The Astur bear Pepe's Page. Fernando Pessoa

The Astur bear Pepe's page.Fernando Pessoa 

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Heteronyms

Fernando Pessoa was four poets in one: Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Alvaro de Campos and himself; each strongly distinct from the others.

One is soon struck by an external difference between their poems.

Alberto Caeiro are free verse; so (though very different in tone) are nearly all those of Alvaro de Campos. Ricardo Reis metrical but unrhymed. Pessoa's own, except a few of the early ones, metrical and closely rhymed.

Concerning their characteristics Jonathan Griffin say, with Fernando Pessoa sayings "noted this way", that:

Caeiro is what Pessoa longed "all the simplicity, all the grandeur the ancients had", all their "possession of things" and it is was Pessoa longed to be and could not. Reis is the nearest that Pessoa could come to being Caeiro. A disciple of Caeiro, Reis works paganism into an ethical doctrine, part epicurean, part stoic, yet conscious, and kept clear of, a human environment conditioned by Christianity. Through Campos, Pessoa saved himself from settling down into Reis. He starts as an extrovert, ends as an introvert; starts determined "to feel all every way there is", and ends up obsessed, asking if he is real. As poet in his own name, Fernando Pessoa matured fully almost as soon as his heteronym poets appeared. Caeiro is ideal; Reis the good second best; Campos doing Pessoa's travelling for him: but no escape from coming home to the real exploring.

N.B. From the introduction to 'Selected Poems' of Fernando Pessoa, by Jonathan Griffin - Penguin Poetry ISBN 0-14-018845-2

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