The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (38 page)

I believe I’ve answered your first question. Let me know if some point is still hazy, and I’ll try to clear it up. I don’t have any more plans for now, and considering what my plans usually involve and how they turn out, I can only say “Thank God!”

Turning now to your question about the genesis of my heteronyms, I will see if I can answer you fully.

I shall begin with the psychiatric aspect. My heteronyms have their origin in a deep-seated form of hysteria. I don’t know if I’m afflicted by simple hysteria or, more specifically, by hysterical neurasthenia. I suspect it’s the latter, for I have symptoms of abulia that mere hysteria would not explain. Whatever the case, the mental origin of my heteronyms lies in my relentless, organic tendency to depersonalization and simulation. Fortunately for me and for others, these phenomena have been mentally internalized, such that they don’t show up in my outer, everyday life among people; they erupt inside me, where only I experience them. If I were a woman (hysterical phenomena in women erupt externally, through attacks and the like), each poem of Álvaro de Campos (the most hysterically hysterical part of me) would be a general alarm to the neighborhood. But I’m a man, and in men hysteria affects mainly the inner psyche; so it all ends in silence and poetry ...

This explains, as well as I can, the organic origin of my heteronyms. Now I will recount their actual history, beginning with the heteronyms that have died and with some of the ones I no longer remember—those that are forever lost in the distant past of my almost forgotten childhood.

Ever since I was a child, it has been my tendency to create around me a fictitious world, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances that never existed. (I can’t be sure, of course, if they really never existed, or if it’s me who doesn’t exist. In this matter, as in any other, we shouldn’t be dogmatic.) Ever since I’ve known
myself as “me,” I can remember envisioning the shape, motions, character and life story of various unreal figures who were as visible and as close to me as the manifestations of what we call, perhaps too hastily, real life. This tendency, which goes back as far as I can remember being an I, has always accompanied me, changing somewhat the music it enchants me with, but never the way in which it enchants me.

Thus I can remember what I believe was my first heteronym, or rather, my first nonexistent acquaintance—a certain Chevalier de Pas—through whom I wrote letters from him to myself when I was six years old, and whose not entirely hazy figure still has a claim on the part of my affections that borders on nostalgia. I have a less vivid memory of another figure who also had a foreign name, which I can no longer recall, and who was a kind of rival to the Chevalier de Pas. Such things occur to all children? Undoubtedly—or perhaps. But I lived them so intensely that I live them still; their memory is so strong that I have to remind myself that they weren’t real.

This tendency to create around me another world, just like this one but with other people, has never left my imagination. It has gone through various phases, including the one that began in me as a young adult, when a witty remark that was completely out of keeping with who I am or think I am would sometimes and for some unknown reason occur to me, and I would immediately, spontaneously say it as if it came from some friend of mine, whose name I would invent, along with biographical details, and whose figure—physiognomy, stature, dress and gestures—I would immediately see before me. Thus I elaborated, and propagated, various friends and acquaintances who never existed but whom I feel, hear and see even today, almost thirty years later. I repeat: I feel, hear and see them. And I miss them.

(Once I start talking—and typing, for me, is like talking—it’s hard to put on the brake. But I’ll stop boring you, Casais Monteiro! I’ll now go into the genesis of my literary heteronyms, which is what really interests you. What I’ve written so far will at any rate serve as the story of the mother who gave them birth.)

In 1912, if I remember correctly (and I can’t be far off), I got the idea to write some poetry from a pagan perspective. I sketched out a few poems with irregular verse patterns (not in the style of Álvaro de Campos but in a semiregular style) and then forgot about them. But a hazy, shadowy portrait of the person who wrote those verses took shape in me. (Unbeknownst to me, Ricardo Reis had been born.)

A year and a half or two years later, it one day occurred to me to play a joke on Sá-Carneiro—to invent a rather complicated bucolic poet whom I would present in some guise of reality that I’ve since forgotten. I spent a few days trying in vain to envision this poet. One day when I’d finally given up—it was March 8th, 1914—I walked over to a high chest of drawers, took a sheet of paper, and began to write standing up, as I do whenever I can. And I wrote thirty-some poems at once, in a kind of ecstasy I’m unable to describe. It was the triumphal day of my life, and I can never have another one like it. I began with a title,
The Keeper of Sheep
. This was followed by the appearance in me of someone whom I instantly named Alberto Caeiro. Excuse the absurdity of this statement: my master had appeared in me. That was what I immediately felt, and so strong was the feeling that, as soon as those thirty-odd poems were written, I grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and wrote, again all at once, the six poems that constitute “Slanting Rain,”* by Fernando Pessoa. All at once and with total concentration ... It was the return of Fernando Pessoa as Alberto Caeiro to Fernando Pessoa himself. Or rather, it was the reaction of Fernando Pessoa against his nonexistence as Alberto Caeiro.

Once Alberto Caeiro had appeared, I instinctively and subconsciously tried to find disciples for him. From Caeiro’s false paganism I extracted the latent Ricardo Reis, at last discovering his name and adjusting him to his true self, for now I actually
saw
him. And then a new individual, quite the opposite of Ricardo Reis, suddenly and impetuously came to me. In an unbroken stream, without interruptions or corrections, the ode whose name is “Triumphal Ode,”* by the man whose name is none other than Álvaro de Campos, issued from my typewriter.

And so I created a nonexistent coterie, placing it all in a framework of reality. I ascertained the influences at work and the friendships between them, I listened in myself to their discussions and divergent points of view, and in all of this it seems that I, who created them all, was the one who was least there. It seems that it all went on without me. And thus it seems to go on still. If one day I’m able to publish the aesthetic debate between Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos, you’ll see how different they are, and how I have nothing to do with the matter.

When it came time to publish
Orpheu
, we had to find something at the last minute to fill out the issue, and so I suggested to Sá-Carneiro that I write an “old” poem of Álvaro de Campos’s—a poem such as Álvaro de Campos would have written before meeting Caeiro and falling under his influence. That’s how I came to write “Opiary,”* in which I tried to incorporate all the latent tendencies of Álvaro de Campos that would eventually be revealed but that still showed no hint of contact with his master Caeiro. Of all the poems I’ve written, this was the one that gave me the most trouble, because of the twofold depersonalization it required. But I don’t think it turned out badly, and it does show us Álvaro in the bud.

I think this should explain for you the origin of my heteronyms, but if there’s any point I need to clarify—I’m writing quickly, and when I write quickly I’m not terribly clear—let me know, and I’ll gladly oblige. And here’s a true and hysterical addendum: when writing certain passages of Álvaro de Campos’s
Notes for the Memory of My Master Caeiro
, I have wept real tears. I tell this so that you’ll know whom you’re dealing with, my dear Casais Monteiro!

A few more notes on this subject... I
see
before me, in the transparent but real space of dreams, the faces and gestures of Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos. I gave them their ages and fashioned their lives. Ricardo Reis was born in 1887 (I don’t remember the month and day, but I have them somewhere) in Oporto. He’s a doctor and is presently living in Brazil. Alberto Caeiro was born in 1889 and died in 1915. He was born in Lisbon but spent most of his life in the country. He had no profession and practically
no schooling. Álvaro de Campos was born in Tavira, on October 15th, 1890 (at 1:30
P.M.,
says Ferreira Gomes,* and it’s true, because a horoscope made for that hour confirms it). Campos, as you know, is a naval engineer (he studied in Glasgow) but is currently living in Lisbon and not working. Caeiro was of medium height, and although his health was truly fragile (he died of TB), he seemed less frail than he was. Ricardo Reis is a wee bit shorter, stronger, but sinewy. Álvaro de Campos is tall (5 ft. 9 in., an inch taller than me), slim, and a bit prone to stoop. All are clean-shaven—Caeiro fair, with a pale complexion and blue eyes; Reis somewhat dark-skinned; Campos neither pale nor dark, vaguely corresponding to the Portuguese Jewish type, but with smooth hair that’s usually parted on one side, and a monocle. Caeiro, as I’ve said, had almost no education—just primary school. His mother and father died when he was young, and he stayed on at home, living off a small income from family properties. He lived with an elderly great-aunt. Ricardo Reis, educated in a Jesuit high school, is, as I’ve mentioned, a doctor; he has been living in Brazil since 1919, having gone into voluntary exile because of his monarchist sympathies. He is a formally trained Latinist, and a self-taught semi-Hellenist. Álvaro de Campos, after a normal high school education, was sent to Scotland to study engineering, first mechanical and then naval. During some holidays he made a voyage to the Orient, which gave rise to his poem “Opiary.” He was taught Latin by an uncle who was a priest from the Beira region.

How do I write in the name of these three? Caeiro, through sheer and unexpected inspiration, without knowing or even suspecting that I’m going to write in his name. Ricardo Reis, after an abstract meditation that suddenly takes concrete shape in an ode. Campos, when I feel a sudden impulse to write and don’t know what. (My semiheteronym Bernardo Soares, who in many ways resembles Álvaro de Campos, always appears when I’m sleepy or drowsy, such that my qualities of inhibition and logical reasoning are suspended; his prose is an endless reverie. He’s a semiheteronym because his personality, although not my own, doesn’t differ from my
own but is a mere mutilation of it. He’s me without my logical reasoning and emotion. His prose is the same as mine, except for a certain formal restraint that reason imposes on my own writing, and his Portuguese is exactly the same—whereas Caeiro writes bad Portuguese, Campos writes it reasonably well but with mistakes such as “me myself instead of “I myself,” etc., and Reis writes better than I, but with a purism I find excessive. What’s hard for me is to write the prose of Reis—still unpublished—or of Campos. Simulation is easier, because more spontaneous, in verse.)

At this point you’re no doubt wondering what bad luck has caused you to fall, just by reading, into the midst of an insane asylum. The worst thing is the incoherent way I’ve explained myself, but I write, I repeat, as if I were talking to you, so that I can write quickly. Otherwise it would take me months to write.

I still haven’t answered your question about the occult. You asked if I believe in the occult. Phrased in that way, the question isn’t clear, but I know what you mean and I’ll answer it. I believe in the existence of worlds higher than our own and in the existence of beings that inhabit those worlds. I believe there are various, increasingly subtle levels of spirituality that lead to a Supreme Being, who presumably created this world. There may be other, equally Supreme Beings who have created other universes that coexist with our own, separately or interconnectedly. For these and other reasons, the External Order of the Occult, meaning the Freemasons, avoid (except for the Anglo-Saxon Freemasons) the term “God,” with its theological and popular implications, and prefer to say “Great Architect of the Universe,” an expression that leaves open the question of whether He is the world’s Creator or merely its Ruler. Given this hierarchy of beings, I do not believe that direct communication with God is possible, but we can, according to the degree of our spiritual attunement, communicate with ever higher beings. There are three paths toward the occult: the path of magic (including practices such as spiritism, intellectually on a par with witchcraft, likewise a form of magic), which is an extremely dangerous path in all respects; the mystical path, which is not inherently dangerous but
is uncertain and slow; and the path of alchemy, which is the hardest and most perfect path of all, since it involves a transmutation of the very personality that
prepares
it, not only without great risks but with defenses that the other paths don’t have. As for “initiation,” all I can tell you is this, which may or may not answer your question: I belong to no Initiatic Order. The epigraph to my poem “Eros and Psyche,”* a passage taken (and translated, since the original is in Latin) from the Ritual of the Third Degree of the Portuguese Order of the Knights Templar, indicates no more than what in fact occurred: that I was allowed to leaf through the Rituals of the first three degrees of that Order, which has been extinct, or dormant, since around 1888. Were it not dormant, I would not have cited that passage from the Ritual, since Rituals in active use should not be quoted (unless the Order isn’t named).

I believe, my dear colleague, that I have answered your questions, albeit with some confusion here and there. If you have other questions, don’t hesitate to ask them. I will answer as best I can, though I may not answer so promptly, for which I offer my apologies in advance.

Warm regards from your friend who greatly admires and respects you,

Fernando Pessoa

P.S. (!!!)

14 January 1935

Besides the copy I usually make for myself when I type a letter that contains explanations of the sort found herein, I’ve made a second copy that will always remain at your disposal, in case the original gets lost or you need this copy for some other reason.