Zenith / Pessoa
I wanted to prove it was possible to know Fernando Pessoa
ISABEL LUCAS
Words
PEDRO FERREIRA
Portrait
JOÃO MAIO PINTO
Illustrations
Pessoa, an Experimental Life is the result of 12 years spent trying to prove that Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s most famous poet, had a life beyond his extensive oeuvre. Considered by many to be the finest and most comprehensive biography on the subject, Richard Zenith, a leading authority on all things Pessoan, reveals how the genius came to be, while highlighting the autobiographical aspects of his heteronymic experiment.
“The great challenge of this biography was knowing where Fernando Pessoa the man was. The man who had his share of disappointments, joys, perhaps passions, how he spent his days and nights”. With no pre-conceived idea, for over a decade, Zenith’s quest involved trying to reconstruct the day-to-day life of an author who created a multitude of heteronyms. On examination, the notion of him having forgotten or forsaken a life beyond literature seems to have some substance.
Pessoa was truly passionate about literature and forwent many aspects of a normal life. He never married, never raised a family, never considered doing a job with regular hours, and never had a career, as such. He would say that being a poet wasn’t really a profession. That said, there was a social Pessoa, a Pessoa that frequented cafés, who had a group of friends “and a family with aunts and uncles and cousins with whom he enjoyed good relations. All of this is real life. He also had a sense of humour, despite being very reserved, but rarely showed his inner self to family or friends”.
Zenith says this in Portuguese but the biography, which boasts over 1,000 pages, was written in the author’s native English. American critics, who got first access to the book, gave it considerable praise, and it featured in several literary supplements in the USA. After being translated, the Portuguese edition was published in the spring of 2022.
Born in Washington DC, in 1956, Richard Zenith is one of the greatest exponents of the poet’s work and has enjoyed a distinguished career as a writer, critic and translator, winning the prestigious Pessoa Prize in 2012. He dispels some of the mythology surrounding himself when he reveals that he didn’t learn Portuguese because of Fernando Pessoa. “It’s a nice idea but it wasn’t quite like that. But it was Pessoa that made me stay in Portugal. I came to translate Cantigas de Amigo e de Amor and Cantigas de Escárnio e Maldizer, but it was the work of Pessoa that made me stay.” And what was so special about the work or the persona? “Pessoa’s universal nature. The fact that he was a great writer but straightforward. Few writers are capable of being accessible and profound at the same time. Pessoa has that ability, as well as the honesty that great writers have, being able to confront uncomfortable truths. And the vast nature of his work ensured I didn’t get bored”.
As for the language itself, Zenith learned Portuguese while teaching at a university in Brazil, although he had read The Book of Disquiet, which a friend had “introduced” him to. “The Book of Disquiet alone would be enough to put Pessoa among the greatest writers of the 20th century”, he says about the book that initiated a relationship that continues to this day. “I had serious doubts. I worked on this biography for 12, 13 years and around five years before handing it over, I was unsure if it would be a decent biography, in other words, a biography like I wanted. I knew that it should be better than previous efforts, because, meanwhile, there has been a great deal of research and investigation into Pessoa’s life.”
Zenith knew he was at an advantage, especially regarding the biography written by João Gaspar Simões, which was published in 1950 and considered a benchmark by many. It’s been over 70 years now. “João Gaspar Simões deserves praise for having realised so early that Pessoa warranted a biography. Now, I wanted to prove that it was possible to know Fernando Pessoa.”
Initially, he used the first person singular, “as if it were Pessoa’s spirit looking at his life”, he explains. He dropped that project. “While gathering material from Pessoa's estate, I came across notes that were very valuable. He kept a lot of paper for literary reasons, like something with a poem or an idea for a short story. Often there was information about his everyday life. A note about money he owed someone, letters he intended to write. Then there's a lot of information in the literary works, in which he reveals something of himself."
Pessoa’s work contains much that is autobiographical. “It’s simply there in a normally distorted way. He used his life to write, but he changes many details and we have to consider the entire oeuvre and reflect well, to decide what is really biographical”, Zenith continues, mentioning access to many previously unseen letters between the poet and his mother (Pessoa moved to Lisbon when he was 17, while his mother remained in South Africa for another 15 years). There are others between her and other relatives when Pessoa was small, with various mentions of “little Fernando”. There are interviews with family members, people who didn’t know him directly, but were close to others who spent time with him. “With all these sources, we can slowly build a possible portrait of Fernando Pessoa”.
One of the objectives was to tell a story that depicted the writer’s human side and also spoke about his work, “and which allowed the reader to sense what Fernando Pessoa was like”, says the biographer, with the caveat: “I’m not saying understand Fernando Pessoa, because I think it’s impossible to understand anyone, and Pessoa even less. But at least get a sense of him, understand the development, be it his spiritual path or sexual awakening.”
Pessoa’s sexuality pervades the whole book. "There’s this idea that he never had a sexual relationship, neither with a man nor a woman. It was as if he wanted to save this sexual side for creative endeavours," says Zenith.
“That surprised me. It’s a very strong impulse; the sexual tension throughout life, from a very early age. He wrote notes and we realise that discovering that sexuality, puberty, was traumatic for him. This might have to do with uncertainty about his sexual orientation (he has a homosexual or bisexual heteronym). Throughout his writing there are many poems about sexuality, including two English poems. That sexual energy also influenced his oeuvre. It’s hard to explain. I try in the biography, but the fragmentation into heteronyms - even beyond heteronomy - also has to do with a sexual energy that permeates the writing, like an orgasmic energy, capable of producing so much work. Later, he also relates his spiritual quest with his sexual development. The virginity that’s a problem when he’s 28, is later seen as a spiritual advantage. That energy stays within.”
As the title of the biography suggests, it’s a life of permanent experimentation, where each heteronym allows more experiments, or certain characters that he creates, which are not really heteronyms. “We can see Ofélia Queirós as an experiment”, says Zenith. “It’s an attempt at getting love, a romantic relationship. Pessoa is always exploring. He was like a literature scientist, always doing experiments”.
The fascination for Pessoa’s work, “one of the richest and strangest bodies of literature produced in the twentieth century” according to Zenith’s introduction, cannot be disconnected from what the biographer calls his “Portugueseness”. In his words: “Pessoa's greatness and universality also have to do with his Portugueseness. He is open about who he is, digging deep on the being Portuguese. However, as a writer without prejudices, he transcends nationalism. In Pessoa, Portugal becomes a symbol. And that love for Portugal is also love for humanity. Portugal is a problem for Pessoa, but Portugal isn’t only Portugal. Portugal is everything in Pessoa's mind."
Zenith suggests that because Pessoa spent his childhood in far away Durban, South Africa, and received an Anglo-Saxon education, this helped him become open-minded and realise that there were various ways of seeing the world, and various types of imperialism. “All this helped Pessoa to be cosmopolitan”, concludes Zenith, who believes that Pessoa’s greatness has to do with what might be considered flaws or potentially disturbing aspects. Examples include a certain passive racism, which was all but impossible to avoid, given how segregated the society was. He had Jewish ancestry on his father's side but didn’t flinch when it came expressing his thoughts on Jewishness, and religion in general. In terms of politics, he went through a rather reactionary phase, before modifying his views." And the erudition. And the heteronomy, which starts practically when Pessoa begins writing. "He was almost always writing with someone else’s voice, which is curious in his work. It also has to do with that universality, which Pessoa called impersonality or depersonalisation; he dared to speak in the voice of others, and by speaking in the voice of others, he spoke in everybody’s voice. This way, he’s able to speak of many feelings, of having many thoughts, in a very personal way, which is also impersonal. In other words, all this is transferable. It seems he's speaking for us.”
When telling the story of Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith always manages to avoid hagiography. That said, he admits that there was sometimes a danger or temptation to over-interpret: "In my opinion, he’s a genius, but not everything he wrote was brilliant. And it's his desire to be a genius that makes him a genius. He had to be a genius." His exacerbated, unique passion for literature led him to it.
