another.Like Kafka, Pessoa stands above his peers for his profound sense of humanity.He is also as singular as Kafka.Pessoa is a mystery, and his notes and letters further illustrate this.I am sorry that he died before the world would honor him as one of the Twentieth Century's greatest writers.However, Pessoa was well aware of his genius and the admiration of the world would have done nothing to convince him of his worth.He was already convinced!
Pessoa published little during his lifetime, but it was because he never submitted much of his work for publication.Apparetnly, the Portugese publishers still haven't published all of his works, either, and that is a shame.
One thing that stands out about this book is that Pessoa does not engage in any of the posturing that one might find in the works of other writers convinced of their genius.One senses that Pessoa considers his genius not in boast, but as if it were as unavoidable as his own face.It is fact to him; he cannot change it.His is a sad genius, not a violent genius.But do not pity him; he knew what he was doing.Pessoa was a man who knew what it meant to be a writer (that is, a perpetual other, an individual who can describe the world because he stands apart from it).
Pessoa is a wonder.Buy this book.I only wish it were the "Collected Prose" of Pessoa rather than the "Selected Prose."

One more note, if you are interested in Portugese literature you must read Anotnio Lobo Antunes, also published by Grove Press.A few of his works have been also translated by Richard Zenith (to whom I am grateful for his translations).If you like madness, madness in the Faulknerian sense, then you will love Lobo Antunes.

An indispensable addition to the Pessoa oeuvre in English
Richard Zenith is my favourite translator of Pessoa; in this collection, he brings the insight and perspective he brought to his transcendant "Pessoa & Co." and "Book of Disquietude." The puckish nature of Pessoa's heteronym project is put into sharp relief: those who know only Pessoa/Soares may have thought the subsumption into heteronymology a sad affaire.

This collection complicates and deepens that perspective, with selections ranging from the whole of Pessoa's life, from the childhood Alexander Search to the elderly and Stoic Baron of Tieve, yet remains (as Pessoa remains) wholly delightful and charming. A Maria José even appears, in a letter "From A Hunchbacked Girl To A Metalworker" (a heartbreaking letter, I may add). Pessoa's possibly affected eccentricities is in full evidence here: witness the "Riddle Of The Stars," a kind of proto-"Changing Light At Sandover," wherein Pessoa receives otherworldly communiqués via automatic writing and the spirits exhort him repeatedly to lose his virginity. Other kicks: his "static drama" "O Marinhero" and Alvaro de Campos' "Ultimatum," where he personally attacks everyone responsible for World War I (and I mean, _everyone_).

Zenith's notes are indispensable (though he peculiarly abandons his "Disquietude" for "Disquiet," and chooses American English as his idiom). All in all, a welcome addition to the Pessoan archive in English, and a breathtaking array of further complications. ... Read more

Product Description
The recent discovery of the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) is reminiscent of the discovery of Kafka at mid-century. Like Kafka, Pessoa left his work in disarray, much of it to be published only posthumously. And Pessoa has fast become a literary icon of postmodernism, as Kafka is of modernism. Pessoa is best known for his unique practice of writing under "heteronyms," distinct personalities whom Pessoa supplied with differing biographies, literary influences, even horoscopes; and each of whom generated radically different texts. Pessoa was a multitude of authors.

Since its publication in 1998, Exact Change’s edition of Pessoa’s major prose work, The Book of Disquiet, has been one of its best-selling titles, and extensive articles on Pessoa have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, New York Review of Books, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Voice Literary Supplement, and Washington Post. But the discovery continues. In 1999, translator Richard Zenith made a new find in the Pessoa archive in Lisbon: a group of prose writings by a previously unknown heteronym, the "Baron of Teive." The Portuguese volume of these writings has been received by scholars as a crucial piece of the puzzle that is Pessoa’s oeuvre. The Education of the Stoic is the unique work left by the Baron of Teive, who, after destroying all his previous literary attempts and before destroying himself, explains "the impossibility of producing superior art." It is the dark companion piece to The Book of Disquiet. This is its first publication in English.There are in Pessoa echoes of Beckett’s exquisite boredom; the dark imaginings of Baudelaire (whom he loved); Melville’s evasive confidence man; the dreamscapes of Borges...--Village Voice Literary SupplementAnglomanic, myopic, courteous, elusive, dressed in black, reticent and familiar, the cosmopolitan who preaches nationalism, "the solemn investigator of useless things," the humorist who never smiles and makes our blood run cold, the inventor of other poets and self-destroyer, the author of paradoxes clear as water, and like water, dizzying: "to pretend is to know oneself," the mysterious one who doesn’t cultivate mystery, mysterious as the moon at noon, the taciturn ghost of the Portuguese midday--who is Pessoa?"--Octavio PazBy Fernando Pessoa.

Translated by Richard Zenith.

Afterword by Antonio Tabucchi.Paperback, 6 x 8 in. / 128 pgs ... Read more

Product Description
Fiction. Autobiography. Translated from the Portuguesewith an introduction and translator's notes by Alfred Mac Adam. Theseshort, aphoristic paragraphs, ranging in size from a few sentences toa few pages, comprise the "autobiography" of Bernardo Soares, one ofFernando Pessoa's many devastatingly captivating literary alteregos. Pessoa (1888-1935) was a multitude of writers in one: his workswere composed by what he named "heteronyms," alter egos with distinctbiographies, ideologies, influences, horoscopes. THE BOOK OF DISQUIETwas found after Pessoa's death, on disordered scraps of paper in atrunk, and was finally published nearly 50 years later. "A fracturedassemblage of quasi-symbolist reveries, cynical epigrams, musings onquotidian torpor, and gorgeously wrought depressive fits, the book isprobably as close as Pessoa could ever come to writing anautobiography." (--VOICE LITERARY SUPPLEMENT) "I was a genius morethan in my dreams and less than in life. This is my tragedy. I was therunner who fell almost at the tape, and when I was almost there, I wasthe first." If genius consists of complicated and heartfelt musings,delightful and incisive use of language (not to mention magnificenttranslation), and brilliance of mind and expression, then certainlythis book is an act (or perpetration?) of genius. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Existential modernist masterpiece
An existential, modernist masterpiece. A collection of random musings of a fiercely contemplative mind rather than a novel. Indeed if you try to read The Book of Disquiet from cover to cover, it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happens, and what we have is a collection of reveries and thoughts - almost a diary, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts to wear on the reader. But I would urge you not to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find a work of undeniable genius.

The Book of Disquiet is written by one of Pessoa's heteronyms, Bernardo Soares, an assistant bookkeeper in a textile company in Lisbon. Indeed we even get an introduction from Pessoa about when he `met' this person.

Sure enough at times Soares/Pessoa comes over as being a bit like Hamlet's more indecisive twin, but the use of language is often profound and frequently mesmerising. It's certainly on the heavy side of the reading scale, but it positively soars in its contemplation of life. "It's like having a cold in the soul" he says. How beautiful is that?

Some of the pieces are simply a single line, others a little longer but few more than a couple of pages. The ideas are often deep, but the language is far from impenetrable.

To give you another example, have you ever had trouble sleeping? How about this then: "Anyone wanting to make a catalogue of monsters would need only to photograph the things the night brings to somnolent souls who cannot sleep".

I could go on picking these superb musings at random. The book is full of them. It's unlike anything else you will have read, and a book that I know that I will dip into frequently.It's a mystery why his work isn't more widely known.

If you are of a contemplative disposition, then this may well be one of those books that truly changes how you see things. It's stunning. I'll leave the last word to Pessoa, which sums up my feelings on this book: "I stare out from the window of my room at the multitudes of stars; at multitudes of stars and nothing, but oh so many stars..."

Kierkegaard, Pessoa- how many of them are us?
The life - project of Pessoa in his making of multiple poetic alter egos, reminds of the life - project of Kierkegaard who explored various aspects of the religious life through use of alter egos often representing different faculties, approaches and moods of life. But if Kierkegaard's aim is to bring the reader to realization of what it might be to be in true connection with God, Pessoa's seems to be more to dissipate the notion of unique identity completely out of existence. Thus the fragments he shores around his own ruin and attributes to alter ego , heteronym Bernard Soares have within them a strong nihilistic self- and - world denying element.
Yet and here is the contradiction and the deeper truth they also reveal a kind of beauty both in perception and in the varied motion of the mental life itself. Lonely solitary lost fragmented Pessoa knows no human sacrifice like that of Kierkegaard with Regina, knows no dedication to his father's task of doing God's duty in the most ultimate way. He instead seems to reveal hidden realities as he conceals that beyond them all may well lie an eternal nothing. Kierkegaard is the many- selved servant of God, and Pessoa the many - selved servant of nothing more holy than human poetry.

Pesoa's Kaleidoscope
Fernando Pesoa's genius lies within who Pesoa was as nil and not.He wasn't anyone. Only somene who continually writes in "disquiet" his persona's variable exegesis.The writing is in the book but the author who wrote it, Fernando Pesoa does not "feel himself" as actually being who he is. So, maybe he's actually a different author, with a different name who begins to write a different book. There's all of the writing there, its genius evident in the mystery of the writing itself. All the writing invested with absolute revelation ofnuminous absence. The absence is that of the author's presence.Magic?Truly.The author is not there.But he must be "there" because he has no choice but to write.What's the answer for the author who is finds himself as absent?He must undertake the creation of the abent author's presence.How?By literally creating a utterly unique form of literature. A literature whose grammar is of being literal by making it possible to write of the absence of an author to himself into a presence to be known as the once absent identity.Writing through a textual hermeticism capable of transmutation through written words of the emanation of an author as "logos," or the Word. "In the beginning there was the Word." Through the Word as logos, all identity is created in the appearance, ex nilho, of the writer mediated solely through himself in this the new logos of writing itself.Pesoa is not himself. He's a man who achieves glimpses of a unmanifest self-referential identity only through his books. In the work of writing these books, this identity is made manifest as the author's anamnesis.Seemingly he finds out (remembers) he is, and always was, a certain author he now "remembers" as himself as a manifested presence. An absolute genius manifested as the author himself being (repeatedly) annihilated through radical self-doubt.Only later remembering who he was as absolute presence never to be lost again. Until this is accomplished all of the laborious, literal negotiations must of necessity begin anew, and are written as literature whose search arises from absence's discontent becomes the new discourse as the art and improvisation of real identity forged in the alchemy of narrative.This peculiar narative reaveals itself as a lived experience of self-discovery.One man of many parts dismembered in his own identity become self-inflicted and religious. Pesoa's own holy inquisition seeking and finding the indentity he is spurious, a phantasm of derealized personality perpetually guilty of having a persona found lacking,Wriiten out in texts as being found guilty of the "heresy" of having an identity.Never before Pesoa has an identity crisis of infinite magnitude been witnessed in Pesoa absence made real presence in some of the 2OTH century's finest writing and poetry. of the 20TH century in The writing of a man named Fernando Pesoa. A man lost to himself, in search of the "person" underneath the name. Personality and identity as reality grounded in a mystery only to be known by itself: self found through words that are the artifacts of the self discovered. A genius lost to himself and calling his absent identity into gradual existence by a person's absence fading into a personality that's presented in multiple, shifting Heteronyms, or cases of terminal identity lost and regained.

The beauty of this novel
Poetry often speaks to us; we see something in it, something recognizable, and it's like we are shown a piece of ourselves that had been hidden for a lifetime before. Finding Pessoa's *Book of Disquiet* was like finding a piece of myself. In the pages of this poetic novel you will find honesty, often self-disparaging, and you will find beauty in the smallest observation. However, be forewarned, this is not a book that should be picked up with the idea of light reading in mind. In fact, you may find that you have to put it down, repeatedly, to get away from it, to think, but you will always, always come back to it. Keep it close to hand.

Thinking is absurd
"If i think, it all seems absurd to me; if i feel, it all seems strange; if i desire, he who desires is something inside of me."
Sums up the book perfectly. Pessoa explores one of his many personalities. "The Book of Disquiet" explains, in complete depth and faith, the beauty of a lonely, existential, moment by moment life. He explains the beauty that people forget. He explains the world, his perception, as if every moment were the last.
"The book of disquiet" is one of the most insightful books a person can read, but only if one has imagination and an ability to let go. Bernardo Soars, Pessoa's personality who wrote the book, is extreme and eccentric. It isn't easy reading, and it won't affect you if you can't overlook the fact that life doesn't go on like Soars'; that there is more in thinking, dreaming, and desiring than Soars admits. What makes the book so special is how Soars can forget everything but the thought and the moment, and how he can analyze and critique and put into words something that most of us forget to remember. "The book of disquiet" reminds me, at least, of how to appreciate my own mind. It is the only philosophy-like book that i enjoy (as yet) because it is the real thing and encompasses a forgotten part of real life. ... Read more

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anthology ed & tr Edwin Honig & Susan M. Brown ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

dull and duller
This man is verbose and totally obsessed by his own emotional turmoil in everyday living.
It wouldn't be so bad except he really has little to say, and that he does in a completely
unremarkable way.Two thumbs down, ... unlessyou are a Cancer and share his condition.

Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa is surely the most important 20th century Portuguese poet. The critic Harold Bloom considers Fernando Pessoa (along with Pablo Neruda) the "most representative" poet of the 20th century. This is a considerable feat if one considers other 20th century poets like: T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Valery, Yeats, Lorca etc.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez considers Neruda the "best poet of the 20th century, in any language." I highly admire Neruda, but Pessoa has done more for me, has influenced me much more than has Neruda. Pessoa's invention of several "selves" is a feat of originality without precedent.

Perhaps what most characterizes Pessoa is his strangeness. His strangeness is partly explained by his own life: Pessoa has been called "the man who never was." This is accurate: he is one of the most solitary literary geniuses of modern times. This sense of estrangement is all-pervasive in most of his poems.

The Noble Laureate Gao Xinjiang recently called Pessoa "the most profound poet of the 20th century." I concur with him. ---

Concerning this selection: I suggest the reader buy both the Zenith and Hong translations. It would be best ofcourse if one read his poetry in the original Portuguese. P.S: (Pessoa's complete poems can be found online, in both English, Spanish & Portuguese...)

Genius and Madness from the Portuguese
It's telling of the miserable state and status of the Portuguese -- "a brilliance lacking luster" -- that only an enlightened few are privileged to know (posthumously) that Pessoa ranks among the greatest writers of recent centuries.(Yes.)Become one of the privileged few to enter Pessoa's universe, and make sure it's initially through the translations of Honig and Brown.

Moving
Accessable modern poetry; depressing, surreal, with alot of sach-religious overtones.

fabulous
Do yourselves a favour and read the unforgettable poems of the century's least acknowledged, but greatest, poet. ... Read more

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Poet, short-story writer, feverish inventor--Fernando Pessoa was one of the most innovative figures shaping European modernism.Known for a repertoire of works penned by multiple invented authors--which he termed heteronyms--the Portuguese writer gleefully subverted the notion of what it means to be an author.Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa offers an introduction to the fiction and the "profusion of selves" that populates the enigmatic author's uniquely imagined oeuvre.

To guide readers through the eclectic work fashioned by Pessoa's heteronyms, K. David Jackson advances the idea of "adverse genres" revealing genre clashes to be fundamental to the author's paradoxical and contradictory corpus. Through the invented "coterie of authors," Pessoa inverted the usual relationships between form and content, authorship and text.In an inspired, paradoxical, and at times absurd mixing of cultural referents, Pessoa selected genres from the European tradition (Ricardo Reis's Horatian odes, Álvaro de Campos's worship of Walt Whitman, Alberto Caeiro's pastoral and metaphysical verse, and Bernardo Soares's philosophical diary), into which he inserted incongruent contemporary ideas.By creating multiple layers of authorial anomaly Pessoa breathes the vitality of modernism into traditional historical genres, extending their expressive range.

Through examinations of "A Very Original Dinner," the "Cancioneiro," love letters to Ophelia Queirós, "The Adventure of the Anarchist Banker," Pessoa's collection of quatrains derived from Portuguese popular verse, the Book of Disquietude, and the major poetic heteronyms, Jackson enters the orbit of the artist who exchanged a normal life for a world of the imagination. ... Read more

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essays, manifestos, autobiographies ... Read more

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Alberto Caeiro da Silva nasceu em Lisboa a (...) de Abril de 1889, e nessa cidade faleceu, tuberculoso, em (...) de (...) de 1915. A sua vida, porém decorreu quase toda numa quinta do Ribatejo. Só os primeiros dois anos dela e os últimos meses foram passados na sua cidade natal. Nessa quinta isolada cuja aldeia próxima considerava por sentimento como sua terra, escreveu Caeiro quase todos os seus poemas primeiros, a que chamou O Guardador de Rebanhos, os do livro, ou o quer que fosse, incompleto, chamado O Pastor Amoroso, e alguns, os primeiros, de que eu mesmo, herdando-os para publicar, com todos os outros, reuni sob a designação, que Álvaro de Campos me lembrou, de Poemas Inconjuntos. ... Read more

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A mais importante e completa colectânea de poemas ortónimos de Fernando Pessoa publicados em vida do autor em diversas revistas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

O poeta é um fingidor
O Cancioneiro é composto por poemas líricos, rimados e metrificados, de forte influência simbolista. É do Cancioneiro um dos poemas mais célebres de Pessoa, Autopsicografia, em que reflete sobre o fazer poético: "O poeta é um fingidor. Finge tão completamente Que chega a fingir que é dor A dor que deveras sente. E os que lêem o que escreve, Na dor lida sentem bem, Não as duas que ele teve, Mas só a que el
es não têm."

Excelente obra! ... Read more

Product Description
Message ("Mensagem") was the only book of verse in his own language that Pessoa saw through the press in his lifetime. On the face of it, a patriotic sequence steeped in 'Sebastianismo', the poems offer much more than this, the Kings and navigators of the Portugal's history standing as avatars of the poet's self, their explorations and heroic deeds projections of the poet's inner creative life. Although Pessoa is famous for the many heteronyms under which he composed verse in wildly different styles, this volume was published under his own name - the 'orthonym', as he defined it - and it remains one of his great masterpieces. This edition brings Jonathn Griffin's fine translation (originally published by the Menard Press in 1992) back into print, as part of Shearsman's Pessoa edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The portrait of a nation
If you are wondering how the portuguese are like, Pessoa's book will give you a hint. Unfortunately things haven't changed much since the author's time. Once a great nation of sailors and of a great world wide empire, nothing remains but a dull far away memory of what we were. We tend to live to much from the glories of the past without ever thinking of the possible glories of the future. We live in the shadow of Camões's epic poem "Os Lusíadas" still thinking it was the greatest portuguese literary work ever written. On the 25th of April 1974 a new generation raised from the fall of a dictatorship of almost 30 years. But those who gave birth to the revolution are now those who perpetuate the social differences between rich and poor, good and bad, high and low. Ironic isn't it? As Pessoa, I still have hope. This people is made of hope although lacking some iniciative to actually make a difference... If something goes wrong, blame it on the government. If something goes right, thank God for it. The Fifth Empire hasn't arrived yet, and I hardly think it ever will.
Pessoa is one of the greatest portuguese writers of all time but he's not the only one. I also reccomend (if a translated version is available)Mário de Sá-Carneiro, José Saramago, Virgílio Ferreira, Eça de Queiroz, Antero de Quental. These are the so-called classics, just to get you started in the discovery of portuguese literature.

For those with knowledge
The poetry is cunningly crafted, but I am not sure how well the translation really stands up, as I read it in the native Portuguese.

Those who have never studied Portuguese history will probably rate this only a 2 or three statrs, but those who have studied Portuguese history in depth and have developed a sense for the sentiment of the nation will be amazed at how Pessoa has managed to capture the flavour and emotion of centuries of a nation's past into his clever verses.

I give it four stars as it is a translation. The portuguese version gets five and then some.

Indispensável - Essencial
Indispensável, não apenas para os portugueses, mas também para os brasileiros e falantes do Português em geral.

Essencial to all portuguese speakers.

A Alma Portuguesa
Indispensável para quem seja português ... Read more

Product Description
This title has fewer than 24 printed text pages. Antinous: A Poem is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Fernando Antenio Nogueira Pessoa is in the English language. If you enjoy the works of Fernando Antenio Nogueira Pessoa then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection. ... Read more

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Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was one of the major poets of the 20th century, one of the major names in Portuguese writing, and one of the most enigmatic figures in world literature of any period. In his introduction to this dual-language Selected Poems, first published in 2004, David Butler arranges the poems thematically, setting Pessoa's various voices or personae "in active and immediate dialogue with one another", thereby providing real insight into a poet of "astonishing post-modernity"."Butler's version of the Selected Poems is as good an introduction to the enigmatic character of Pessoa's poetry as exists in English.-Michael Smith, The Irish Times"These translations of Pessoa are outstanding."-Fernando d'Oliveira Neves, former Ambassador of Portugal in Ireland ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Four poets as one
Pesssoa is unique as a poet in that he generously scatters himself into the identities of three other people. The four heteronyms dominate his character.He searches for objective truth.
Here is an excerpt.
have no ambitions and no desires.
To be a poet is not my ambition,
It's my way of being alone.
... Read more

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In 1925, Fernando Pessoa wrote a guidebook to Lisbon for English-speaking visitors, and wrote it in English. The typescript was only discovered amongst his papers long after his death, but has not hitherto been made available in the UK or the USA. The book is fascinating in that it shows us Pessoa's view of his native city - and Pessoa, as an adult, rarely left Lisbon, and it figures large in his poetry. The book can still be useful to visitors today, given that the majority of the sights described are still to be found. A fascinating scrap from the master's table... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A droll Pessoa
For ardent Pessoa followers or researchers of Portuguese poetry and literature, this will have to be read but it is Pessoa at his drollest.I admire the people who published it having not been published in Pessoa's lifetime. And it does show his love of Lisbon and details not available in a lot of guidebooks but, in the end, it is a droll walk through the streets for those whose focus is mostly for a guidebook. ... Read more

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Este volume das obras Completas de Fernando Pessoa e exclusivamente dedicado a poesia em ingles que ele publicou em sua vida. A massa de outros poemas ingleses que ele escreveu, e que um ou outro tem sido recentemente revelado dos seus manuscritos, constitui, e deve constituir, um grupo a parte, objecto de outra compilacao.... ... Read more