Fernando Pessoa and Antero de Quental (with Shakespeare in between)

Fernando Pessoa and Antero de Quental (with Shakespeare in between) ONESIMO T. ALMEIDA It is rather ironic that Fernando Pessoa, undoubtedly a master of irony, may now be read in such a light as to appear that nothing he wrote can be taken at face value. Viewed now as a postmodern avant la lettre, it has become fashionable to read him as someone who feigns at all times. Postmodernists enjoy ambiguity, metonymy, irony, playfulness, indeterminacy, contingency, scepticism, fragmentation, relativity, and they have influenced contemporary readings of the Portuguese modernist to such an extent that to take a statement about a pipe as actually being about a pipe is met with suspicion. Actually, if one looks attentively, a myriad of Pessoa's writings seem to lack any irony at all. If his heteronymous prose does in fact raise questions as to the depth of his commitment to many of his beliefs because, as he himself put it, 'Sinto crenc;as que nao tenho [•.• J Sin to-me multiplo. Sou como urn quarto com inumeros espe1hos fantasticos que torcem para reflexoes falsas uma unica anterior realidade que nao esm em nenhuma e esta em todas' ['I feel beliefs that I do not have [".J I feel multiplied. I am like a room with innumerable fantastic mirrors twist false reflections towards a single a that is nowhere and everywhere']' 1 it is far from demonstrable nothing written by the poet can be understood literally. Even may be inclined to agree with Antonio Sousa Ribeiro's overview that can find in Pessoa's writings no unified perspective; instead we witness the experimentation with a ~hole spectrum of concurrent views, following the logic of multiperspectivism facilitated by the play of voices inherent in the heteronymic "drama em gente" ["peopled drama"]', 2 there is more unity there than meets the eye, as Ribeiro himself showed regarding Pessoa's views on the empires of Germany (which he despised) and of Portugal (the fifth empire-to-be that he was to announce and celebrate). There are indeed many more instances of solid positions from which Pessoa never vacillates or has doubts. 3 Many of the orthonymic writings reveal a high 1 Fernando Pessoa, intimas e de A uto-Interpretllfao, ed. by do Prado Coelho (Lisbon: 1966), p. 93. All translations, unless UUICIW"C Nielson. 2 Ant6nio Sousa Ribeiro. 'Fernando Pessoa and Germany'. Portugup.se Studies, 21 (2005), (p. acldnessed this topic in an essay revisiting the scholarship on MlmSagem, upon which

Par/ugue;;< Studies, Vol. '4, No.2, 2008 © Modern Humanities Research Association

52

ONESIMO T. ALMEIDA

PESSOA, ANTERO AND SHAKESPEARE IN BETWEEN

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of consistency and coherence, as I have tried to demonstrate in a variety of writi.ngs on Pesso~'s construction .of M~sagem.4 ~~e fa.ct t?at a tremendous dIscrepancy eXIsted between hIs belrefs and hIS InClInatIOns, onvillingness to act on them, given his insurmountable aboulia, is another matter. In fact, it was not irony that kept him from action. Consider, for instance, the many references Pessoa makes to

A few paragraphs earlier he had explained:

Shakespeare, who is almost an obsession of his. It is no violence to Pessoa's texts to identify a transparent reverence for the English bard, a deep and persistent admiration. Moreover, Pessoa's perspective on, and evaluation of, Shakespeare's works does not change over time, insofar as Pessoa feels he is going to surpass him. He may look at from different angles, but the attitude towards the t:nglish poet, as well as his appraisal of his work, is unaltered until the end of his life. From many possible examples, we may cite the following:

For him, the two greatest poets in the world are Homer and Shakespeare: