The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis

by Fernando Pessoa, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator), Patricio Ferrari (Translator)

A bilingual collection of exquisite poems and prose by one of Fernando Pessoa’s most famous “heteronyms,” Ricardo Reis

Here is the fourth in a series of volumes by Fernando Pessoa’s celebrated “heteronyms.” Fernando Pessoa did not simply write under pseudonyms―he created a coterie of imagined authors, each with a fully realized biography, distinct temperament, singular style, and governing philosophy. Among them, Ricardo Reis stands as the most poised and classical presence in this literary an exiled monarchist physician, and avowed Hellenist who answers modern restlessness with lucid form, stoic restraint, and a pagan sense of measure. Reis contemplates the world as if it were a chessboard―serene, exacting, unsentimental. His odes move among jugs of wine, ivy leaves, destiny, and the austere pleasure of self-command, yet beneath their composure runs a quiet existential unease―the intuition that “within us live innumerable others.” Born in the early twentieth century, between the rise of Cubism and the emergence of Dada, Ricardo Reis embodies antiquity within modernity―his paradoxical poise marking a distinctly modern classicism. Based on the definitive Tinta-da-china edition (Portugal) and introduced by Jerónimo Pizarro, this bilingual volume―beautifully translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari―reveals Pessoa’s most measured intellectually rigorous, emotionally contained, and quietly radical in its resistance to the noise of its age. The Complete Works of Ricardo Reis is a must-have collection by Pessoa’s most refined heteronym.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Portugal, Classics, 20th Century, Portuguese Literature

272 pages, Paperback

Published May 5, 2026

About the author

Fernando 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.

Reviews

[jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

the fourth book in new directions’ series of new pessoa translations (after the book of disquiet and the complete works of both alberto caeiro and álvaro de campos), the latest collects the writings of epicurean neo-paganist heteronym ricardo reis (self-exiled monarchist physician). reis’ output is almost entirely poems (typically odes), but also includes some prose writing (with introductions to caeiro, his poetical “master”). composed with stoic resignation and a melancholia perhaps not too distant from bernardo soares’ own in the book of disquiet, reis' poems dwell most often on fate, the gods, being, and nature.

before we lived, the wind would blow,
when there was wind, through these same trees,
and the leaves would stir
no differently than now.

we pass and grow agitated, all in vain.
we make no more noise in the world
than the leaves of the trees
or the wind as it passes.

let us try then with assiduous abandon
to surrender all our efforts to nature
and require no more life
than do the green trees.

we struggle pointlessly to appear great.
apart from us, nothing in the wider world
bows to our greatness
or even serves us.

if here, on the seashore, with just three waves
the sea can wash away my footprint in the sand,
what will it do on that other beach
where saturn is the sea?

*translated from the portuguese by margaret jull costa and patricio ferrari

[Richard Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even with the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I would say this is the best poetry collection I've read, and the one I'd like to keep to my side all throughout my life; these poems console and caress "us like wise old men accustomed to excusing life." My encounter with Reis's poems came much earlier, in different version of the book that collects Pessoa's poems; this new version by the publisher New Direction includes all the poems written by Reis (which is a made-up poet by the real Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa) in addition to his prose works.

Ricardo Reis orients his poems toward two goals: Calm soul (at absolutely all times) and aesthetics of the Greek civilization, which he considers purer than any aesthetics that came afterward.

"Let us love more calmly
Our own uncertain life."

"Calm, solemnly transient,
Given over to things and to my own life,
I seek not to live among the stars
But simply to live with myself."

His philosophy could be said in this one phrase:
"It is enough that life be simply life
And that I live it."

There is nothing abstruse about his poetry nor his philosophy. His thoughts as expressed in his simple poems caress us (and yes, that is the appropriate verb, caress); they imply that by simply existing, we've done all we could've done. The only important thing is to stay calm and embrace your life. He says, "If that's what happened, that is what's right."

The value is in the action taken, not the consequences. We need grace to accept consequences as they come. There is a higher power, conveniently called Destiny or sometimes God, and our stubborn resistance to the idea, as taught in a typical secular society, does not make us fare better. Our agency lies only in how we accept what happens, whether calmly or revoltingly. One should always choose calm.

[Eric Dovigi]

I discovered Fernando Pessoa et al. this year, and I am so excited. This kind of thing only happens to us a few times in our lives as readers. I feel a kindred soul. We are all in a peculiar quest to understand the self and identity in this "post-authentic" world, and we can look to Pessoa--a writer who lived through a similar era of soul-search--for how to navigate this impossible task with creativity and liveliness. So far, of all the heteronyms, Ricardo Reis is my favorite, and I think the best. He feels the least like a made-up character and the most like a facet of Pessoa's own taste and aesthetic judgment. Some of the poems will stay with me for my whole life.

"Countless lives inhabit us.
I donʾt know, when I think or feel,
Who is thinking or feeling.
I am merely the place
Where thinking and feeling happen."

[Robert Reinhard · Rating 4.75 out of 5]

another fully embodied oeuvre of Pessoa's created heteronym writers, wonderful poems and some prose of a consciousness melded with the Greek traditions and gods. The poems mostly odes value the living of life - not as "seize" the day but as with the present of the day and aware of the gods who live it calmly. Pessoa says quite correctly that monotheism is a decline of civilization; a full culture requires a multiplicity of gods and their imaginative aspects.

[tien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book, I have visions of standing amongst sugar cane and lying down in the sand with my head on someone’s stomach being lulled to sleep. The poems in this I like I love, but for the most part I was just in a trance numbly reading one after another.

[Craig Kimmerling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arrived bent out of shape, but at least the damage was not from my trunk. Why get bent out of shape over dreams?

[Colton · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

All Pessoa is worthwhile and beautiful.