Pessoa: A Biography
by
Richard Zenith
American-born Richard Zenith is rightly regarded in Portugal as a national treasure. His service to Portuguese letters has been acknowledged in a variety of ways, but none more prestigious that the Premio Pessoa in 2012. The annual prize is the most important award in Portugal for “distinguished cultural achievement.” In bestowing the award, the jury cited the quality of Zenith’s translation work by authors such as Luis de Camões, The Galician troubadours, Sophia de Mello Breyner and Antonio Lobo Antunes but it was his research, criticism and translation of Fernando Pessoa's work for which Richard Zenith received the greatest distinction: |
"With lucidity, Richard Zenith is not only an editor of Pessoa’s work, an explainer of heteronyms, but also the great translator of his poetics into the English language.” The committee also noted that Zenith’s “disciplined and methodical work” on Pessoa was accomplished “in service to a passion.”
In service to a passion, indeed. For decades, Pessoa has consumed Zenith’s attention. He has culled through more than 30,000 pages of documents Pessoa left behind, uncovered “lost” manuscripts, edited numerous volumes (in Portuguese) of Pessoa’s writings, assigned attributions to scribbled poems on scraps of paper, mounted exhibitions, and of course brilliantly translated Pessoa for the English-speaking world.
The culmination of all this work is his absolutely comprehensive, riveting and beautifully-written Fernando Pessoa biography, 13 years in the making. Full disclosure here: this is not a review but an appreciation of a truly remarkable read. I know Richard personally and have spent time with him in both Lisbon and in the states. I do not believe, however, that my personal association has gotten in the way of recognizing his achievement in Pessoa: A Biography (New York: Liveright) or as the book is titled in the U.K., Pessoa: An Experimental Life (London: Allen Lane).
For those unfamiliar with Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s most important 20th Century writer (1888-1935), let me just say: You should be. But to be familiar with Pessoa also means one has to be familiar with at least three other writers—Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos—whom Pessoa invented. Zenith opens his biography with a helpful list of short “biographies” of Pessoa’s more than 40 “heteronyms,” or unique alternate identities which he created, elaborated, cross-referenced and under whose names he wrote thousands of pages, mostly in Portuguese, but also in English and French. Pessoa explained these fictive personae this way: “Today I have no personality: I have divided all my humanness among the various authors whom I've served as literary executor. Today I am the meeting place of a small humanity that belongs only to me.”
As Zenith’s massive (1000+pages) biography unfolds, each of these fictional authors become characters in their own rights. Which is exactly what Pessoa would have wanted. Zenith, in fact, devotes considerable pages to illuminating the “lives” and “successes and failures” of a great many of these heteronyms. Always, however, he links them back to Pessoa, himself, who though “forever someone else,” as Zenith aptly entitled a translated selection of Pessoa’s poems published in 2009, was also their enigmatic creator.
Zenith meticulously, but never tediously, chronicles nearly every moment of Pessoa’s life from his childhood in South Africa, where he learned English and wrote and published poems (under heteronyms) in the Natal Mercury to his death in Lisbon at the age of 47. While Pessoa’s life, on the public surface, was hardly remarkable—he had one romance, dabbled in politics, did more than dabble into the occult, made his living drudging in offices, translating, publishing poems here and there, and starting several businesses and literary magazines—Zenith reveals that his life was far from ordinary. He is adept at showing how his center was composed of multitudinous personalities, who while vicarious, also breathed life into the poet. Or as Zenith writes: “Pessoa’s writings were, by and large, provisional visual representations of his soul. In fact, he never stopped showing us who he was or was trying to be. His poems and prose pieces were him, his own person, or the bits and pieces of the person, or Pessoa, who did not exist as such. His sexual life? His spiritual life? They may be found in his writing, and nowhere else but in his writing. There is no secret Pessoa for the biographer to reveal.”
The best biographies place their subject within the culture, events, literature and politics of their time. Zenith does that admirably well. Although I have some familiarity with Portugal, I knew little of its vital history. Thanks to Zenith, who adroitly depicts the tumultuous political and cultural upheavals in society that engulfed the country in the first part of the last century, I have an additional context for understanding Pessoa, his times and his world.
Above all, Zenith has allowed me to get inside Pessoa himself. While he is adept at chronicling the where and when of Pessoa’s rather innocuous life, he has gone far beyond just the facts to reveal how Pessoa created, why he created, and above all, why it matters. Richard Zenith highly deserves another Premio Pessoa.
— Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno
The culmination of all this work is his absolutely comprehensive, riveting and beautifully-written Fernando Pessoa biography, 13 years in the making. Full disclosure here: this is not a review but an appreciation of a truly remarkable read. I know Richard personally and have spent time with him in both Lisbon and in the states. I do not believe, however, that my personal association has gotten in the way of recognizing his achievement in Pessoa: A Biography (New York: Liveright) or as the book is titled in the U.K., Pessoa: An Experimental Life (London: Allen Lane).
For those unfamiliar with Fernando Pessoa, Portugal’s most important 20th Century writer (1888-1935), let me just say: You should be. But to be familiar with Pessoa also means one has to be familiar with at least three other writers—Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis and Álvaro de Campos—whom Pessoa invented. Zenith opens his biography with a helpful list of short “biographies” of Pessoa’s more than 40 “heteronyms,” or unique alternate identities which he created, elaborated, cross-referenced and under whose names he wrote thousands of pages, mostly in Portuguese, but also in English and French. Pessoa explained these fictive personae this way: “Today I have no personality: I have divided all my humanness among the various authors whom I've served as literary executor. Today I am the meeting place of a small humanity that belongs only to me.”
As Zenith’s massive (1000+pages) biography unfolds, each of these fictional authors become characters in their own rights. Which is exactly what Pessoa would have wanted. Zenith, in fact, devotes considerable pages to illuminating the “lives” and “successes and failures” of a great many of these heteronyms. Always, however, he links them back to Pessoa, himself, who though “forever someone else,” as Zenith aptly entitled a translated selection of Pessoa’s poems published in 2009, was also their enigmatic creator.
Zenith meticulously, but never tediously, chronicles nearly every moment of Pessoa’s life from his childhood in South Africa, where he learned English and wrote and published poems (under heteronyms) in the Natal Mercury to his death in Lisbon at the age of 47. While Pessoa’s life, on the public surface, was hardly remarkable—he had one romance, dabbled in politics, did more than dabble into the occult, made his living drudging in offices, translating, publishing poems here and there, and starting several businesses and literary magazines—Zenith reveals that his life was far from ordinary. He is adept at showing how his center was composed of multitudinous personalities, who while vicarious, also breathed life into the poet. Or as Zenith writes: “Pessoa’s writings were, by and large, provisional visual representations of his soul. In fact, he never stopped showing us who he was or was trying to be. His poems and prose pieces were him, his own person, or the bits and pieces of the person, or Pessoa, who did not exist as such. His sexual life? His spiritual life? They may be found in his writing, and nowhere else but in his writing. There is no secret Pessoa for the biographer to reveal.”
The best biographies place their subject within the culture, events, literature and politics of their time. Zenith does that admirably well. Although I have some familiarity with Portugal, I knew little of its vital history. Thanks to Zenith, who adroitly depicts the tumultuous political and cultural upheavals in society that engulfed the country in the first part of the last century, I have an additional context for understanding Pessoa, his times and his world.
Above all, Zenith has allowed me to get inside Pessoa himself. While he is adept at chronicling the where and when of Pessoa’s rather innocuous life, he has gone far beyond just the facts to reveal how Pessoa created, why he created, and above all, why it matters. Richard Zenith highly deserves another Premio Pessoa.
— Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno