The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (17 page)

Pessoa received most of his automatic communications in 1916–17, and though few were dated, a rough chronology can be established on the basis of their content and physical characteristics. The earliest communications, for example, do not have the two intersecting triangles that often accompany the signature of Henry More, the first and most persistent communicator. Mores colleague, called simply Wardour, began to dialogue with Pessoa in the summer of 1916, as did the malefic Voodooist, who sometimes signed himself as Joseph Balsamo, the alias of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743–97), a member of the Egyptian Free Masons and one of the most notorious charlatans of his day. Both Wardour and the Voodooist also had their characteristic symbols, as described in communication #22. These and the various other signing spirits all wrote with a childish script that had little in common with Pessoa’s normal handwriting. They were prompted by his questions, which can usually be intuited from the answers given
.

Wardour, besides his communications, wrote several poems, one of which was in association with Pessoa, and cast various horoscopes. More, also an astrologer, was the most intellectual of the communicating spirits, for in life he had been a poet, philosopher, and professor: Dr. Henry More (1614–87), one of the so-called Cambridge Platonists. Toward the end of his earthly sojourn Dr. More became a student of the Kabbala, and he was identified as a Rosicrucian by Hargrave Jennings in the aforementioned book that made such an impact on Pessoa
.

Besides coaxing Pessoa to perk up his love life, the spirits occasionally offered professional advice, as when one of them wrote: “You must induce Gosse to see your poems. He is in the state of mind necessary to [be] some sort of aid.” There is no record of Pessoa ever having contacted Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), but he owned a small book of the English poet’s verses, one of which he quoted in Text
373 of The Book of Disquiet.
The spirits sometimes helped Pessoa make decisions about practical matters—“Move to Sengo’s house
,”
Wardour at one point instructed him, and Pessoa did rent a room from Sr. Manuel Sengo in 1916—and several brief communications from the 1920s predicted, wrongly, that Pessoa’s business ventures would be successful. (Among his various money-making schemes, Pessoa tried to act as an agent between British and Portuguese mining concerns, but no deals were ever cut.)

The thirty communications published here are but a smattering of the hundreds contained in the archives. Some have been excerpted to eliminate the many repetitions and incomplete phrases, the lowercase letters that begin many of the sentences have been changed to uppercase, and no attempt has been made to depict the chaos that characterizes certain of the originals, with numerous crossed-out words and names, and occasional automatic doodles. The selection is representative in terms of subject matter and motifs, but none of the (much rarer) Portuguese communications has been included here. Pessoa’s letter to his Aunt Anica, in which he recounts the beginnings of his mediumistic experiences, serves as a preamble to the communications, which are followed by two excerpts from his unfinished “Essay on Initiation,” dating from the
1930s,
and by Raphael Baldaya’s “Treatise on Negation.”

Pessoa sent the following letter to Switzerland, where his great-aunt, Ana Luísa Pinheiro Nogueira, had been living since
1914
with her daughter Maria and her son-in-law Raul, a student of engineering at the University of Lausanne
.

Lisbon, 24 June 1916

My dear Aunt,

Thank you for your letter of the 13th and the good wishes it contains.* I also thank Raul for his of May 22nd, which I will answer soon. I think I can promise that, as I feel a little better now, less subject to the inertia that has afflicted me and that was caused, as you can imagine, by the various shocks my nerves have suffered.

I’m glad to report that I’ve (finally!) received truly good news from Pretoria. Except for her arm, which apparently still hasn’t regained its movement, Mother’s condition* has greatly improved. Her mental state is at last back to normal. That mental confusion which had me so worried has disappeared. And now she goes out of her bedroom, spending a few hours each day in the dining room.

I don’t know what treatment she’s getting at the moment. I know that at first they did indeed use electric shock therapy, but they stopped this, for it seems to have bothered her a great deal. And I suppose that at that stage of her illness the natural discomfort of the shocks wasn’t a good thing. If that was the case, then by now they’ve probably resumed the therapy.

There’s still nothing definite to report about the war and the possibility of troops from here being sent abroad. I think that young men in Raul’s situation aren’t likely to be called up any time soon. I obviously can’t be
sure
of this, but it seems to be the general feeling. If Raul were here, however, he would at the very least be subjected to an “officer training school” or something of the sort.

As for the nervous state I’ve been in, lately I’m feeling somewhat better. And as for the family, there’s no real news, except that Joaquina is sometimes better, sometimes worse. Mario’s situation, as I’d predicted through astrology, has not only improved, it seems to be getting better all the time.

Let’s go now to the mysterious case that has piqued your curiosity. You say you can’t guess what it is, and surely you can’t, for it’s something that not even I would ever have expected.

So here it is. Towards the end of March (or thereabouts), I began to be a medium. Imagine! I, who (as you will remember) was basically a hindrance in the quasi-séances we used to hold, have suddenly become a novice at automatic writing. I was at home one evening, having come back from the Café Brasileira, when I literally felt moved to pick up a pen and put it to a sheet of paper. Only afterwards, of course, did I realize that I’d had this impulse. At the time it just seemed like the natural circumstance of distractedly picking up a pen to make doodles. That first session began with me writing the signature (which I know quite well) of “Manuel Gualdino da Cunha.”* I wasn’t thinking in the least of Uncle Manuel. Then I wrote a few insignificant, uninteresting things.

I’ve continued to write, sometimes of my own will and sometimes because I’m
forced
to, but rarely are the “communications” intelligible. I can understand certain phrases. And there’s a very odd, irritating tendency for my questions to be answered by
numbers
, and also a tendency to
draw
. The drawings aren’t of objects but of Masonic and Kabbalistic signs, occult symbols and the like, which I find a bit unsettling. It’s nothing like yours or Maria’s automatic writing, which comes out as a smooth narrative, a series of answers in coherent language. Mine is less clear, but much more mysterious.

I should say that the presumed spirit of Uncle Manuel has not reappeared in writing (or in any other way). The communications I get now are, so to speak, anonymous,* and whenever I ask “Who’s speaking?” I’m answered by drawings or numbers.

I include a little sample, which you need not return. This one has numbers and scribbles, but hardly any drawings. It’s what I happen to have on hand, and it will at least give you an idea of what my communications look like.

Curiously enough, although I have no idea what all these numbers mean, I consulted a friend* who’s an occultist and hypnotist (a fascinating fellow, as well as a great friend), and he told me some remarkable things. Once, for instance, I told him I’d written a certain four-digit number that I can’t remember right now. He replied that there were five people in the house where I was staying.
Which was true. But he didn’t explain how he’d reached that conclusion. What he did explain was that the fact of writing numbers proves the authenticity of my automatic writing—that it’s not just autosuggestion but true mediumship. Spirits, he says, make communications of this type as a guarantee, and so of course they’re unintelligible to the medium, being inconceivable even to his unconscious.

This friend of mine has explained other numbers with the same remarkable certainty. There were only three numbers that he couldn’t interpret.

I’m telling all of this quickly, and so I’m leaving out some interesting details, but the heart of the matter is all here.

My powers as a medium don’t stop here. I’ve discovered yet another facet of them, one that I had not only never experienced but had, as it were, experienced in reverse. When Sá-Carneiro was going through the psychological crisis that led to his suicide in Paris,
I felt the crisis here
, I was overwhelmed by a sudden depression that came
from outside
and that I couldn’t understand at the time. This kind of heightened sensitivity hasn’t continued.

I’ve saved the most interesting part for last, however. Besides developing qualities as a writing medium, I’m also becoming a
seeing
medium. I’m beginning to have what occultists call “astral vision,” as well as what’s known as “etheric vision.” This is all very much in the early stages, but there’s no room for doubt. For now it’s rudimentary and occurs only for brief moments, but in those moments
it really exists
.

There are moments, for instance, when I have sudden flashes of “etheric vision” and can see certain people’s “magnetic aura” and especially my own, reflected in the mirror, and radiating from my hands in the dark. I’m not hallucinating, because what I see is seen by others, or at least by one other, whose vision is even more refined. In one of my best moments of etheric vision, which happened one morning at the Cafe Brasileira of Rossio,* I saw someone’s ribs through his coat and skin. This is etheric vision in its highest degree. Will I really end up having it—I mean with this kind of clarity and whenever I want it?

My “astral vision” is still very basic, but sometimes, at night, I close my eyes and see a swift succession of small and sharply defined pictures (as sharply defined as anything in the outside world). I see strange shapes, designs, symbolic signs, numbers (yes, here too I’ve seen numbers), and the like.

And sometimes I suddenly have the strange feeling that
I belong to something else
. My right arm, for example, will begin to be raised in the air without my willing it. (I can
resist
, of course, but the point is that I didn’t
want
to raise it.) At other times I’ll lean to one side, as if I were magnetized, etc.

You’re probably wondering why I find any of this unsettling, why these various phenomena—still in a very rudimentary stage—should cause me concern. It’s not that they frighten me. I’m more curious than frightened, though there are things that sometimes startle me, as when on several occasions, looking at the mirror, I’ve seen my face disappear, to be replaced by the visage of a bearded man or of someone else (four different figures in all have appeared to me).

What unsettles me is that I know more or less what this means. Don’t imagine that I’m going mad. No: I feel mentally more stable than I ever have. What worries me is that this isn’t how the powers of a medium usually develop. I know enough of the occult sciences to realize that the so-called higher senses are being aroused in me for some mysterious purpose and that the unknown Master who is initiating me, by imposing on me this higher existence, is going to make me feel a deeper suffering than I’ve ever known and will subject me to all those unpleasant things that come with the acquisition of these higher faculties. The mere dawning of those faculties is accompanied by a mysterious feeling of isolation and desolation that fills the soul with bitterness.

Whatever must be will be.

I haven’t told you
everything
, because not everything can be told, but I’ve told enough for you to have a rough idea.

Maybe you think I’m just crazy, though I suspect not. These things aren’t normal, but they aren’t
unnatural
.

Please don’t talk about any of this to anyone. There’s no
advantage in doing so, and there are many disadvantages (including some we may not know about).

Good-bye, my dear Aunt. Greetings to Maria and Raul, and kisses for little Eduardo. And many fond hugs to you from your devoted nephew

Fernando

1.

Henry More, the “Platonist”

You ask me who I am. That is who. Because “Platonist” means nothing here. I am more than that. I am a R†C.

You are my disciple.

Monastic life is not good for you.
Yes, but I was a man who could do that. I am a strong man. I am a Frater R†C.

No man knows what he has courage for unless the occasion appears.
Very soon you will know what you have courage for—namely, for
mating with a girl

Yes—altogether. Yes. Not all. Part are meant to mystify you. Because you do not wish to be mystified.

No man is more tolerant than I am, but I think your laziness is inexcusable. Why don’t you finish your manifesto?
...

The time draws near. Ask nothing now.

July 1916—Not in the beginning, but towards the end.

No, there is no need to satisfy you.

2.

28 May 1916—night (9, hence 8
P.M
.)

No man is more tolerant than I. I must not mask my better qualities, nor maneuver to make myself even less than I am.

...

Yes. No. She is a very masculine woman and she is a virgin in body but not in purpose and mind. Very like [you], except that she is strong and you are weak.

Yes. No: I say this because it is true.

Yes, you have guessed it quite well. The inner sense of words is nearer to me than the outer one. So I speak first from the inner sense.
Not exactly. She is pushed on to you by events. She is herself an event in your life. She is not pushed on to you by another, but she is not moved by instinct to meet you; she is led to do it by another.
No. She is not yet known to you.
Neither of them is known to you.
No. Altogether wrong.
...