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Forever Someone Else
It was only many years after his death that Portugal's Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) came to be recognized as one of Europe's greatest modern poets and prose writers.
Born in Lisbon, he spent nine years of his childhood in South Africa and then returned to his native city, where he lived an outwardly quiet and modest life. But his inward, creative life was volcanic, giving rise to a vast and largely fragmentary output that includes poetry, fiction, dramatic works, writings on sociology, economics and religion, political commentary, astrological charts, and esoteric speculations. His most stunning prose work is The Book of Disquiet, a semi-fictional diary published for the first time in 1982. Although Pessoa published a number of his finest poems - such as "The Tobacco Shop," "Autopsychography" and "Portuguese Sea" - in magazines and in a book titled Message (1934), many others came to light posthumously, as family members and researchers sifted through the poet's generous legacy to the world: a trunk containing thousands of unpublished manuscripts. Forever Someone Else offers an ample selection of the poetry written by Pessoa under his own name and in the names of the personas he called "heteronyms": Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos. Unusual not only for writing under different names but also for adopting dissimilar points of view and radically diverse literary styles, Fernando Pessoa, of all poets from all ages, was like no one else.
Richard Zenith, born in Washington DC, is a longtime resident of Lisbon, where he works as a writer, translator, and researcher. He is responsible for many editions of Fernando Pessoa's works in Portugal, including the Livro do Desassossego (Assírio & Alvim, 1998; 10th ed. 2012). His translations of Pessoa's poetry and prose have won prizes in the United States and Great Britain.
Born in Lisbon, he spent nine years of his childhood in South Africa and then returned to his native city, where he lived an outwardly quiet and modest life. But his inward, creative life was volcanic, giving rise to a vast and largely fragmentary output that includes poetry, fiction, dramatic works, writings on sociology, economics and religion, political commentary, astrological charts, and esoteric speculations. His most stunning prose work is The Book of Disquiet, a semi-fictional diary published for the first time in 1982. Although Pessoa published a number of his finest poems - such as "The Tobacco Shop," "Autopsychography" and "Portuguese Sea" - in magazines and in a book titled Message (1934), many others came to light posthumously, as family members and researchers sifted through the poet's generous legacy to the world: a trunk containing thousands of unpublished manuscripts. Forever Someone Else offers an ample selection of the poetry written by Pessoa under his own name and in the names of the personas he called "heteronyms": Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos. Unusual not only for writing under different names but also for adopting dissimilar points of view and radically diverse literary styles, Fernando Pessoa, of all poets from all ages, was like no one else.
Richard Zenith, born in Washington DC, is a longtime resident of Lisbon, where he works as a writer, translator, and researcher. He is responsible for many editions of Fernando Pessoa's works in Portugal, including the Livro do Desassossego (Assírio & Alvim, 1998; 10th ed. 2012). His translations of Pessoa's poetry and prose have won prizes in the United States and Great Britain.
319 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2008
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188 people want to read
About the author
Fernando Pessoa
1,251 books6,361 followersFernando António Nogueira Pessoa was a poet and writer.
It is sometimes said that the four greatest Portuguese poets of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. The statement is possible since Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos who wrote in styles completely different from his own. In fact Pessoa wrote under dozens of names, but Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. He dubbed them ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms, since they were not false names but “other names”, belonging to distinct literary personalities. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry. Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis also signed dozens of pages of prose.
The critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the twentieth century, along with Pablo Neruda.
It is sometimes said that the four greatest Portuguese poets of modern times are Fernando Pessoa. The statement is possible since Pessoa, whose name means ‘person’ in Portuguese, had three alter egos who wrote in styles completely different from his own. In fact Pessoa wrote under dozens of names, but Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos were – their creator claimed – full-fledged individuals who wrote things that he himself would never or could never write. He dubbed them ‘heteronyms’ rather than pseudonyms, since they were not false names but “other names”, belonging to distinct literary personalities. Not only were their styles different; they thought differently, they had different religious and political views, different aesthetic sensibilities, different social temperaments. And each produced a large body of poetry. Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis also signed dozens of pages of prose.
The critic Harold Bloom referred to him in the book The Western Canon as the most representative poet of the twentieth century, along with Pablo Neruda.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 4, 2024
kui mõistaksime kõik nii nagu Pessoa, siis maailm oleks helgem koht
”I know very well that in everyone’s childhood there was a garden, / Private or public, or belonging to the neighbor. / I know very well that our playing made us its owner / And that sadness belongs to today.”
”I know very well that in everyone’s childhood there was a garden, / Private or public, or belonging to the neighbor. / I know very well that our playing made us its owner / And that sadness belongs to today.”
September 14, 2015
How does one man become three of Portugal's most important twentieth century poets? Judging from this book, it begins with an abiding obsession for other ways of seeing, then is nurtured by a near-constant struggle with questions of true identity, and culminates with an overflow of thoughts and feelings that contradict rather than confirm his sense of himself. Pessoa was a schizophrenic, or a genius, or a poet or philosopher or all of these things and none. This book curates a collection of works, skillfully translated, that play out the drama of his evolving selfhood while delivering poignant insights, sophisticated meditations, painful lamentations, and lush imagery. In its pages, fans of poetry, philosophy, and psychology will find plenty to occupy them.
The book includes works by Pessoa's three most famous heteronyms--Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos--as well as a smattering of Pessoa's original poems, some of which were written in English. A sweet Lisboan merchant of candied flowers and exotic nuts told me that Alberto Caeiro was her favorite heteronym, blushing happily over his romantic pastoral poems, and I share her tastes. An ache to touch the real world lurks behind these poems, to find truth in grass and trees and animals, unfiltered by concepts or abstractions, and the poems periodically break through intellectual barriers in ways few poems seem to manage or even attempt in the twentieth century. "The Keeper of Sheep," "The Shepherd in Love," and "I enjoy the fields without paying them any notice" are particular standouts.
Ricardo Reis is also delightful, just as capable of lyricism as Caeiro but more philosophical, and more anxious about identity. He seems to have been a repository for some of Pessoa's own anxiety over identity, for many of Reis' poems wrestle straightforwardly with questions about who he is. Some of these poems read like resolutions or mission statements, as if Pessoa is trying to reassure himself there is a way forward through the dizzying valences of selfhood he found himself wandering between. Alvaro de Campos is my least favorite, despite his uncanny imitations of Walt Whitman's voice and style. It's disorienting to see Whitman's celebratory voice trained upon cold machinery and technology, which de Campos adored being a Naval engineer.
Pessoa's original poems felt weakest, though still fascinating. His English poems in particular cleave strongly to rhythm and meter and rhyme, sacrificing concrete language, over-relying upon abstractions in their quest to be philosophically poignant. But let's be clear: even the least works of Pessoa rival some of the strongest poems of our time, and I'll happily return to this book in the years to come.
The book includes works by Pessoa's three most famous heteronyms--Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos--as well as a smattering of Pessoa's original poems, some of which were written in English. A sweet Lisboan merchant of candied flowers and exotic nuts told me that Alberto Caeiro was her favorite heteronym, blushing happily over his romantic pastoral poems, and I share her tastes. An ache to touch the real world lurks behind these poems, to find truth in grass and trees and animals, unfiltered by concepts or abstractions, and the poems periodically break through intellectual barriers in ways few poems seem to manage or even attempt in the twentieth century. "The Keeper of Sheep," "The Shepherd in Love," and "I enjoy the fields without paying them any notice" are particular standouts.
Ricardo Reis is also delightful, just as capable of lyricism as Caeiro but more philosophical, and more anxious about identity. He seems to have been a repository for some of Pessoa's own anxiety over identity, for many of Reis' poems wrestle straightforwardly with questions about who he is. Some of these poems read like resolutions or mission statements, as if Pessoa is trying to reassure himself there is a way forward through the dizzying valences of selfhood he found himself wandering between. Alvaro de Campos is my least favorite, despite his uncanny imitations of Walt Whitman's voice and style. It's disorienting to see Whitman's celebratory voice trained upon cold machinery and technology, which de Campos adored being a Naval engineer.
Pessoa's original poems felt weakest, though still fascinating. His English poems in particular cleave strongly to rhythm and meter and rhyme, sacrificing concrete language, over-relying upon abstractions in their quest to be philosophically poignant. But let's be clear: even the least works of Pessoa rival some of the strongest poems of our time, and I'll happily return to this book in the years to come.
January 18, 2025
I just got back from honeymooning in Portugal and have developed a healthy obsession with all things Portuguese. I was delighted to find this volume of Portugal’s most famous poet translated into English with both languages side by side. But this experience turned out to be far stranger than I expected.
Fernando Pessoa was perhaps most notable for his use of “heteronyms” - not just pen names, but whole alternate personalities with histories and literary styles all their own. This book is a survey of the most famous of these. There’s Alberto Caeiro, the naive pastoralist who seeks a visceral experience of nature and of village life free from the tyranny of rational thought. We have Ricardo Reis, the depressive philosopher (a Porto native who emigrated to Brazil, if we are to believe Pessoa’s biography). And then we meet Alvaro De Campos, a petulant romantic whose early striving to “feel everything in every way,” gradually collapses inward into self-pity and longing for release.
Of the three heteronyms, Caeiro’s poems are the most beautiful. “The Shepherd In Love,” is gorgeously plainspoken, easily moving even a poetry neophyte like myself to tears, although he confesses in another poem that he never actually kept any sheep (a fiction within a fiction?) De Campos has the most exciting style. His manic invocations and musical repeated phrases almost prefigure the Beats who would come a few decades later. Ultimately, however, his perspective becomes tiresome and self-obsessed.
Where does this leave Pessoa himself? The book’s final section is devoted to the poems he wrote under his own name. In these selections, we see an almost singleminded obsession with questions of identity, of the plurality of the soul. It becomes apparent that his use of the heteronyms is not just a quirk of literary style, but indeed a lifelong battle with the question of perspective, or even a genuine case of multiple personalities. The great irony of Pessoa’s work is that his poems ring most true when he is being someone else, that the wholeness of being required to move the spirit only existed in Pessoa’s alter egos, while he himself was too fragmentary an individual to ever form a cohesive voice.
These are lovely, challenging, bewitching works if one is prepared to really dive into Pessoa’s psyche and accept that his alternate personalities are in some sense “real.” I finished the book with the feeling that I adore Caeiro’s poems, but don’t much care for Pessoa’s, which seems absurd on the face of it were it not for the fact that Pessoa himself would probably agree. He warns us after all in his ‘Autopsychography,’ “A poet is a feigner/ Who’s so good at his act/ He even feigns the pain/ Of pain he feels in fact”
Fernando Pessoa was perhaps most notable for his use of “heteronyms” - not just pen names, but whole alternate personalities with histories and literary styles all their own. This book is a survey of the most famous of these. There’s Alberto Caeiro, the naive pastoralist who seeks a visceral experience of nature and of village life free from the tyranny of rational thought. We have Ricardo Reis, the depressive philosopher (a Porto native who emigrated to Brazil, if we are to believe Pessoa’s biography). And then we meet Alvaro De Campos, a petulant romantic whose early striving to “feel everything in every way,” gradually collapses inward into self-pity and longing for release.
Of the three heteronyms, Caeiro’s poems are the most beautiful. “The Shepherd In Love,” is gorgeously plainspoken, easily moving even a poetry neophyte like myself to tears, although he confesses in another poem that he never actually kept any sheep (a fiction within a fiction?) De Campos has the most exciting style. His manic invocations and musical repeated phrases almost prefigure the Beats who would come a few decades later. Ultimately, however, his perspective becomes tiresome and self-obsessed.
Where does this leave Pessoa himself? The book’s final section is devoted to the poems he wrote under his own name. In these selections, we see an almost singleminded obsession with questions of identity, of the plurality of the soul. It becomes apparent that his use of the heteronyms is not just a quirk of literary style, but indeed a lifelong battle with the question of perspective, or even a genuine case of multiple personalities. The great irony of Pessoa’s work is that his poems ring most true when he is being someone else, that the wholeness of being required to move the spirit only existed in Pessoa’s alter egos, while he himself was too fragmentary an individual to ever form a cohesive voice.
These are lovely, challenging, bewitching works if one is prepared to really dive into Pessoa’s psyche and accept that his alternate personalities are in some sense “real.” I finished the book with the feeling that I adore Caeiro’s poems, but don’t much care for Pessoa’s, which seems absurd on the face of it were it not for the fact that Pessoa himself would probably agree. He warns us after all in his ‘Autopsychography,’ “A poet is a feigner/ Who’s so good at his act/ He even feigns the pain/ Of pain he feels in fact”
August 29, 2022
poesie meravigliose da cui è difficile staccarsi
July 27, 2017
Gift bought from Bertrand Bookstore, the oldest operating bookstore in the world <3
Interesting how each pseudonym has such different writing styles:
1. Very philosophical and introspective
2. Emotional, full of wisdom
3. Very detailed and descriptive, good at illustrating a mood or painting a picture and making you feel like you're in a particular scene
4. Resigned and fatalistic
Interesting how each pseudonym has such different writing styles:
1. Very philosophical and introspective
2. Emotional, full of wisdom
3. Very detailed and descriptive, good at illustrating a mood or painting a picture and making you feel like you're in a particular scene
4. Resigned and fatalistic
May 30, 2024
An amazing poetry collection which I cannot recommend enough. Absolutely adored the way in which Pessoa explored different poetry styles through different pseudonyms. I highly recommend this.
April 19, 2015
When I was in Lisbon in January this was the only thing by Pessoa that I could find in English. I've been meaning to read his BOOK OF DISQUIET for years, and that's what I'd been looking for, but I'm glad that I found this collection of his poems instead. I've folded the corners of many pages and in the last three months I've read some of these poems enough times that they've already become familiar and classic and comforting to me.
While I was on my trip, Huseyin sent me the text of "The Tobacco Shop". It was a good coincidence since he happened to find the poem online and knew I would like it on the same day I bought the book, without either of us having mentioned Pessoa to each other yet. Since then we've talked about that poem and several of the others, and I like knowing that this book will always remind me of him.
Pessoa wrote under both his own name and at least four other "heteronyms" which he developed distinct personalities for, and who wrote letters to each other and reviewed each other's work. My favorite of his personas is probably Alberto Caeiro, who wrote slightly shorter poems than the others, and whose collection "The Keeper of Sheep" opens with the lines I never kept sheep, / but it's as if I'd kept them. Annoyingly, the book ends with some of the weakest poems, the ones originally written in English and some boring odes to Portuguese sailors, but I love a lot of what comes before.
I'll always be the one who waited for a door to open in a wall without doors
And sang the song of the Infinite in a chicken coop
And heard the voice of God in a covered well.
While I was on my trip, Huseyin sent me the text of "The Tobacco Shop". It was a good coincidence since he happened to find the poem online and knew I would like it on the same day I bought the book, without either of us having mentioned Pessoa to each other yet. Since then we've talked about that poem and several of the others, and I like knowing that this book will always remind me of him.
Pessoa wrote under both his own name and at least four other "heteronyms" which he developed distinct personalities for, and who wrote letters to each other and reviewed each other's work. My favorite of his personas is probably Alberto Caeiro, who wrote slightly shorter poems than the others, and whose collection "The Keeper of Sheep" opens with the lines I never kept sheep, / but it's as if I'd kept them. Annoyingly, the book ends with some of the weakest poems, the ones originally written in English and some boring odes to Portuguese sailors, but I love a lot of what comes before.
I'll always be the one who waited for a door to open in a wall without doors
And sang the song of the Infinite in a chicken coop
And heard the voice of God in a covered well.
I smoked my life. How uncertain
All I saw or read! And all
The world is a great open book
That smiles at me in an unknown tongue.
September 18, 2022
Very happy to discover Pessoa. Perhaps, if not for my trip to Lisbon, I would forever have missed him.
It’s mind-boggling how versatile he is. His multiple literary personalities are so different and so good, each of them. It’s like the same feeling gets in different hands and is moulded according to a different mind into a different form and transforms into something very distinctive.
What I got from this introduction to Pessoa: we are nothing, we are not important, it is important to live, to feel, to see, to experience.
It’s mind-boggling how versatile he is. His multiple literary personalities are so different and so good, each of them. It’s like the same feeling gets in different hands and is moulded according to a different mind into a different form and transforms into something very distinctive.
What I got from this introduction to Pessoa: we are nothing, we are not important, it is important to live, to feel, to see, to experience.
November 18, 2022
I really liked this edition. With the original Portuguese on one page and the English on the other, it was nice to the translation. This edition also compiled the works of the three poets that Pessoa was/is (who knows how to explain this) and I liked how they included Pessoa's contemporaries views on each poet as well as Pessoa's own view of that identity in the introduction of each section for the "new poet."
Yeah, I just really liked these poems. Tobacco Shop was probably my favorite poem as a whole.
Yeah, I just really liked these poems. Tobacco Shop was probably my favorite poem as a whole.
December 3, 2023
I am an avid fan of Fernando Pessoa and this book has served as an introduction to the author for my peers that cannot speak Portuguese. In my opinion the selection of poems is quite good and diverse but the translation could be much better, sometimes lacking imagery that could have been portrayed. I imagine it is because simplicity was prioritised during the process, allowing for verses maintain a certain agreeable length.
December 27, 2022
Ser outro constantemente
Por a alma naõ ter raízes
De viver de ver somente!
Picked up Pessoa in Lisbon yesterday. He writes that he wants to feel all things in every way. He certainly made me feel all things — in many ways! A worthy companion for any traveler.
Por a alma naõ ter raízes
De viver de ver somente!
Picked up Pessoa in Lisbon yesterday. He writes that he wants to feel all things in every way. He certainly made me feel all things — in many ways! A worthy companion for any traveler.
March 16, 2018
Nice selection of poems, overall a great introduction to Pessoa's aesthetics and various poetic personas.
I also loved that the edition is bilingual.
I also loved that the edition is bilingual.
August 29, 2018
To travel! To change countries!
To be forever someone else,
With a soul that has no roots,
Living only off what it sees!
To be forever someone else,
With a soul that has no roots,
Living only off what it sees!
December 1, 2019
so many bangers. Favorite probably:
I'm beginning to know myself. I don't exist.
I'm the gap between what I'd like to be and what others have made me
I'm beginning to know myself. I don't exist.
I'm the gap between what I'd like to be and what others have made me
June 20, 2021
“To travel! To change countries! To be forever someone else, with a soul that has no roots, living only off what it sees.”
July 15, 2022
not for me
October 3, 2023
bought it in portugal
November 5, 2025
I think either the translation was not very well or I could not understand the Pessoa logic.
December 4, 2019
I had never heard of Pessoa before I came across this in a bookstore in Porto, Portugal last year. I love bilingual editions. I don’t know Portuguese, but I have enough Spanish and French to get the feeling of the rhymes and rhythm. Having the English on the next page is perfect to get the meaning.
Segue o teu destino,
Rega as tuas plantas,
Ama as tuas rosas
O resto é a sombra
De árvores alheias.
Follow your destiny,
Water your plants,
Love your roses.
The rest is shadows
Of unknown trees.
Segue o teu destino,
Rega as tuas plantas,
Ama as tuas rosas
O resto é a sombra
De árvores alheias.
Follow your destiny,
Water your plants,
Love your roses.
The rest is shadows
Of unknown trees.
October 13, 2019
Long standing guest of my bedside table.
Pessoa hiç gitmesin istiyorum çünkü.
Pessoa hiç gitmesin istiyorum çünkü.
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July 7, 2024Álvaro de Campos >>>
July 16, 2013
Touching, evocative, musical, bound to his roots, sensual... divine.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews