What do you think?
Rate this book
Pessoa: A Biography
Like Richard Ellmann’s James Joyce, Richard Zenith’s Pessoa immortalizes the life of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers.
Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he could do “more in dreams than Napoleon,” yet haunted by the specter of hereditary madness, Pessoa invented dozens of alter egos, or “heteronyms,” under whose names he wrote in Portuguese, English, and French. Unsurprisingly, this “most multifarious of writers” (Guardian) has long eluded a definitive biographer—but in renowned translator and Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, he has met his match.
Relatively unknown in his lifetime, Pessoa was all but destined for literary oblivion when the arc of his afterlife bent, suddenly and improbably, toward greatness, with the discovery of some 25,000 unpublished papers left in a large, wooden trunk. Drawing on this vast archive of sources as well as on unpublished family letters, and skillfully setting the poet’s life against the nationalist currents of twentieth-century European history, Zenith at last reveals the true depths of Pessoa’s teeming imagination and literary genius.
Much as Nobel laureate José Saramago brought a single heteronym to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa’s imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. A solitary man who had only one, ultimately platonic love affair, Pessoa used his and his heteronyms’ writings to explore questions of sexuality, to obsessively search after spiritual truth, and to try to chart a way forward for a benighted and politically agitated Portugal.
Although he preferred the world of his mind, Pessoa was nonetheless a man of the places he inhabited, including not only Lisbon but also turn-of-the-century Durban, South Africa, where he spent nine years as a child. Zenith re-creates the drama of Pessoa’s adolescence—when the first heteronyms emerged—and his bumbling attempts to survive as a translator and publisher. Zenith introduces us, too, to Pessoa’s bohemian circle of friends, and to Ophelia Quieroz, with whom he exchanged numerous love letters. Pessoa reveals in equal force the poet’s unwavering commitment to defending homosexual writers whose books had been banned, as well as his courageous opposition to Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, toward the end of his life. In stunning, magisterial prose, Zenith contextualizes Pessoa’s posthumous literary achievements—especially his most renowned work, The Book of Disquiet.
A modern literary masterpiece, Pessoa simultaneously immortalizes the life of a literary maestro and confirms the enduring power of Pessoa’s work to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of our modern world.
Nearly a century after his wrenching death, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) remains one of our most enigmatic writers. Believing he could do “more in dreams than Napoleon,” yet haunted by the specter of hereditary madness, Pessoa invented dozens of alter egos, or “heteronyms,” under whose names he wrote in Portuguese, English, and French. Unsurprisingly, this “most multifarious of writers” (Guardian) has long eluded a definitive biographer—but in renowned translator and Pessoa scholar Richard Zenith, he has met his match.
Relatively unknown in his lifetime, Pessoa was all but destined for literary oblivion when the arc of his afterlife bent, suddenly and improbably, toward greatness, with the discovery of some 25,000 unpublished papers left in a large, wooden trunk. Drawing on this vast archive of sources as well as on unpublished family letters, and skillfully setting the poet’s life against the nationalist currents of twentieth-century European history, Zenith at last reveals the true depths of Pessoa’s teeming imagination and literary genius.
Much as Nobel laureate José Saramago brought a single heteronym to life in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Zenith traces the backstories of virtually all of Pessoa’s imagined personalities, demonstrating how they were projections, spin-offs, or metamorphoses of Pessoa himself. A solitary man who had only one, ultimately platonic love affair, Pessoa used his and his heteronyms’ writings to explore questions of sexuality, to obsessively search after spiritual truth, and to try to chart a way forward for a benighted and politically agitated Portugal.
Although he preferred the world of his mind, Pessoa was nonetheless a man of the places he inhabited, including not only Lisbon but also turn-of-the-century Durban, South Africa, where he spent nine years as a child. Zenith re-creates the drama of Pessoa’s adolescence—when the first heteronyms emerged—and his bumbling attempts to survive as a translator and publisher. Zenith introduces us, too, to Pessoa’s bohemian circle of friends, and to Ophelia Quieroz, with whom he exchanged numerous love letters. Pessoa reveals in equal force the poet’s unwavering commitment to defending homosexual writers whose books had been banned, as well as his courageous opposition to Salazar, the Portuguese dictator, toward the end of his life. In stunning, magisterial prose, Zenith contextualizes Pessoa’s posthumous literary achievements—especially his most renowned work, The Book of Disquiet.
A modern literary masterpiece, Pessoa simultaneously immortalizes the life of a literary maestro and confirms the enduring power of Pessoa’s work to speak prophetically to the disconnectedness of our modern world.
1088 pages, Hardcover
First published July 20, 2021
260 people are currently reading
3483 people want to read
About the author
Richard Zenith
56 books37 followersRichard Zenith is an acclaimed translator and literary critic. His translations include Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet and Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, which won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. The recipient of Portugal’s Pessoa Prize, Zenith lives in Lisbon, Portugal.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
March 27, 2025
Would you read a thousand-page biography
Of a person who had no life?
A person who didn't have a real job?
A person who wrote and drank and smoked his life away?
Who never changed the style of his dark suits?
Who went to the beach once and kept his dark suit on?
Who sat at the same tables of the same cafés with the same people drinking the same drinks smoking the same cigarettes day after day?
Who had his moustaches trimmed daily?
Whose eyes disappeared from behind thick glasses?
Who feared women like the plague?
Who preferred men but not carnally?
A person who only ever made love to his own brain?
Who changed his mind like one changes hats?
A nonentity who contained multitudes?
Who was Fernando on Monday
Alexander on Tuesday
Alberto on Wednesday
Alvaro on Thursday
Ricardo on Friday
Bernardo on Saturday
Nobody on Sunday?
A person who saw the universe in a tobacco shop
A Greek portico in the setting sun
A sunflower in a sunflower?
A person who never wrote about himself
But was in everything he wrote?
Who had no opinions about anything
But could see everything from every angle
Feel everything in every way possible?
Who was a conservative experimentalist
A prudish sensualist
A Rosicrucian and a Knight Templar
A one-man military dictatorship for individual freedom
A White Magician
An emperor of the Portuguese tongue
Who could barely complete a single task?
Who would start a poem a letter a story a business venture a plan to take over the world all on the same day
And by sundown all would be shelved incomplete?
A person who died at 47 having only published a slim volume of poems and some articles?
Who left behind some 30,000 scribbled-on pieces of paper in a large trunk?
A person whose name is now on the lips of pretty much anyone who cares about literature?
Whose poetry is tattooed on the flesh of non-virgins?
Whose songs will be sung by sailors yet unborn?
Would you read such a biography?
I would and I have
A month and a half of my life reading about a guy
Who had no life no job no nothing...
And let me tell you something
I would do it all over again
Just not today
August 22, 2021
pessoa could not imagine that his literary dispersion, which faithfully mirrors our ontological instability and the absence of intrinsic unity in the world we inhabit, would make him required reading by the time the next century arrived.richard zenith's biography of the enigmatic portuguese modernist master is mammoth in ambition, scope, and accomplishment. pessoa is a relentlessly engrossing work of the life and times of the heteronymic poet and prose writer. meticulously researched (the book took some 12-13 years to complete) and definitively comprehensive, zenith's biography is itself a work of art (and it must be noted that zenith's erudition and absolutely exquisite vocabulary make every page a delight to read).
whether recounting pessoa's early life, myriad literary plans (most of which never came to fruition), curious temperament and personality, sociopolitical milieu, chronic debt, attraction to mysticism and his ongoing "quest for esoteric truth," excessive drinking, "monosexuality," political leanings — to say nothing of his contextual and critical take on his heteronyms and the writer(s)'s prodigious output — zenith's masterwork is the portrait of an artist as an "absolute individualist." some eight and a half decades after his passing, pessoa refracts its subject's resplendent genius in scintillating detail.
pessoa's writings were, by and large, provisional visual representations of his soul. in fact, he never stopped showing us who he was or was trying to be. his poems and prose pieces were him, his own person, or the bits and pieces of the person, or pessoa, who did not exist as such. his sexual life? his spiritual life? they may be found in his writing, and nowhere else but his writing. there is no secret pessoa for the biographer to reveal.
May 14, 2025
Fernando Pessoa é o meu poeta favorito. Ainda tenho em mim a mesma sensação que tive quando li pela primeira vez um poema dele nas aulas de Português no secundário: wow. Esta pessoa está a escrever exactamente aquilo que eu sinto!! Foi a primeira vez que me vi representada na literatura, foi a primeira vez que percebi não estar sozinha neste caos que é o universo. Tenho muito a agradecer à minha Professora de Português do 12° ano que nos ensinou Fernando Pessoa de uma forma tão bela e tão única.
Apaixonei-me pelo "Lisbon Revisited" à primeira leitura, mas foi com o poema "Aniversário", declamado de uma forma tão bonita pela minha Professora, que eu chorei com um poema. Eu estou ali, naquele poema. Sempre que o leio, volto imediatamente a ser a menina de 17 anos numa sala de aula a ouvir a professora a declamar com emoção. Todas as sensações regressam a mim. Caraças, como é que algo escrito por uma pessoa, que nunca me conheceu, há quase 100 anos pode dizer-me tanto, falar-me tanto à alma, ao ponto de eu me reconhecer nele.
Nos stories do instagram, fui partilhando excertos da biografia e fui fazendo alguns comentários, chamando sempre o Sr. Pessoa de Nandinho. Permitam-me esta intimidade com o Poeta, mas é que olho para o Fernando Pessoa e vejo-me a mim. Revejo-me nele, nos sentimentos e emoções transmitidos nos poemas. Mesmo que o poeta seja um fingidor, que não era verdade no caso do Pessoa, conseguiu escrever e descrever tão bem o que é isto de ser-se humano.
Há muita coisa a dizer sobre esta biografia, mas o principal é que, na minha opinião, este é o grande acontecimento literário de 2022 em Portugal. Que portento de livro!!
Nesta biografia, ficamos a saber que Pessoa era misógino, racista, elitista, defendia uma sociedade baseada em classes, ria-se da ideia de igualdade de género. Mas também ficamos a perceber que tudo isto não passava de uma máscara, uma armadura protectora de quem se sente profundamente deslocado, profundamente só.
Nos agradecimentos, Richard Zenith escreve que "Pessoa nunca poderia ser captado, definido, abarcado. Espero ter escrito um livro que pelo menos ajude o leitor a sentir Pessoa." E é isto que é ler esta biografia: sentir Pessoa. 💙
Apaixonei-me pelo "Lisbon Revisited" à primeira leitura, mas foi com o poema "Aniversário", declamado de uma forma tão bonita pela minha Professora, que eu chorei com um poema. Eu estou ali, naquele poema. Sempre que o leio, volto imediatamente a ser a menina de 17 anos numa sala de aula a ouvir a professora a declamar com emoção. Todas as sensações regressam a mim. Caraças, como é que algo escrito por uma pessoa, que nunca me conheceu, há quase 100 anos pode dizer-me tanto, falar-me tanto à alma, ao ponto de eu me reconhecer nele.
Nos stories do instagram, fui partilhando excertos da biografia e fui fazendo alguns comentários, chamando sempre o Sr. Pessoa de Nandinho. Permitam-me esta intimidade com o Poeta, mas é que olho para o Fernando Pessoa e vejo-me a mim. Revejo-me nele, nos sentimentos e emoções transmitidos nos poemas. Mesmo que o poeta seja um fingidor, que não era verdade no caso do Pessoa, conseguiu escrever e descrever tão bem o que é isto de ser-se humano.
Há muita coisa a dizer sobre esta biografia, mas o principal é que, na minha opinião, este é o grande acontecimento literário de 2022 em Portugal. Que portento de livro!!
Nesta biografia, ficamos a saber que Pessoa era misógino, racista, elitista, defendia uma sociedade baseada em classes, ria-se da ideia de igualdade de género. Mas também ficamos a perceber que tudo isto não passava de uma máscara, uma armadura protectora de quem se sente profundamente deslocado, profundamente só.
Nos agradecimentos, Richard Zenith escreve que "Pessoa nunca poderia ser captado, definido, abarcado. Espero ter escrito um livro que pelo menos ajude o leitor a sentir Pessoa." E é isto que é ler esta biografia: sentir Pessoa. 💙
April 6, 2025
Ne kitap ama, ne kitap. Hayatımda okuduğum en iyi birkaç biyografiden biri oldu Richard Zenith'in Pessoa'sı. Bütün Pessoaları anlatan, tüm o parça parça Pessoalardan bir büyük resim çıkarmayı başaran, muazzam bir emek ve sabırla derlenmiş bir metin, büyük, devasa bir iş. Kimi biyografi yazarları teknik bir konu gibi yaklaşır meseleye ve okuru bilgiye boğar, kimisi süjesinin büyüsüne kapılıp duygulardan örer metni - Zenith'in yaptığı işin kusursuzluğu ise bence bu ikisinin dengesini muazzam kurmuş olmasında. Pessoa'ya duyduğu hayranlık her satıra sinmiş ama bu hayranlık yazarın gözünü kör de etmemiş. Ne diyebilirim ki, hem Zenith'e büyük hayranlık duydum, hem Pessoa'ya duyduğum hayranlık katlandı.
Herhalde edebiyat tarihinde biyografisini yazmanın en zor olduğu isimlerin başında geliyor Pessoa. Onlarca heteronim altında bölük pörçük eserler vermiş, büyüklüğü ölümünden çok sonra, sandığındaki Huzursuzluğun Kitabı fragmanları birleştirilince anlaşılabilmiş; gizemli, tuhaf, izini sürmesi ziyadesiyle zor biri o. Ama Zenith başarmış.
Karşımızdaki epeyce kapsamlı bir iş, öyle ki sadece çocukluğunun anlatıldığı bölüm 185 sayfa sürüyor. Fakat gelin görün ki akademik düzeyde bir detay ve titizlikle hazırlanmış bu metin, Zenith'in oyunbaz ve edebî dili sayesinde kendini hiç sıkmadan okutuyor. Genelde yazar biyografilerinde çocukluktan ziyade eserlerini üretmeye başladıkları döneme ve sonrasına daha çok odaklanılır, ancak Zenith bence çok doğru bir tercihle hikayeye en baştan başlamayı seçiyor, Pessoa'nın kendine neden sayısız heteronim üretmeyi tercih ettiğini anlamanın yolu bence de o çocukluktan geçiyor çünkü.
Çok, çok, çok şey öğrendim; hem Pessoa'ya, hem 20. yüzyıl başı Portekiz'ine ve Avrupa'sına, hem dönemin siyasi krizlerine ve dönüşümlerine dair... Pessoa'yı tamamen anlamak mümkün mü bilmiyorum, ama anlamaya bundan daha fazla yaklaşabileceğimi sanmıyorum. Bu sadece bir biyografi değil, bir edebiyatçıya dair yazılmış bir büyük edebî eser.
Kitabı dilimize böyle kusursuz ve hatasız biçimde kazandıran çevirmen Can Sezer ile kitabın editörü Emre Tokcael'e ve tabii ki Everest Yayınları'na da ayrıca teşekkürler. Büyük bir iş sahiden.
Herhalde edebiyat tarihinde biyografisini yazmanın en zor olduğu isimlerin başında geliyor Pessoa. Onlarca heteronim altında bölük pörçük eserler vermiş, büyüklüğü ölümünden çok sonra, sandığındaki Huzursuzluğun Kitabı fragmanları birleştirilince anlaşılabilmiş; gizemli, tuhaf, izini sürmesi ziyadesiyle zor biri o. Ama Zenith başarmış.
Karşımızdaki epeyce kapsamlı bir iş, öyle ki sadece çocukluğunun anlatıldığı bölüm 185 sayfa sürüyor. Fakat gelin görün ki akademik düzeyde bir detay ve titizlikle hazırlanmış bu metin, Zenith'in oyunbaz ve edebî dili sayesinde kendini hiç sıkmadan okutuyor. Genelde yazar biyografilerinde çocukluktan ziyade eserlerini üretmeye başladıkları döneme ve sonrasına daha çok odaklanılır, ancak Zenith bence çok doğru bir tercihle hikayeye en baştan başlamayı seçiyor, Pessoa'nın kendine neden sayısız heteronim üretmeyi tercih ettiğini anlamanın yolu bence de o çocukluktan geçiyor çünkü.
Çok, çok, çok şey öğrendim; hem Pessoa'ya, hem 20. yüzyıl başı Portekiz'ine ve Avrupa'sına, hem dönemin siyasi krizlerine ve dönüşümlerine dair... Pessoa'yı tamamen anlamak mümkün mü bilmiyorum, ama anlamaya bundan daha fazla yaklaşabileceğimi sanmıyorum. Bu sadece bir biyografi değil, bir edebiyatçıya dair yazılmış bir büyük edebî eser.
Kitabı dilimize böyle kusursuz ve hatasız biçimde kazandıran çevirmen Can Sezer ile kitabın editörü Emre Tokcael'e ve tabii ki Everest Yayınları'na da ayrıca teşekkürler. Büyük bir iş sahiden.
June 30, 2022
Durante algumas semanas, o meu mundo foi Lisboa no primeiro quarto de século e Pessoa. Pessoa, sempre.
Creio ser impossível não gostar deste último trabalho de Richard Zenith (ouso arriscar classificá-lo como "O" trabalho de uma vida) e as 1200 páginas passam a voar...
Tal como Pessoa com as suas criações literárias, também eu viajei nas páginas do livro.
Obrigada, R. Zenith.
Creio ser impossível não gostar deste último trabalho de Richard Zenith (ouso arriscar classificá-lo como "O" trabalho de uma vida) e as 1200 páginas passam a voar...
Tal como Pessoa com as suas criações literárias, também eu viajei nas páginas do livro.
Obrigada, R. Zenith.
May 15, 2025
What an achievement, and a book that I was sad to finish, in a way. Most bios have a troubling fault or imbalance, but this (like Ampersad's of R. Ellison) seems as good a bio as could be. Informative, judicious quotations, research weaved in so that it organically fits with the rest of the material, and a style that supports all of that plus occasional personal remarks and speculation, where speculation seems appropriate.
It helps that Pessoa is a fascinating, conflicted, chimerical person. I doubt any biographer could capture him in all his heteronyms and guises, but Zenith manages to get across the paradoxes and thinking of Pessoa and Company. You don't need to have read Pessoa to appreciate what Zenith has done.
It helps that Pessoa is a fascinating, conflicted, chimerical person. I doubt any biographer could capture him in all his heteronyms and guises, but Zenith manages to get across the paradoxes and thinking of Pessoa and Company. You don't need to have read Pessoa to appreciate what Zenith has done.
July 27, 2022
"Atento ao que sou e vejo,
Torno-me eles e não eu.
Cada meu sonho ou desejo,
É do que nasce e não meu.
(24 de Agosto de 1930)"
Torno-me eles e não eu.
Cada meu sonho ou desejo,
É do que nasce e não meu.
(24 de Agosto de 1930)"
November 25, 2023
Demorou, são quase 1200 páginas e não há propriamente um enredo a puxar pela nossa curiosidade, não que fosse necessário dada a enigmática persona de Pessoa, e, no entanto, algo faltou. Zenith escreve de forma soberba, diria que ao fim de 30 anos a editar e traduzir Pessoa se aproximou muito do seu estilo. Mas esperava mais. Pessoa resulta numa das biografias mais realistas que li, mesmo que Zenith embelese descrições com imaginação, romanceando ações e desejos, fá-lo a partir do interior de um Pessoa que se habituou a conhecer como uma espécie de segunda identidade. No final, o realismo de Zenith dá-nos um Pessoa humano, para mim, demasiado humano. Não queria um herói, não precisava de nos dar o “Super-Camões”, mas o que é uma biografia se não a história que sustenta a razão pela qual a memória perdura?
O livro abre com um Prólogo excecional, com uma escrita irrepreensível lançando toda uma contextualização de Pessoa que nos agarra e faz sonhar, criando expectativas elevadas para o resto do livro. Contudo, assim que se inicia o contar da vida de Pessoa, a história cola-se às ações registadas, praticamente tudo o que é dito parece brotado de algum registo, seja de Pessoa, da sua família, dos jornais, amigos ou outros que com ele conviveram. Impressiona, demonstra um trabalho imenso de pesquisa, percebe-se porque demorou 13 anos a escrever, e mais do que isso, cria um registo que ficará para a posterioridade. Passo a passo, Zenith vai descrevendo tudo o que se conhece sobre o autor, ficando a dúvida se ousou deixar algo de fora, tal o detalhe sempre suportado.
Esta abordagem permite a muitos de nós conhecer melhor o Portugal do início do século XX, o fim da monarquia, o surgimento da República, a sede de renascimento artístico, as influências externas, a relação com a política inglesa e a cultura francesa, os movimentos da elite lisboeta, contudo fica a dúvida sobre quanto disso poderá interessar a não-portugueses. Por outro lado, o detalhe é tanto, existem tantos pontos relevados e discutidos que a figura de Pessoa acaba a perder-se por entre eles. Mesmo toda a descrição dos amigos de Pessoa envolvidos na criação dos vários projetos editoriais e de movimentos artísticos vai a um detalhe tal em que deixamos de ver Pessoa para ver o que era a vida naquele tempo no meio daquelas pessoas. Sendo relevante, e por vezes até interessante, o desfoque acontece. Pessoa nunca sai de cena, mas Pessoa é apenas mais um. Zenith assume um posicionamento profundamente realista, apresenta o homem enquanto homem, mas um livro destes não devia dar-nos apenas o homem, pois não é ele que robustece a imaginação de quem o leu e ousou sonhar com ele.
Zenith parece ter gizado uma missão, dar conta de tudo e todos aqueles em que Pessoa tocou, contudo com isso perdeu a hipótese de ir à essência do que fez de Pessoa a pessoa que fez tantos de nós apaixonar-se pela língua portuguesa. Porque isso não foi feito pelo simples ato de existir, de fazer coisas, de se relacionar com pessoas, de se relacionar com autoridades. Zenith esforçou-se por nos dar acesso a praticamente todas as facetas de Pessoa, não apenas os seus heterónimos, mas especialmente, as da sua personalidade, indo muito para além do que se tem lido como retrato geral do autor. Zenith dedica centenas de páginas aos seus traços mais negativos — o racismo, a misoginia, a homofobia, o alcoolismo, o nacionalismo, as dívidas, tudo rodeado de um enorme inconseguimento. Dito assim, em sucedâneo, parece que se construiu aqui o traço de uma persona-non-grata, contudo Zenith fá-lo com imenso cuidado, desvelando e justificando sempre em cada momento, raramente permitindo que os traços negativos contaminem a aura maior de Pessoa. O detalhe na apresentação destas facetas, com dados e perspetivas múltiplas, é de tal ordem que se torna possível acreditar que Pessoa foi o diabo e o santo, porque que tendo dito/escrito, nada disso terá passado da superfície, parte das suas múltiplas máscaras, nunca tendo tocado a verdadeira essência do Ser de Pessoa.
Ora se todo este mundo de provas e contra-provas serve para manter Pessoa imaculado, acaba fragilizando tremendamente a sua identidade. Ora é uma coisa, ora é outra. Mesmo sabendo que Pessoa passou pela vida exatamente dessa forma, daí os heterónimos. Pessoa foi tudo o que quis imaginar ser, sem nunca o ser, o que em defesa de Zenith, suporta totalmente a sua abordagem. Mas isso não deixa de lhe retirar poder, de cortar a ambição de querer chegar a uma persona interior, ao motor por debaixo de todas aquelas máscaras que nos faz sonhar de todas as vezes que abrimos um livro seu.
A parte final da biografia dá um espaço enorme ao esoterismo vivido pelo poeta, não foi o único, foi uma época terrível para a elite intelectual europeia que se deixou seduzir pela astrologia, espiritismo e sabe-se lá mais o quê. Mas fica-me a impressão de que Zenith tenta nesta parte do friso cronológico elevar a persona além do realismo por via dessas condições esotéricas. Talvez seja uma interpretação errónea minha, mas senti esse forçar do espiritual em Pessoa como a machadada final na depreciação da persona de Pessoa. Percebo a ideia, o mundo do paranormal é uma porta fácil para o incomum, o excecional, mas é também uma porta direta para a incapacidade crítica e analítica, algo que não combina com a agudez dos escritos de Pessoa.
E mais perto ainda da reta final, Zenith remata tudo com o nacionalismo de Pessoa, os seus textos em defesa do Estado Novo, de António Ferro e António Salazar. Não o faz sem mostrar como Pessoa compreendeu a determinada altura que tinha errado, que se tinha enganado totalmente, fazendo uma reviravolta de 180º. Zenith não podia não relatar tal, mas o problema não está aí, surge antes pelo modo como dedicou toda a sua abordagem a mostrar sempre o lado mau e bom, a construir e a elevar sempre o humano simples por detrás do grande poeta, falando do homem comum, esquecendo o artista. Mesmo quando em determinados momentos Zenith dá conta do “génio”, nomeadamente pelas palavras do próprio Pessoa, tal nunca é apresentado como efetivo, parece restar sempre uma sombra, uma dúvida sobre o tamanho dessa genialidade.
Como comecei por dizer, não queria um herói, mas escrever uma biografia é acima de tudo um trabalho de edição da vida de alguém. Quando se resolve nada editar, e a tudo dar o mesmo destaque, surge uma enorme manta de retalhos que dando conta daquilo que uma vida realmente é, não evidencia a pessoa que realmente foi. Todos nós em certas idades dizemos coisas que nunca diríamos passados 10 ou 20 anos, mudamos, crescemos, pensamos coisas negras que nunca diríamos a ninguém e que erradamente escrevemos em diários. Na verdade, somos muito mais do que a capa que continuamente editamos de nós mesmos. E se tudo isso nos pode aproximar daquilo que foi uma vida, as ações e atividades feitas ao longo de 47 anos, nem por isso nos dá uma noção mais completa de quem efetivamente foi, ou melhor, do que verdadeiramente representou e representa. Porque não recordamos tudo e todos, escolhemos quem recordamos, mas mais do que isso, escolhemos como recordar cada uma dessas pessoas que passou por nós. E porque o trabalho do historiador é mais do que descrever, é mais do que desenhar um friso cronológico e preenchê-lo de eventos, é também um trabalho de interpretação.
No final do livro ficou-me o trago amargo de uma biografia que foi ao extremo do pós-modernismo para demonstrar que o ser humano não tem qualquer relação com as clássicas narrativas lineares, ditas “manipuladoras”. Que o ser humano não passa de um conjunto de momentos desencontrados que se vão somando ano após ano, contribuindo para um todo que nunca deixa de ser um amontado de fragmentos. E no entanto, Zenith não deixa de seguir o elemento mais linear de todos, o tempo, sendo na verdade o único vetor consistente que usa para suportar todos aqueles fragmentos. Disse amargo, porque reconhecendo que somos feitos desses fragmentos, aquilo que continua a manter o meu interesse no estudo da narrativa é exatamente o modo como ela, e nós biologicamente dependentes dela, ignora todo esse acaso cósmico para continuar a oferecer-nos estruturas organizadas de informação que servem o exaltar do nosso pensamento e sentir.
Sobre as edições. A versão original foi publicada primeiro em inglês (2021), tendo eu lido pouco mais de metade nessa edição, ainda que na versão áudio com a belíssima narração de Nigel Patterson (42h). O restante foi lido na também belíssima tradução portuguesa dos Telles de Menezes (2022). Passando de uma versão para a outra, fazendo algumas comparações, não senti que nenhuma fosse superior, a qualidade do texto de Zenith mantém-se elevada e a leitura é extremamente fluída. Assim, se a minha crítica acima soa bastante negativa, a leitura do livro não deixa de ser uma mais-valia enquanto experiência, pelo que deixo aqui algumas ligações para outras análises, bem mais positivas, do The Guardian e New York Times.
4.5/5
Publicado com imagens e links no substack, "A biografia fragmentada de Pessoa"
O livro abre com um Prólogo excecional, com uma escrita irrepreensível lançando toda uma contextualização de Pessoa que nos agarra e faz sonhar, criando expectativas elevadas para o resto do livro. Contudo, assim que se inicia o contar da vida de Pessoa, a história cola-se às ações registadas, praticamente tudo o que é dito parece brotado de algum registo, seja de Pessoa, da sua família, dos jornais, amigos ou outros que com ele conviveram. Impressiona, demonstra um trabalho imenso de pesquisa, percebe-se porque demorou 13 anos a escrever, e mais do que isso, cria um registo que ficará para a posterioridade. Passo a passo, Zenith vai descrevendo tudo o que se conhece sobre o autor, ficando a dúvida se ousou deixar algo de fora, tal o detalhe sempre suportado.
Esta abordagem permite a muitos de nós conhecer melhor o Portugal do início do século XX, o fim da monarquia, o surgimento da República, a sede de renascimento artístico, as influências externas, a relação com a política inglesa e a cultura francesa, os movimentos da elite lisboeta, contudo fica a dúvida sobre quanto disso poderá interessar a não-portugueses. Por outro lado, o detalhe é tanto, existem tantos pontos relevados e discutidos que a figura de Pessoa acaba a perder-se por entre eles. Mesmo toda a descrição dos amigos de Pessoa envolvidos na criação dos vários projetos editoriais e de movimentos artísticos vai a um detalhe tal em que deixamos de ver Pessoa para ver o que era a vida naquele tempo no meio daquelas pessoas. Sendo relevante, e por vezes até interessante, o desfoque acontece. Pessoa nunca sai de cena, mas Pessoa é apenas mais um. Zenith assume um posicionamento profundamente realista, apresenta o homem enquanto homem, mas um livro destes não devia dar-nos apenas o homem, pois não é ele que robustece a imaginação de quem o leu e ousou sonhar com ele.
Zenith parece ter gizado uma missão, dar conta de tudo e todos aqueles em que Pessoa tocou, contudo com isso perdeu a hipótese de ir à essência do que fez de Pessoa a pessoa que fez tantos de nós apaixonar-se pela língua portuguesa. Porque isso não foi feito pelo simples ato de existir, de fazer coisas, de se relacionar com pessoas, de se relacionar com autoridades. Zenith esforçou-se por nos dar acesso a praticamente todas as facetas de Pessoa, não apenas os seus heterónimos, mas especialmente, as da sua personalidade, indo muito para além do que se tem lido como retrato geral do autor. Zenith dedica centenas de páginas aos seus traços mais negativos — o racismo, a misoginia, a homofobia, o alcoolismo, o nacionalismo, as dívidas, tudo rodeado de um enorme inconseguimento. Dito assim, em sucedâneo, parece que se construiu aqui o traço de uma persona-non-grata, contudo Zenith fá-lo com imenso cuidado, desvelando e justificando sempre em cada momento, raramente permitindo que os traços negativos contaminem a aura maior de Pessoa. O detalhe na apresentação destas facetas, com dados e perspetivas múltiplas, é de tal ordem que se torna possível acreditar que Pessoa foi o diabo e o santo, porque que tendo dito/escrito, nada disso terá passado da superfície, parte das suas múltiplas máscaras, nunca tendo tocado a verdadeira essência do Ser de Pessoa.
Ora se todo este mundo de provas e contra-provas serve para manter Pessoa imaculado, acaba fragilizando tremendamente a sua identidade. Ora é uma coisa, ora é outra. Mesmo sabendo que Pessoa passou pela vida exatamente dessa forma, daí os heterónimos. Pessoa foi tudo o que quis imaginar ser, sem nunca o ser, o que em defesa de Zenith, suporta totalmente a sua abordagem. Mas isso não deixa de lhe retirar poder, de cortar a ambição de querer chegar a uma persona interior, ao motor por debaixo de todas aquelas máscaras que nos faz sonhar de todas as vezes que abrimos um livro seu.
A parte final da biografia dá um espaço enorme ao esoterismo vivido pelo poeta, não foi o único, foi uma época terrível para a elite intelectual europeia que se deixou seduzir pela astrologia, espiritismo e sabe-se lá mais o quê. Mas fica-me a impressão de que Zenith tenta nesta parte do friso cronológico elevar a persona além do realismo por via dessas condições esotéricas. Talvez seja uma interpretação errónea minha, mas senti esse forçar do espiritual em Pessoa como a machadada final na depreciação da persona de Pessoa. Percebo a ideia, o mundo do paranormal é uma porta fácil para o incomum, o excecional, mas é também uma porta direta para a incapacidade crítica e analítica, algo que não combina com a agudez dos escritos de Pessoa.
E mais perto ainda da reta final, Zenith remata tudo com o nacionalismo de Pessoa, os seus textos em defesa do Estado Novo, de António Ferro e António Salazar. Não o faz sem mostrar como Pessoa compreendeu a determinada altura que tinha errado, que se tinha enganado totalmente, fazendo uma reviravolta de 180º. Zenith não podia não relatar tal, mas o problema não está aí, surge antes pelo modo como dedicou toda a sua abordagem a mostrar sempre o lado mau e bom, a construir e a elevar sempre o humano simples por detrás do grande poeta, falando do homem comum, esquecendo o artista. Mesmo quando em determinados momentos Zenith dá conta do “génio”, nomeadamente pelas palavras do próprio Pessoa, tal nunca é apresentado como efetivo, parece restar sempre uma sombra, uma dúvida sobre o tamanho dessa genialidade.
Como comecei por dizer, não queria um herói, mas escrever uma biografia é acima de tudo um trabalho de edição da vida de alguém. Quando se resolve nada editar, e a tudo dar o mesmo destaque, surge uma enorme manta de retalhos que dando conta daquilo que uma vida realmente é, não evidencia a pessoa que realmente foi. Todos nós em certas idades dizemos coisas que nunca diríamos passados 10 ou 20 anos, mudamos, crescemos, pensamos coisas negras que nunca diríamos a ninguém e que erradamente escrevemos em diários. Na verdade, somos muito mais do que a capa que continuamente editamos de nós mesmos. E se tudo isso nos pode aproximar daquilo que foi uma vida, as ações e atividades feitas ao longo de 47 anos, nem por isso nos dá uma noção mais completa de quem efetivamente foi, ou melhor, do que verdadeiramente representou e representa. Porque não recordamos tudo e todos, escolhemos quem recordamos, mas mais do que isso, escolhemos como recordar cada uma dessas pessoas que passou por nós. E porque o trabalho do historiador é mais do que descrever, é mais do que desenhar um friso cronológico e preenchê-lo de eventos, é também um trabalho de interpretação.
No final do livro ficou-me o trago amargo de uma biografia que foi ao extremo do pós-modernismo para demonstrar que o ser humano não tem qualquer relação com as clássicas narrativas lineares, ditas “manipuladoras”. Que o ser humano não passa de um conjunto de momentos desencontrados que se vão somando ano após ano, contribuindo para um todo que nunca deixa de ser um amontado de fragmentos. E no entanto, Zenith não deixa de seguir o elemento mais linear de todos, o tempo, sendo na verdade o único vetor consistente que usa para suportar todos aqueles fragmentos. Disse amargo, porque reconhecendo que somos feitos desses fragmentos, aquilo que continua a manter o meu interesse no estudo da narrativa é exatamente o modo como ela, e nós biologicamente dependentes dela, ignora todo esse acaso cósmico para continuar a oferecer-nos estruturas organizadas de informação que servem o exaltar do nosso pensamento e sentir.
Sobre as edições. A versão original foi publicada primeiro em inglês (2021), tendo eu lido pouco mais de metade nessa edição, ainda que na versão áudio com a belíssima narração de Nigel Patterson (42h). O restante foi lido na também belíssima tradução portuguesa dos Telles de Menezes (2022). Passando de uma versão para a outra, fazendo algumas comparações, não senti que nenhuma fosse superior, a qualidade do texto de Zenith mantém-se elevada e a leitura é extremamente fluída. Assim, se a minha crítica acima soa bastante negativa, a leitura do livro não deixa de ser uma mais-valia enquanto experiência, pelo que deixo aqui algumas ligações para outras análises, bem mais positivas, do The Guardian e New York Times.
4.5/5
Publicado com imagens e links no substack, "A biografia fragmentada de Pessoa"
Read
September 11, 2021On one level, Fernando Pessoa is an even less likely subject for a biography - much less a thousand-page biography - than most writers, which gives you a good idea of the challenge here, since most writers are mighty turgid beings. But Richard Zenith is not only one of the world's foremost Pessoa scholars but also, like his subject, deeply enamored of storytelling. So despite the fact that Pessoa spent a great, great deal of his life nibbling and scribbling (and drinking) in one little room, this big book is quietly but intensely entertaining. My full review is here:
September 11, 2021
I've been reading Fernando Pessoa for many years. I've owned several collections of his poetry and at one time owned 2 different translations of the fragmentary autobiography considered his masterpiece, The Book of Disquiet. So I was eager for Richard Zenith's huge biography of him. It disappointed me. Not the quality of the biography itself because it's clearly a thorough, balanced portrait of the man and his work. The book is probably much more than I need (or want) to know about Pessoa. As fine as Zenith's book is, he was unable to make him interesting to me. The portrait Zenith painted of the man away from his poetry showed Pessoa without the professional skills or will to become more than he was, a modestly-published but greatly-admired poet. Too private, too shy, too inept at publishing and other business ventures, Zenith has little character to work with and yet, so complete is his research, he makes an enormous book out of him. Even his eccentricities, like his dependence on horoscopes and his interest in the spiritual realm or his use of the many famous heteronyms, the many shards of personality attributed as authors of the writings (a useful description of 47 of them precede the biography itself), once fully-analyzed, become colorless and...well, unusual rather than thought-provoking. Another problem is the comprehensive descriptions of early 20th century Portuguese arts and politics. Most of us aren't steeped in things Portuguese, anyway, once we veer away from Jose Saramago or Antonio Lobo Antunes. So I had trouble relating to the in-depth news of the arts scene and artists around Pessoa. For all the above reasons and more, I didn't get much out of my reading. As biography it's an achievement. I found its subject less interesting than I could have known.
Lately I've been rereading Virginia Woolf's Diaries and recently came to August 1922 when she was reading James Joyce's Ulysses and being disappointed by it for a variety of reasons. I think that one of her comments probably reflects my reception of Zenith's biography of Pessoa: "...so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair."
Lately I've been rereading Virginia Woolf's Diaries and recently came to August 1922 when she was reading James Joyce's Ulysses and being disappointed by it for a variety of reasons. I think that one of her comments probably reflects my reception of Zenith's biography of Pessoa: "...so no doubt I have scamped the virtue of it more than is fair."
December 31, 2024
A minha epopeia de 2024, que consegui concluir mesmo ao cair do pano deste ano!
Uma obra primorosa, mas que, para mim, esmiúça algo em demasia a parte literária...
NOTA - 09/10
Parabéns a mim mesma, porque CONSEGUI!!!
Uma obra primorosa, mas que, para mim, esmiúça algo em demasia a parte literária...
NOTA - 09/10
Parabéns a mim mesma, porque CONSEGUI!!!
September 26, 2023
Um trabalho muitíssimo exaustivo, detalhado, comovente. Aliás, as quatro estrelas têm que ver apenas com a extensão do livro (a meu ver existem certas contextualizações demasiado extensas). O autor leva-nos ao âmago da complexidade de Pessoa; um universo que tem a magia e a ancestralidade de grutas antigas e misteriosas. Para os amantes da obra de Pessoa esta é uma biografia obrigatória. A par da vida do grande Poeta, existe ainda a descrição do Portugal do início do século XX e a menção às principais figuras artísticas e políticas dessa época. Uma obra que requer fôlego mas que vale muito a pena. Estranha-se e depois entranha-se, como diria o Poeta.
October 21, 2021
for a reader of Pessoa, this would be an exciting and beautiful book from translator-scholar Richard Zenith. An exhaustive one.
August 6, 2021
THE Pessoa book by THE Pessoa guy. Just found that I preferred the biographer to his subject. Zenith is a thoughtful, obsessive, and playful writer. Pessoa is all of those things too, but he’s also a disorganized closet-case with his head in clouds and some objectionable opinions on minorities. Makes an interesting poet, not a thousand pages of biography, which explains why maybe a third of this book is (really interesting) historical context on Portuguese colonialism, the rise of fascism in Europe, and a class history of Lisbon— somewhere I now need to visit.
August 2, 2022
“Pouco sabemos sobre o homem. Aí reside a alegoria. Em vez disso, deixou uma pletora de personagens dramáticas bem mais vívidas do que muitas personalidades humanas.”
É a terceira vez este ano que embarco na aventura de conhecer a biografia de grandes escritores. E que aventura foi esta, absolutamente rápida e tão intensa, que nem sequer dei pelo tempo passar. A excecionalidade que foi conhecer a história de Fernando Pessoa, um nome não notável na sua época, que se rodeou de uma áurea de mistério durante muito tempo, tendo-se-nos apenas sido descrito pelas palavras de Gaspar Simões(seu primeiro biógrafo), e cujo conteúdo da sua famosa arca ainda nos traz pistas tão contraditórias e singulares da sua vida. ❤
Um dos maiores marcos da literatura portuguesa, não só como ortónimo, mas também pela diversidade de personagens que fez chegar até nós, leitores. Um génio muito mal compreendido. Até Richard Zenith desencantar a sua vida, desde o dia em que nasceu, 13 de Junho de 1888, até à data da sua morte, 30 de novembro de 1935. ( “I know not what tomorrow will bring”🖤 ).
Este livro faz o retrato não só do génio que Pessoa era, mas também o homem com as suas fragilidades, todos os que impactaram na sua vida , as melhores amigas que foram as palavras e a literatura durante toda a sua existência, deixando-nos um legado literário tão vasto e genial. ❤Da criança de constituição frágil, solitária e de imaginação fértil até ao homem de aparência calma, que não se coadunava com a rotina e se sentia desencaixado no mundo, Fernando Pessoa é, nas palavras de Zenith, um homem com H grande, com todos as suas qualidades e dark sides. Porque Pessoa foi o pacote todo. Racista, xenófobo, machista mas , no mesmo pé, defensor do homossexualismo, do ocultismo, da liberdade individual.
Calcorreamos, com este livro, as ruas de Lisboa, onde Pessoa viajou sem viajar; Durban e outros homens singulares como Winston Churchill e Ghandi; a história da situação política de Portugal e o ambiente caótico que caraterizou a Europa do final do século XIX até aos anos 30; o movimento vanguardista da arte e literatura de Almada Negreiros, Santa Rita Pintor e Mário de Sá Carneiro, companheiros de Pessoa.
Viajamos através das vivências do poeta; as suas aventuras, amizades e até a sua história amorosa com Ofélia Queiroz, a santa paciente que provavelmente nunca amou mais ninguém que o seu Nandinho. Tudo isso feito numa linguagem acessível, absolutamente cinematográfica e com contexto absolutamente compreensível. Adorei a maneira como Zenith terminou os subcapítulos, as frases com que descreve psicologicamente Pessoa de uma maneira assim poética.
“ele usou a escrita não para exprimir passivamente quem era, mas para se estudar experimentalmente, para se transformar e expandir.”
Fez-me rir, escrever imensos, imensos comentários acerca da sua personalidade tão, tão singular mas também me fez admirá-lo. Entender a sua dispersão, o seu fracasso perante os seus inúmeros projetos e, no entanto, ele próprio acreditava na sua fama após a morte, na existência de um quinto Império que levantasse o esplendor da literatura portuguesa. E isso fez-me abalar, a sua opinião convicta na nossa língua, apesar de não concordar com o contexto político do país. Diria que Fernando Pessoa foi um homem português como muitos não foram.
Posso dizer que antes de ler a sua biografia, tinha receio de ler “O Livro do Desassossego”. Agora a minha vontade aumentou mais do que nunca. Assim como conhecer o habitáculo na rua Coelho Rocha, em Lisboa. ❤
É a terceira vez este ano que embarco na aventura de conhecer a biografia de grandes escritores. E que aventura foi esta, absolutamente rápida e tão intensa, que nem sequer dei pelo tempo passar. A excecionalidade que foi conhecer a história de Fernando Pessoa, um nome não notável na sua época, que se rodeou de uma áurea de mistério durante muito tempo, tendo-se-nos apenas sido descrito pelas palavras de Gaspar Simões(seu primeiro biógrafo), e cujo conteúdo da sua famosa arca ainda nos traz pistas tão contraditórias e singulares da sua vida. ❤
Um dos maiores marcos da literatura portuguesa, não só como ortónimo, mas também pela diversidade de personagens que fez chegar até nós, leitores. Um génio muito mal compreendido. Até Richard Zenith desencantar a sua vida, desde o dia em que nasceu, 13 de Junho de 1888, até à data da sua morte, 30 de novembro de 1935. ( “I know not what tomorrow will bring”🖤 ).
Este livro faz o retrato não só do génio que Pessoa era, mas também o homem com as suas fragilidades, todos os que impactaram na sua vida , as melhores amigas que foram as palavras e a literatura durante toda a sua existência, deixando-nos um legado literário tão vasto e genial. ❤Da criança de constituição frágil, solitária e de imaginação fértil até ao homem de aparência calma, que não se coadunava com a rotina e se sentia desencaixado no mundo, Fernando Pessoa é, nas palavras de Zenith, um homem com H grande, com todos as suas qualidades e dark sides. Porque Pessoa foi o pacote todo. Racista, xenófobo, machista mas , no mesmo pé, defensor do homossexualismo, do ocultismo, da liberdade individual.
Calcorreamos, com este livro, as ruas de Lisboa, onde Pessoa viajou sem viajar; Durban e outros homens singulares como Winston Churchill e Ghandi; a história da situação política de Portugal e o ambiente caótico que caraterizou a Europa do final do século XIX até aos anos 30; o movimento vanguardista da arte e literatura de Almada Negreiros, Santa Rita Pintor e Mário de Sá Carneiro, companheiros de Pessoa.
Viajamos através das vivências do poeta; as suas aventuras, amizades e até a sua história amorosa com Ofélia Queiroz, a santa paciente que provavelmente nunca amou mais ninguém que o seu Nandinho. Tudo isso feito numa linguagem acessível, absolutamente cinematográfica e com contexto absolutamente compreensível. Adorei a maneira como Zenith terminou os subcapítulos, as frases com que descreve psicologicamente Pessoa de uma maneira assim poética.
“ele usou a escrita não para exprimir passivamente quem era, mas para se estudar experimentalmente, para se transformar e expandir.”
Fez-me rir, escrever imensos, imensos comentários acerca da sua personalidade tão, tão singular mas também me fez admirá-lo. Entender a sua dispersão, o seu fracasso perante os seus inúmeros projetos e, no entanto, ele próprio acreditava na sua fama após a morte, na existência de um quinto Império que levantasse o esplendor da literatura portuguesa. E isso fez-me abalar, a sua opinião convicta na nossa língua, apesar de não concordar com o contexto político do país. Diria que Fernando Pessoa foi um homem português como muitos não foram.
Posso dizer que antes de ler a sua biografia, tinha receio de ler “O Livro do Desassossego”. Agora a minha vontade aumentou mais do que nunca. Assim como conhecer o habitáculo na rua Coelho Rocha, em Lisboa. ❤
November 30, 2021
Vídeo de opinião:
August 7, 2021
"For Pessoa as for Campos, who in this case served as his creator’s faithful spokesman, the self’s true emotions cannot be intelligibly known, much less expressed, and the self is unreliable, its reality forever fluid, contingent on its changing relations with the surrounding environment. Self-knowledge, or individuality, is, therefore, a matter of attitude, of acting. The great artist, or great anything, is a great pretender."
This is a masterpiece of a biography about a writer who always seems to elude the reader of his true self, despite this fact, Richard Zenith gives an extremely comprehensive look at not just Pessoa's life and mind frame but his social clique and the early 20th-century history of Portugal. No matter how much detail and insight Zenith the reader might struggle to understand Pessoa as a person. He was a writer that can't be explained as simply shy and introverted but as one hesitant to share the full extent of his imaginative and intellectual life. From a young age, he made heteronyms, these fictional personalities based on the many selves of Pessoa, he read the works of Milton, Percy Shelley, and Shakespeare in the original because of his education of the English language in South Africa. He had many languages at his disposal, an active and imaginative mind to become extremely famous in his lifetime like T.S Eliot and James Joyce but Pessoa was a silent genius in a way.
Yes, he did publish some poems but most of his works remained unpublished during his lifetime. He shared his limited but active social with many modernist writers at the same time. Many people encouraged him to publish but he often refused at times or failed to acquire a publisher. Even when one of his works gain recognition in 1934 many critics found him too cerebral and unemotive, mystical due to his interest in astrology and religious cults. He often failed to complete works of fiction and poetry, he refused to have set work hours(he did translations and business letters for a living), get himself in serious debt but didn't he seem panicked at that fact and was never intimate with most of his friends.
In my aim to understand one of my favorite modernist writers,I have come back full circle with a sense that yes I understand him a bit more but he remains alien. His obsession with mystical pracitices, his disregard for ordinary people, and his unwillingness to be practical in most areas of life. In a way, he was all too human, desperate for meaning in a meaningless world, a world becoming secular by the moment, his interest was also shared by WB Yeats and Rilke in his search for religious meaning. I connect to him for I privilege the life of the mind as one of the most things a civilized society can protect if there is no time or money for the life of the mind there is no real freedom, I think he would have agreed with me on that point. I share his love for literature and philosophy, with writers like Percy Shelley and Milton's fascination with language and meaning. The best of writers you have to feel this connection that you both care about the important things of life, a common culture exists among many dead/alive writers and their readers. I hope to reread Pessoa's works(the ones I have access to) and see his works in a new light.
This is a masterpiece of a biography about a writer who always seems to elude the reader of his true self, despite this fact, Richard Zenith gives an extremely comprehensive look at not just Pessoa's life and mind frame but his social clique and the early 20th-century history of Portugal. No matter how much detail and insight Zenith the reader might struggle to understand Pessoa as a person. He was a writer that can't be explained as simply shy and introverted but as one hesitant to share the full extent of his imaginative and intellectual life. From a young age, he made heteronyms, these fictional personalities based on the many selves of Pessoa, he read the works of Milton, Percy Shelley, and Shakespeare in the original because of his education of the English language in South Africa. He had many languages at his disposal, an active and imaginative mind to become extremely famous in his lifetime like T.S Eliot and James Joyce but Pessoa was a silent genius in a way.
Yes, he did publish some poems but most of his works remained unpublished during his lifetime. He shared his limited but active social with many modernist writers at the same time. Many people encouraged him to publish but he often refused at times or failed to acquire a publisher. Even when one of his works gain recognition in 1934 many critics found him too cerebral and unemotive, mystical due to his interest in astrology and religious cults. He often failed to complete works of fiction and poetry, he refused to have set work hours(he did translations and business letters for a living), get himself in serious debt but didn't he seem panicked at that fact and was never intimate with most of his friends.
In my aim to understand one of my favorite modernist writers,I have come back full circle with a sense that yes I understand him a bit more but he remains alien. His obsession with mystical pracitices, his disregard for ordinary people, and his unwillingness to be practical in most areas of life. In a way, he was all too human, desperate for meaning in a meaningless world, a world becoming secular by the moment, his interest was also shared by WB Yeats and Rilke in his search for religious meaning. I connect to him for I privilege the life of the mind as one of the most things a civilized society can protect if there is no time or money for the life of the mind there is no real freedom, I think he would have agreed with me on that point. I share his love for literature and philosophy, with writers like Percy Shelley and Milton's fascination with language and meaning. The best of writers you have to feel this connection that you both care about the important things of life, a common culture exists among many dead/alive writers and their readers. I hope to reread Pessoa's works(the ones I have access to) and see his works in a new light.
December 4, 2023
This is a really difficult book to rate and I think *I* deserve 5 stars for not giving up and having managed to read such a long and detailed (and often repetitive) account of Pessoa's life! It took me about 10 months to read as I picked it up on & off.
On the one hand I learned a LOT about Portugal's politics and social situation in late 19th, early 20th century, about Pessoa's life (I had no clue!), his heteronyms, Orpheu & other artists that crossed his path. But on the other hand, it also bored me to tears with some frequent repetition of Pessoa's trait for procrastination, planning but not execution, his spiritualist sessions, astrology maps...
Generally I don’t like to read translations, but this book was an impossible case. Somehow I thought it would be better to read it in English and have access to Zenith's original text, but with the very few exception of random words or lines, all Pessoa’s poetry in this book has been translated into English (and why not include the original version as well?).
And I've found this comment by Zenith really surprising: ‘Ricardo Reis, who’s as a hard-core monarchist (his last name means ‘kings’)’ - does this mean that all Portuguese people with "Reis" as surname are monarchists?
At some point my feeling was that what Zenith didn’t know, he assumed, created, invented and then wrote. Although I have to give him credit, he did some very very thorough research to put this book together!
Bottom line is that I'm glad I've read this book, but it'll be quite some time (years!) until I pick up another 1000+ pages book!
On the one hand I learned a LOT about Portugal's politics and social situation in late 19th, early 20th century, about Pessoa's life (I had no clue!), his heteronyms, Orpheu & other artists that crossed his path. But on the other hand, it also bored me to tears with some frequent repetition of Pessoa's trait for procrastination, planning but not execution, his spiritualist sessions, astrology maps...
Generally I don’t like to read translations, but this book was an impossible case. Somehow I thought it would be better to read it in English and have access to Zenith's original text, but with the very few exception of random words or lines, all Pessoa’s poetry in this book has been translated into English (and why not include the original version as well?).
And I've found this comment by Zenith really surprising: ‘Ricardo Reis, who’s as a hard-core monarchist (his last name means ‘kings’)’ - does this mean that all Portuguese people with "Reis" as surname are monarchists?
At some point my feeling was that what Zenith didn’t know, he assumed, created, invented and then wrote. Although I have to give him credit, he did some very very thorough research to put this book together!
Bottom line is that I'm glad I've read this book, but it'll be quite some time (years!) until I pick up another 1000+ pages book!
September 5, 2023
"Correcting the proverb 'Better to be alone than in bad company,' he said that for him, an 'absolute individualist,' it was 'better to be alone, even when the company is good.'”
Read
December 29, 2023Before tackling this behemoth, I'd only read , but I'm quite glad I read it before moving on (as I no doubt will do) to other of Pessoa's works.
There's so much in this comprehensive biography that it defies summary. If you're at all interested though, maybe it will whet your appetite to know that in it we get accounts of how Pessoa's lifelong penchant for writing using heteronyms developed from his childhood love of writing stories about the various figures he put in his hand-built models; how he reacted to the early activism of Ghandhi when the latter was still just a lawyer sticking up for Indian migrant workers in Portugal's African colonies; how he was partly responsible for the 50 year long ban on Coca-Cola in Portugal; how he ended up a lifelong (possibly closeted gay) virgin; how he formed a friendship with Aleister Crowley and helped him execute a massive PR hoax; and how he preached the messianic return of of the 16th century Portuguese king Sebastian.
Of course, these are just some of the particularly intriguing highlights from the strange, remarkable life that Pessoa led. What really matters amidst all this is Pessoa's writing, and Zenith does a splendid job of tracing the stories of his numerous heteronyms and the even more numerous texts he wrote using them. Pessoa began so very many pieces and almost never completed anything - a feature of his personality that he tried but failed to alleviate using many different strategies, among them eroticism, self-isolation, hermeticism, astrology, and quack medical treatments. Thus, Zenith has done admirers of Pessoa an incredible service by giving detailed accounts of numberless fragments and bits of writing scrawled on odd pieces of paper alongside the works that have been compiled through the tireless, no doubt tedious work of Pessoa's editors.
But more than this, Zenith manages to shape the details of Pessoa's life into a highly engaging narrative - no small feat for a man whose outward life was about as adventurous as those of Kant and Kierkegaard. And, Zenith places these details in historical context, teaching readers (like me) who are relatively unfamiliar with the Portugal of the late 19th and early 20th centuries a great deal about the political and cultural developments of the period.
There's so much in this comprehensive biography that it defies summary. If you're at all interested though, maybe it will whet your appetite to know that in it we get accounts of how Pessoa's lifelong penchant for writing using heteronyms developed from his childhood love of writing stories about the various figures he put in his hand-built models; how he reacted to the early activism of Ghandhi when the latter was still just a lawyer sticking up for Indian migrant workers in Portugal's African colonies; how he was partly responsible for the 50 year long ban on Coca-Cola in Portugal; how he ended up a lifelong (possibly closeted gay) virgin; how he formed a friendship with Aleister Crowley and helped him execute a massive PR hoax; and how he preached the messianic return of of the 16th century Portuguese king Sebastian.
Of course, these are just some of the particularly intriguing highlights from the strange, remarkable life that Pessoa led. What really matters amidst all this is Pessoa's writing, and Zenith does a splendid job of tracing the stories of his numerous heteronyms and the even more numerous texts he wrote using them. Pessoa began so very many pieces and almost never completed anything - a feature of his personality that he tried but failed to alleviate using many different strategies, among them eroticism, self-isolation, hermeticism, astrology, and quack medical treatments. Thus, Zenith has done admirers of Pessoa an incredible service by giving detailed accounts of numberless fragments and bits of writing scrawled on odd pieces of paper alongside the works that have been compiled through the tireless, no doubt tedious work of Pessoa's editors.
But more than this, Zenith manages to shape the details of Pessoa's life into a highly engaging narrative - no small feat for a man whose outward life was about as adventurous as those of Kant and Kierkegaard. And, Zenith places these details in historical context, teaching readers (like me) who are relatively unfamiliar with the Portugal of the late 19th and early 20th centuries a great deal about the political and cultural developments of the period.
April 28, 2025
The poems were originally written in Portuguese, and I would have preferred them to remain in their original language. As they were translated into English to match the rest of the book, this affect the reading experience and is the only reason for a 4-star rating; otherwise, the book excels in every other aspect.
September 8, 2021
Richard Zenith has given us the ultimate biography of this extraordinary poet. In this vast (1000+ pages) book, Zenith provides not only insights into the development of the poet, but also he delves deeply, with intelligent and incisive research, into the historical, personal, sexual, and creative forces of the Portuguese writing and art community that inspired the poet. For anyone not familiar with Pessoa's work, I would recommend 'The Book of Disquiet' to begin. But this biography is so beautifully and compellingly written, that I'd suggest it be by your side as you read Pessoa. It creates a standard that will be hard to match. But more important, it is the ultimate tribute to the poet, in all his strength and fragility; his quirks and desires. I actually felt I was in Pessoa's world. Every page keeps every successive page turning. Remarkable.
June 3, 2022
Wow! Fernando Pessoa is probably one of the most complex and interesting writers that ever lived! This book is truly a labor of love (it can read rather academic), and it might help if you have some familiarity with Portuguese culture before reading. Pessoa was a poet who wrote under what he labeled "heteronyms..." over 70 of them... as opposed to pseudonyms. His were not just pen names, but characters he developed who had their own birth dates, occupations, astrological charts, styles of writing and philosophies. Creative genius or psychologically troubled? Doesn't much matter... Fernando Pessoa is as unique an individual as you will ever find.
January 26, 2025
Fantastic, very well-written, almost consistently captivating. Revealed a lot of hidden and surprising aspects of Pessoa's life, made me want to be part of the Lisbon literary scene of the early 20th century...would have been interesting to dedicate more on his posthumous acceptance though, it ends kind of awkwardly in a place where he has only published a single book and is not well-known in Portugal and completely unknown in the rest of the world.
Want to read
May 20, 2022
July 10, 2023
Simply an excellent biography.
February 1, 2024
É sempre um prazer ler Pessoa e também o é ler sobre Pessoa; esta biografia é um monumento ao nosso super-Camões.
July 20, 2025
In light of Richard Zenith’s tremendous effort to diligently curate the Portuguese and the World literature great, Fernando Pessoa, the leaves of a life lived illuminate and dazzle in its remarkably kaleidoscopic view. Among its early pages lies a conscious differentiation from his heteronymous writings and not the pseudonymous ones.
It is pertinent that the book opens with all the references to the heteronyms and the amusing argument that Pessoa was the only author to have these many alter egos. It would be an interesting tangent to explore others who may come near, or practice similar writing. As such, the history of literature has "some faint parallels to his performance of multiple authorship" like Yeats, and the Spanish Antonio Machado.
What is unique is the point of view that as Pessoa left behind a treasure trove, in the wooden trunk, these persons / ‘pessoas' are waking up from an apparently deliberate slumber now... and what a life do their voices invest in their unassuming master.
Pessoa claimed that he was just a medium, a “literary executor" who rendered a "phenomenon of splintered authorship", manifesting "a kind of a literary Pompeii" with untold number of curious ideas... unpublished, or yet to be translated in the tongues and sentiments of the world.
Zenith takes all the space and time to let it grow upon the reader how no other posthumous publication :: “expresses with uncanny precision our unuttered feelings of disquiet and existential unsettledness”, just as willingly does he share Pessoa's politics: because of his exploring multiple views, and solidarity with the 'human race'.
It should be understood gradually that a biography of a poet, and that of the poetic calibre of Pessoa is no easy feat, for despite the unearthing of his life’s work, “we know almost nothing about the man. Therein lies the allegory. He left instead , a plethora of dramatic characters" -- as if to extinguish his, or melt his ‘pessoa’ into something bigger. The writer threads this biography with a unique element because, for Zenith, it's a biography of Pessoa's imagination -- which would actually be close to being the most capacious that one could imagine here.
In a particular way, this is also a biography of the city where Pessoa lived and wrote -- we see the post tsunami antiseismic architecture installed by the work of the Marquis de Pombal -- who worked in many areas for the rebuild of Lisbon.
Pessoa gives two accounts of how the heteronymic life began: and around 6 with uncle Cunha's fertile imagination helped -- with languages, a robust cultural activity, and affording a solitary time, to combine and narrate with words--his ever dependable companions. In Durban, and before, coming in contact with the English language, "new world of words opened up to him".
The Historical perspectives that are built because of the contexts that Pessoa's geographical movements cover, deliver for the reader a delightful participation in world history. e.g. the Boers, the Zulus, the Britons in Durban; and someone who’s neither South African nor British, witnessing nothing less consequential than the work that Gandhi is doing, is the eleven years old Fernando.
Pessoa's first serious poem, in English, is about deliberate 'feigning', revealing himself to be the quintessentially representative modernist -- in "making, and remaking reality".
His unfinished essays, such as 'Plausibility of All Philosophies' (one wonders if the unfinished work, that mostly is, is a deliberate conning of the presumed reality... challenging its unnuanced reductiveness, purported or proposed packaged quality of the classics and even the modern pieces of writing) makes one wonder: Is Pessos's work, in a sense, emblematically modernist or postmodernist.
Zenith's deliberations as a biographer attempt to contextualise history, arts, politics across the continents, which is why Gandhi, historical events and various references accommodate Pessoa’s emergence as a writer within the scenarios of these events.
What Zenith particularly remembers to highlight is “Pessoa's capacity to live so much of his mental and emotional life on an imagined and literary plane", resulting in him believing in his heteronyms more than the real people of the world.
Pessoa in the Symbolists' era, reading one of the early Zionists, Nordau's opus, 'Degeneration' shows interestingly his capacity to extract that which is valuable; e.g. Nordau's condemning of psychological deviances, or degeneracy is taken by Pessoa as a testament to some kind of genius (also in reference to Shelley) -- a kind of vindictiveness.
The role of the phase that ‘Degeneration’, ‘Decadence’, and disintegration plays at the turn of the century, allows Pessoa to depart from and construct something new, leading up to his exceptional work, ‘The Book of Disquiet.
What's interesting is that the influences upon Pessoa, would crystallize into his own original literary modernist style. That he would write in multilingual registers, that is, French, Portuguese (poetry to begin with) and English, as well at a time when Pessoa is witness to the decadence and the ‘fin de siecle’ literary output of the other modernists--only accelerates the advent of a global literary modernism of sorts.
That Pessoa, as a Modernist, is imagining his sensibility in relation to those of Wilde, Yeats, and also keeping a distance, reveals much about his vision of dealing with reality not always concretely but abstrusely, or literarily, even philosophically.
The Literary magazine, brought out with the help and impetus provided by Sa-Carneiro is a breath of respite, considering the seemingly never-ending intervals Pessoa would take with everything he began writing or dreamed of publishing.
Zenith achieves quite frequently in this work, a fundamental tendency to maintain Pessoa's sensibility while revealing about his heteronyms, where he is careful to keep the fine balance between explication and abstraction, a property Pessoa had clearly put to practice which would manifest throughout his extensive bibliography.
Over the due course of the unfolding of Pessoa's life, the reader gets aptly facilitated with information on the Modernist ideas and the myriad parallel movements mushrooming, while Pessoa is honing what's been evolving in his mind as ‘the poet extraordinaire'.
One of the highlights of this book is how the writer explores the conditions for the disquietude that Pessoa undergoes or initiates himself; whether it is regarding the problem of him publishing with a reluctance: to publish or not to publish becomes his question … or that he lacked self-discipline ... and feared a certain fame that would differentiate him from the space of the unpublished ... and make him 'more isolated'.
It is then understood how Pessoa harboured the capacity to see from different points of view, invoking the nation's (Portugal's) 'imperial destiny' and an "essentially pagan blood running through its self-asserting culture". And according to Zenith, Pessoa was not eventually interested in either 'swampism, intersectionism, or being avant-garde' ... but "yearned for … a new renaissance, to be spearheaded by Portugal".
The peculiarities with Pessoa have been given their due space; I would not have known about the 'astral world' of Pessoa, the chart making or the astrological predictions, ... And interestingly enough, Pessoa's astral world comes into effect not so much in his practical life as it does in the world of his (heteronymic) selves… Zenith does not eschew from providing a more balanced account, for Pessoa’s politics, his views on racism, slavery, colonialism, ... from Greek culture’s influences.
The expansive scope of the book allows to document or rather curate contemporary Portuguese modern greats and artists, like the modernist painter, Souza-Cardoso and their importance in Portuguese modernism.
While the European modernist contemporaries ie Pessoa, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Pound and others reflect a period full of avant gardist tendencies, what this biography underlines aptly is the ever emerging ebb and flow of modernist conservative voices, styles and beliefs. Pessoa conveys it through his poetry, while others exhibit it in their arts:
"Everlasting remembrance, how briefly you endure!"
Pessoa's magazine projects, enlisted by Zenith, are shown in a brilliant perspective, that is, of building up to his failures, to concretely publish his writing.
Towards the end of his life, Pessoa also invested in fleshing out his heteronyms psychologically, and of all the people Pessoa would share the related insights of their characteristics with the French researcher, student, Pierre Hourcade.
For the concluding part, perhaps the literary legacy of Pessoa, which comes after his demise, is an area the writer could have spent some more words on. It is significant that someone who claims to be not himself, someone who emerges through his trunk and his writings, wordings or as a belief, needs to be contextualised and written on, in the light of his works coming out, emerging as if to be freeing himself as a being that truly belonged to writing, reflecting, and all the wait in between.
It is pertinent that the book opens with all the references to the heteronyms and the amusing argument that Pessoa was the only author to have these many alter egos. It would be an interesting tangent to explore others who may come near, or practice similar writing. As such, the history of literature has "some faint parallels to his performance of multiple authorship" like Yeats, and the Spanish Antonio Machado.
What is unique is the point of view that as Pessoa left behind a treasure trove, in the wooden trunk, these persons / ‘pessoas' are waking up from an apparently deliberate slumber now... and what a life do their voices invest in their unassuming master.
Pessoa claimed that he was just a medium, a “literary executor" who rendered a "phenomenon of splintered authorship", manifesting "a kind of a literary Pompeii" with untold number of curious ideas... unpublished, or yet to be translated in the tongues and sentiments of the world.
Zenith takes all the space and time to let it grow upon the reader how no other posthumous publication :: “expresses with uncanny precision our unuttered feelings of disquiet and existential unsettledness”, just as willingly does he share Pessoa's politics: because of his exploring multiple views, and solidarity with the 'human race'.
It should be understood gradually that a biography of a poet, and that of the poetic calibre of Pessoa is no easy feat, for despite the unearthing of his life’s work, “we know almost nothing about the man. Therein lies the allegory. He left instead , a plethora of dramatic characters" -- as if to extinguish his, or melt his ‘pessoa’ into something bigger. The writer threads this biography with a unique element because, for Zenith, it's a biography of Pessoa's imagination -- which would actually be close to being the most capacious that one could imagine here.
In a particular way, this is also a biography of the city where Pessoa lived and wrote -- we see the post tsunami antiseismic architecture installed by the work of the Marquis de Pombal -- who worked in many areas for the rebuild of Lisbon.
Pessoa gives two accounts of how the heteronymic life began: and around 6 with uncle Cunha's fertile imagination helped -- with languages, a robust cultural activity, and affording a solitary time, to combine and narrate with words--his ever dependable companions. In Durban, and before, coming in contact with the English language, "new world of words opened up to him".
The Historical perspectives that are built because of the contexts that Pessoa's geographical movements cover, deliver for the reader a delightful participation in world history. e.g. the Boers, the Zulus, the Britons in Durban; and someone who’s neither South African nor British, witnessing nothing less consequential than the work that Gandhi is doing, is the eleven years old Fernando.
Pessoa's first serious poem, in English, is about deliberate 'feigning', revealing himself to be the quintessentially representative modernist -- in "making, and remaking reality".
His unfinished essays, such as 'Plausibility of All Philosophies' (one wonders if the unfinished work, that mostly is, is a deliberate conning of the presumed reality... challenging its unnuanced reductiveness, purported or proposed packaged quality of the classics and even the modern pieces of writing) makes one wonder: Is Pessos's work, in a sense, emblematically modernist or postmodernist.
Zenith's deliberations as a biographer attempt to contextualise history, arts, politics across the continents, which is why Gandhi, historical events and various references accommodate Pessoa’s emergence as a writer within the scenarios of these events.
What Zenith particularly remembers to highlight is “Pessoa's capacity to live so much of his mental and emotional life on an imagined and literary plane", resulting in him believing in his heteronyms more than the real people of the world.
Pessoa in the Symbolists' era, reading one of the early Zionists, Nordau's opus, 'Degeneration' shows interestingly his capacity to extract that which is valuable; e.g. Nordau's condemning of psychological deviances, or degeneracy is taken by Pessoa as a testament to some kind of genius (also in reference to Shelley) -- a kind of vindictiveness.
The role of the phase that ‘Degeneration’, ‘Decadence’, and disintegration plays at the turn of the century, allows Pessoa to depart from and construct something new, leading up to his exceptional work, ‘The Book of Disquiet.
What's interesting is that the influences upon Pessoa, would crystallize into his own original literary modernist style. That he would write in multilingual registers, that is, French, Portuguese (poetry to begin with) and English, as well at a time when Pessoa is witness to the decadence and the ‘fin de siecle’ literary output of the other modernists--only accelerates the advent of a global literary modernism of sorts.
That Pessoa, as a Modernist, is imagining his sensibility in relation to those of Wilde, Yeats, and also keeping a distance, reveals much about his vision of dealing with reality not always concretely but abstrusely, or literarily, even philosophically.
The Literary magazine, brought out with the help and impetus provided by Sa-Carneiro is a breath of respite, considering the seemingly never-ending intervals Pessoa would take with everything he began writing or dreamed of publishing.
Zenith achieves quite frequently in this work, a fundamental tendency to maintain Pessoa's sensibility while revealing about his heteronyms, where he is careful to keep the fine balance between explication and abstraction, a property Pessoa had clearly put to practice which would manifest throughout his extensive bibliography.
Over the due course of the unfolding of Pessoa's life, the reader gets aptly facilitated with information on the Modernist ideas and the myriad parallel movements mushrooming, while Pessoa is honing what's been evolving in his mind as ‘the poet extraordinaire'.
One of the highlights of this book is how the writer explores the conditions for the disquietude that Pessoa undergoes or initiates himself; whether it is regarding the problem of him publishing with a reluctance: to publish or not to publish becomes his question … or that he lacked self-discipline ... and feared a certain fame that would differentiate him from the space of the unpublished ... and make him 'more isolated'.
It is then understood how Pessoa harboured the capacity to see from different points of view, invoking the nation's (Portugal's) 'imperial destiny' and an "essentially pagan blood running through its self-asserting culture". And according to Zenith, Pessoa was not eventually interested in either 'swampism, intersectionism, or being avant-garde' ... but "yearned for … a new renaissance, to be spearheaded by Portugal".
The peculiarities with Pessoa have been given their due space; I would not have known about the 'astral world' of Pessoa, the chart making or the astrological predictions, ... And interestingly enough, Pessoa's astral world comes into effect not so much in his practical life as it does in the world of his (heteronymic) selves… Zenith does not eschew from providing a more balanced account, for Pessoa’s politics, his views on racism, slavery, colonialism, ... from Greek culture’s influences.
The expansive scope of the book allows to document or rather curate contemporary Portuguese modern greats and artists, like the modernist painter, Souza-Cardoso and their importance in Portuguese modernism.
While the European modernist contemporaries ie Pessoa, Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Pound and others reflect a period full of avant gardist tendencies, what this biography underlines aptly is the ever emerging ebb and flow of modernist conservative voices, styles and beliefs. Pessoa conveys it through his poetry, while others exhibit it in their arts:
"Everlasting remembrance, how briefly you endure!"
Pessoa's magazine projects, enlisted by Zenith, are shown in a brilliant perspective, that is, of building up to his failures, to concretely publish his writing.
Towards the end of his life, Pessoa also invested in fleshing out his heteronyms psychologically, and of all the people Pessoa would share the related insights of their characteristics with the French researcher, student, Pierre Hourcade.
For the concluding part, perhaps the literary legacy of Pessoa, which comes after his demise, is an area the writer could have spent some more words on. It is significant that someone who claims to be not himself, someone who emerges through his trunk and his writings, wordings or as a belief, needs to be contextualised and written on, in the light of his works coming out, emerging as if to be freeing himself as a being that truly belonged to writing, reflecting, and all the wait in between.
August 2, 2023
This book is encyclopedic in its scope and detail. I understand why. Zenith is trying to encapsulate the life of a man whose mind was expansive and multifarious and who lived in tumultuous, changing times. Zenith is generous in offering the reader a thorough grounding in those times - British/Portuguese relations, the Boer War, the end of the monarchy in Portugal, etc. - and I appreciate the attention Zenith pays to people of note who touched even slightly Pessoa’s life - Gandhi, King Ngungunhane. But it got to be too much.
I understand that the childhood years are formative, but unless you’re their mother, people tend to become so much more interesting once they become adults, and that’s when biographies generally hit their stride, too. Zenith lingers in Pessoa’s childhood, tracking his reading, his writing, explaining briefly the juvenalia of the Brontes, the background of Eugen Sandow, author of a book on bodybuilding that Pessoa read, and so much more. I think Zenith loved his subject and relished the wealth of information available to him, but I wish he’d culled it a little more to fine tune his work.
Tracking every idea Pessoa ever had must have been exhausting, and it seems to have resulted in minute, but lackluster, writing on Zenith’s part. There’s a fine art to telling a life story in such a way that you include all the bits without getting bogged down in them, deepening the reader’s understanding without swamping them in minutia. Zenith doesn’t quite manage it, and I found myself skimming swathes of pages and growing to resent Pessoa and Zenith for not being more interesting.
I understand that the childhood years are formative, but unless you’re their mother, people tend to become so much more interesting once they become adults, and that’s when biographies generally hit their stride, too. Zenith lingers in Pessoa’s childhood, tracking his reading, his writing, explaining briefly the juvenalia of the Brontes, the background of Eugen Sandow, author of a book on bodybuilding that Pessoa read, and so much more. I think Zenith loved his subject and relished the wealth of information available to him, but I wish he’d culled it a little more to fine tune his work.
Tracking every idea Pessoa ever had must have been exhausting, and it seems to have resulted in minute, but lackluster, writing on Zenith’s part. There’s a fine art to telling a life story in such a way that you include all the bits without getting bogged down in them, deepening the reader’s understanding without swamping them in minutia. Zenith doesn’t quite manage it, and I found myself skimming swathes of pages and growing to resent Pessoa and Zenith for not being more interesting.
October 10, 2021
Monumental achievement. I felt touched, infuriated, awestruck, amazed and just incredibly overwhelmed in learning what this "unsuccessful", scattered yet uncompromisingly, ruthlessly, brilliant person was able to produce and accomplish. Pessoa and his biographer have put on full display his evolution and formation as a person who though, in many ways an outsider, still illuminated for those able to discern and appreciate his gifts, universal human fears, desires, shortcomings, the impossibility of existence along with the occasional miracle and taste of something beyond the ordinary and visible, life in all its facets. His offerings to posterity clearly reflect much of what was unique to his time and place but also perennial. His alter egos and ability to shape shift and expound opposing viewpoints through his heteronyms allowed him to create a universe of his own design that defies what we may think of as "normal" and makes this God-like artist a unique and wondrous discovery for this reader. In many ways his standards for what he wanted to accomplish were unmet but one could say several lifetimes would be required to successfully execute the ever expanding project he was constantly building upon. Defying categorization up until his death and beyond it sounds like there may yet be new discoveries among his voluminous papers to analyze and interpret but what Zenith has done here is fantastic and a heroic effort.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 70 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.