15 Best Poems by Fernando Pessoa and his Heteronyms

Fernando Pessoa is unquestionably one of the masters of universal literature. Considered, alongside Camões, as the most important writer in Portuguese literature, Pessoa collected heteronyms, through which he showed all his genius as a poet that did not fit in himself; he needed overflows to give vent to his art. In addition to having produced in Portuguese, he also wrote in English, given that he lived, during his childhood and adolescence, in South Africa.

heteronyms

The heteronyms are the trademark of the multiple-faced poet. All of them have biographies (each of their characters had their own story, with the right to date of birth, city birth, profession, affiliation and date of death, with the exception of Ricardo Reis, whose date of death was not defined by the poet) and styles own. It was through the heteronymy phenomenon that the writer showed his versatility and immense creativity, characteristics that gave Pessoa the fame of an eccentric poet and mysterious, which is understandable, since never before in the history of literature has a writer shown such skill in building literary characters so believable.

About Fernando Pessoa

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa was born in Lisbon, Portugal, on June 13, 1888. His name is associated with the first phase of Portuguese Modernism, also known as Orphism, a movement that he helped found alongside writers such as Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Almada Negreiros. Although he had a fruitful literary career, the only book of poetry in Portuguese published in his lifetime was Mensagem, in 1934. He was literate in English, due to the period he lived in South Africa (the diplomatic career of the stepfather moved the family to Durban), so most of his books were written in that language. He was also a translator, and among the important authors he translated are Lord Byron, Shakespeare and Edgar Alla Poe. He died in his hometown on November 30, 1935, aged 47.

His best-known poems were signed by his main heteronyms: Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, as well as a semi-heteronym, Bernardo Soares, considered the alter ego of writer. Under the heteronym Bernardo Soares, he wrote the fragments that were later collected in O Livro do Desassego, one of his most important works. So that you know the poems of the orthonym and also of the heteronyms of one of the most cialis 20 mg important authors of the Portuguese language, the School Education selected 15 poems by Fernando Pessoa for you to immerse yourself in the genius and inventiveness of this magnificent writer.

Fernando Pessoa's Best Poems

Fragment of the poem Tabacaria, signed by the heteronym Álvaro de Campos.

1. Poem: Tobacconist – Fernando Pessoa

Tobacconist

I'm nothing.
I will never be anything.
I can't want to be anything.
Apart from that, I have all the dreams of the world in me.
My bedroom windows,
From my room to one of the millions in the world.
that no one knows who he is
(And if they knew who it is, what would they know?),
You come to the mystery of a street constantly crossed by people,
To a street inaccessible to all thoughts,
Real, impossibly real, certain, unknowingly certain,
With the mystery of things beneath stones and beings,
With death putting moisture on the walls
and white hair in men,
With Destiny driving the wagon of everything down the road of nothing.

I am defeated today, as if I knew the truth.
I am lucid today, as if I were about to die,
And no longer had a brotherhood with things
Otherwise a farewell, becoming this house and this side of the street
The row of carriages on a train, and a whistled departure
From inside my head,
And a jolt of my nerves and a creak of bones on the way out.

Today I am perplexed, like someone who thought and found and forgot.
Today I am torn between the loyalty I owe
To the Tabacaria across the street, like a real thing on the outside,
And the feeling that everything is a dream, like a real thing inside.

I failed at everything.
As I had no aims, maybe everything was nothing.
The learning they gave me,
I climbed down from it through the back window of the house.

1. Poem: When I didn't have you - Fernando Pessoa

When I didn't have you

When I didn't have you
He loved Nature as a calm monk loves Christ.
Now I love nature
Like a calm monk to the Virgin Mary,
Religiously, in my own way, as before,
But in another, more moving and close way…
I see the rivers better when I go with you
Through the fields to the banks of the rivers;
Sitting by your side watching the clouds
I fix them better —
You did not take Nature from me...
Thou hast changed Nature...
You brought Nature to my feet,
Because you exist I see her better, but the same,
Because you love me, I love her in the same way, but more,
Because you chose me to have you and love you,
My eyes stared at her longer
About all things.
I don't regret what I once was
Because I still am.

I just regret that I didn't love you once.

1. Poem: Love Is a Company – Fernando Pessoa

Love Is a Company

Love is a company.
I no longer know how to walk alone along the paths,
Because I can no longer walk alone.
A visible thought makes me walk faster
And see less, and at the same time really enjoy seeing everything.
Even her absence is something that is with me.
And I like her so much that I don't know how to want her.

If I don't see her, I imagine her and I'm strong like tall trees.
But if I see her I tremble, I don't know what has become of what I feel in her absence.
All of me is any force that abandons me.
All of reality looks at me like a sunflower with her face in the middle.

1. Poem: Poem in a straight line – Fernando Pessoa

straight line poem

I've never known anyone who'd been beaten up.
All my acquaintances have been champions at everything.

And I, so often base, so often swine, so often vile,
I so often irresponsibly parasite,
Inexcusably dirty.

I, who so often have not had the patience to take a bath,
I, who so many times have been ridiculous, absurd,
That I've publicly wrapped my feet in tag rugs,
That I have been grotesque, petty, submissive and arrogant,
That I have suffered trousseau and silence,
That when I haven't been silent, I've been even more ridiculous;
I, who have been comical to hotel maids,
I, who have felt the wink of the freight boys,
I, who have made financial shame, borrowed without paying,
I, who, when the time for the punch came, have been crouching down
Out of the possibility of the punch;
I, who have suffered the anguish of ridiculous little things,
I find that I have no partner in all this in this world.

Everyone I know who talks to me
Never had a ridiculous act, never suffered trousseau,
He was never but a prince—all of them princes—in his life...
I wish I could hear someone's human voice
That he confessed not a sin, but an infamy;
Let it count, not violence, but cowardice!
No, they are all the Ideal, if I hear them and speak to me.

Who is there in this wide world that confesses to me that he was once vile?
O princes, my brothers,

Arre, I'm sick of demigods!
Where is there people in the world?
So it's just me who's vile and wrong on this earth?
Could the women not have loved them,
They may have been betrayed — but never ridiculous!
And I, who have been ridiculous without being betrayed,
How can I talk to my superiors without hesitating?
I, who have been vile, literally vile,
Vile in the petty and infamous sense of vileness.

1. Poem: I don't know if it's love you have, or love you pretend - Fernando Pessoa

I don't know if it's the love you have, or the love you pretend

I don't know if it's love you have, or love you pretend,
What do you give me? Give it to me. That's enough for me.
Since I am not for a while,
Be me young by mistake.
Little the gods give us, and the little is false.
However, if they give it, false as it may be, the gift
It's true. Accepted,
I close my eyes: it's enough.
What else do I want?

1. Poem: The keeper of flocks – Fernando Pessoa

the herd keeper

I never kept flocks,
But it's like you keep them.
My soul is like a shepherd,
Know the wind and the sun
And walks by the hand of the Seasons
Next and look.
All the peace of nature without people
Come and sit next to me.
But I get blue like a sunset
To our imagination,
When it gets cold at the bottom of the plain
And feel the night enter
Like a butterfly through the window.

But my sadness is quiet
Because it's natural and fair
And it is what must be in the soul
When you already think it exists
And the hands pick flowers without her noticing.

Like a rattling noise
Beyond the bend in the road,
My thoughts are happy.
I only feel sorry to know that they are happy,
Because if you didn't know,
Instead of being happy and sad,
They would be happy and content.

Thinking is uncomfortable like walking in the rain
When the wind grows and it seems that it rains more.

I have no ambitions or desires
Being a poet is not my ambition
It's my way of being alone.

And if I wish sometimes
For imagining, being a little lamb
(Or be the whole herd
To walk spread across the hillside
Being a lot of happy things at the same time),

It's just because I feel what I write at sunset,
Or when a cloud passes its hand over the light
And a silence runs through the grass outside.

1. Poem: Love – Fernando Pessoa

Love

LOVE, when it reveals itself,
Unable to reveal.
It feels good to look at her,
But he doesn't know how to talk to you.

Who wants to say what he feels
She doesn't know what to say.
Spoken: It seems like it lies...
Cala: seems to forget…

Ah, but if she guessed,
If she could hear the look,
And if one look was enough for you
To know that they are loving her!

But those who are sorry, shut up;
Who wants to say how much you feel
It is without soul or speech,
Be alone, entirely!

But if this can tell you
What I dare not tell you,
I won't have to talk to you anymore
Because I'm telling you...

1. Poem: Maritime Ode – Fernando Pessoa

maritime ode

Alone, on the deserted pier, this summer morning,
I look to the side of the bar, I look to the Indefinite,
I look and I am glad to see,
Small, black and clear, a steamer coming in.
It comes very far, crisp, classic in its own way.
It leaves the empty fringe of its smoke in the distant air behind it.
It comes in, and the morning goes in with it, and in the river,
Here, there, maritime life wakes up,
Sails are set, tugs advance,
Small boats appear behind the ships in the harbor.
There is a vague breeze.
But my soul is with what I see less.
With the incoming packet,
Because he is with the Distance, with the Morning,
With the maritime sense of this Hour,
With the aching sweetness that rises in me like nausea,
Like one starting to get sick, but in the spirit.

I look at the steamer from afar, with a great independence of soul,
And inside me a wheel begins to turn, slowly.

The packets that enter the bar in the morning
Bring my eyes with you
The joyful and sad mystery of who arrives and departs.
They bring back memories of distant docks and other moments
Otherwise the same humanity in other points.
Every docking, every leaving a ship,
It is — I feel it in me like my blood —
Unconsciously symbolic, terribly
Threatening of metaphysical meanings
That disturb in me who I was...

Ah, the whole pier is a longing made of stone!
And when the ship leaves the dock
And you suddenly notice that a space has opened
Between the pier and the ship,
I have, I don't know why, a recent anguish,
A haze of feelings of sadness
That shines in the sun of my grassy anxieties
Like the first window where dawn hits,
And surrounds me with a memory of someone else
That it was mysteriously mine.

1. Poem: Autopsychography – Fernando Pessoa

autopsychography

The poet is a pretender.
Pretend so completely
Who even pretends to be pain
The pain that he really feels.

And those who read what he writes,
In pain they feel well,
Not the two he had,
But only the one they don't have.

And so on the wheel rails
Spins, entertaining reason,
This rope train
What is called heart.

1. Poem: Birthday – Fernando Pessoa

Birthday

When they celebrated my birthday,
I was happy and nobody was dead.
In the old house, until my birthday it was a tradition for centuries,
And everyone's joy, and mine, was right with any religion.

When they celebrated my birthday,
I had the great health of not noticing anything,
From being smart to among the family,
And not having the hopes that others had for me.
When I came to hope, I no longer knew how to hope.
When I came to look at life, I had lost the meaning of life.

Yes, what I was supposed to be myself,
What I was of heart and kinship.
What I was of half-provincial evenings,
What I was from loving me and me being a boy,
What I was — oh my God!, what I only know today that I was…
How far!…
(I don't think so...)
The time when they celebrated my birthday!

What I am today is like the damp in the hallway at the end of the house,
I put grill on the walls...
What I am today (and the house of those who loved me trembles through my
tears),
What I am today is having sold the house,
Is that they all died,
It's being me surviving myself like a cold match...

Back in the day when they celebrated my birthday...
That my love, as a person, that time!
The soul's physical desire to find itself there again,
On a metaphysical and carnal journey,
With a duality of me for me…
Eating the past like starving bread, no time to butter your teeth!

1. Poem: I have so much feeling - Fernando Pessoa

I have so much feeling

I have so much feeling
Which often persuades me
Why am I sentimental?
But I recognize, as I measure myself,
That all this is thought,
That I didn't feel at all.

We have, all of us who live,
A life that is lived
And another life that is thought of,
And the only life we ​​have
It is the one that is divided
Between true and wrong.

But which one is the real one?
And what's wrong, nobody
You will be able to explain to us;
And we live in a way
What a life we ​​have
That's what you have to think about.

1. Poem: Presage – Fernando Pessoa

Omen

Love, when it reveals itself,
Unable to reveal.
He knows how to look at her,
But he doesn't know how to talk to you.

Who wants to say what he feels
She doesn't know what to say.
Spoken: It seems like it lies...
Cala: seems to forget…

Ah, but if she guessed,
If she could hear the look,
And if one look was enough for you
To know that they are loving her!

But those who are sorry, shut up;
Who wants to say how much you feel
It is without soul or speech,
Be alone, entirely!

But if this can tell you
What I dare not tell you,
I won't have to talk to you anymore
Because I'm telling you...

1. Poem: I don't know how many souls I have - Fernando Pessoa

I do not know how many souls I have

I do not know how many souls I have.
Every moment I changed.
Continuously weird me out.
I never saw myself nor ended.
From so much being, I only have a soul.
Those who have a soul are not calm.
Whoever sees is just what he sees,
Who feels is not who he is,

Attentive to what I am and see,
I become them and not me.
My every dream or wish
It is what is born and not mine.
I am my own landscape;
I watch my passing,
Diverse, mobile and alone,
I don't know how to feel where I am.

So, oblivious, I'm reading
Like pages, my being.
What follows not foreseeing,
What happened to forget.
I note on the sidelines of what I read
What I thought I felt.
I reread it and say, “Was it me?”
God knows, because he wrote it.

1. Poem: All the love letters… – Fernando Pessoa

All love letters...

All love letters are
Ridiculous.
They wouldn't be love letters if they weren't
Ridiculous.

I also wrote in my time love letters,
Like the others,
Ridiculous.

The love letters, if there is love,
Has to be
Ridiculous.

But after all,
Only the creatures that never wrote
Love letters
is that they are
Ridiculous.

I wish I had it in the time I was writing
without noticing
Love letters
Ridiculous.

The truth is that today
my memories
From these love letters
is that they are
Ridiculous.

(All the weird words,
Like the odd feelings,
are naturally
Ridiculous.)

1. Poem: The blind man and the guitar – Fernando Pessoa

The blind man and the guitar

Various noise from the street
It passes high for me that I follow.
I see: each thing is yours
I hear: every sound is yours.

I'm like the beach that invades
A sea that descends again.
Ah, in all this the truth
It's just me having to die.

After I cease, the noise.
No, I don't adjust anything
To my lost concept
Like a flower on the road.

I got to the window
Because I heard singing.
It's a blind man and the guitar
Who are crying.

Both are sorry
are one thing
Who walks around the world
Making it hurt.

I am blind too
Singing on the road
the road is bigger
And I don't ask for anything.

Luana Alves
Graduated in Letters