The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (26 page)

“He will bring peace to the whole world,” says Bandarra of King Sebastiao. Worldwide peace implies a universal brotherhood whose nature we can’t foresee but which will surely require a common vehicle of communication—a single language.

What harm is there in preparing to be culturally dominant, even if we’re not successful? We won’t shed one drop of blood, nor will we stifle our human yearning for domination. We won’t fall into the futility of humanitarian universalism, but neither will we fall into the brutality of noncultural nationalism. We will attempt to impose a language rather than physical force. We will not oppress any race of any color, just as in the past we have not generally been oppressive, for although at times we were barbaric, like all empires that conquer, we were less so than others, and we cannot be accused of excluding people of another color from our home or from our table. Thus our very nature prepares us for that universal brotherhood which theosophy predicts and which has long been the secret social doctrine of the Rosicrucians.

Should we fail, we will still have accomplished something: the enrichment of our language. At the very worst, we will at least have improved our writing. We will render immediate service to general culture and civilization; if we do nothing else, we cannot be accused of having sinned.

An imperialism of grammarians? The imperialism of grammarians runs deeper and endures longer than that of generals. An imperialism of poets? Yes, of poets. The phrase sounds ridiculous only to those who defend the old and ridiculous kind of imperialism. The imperialism of poets endures and wins out; that of politicians passes on and is forgotten, unless the poet remembers it in his songs. We say “Cromwell
did”
but “Milton
says
.” And in the distant future when there is no more England (for England’s characteristics do not include being eternal), Cromwell will be remembered only because Milton mentioned him
in a sonnet. The end of England will signify the end of what we may call the work of Cromwell, or the work in which he collaborated. But the poetry of Milton will end only with the end of all civilization or of man’s presence on earth, and perhaps even then it won’t have ended.

A foggy morning. Morning means the beginning of something new—a new age, a new phase, or the like. The fog indicates that the Desired One will be “hidden” when he comes—that his arrival won’t be (or hasn’t been) noticed. This is confirmed by his first coming, in 1640. That date marks the beginning of a dynasty, and the coming of King Sebastiao was “hidden” by the fog, for while everyone judged—by virtue of his original symbology—that the Hidden One was King João IV,* the Hidden One was actually the abstract fact of Independence, as later became evident. However little we may understand about his Second Coming, in 1888, we know at least that the ancient prophecy has been fulfilled: we know that 1888 is “morning,” because it’s the beginning of the Reign of the Sun, for which “morning” is the best possible symbol, and now, thirty-seven years later, the fact that no one realizes just what happened on that date is proof of the foggy, hidden character of the Second Coming of King Sebastião.

Pessoa’s short stories, like his plays, were large in number, written in English as well as Portuguese, mostly fragmentary, and generally at odds with the form as traditionally conceived. Pessoa was an assiduous reader of detective novels, and this shows in the titles of some of his stories—“The Stolen Parchment,” “The Case of the Quadratic Equation,” “The Disappearance of the Yacht
Nothing”—
but he was less concerned with creating intrigue than with expounding unusual ideas or exploring strange paths of logic. He planned to group his stories, which were attributed to various heteronyms, under general titles, such as
Tales of a Madman, Tales of a Reasoner, Metaphysical Stories, Hypotheses,
and
Antitheses.
“The Anarchist Banker” would have been the premier story in this last-named group, had Pessoa ever gotten around to completing and organizing his short fictions. As it was, he finished only a handful of the dozens of stories that he started to write or thought about writing. “The Anarchist Banker,” published in 1922, was his longest story, and the one he cared about most. Toward the end of his life he began working on a revised version, and he also (as mentioned earlier) translated a few pages of it into English, in the hope of finding an English publisher
.

This story might be better termed a Socratic dialogue, and Pessoa himself once referred to it as a “dialectical satire.” The narrative of actual events could fit into two pages; the other twenty-six are taken up by logical argument. It is a brilliant piece of argumentation, though it relies on a doubtful premise: that we can do nothing to correct inequalities in our natural endowments, which the banker calls the “injustices of Nature.” On the other hand, the predicted failure of the Russian Revolution
to achieve anything remotely resembling a free society was right on the mark
.

Do the banker’s views reflect the author’s? In part they do, despite Pessoa’s disclaimer in his “Preface to
Fictions of the Interlude”
(p
. 311–13).
Pessoa, like the banker, was not sympathetic to workers’ movements or to any other form of social mobilization; he was a resolute individualist. But he was also an aristocrat, in his outlook if not in his blood, and he instinctively hated money-driven capitalism, as his essay “American Millionaires” (pp
. 198–99)
makes clear
.

We had just finished dinner. Across from me my friend—a wealthy banker, businessman, and renowned profiteer—was smoking absent-mindedly. Our conversation had been dwindling and was now quite dead. I tried to revive it with a thought that happened to cross my mind. I looked at him, smiling:

“I just remembered. Someone told me the other day that you used to be an anarchist.”

“Used to be, no. I was and
am
an anarchist. My position on that score hasn’t changed.”

“You an anarchist? Now I’ve heard everything! In what way are you an anarchist? Only if you’ve redefined the word....”

“Not at all. I use it in the usual sense.”

“You mean you’re an anarchist in exactly the same way that the members of workers’ associations are anarchists? You mean there’s no difference between you and those guys from the unions who like to toss bombs?”

“I didn’t say that. Of course there’s a difference. But it’s not what you think it is. You probably suppose that my social theories aren’t the same as theirs.”

“Oh, I see. You’re an anarchist in theory, but in practice....”

“I’m an anarchist in practice as much as in theory. In fact I’m much more of an anarchist, in terms of practice, than the so-called anarchists you mention. My entire life proves it.”

“What?!”

“My entire life proves it. You’ve never given clear and careful thought to the matter. That’s why you think I’m talking nonsense, or else pulling your leg.”

“It’s just that I don’t understand. Unless... unless by anarchism you mean that your life is in a certain way corrosive, antisocial.”

“No. I’ve already told you that I use the word anarchism in its usual sense.”

“If you say so, but I still don’t understand.... You mean to tell me there’s no difference between your genuinely anarchist theories and what you actually practice in life—in your life as you live it today? You expect me to believe that your life is just like that of other people who call themselves anarchists?”

“Certainly not. All I’m saying is that between my theories and the way I live there’s no discrepancy, they’re in perfect agreement. You’re right that my life isn’t like that of the trade unionists and those who toss bombs, but it’s their life—not mine—that’s at odds with anarchism, against the very ideals they preach. In me, wealthy banker and businessman that I am, and you can even call me a profiteer—in me the theory and practice of anarchism go hand and hand. You compared me to those fools who form unions and toss bombs to show that I’m different from them. And I am different, but the difference is that
they
are anarchists only in theory, whereas I’m an anarchist in theory and practice. They are anarchists and stupid; I’m an intelligent anarchist. I, in other words, am the true anarchist. They—I mean the trade unionists and those who toss bombs (and I used to be one of them until I discovered true anarchism)—they are anarchism’s dross, the milksops of this great libertarian doctrine.”

“This is unbelievable! It’s extraordinary! But how do you reconcile your life as a banker and businessman with anarchist theories? How reconcile your life if, as you claim, you have the same theories as ordinary anarchists? You even claim that the difference between you and them is that you’re
more
anarchist than they are—is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“I can’t see how.”

“But would you like to see?”

“Of course I would.”

He took from his mouth his cigar, which had gone out, and relit it slowly. He stared at the match until the flame expired, gingerly dropped it into the ashtray, lifted his head back up, and said:

“Listen. I was born into a family from this city’s working class. As you can well imagine, I inherited neither a good name nor good circumstances. All I had was a naturally clear-thinking mind and a reasonably strong will. These were natural gifts, which my humble birth couldn’t take away from me.

“Like almost everyone else in my social class, I was a manual laborer who barely scraped by. I never went hungry, but I came close. And if I had gone hungry, it wouldn’t have changed the path that my life took (as I’ll now explain) and that made me what I am today.

“I was, in short, a common laborer. Like all the rest, I worked because I had to, and I worked as little as possible. But I was smart. I read things and discussed things whenever I could, and since I was no fool, I came to greatly resent my lot and the social conditions responsible for it. My lot, as I’ve mentioned, could have been worse than it was, but at the time I felt as if Fate had taken advantage of social conventions to heap all the world’s injustices on top of me. I was about twenty years old, or twenty-one at most, and that’s when I became an anarchist.”

He paused and turned in my direction. Leaning slightly forward, he continued:

“I’ve always been a basically clear-thinking sort. I felt resentful, rebellious. I tried to understand my feeling. And I became a consciously, logically convinced anarchist—the same convinced anarchist I am today.”

“And is the theory you have today the same one you had back then?”

“Absolutely. There’s only one genuinely anarchist theory. I have the same theory now as I had when I became an anarchist. As you’ll see. ... I was saying that, since I’m clear thinking by nature, I consciously and logically became an anarchist. And just what is an anarchist? It’s someone who rebels against the injustice of people being born
socially
unequal—that’s what it boils down to. And this gives rise, as we see time and again, to open revolt against the social conventions that make that inequality possible. At this point I’m focusing on the psychological path—on how it is that someone becomes an anarchist. Then I’ll deal with the theoretical aspects. For now, just imagine the resentment of an intelligent person in my circumstances. Looking around the world, what does he see? One man is born the son of a millionaire, instantly protected against the considerable number of adversities that money can fend off or at least mitigate; another is born as a miserable creature into a family where there are already too many mouths to feed. A man who’s born a count or a marquis is treated with respect no matter what he does, whereas a man like me has to do everything to a T or he’ll be treated like scum. Some, because they’re born into good circumstances, can study, travel, and go to school, thereby surpassing (in a certain way) those who are by nature more intelligent. And it’s that way in all of life....

“There’s nothing we can do about the injustices of Nature. But we can and should fight against the injustices of society and its conventions. I accept—I have no choice but to accept—that a man is superior to me because of the talent, strength, and energy Nature has endowed him with; I don’t accept that he’s my superior because of qualities that are in no way innate but that he received, by sheer luck, as soon as he left his mother’s womb: wealth, social position, favorable circumstances, etc. It was this sort of thing that I deeply resented and that gave rise to my anarchism—the very same anarchism I maintain to this day, as I said.”

He paused again, as if gathering his thoughts. Puffing on his cigar, he slowly exhaled the smoke away from me. He turned back to me and was going to proceed, but I interrupted him:

“As a matter of curiosity, tell me: Why did you go so far as to become an anarchist? You could have embraced a less radical doctrine, such as socialism. Your rebellion could have led to one of any number of various social theories.... If I’ve understood correctly, by anarchism you mean (and I think it’s a good definition) the rejection of all social formulas and conventions, and the ardent struggle to abolish them all....”

“That’s right.”

“But why did you choose such an extreme form of protest? Why not some intermediate form?”

“I gave careful thought to the matter. I became quite familiar with all the new social theories in the pamphlets I read. And I chose the anarchist theory, which you rightly consider to be the most radical of all, for the simple reasons I’ll now explain.”

He stared for a moment into space, and then looked back at me.

“The only real evils in the world are the various social conventions and fictions—from religion and the family to money and the state—that have been superimposed on natural realities. We’re born to be men or women, or rather, to grow up to be men or women. We’re not born,
naturally
speaking, to be husbands, to be rich or poor, Catholic or Protestant, Portuguese or English. All these things that define us are social fictions. And why are these social fictions bad?
Because they’re fictions, because they’re not natural.
Money is as bad as the state, the institution of the family as bad as religion. If there were other fictions besides these, they would be equally bad,
because they would also be fictions
, because they would also overlay and obstruct natural realities. And any system besides pure anarchism, which aims to do away with all systems,
is likewise a fiction
. To engage all our yearning, all our effort and all our intelligence in the furtherance of one social fiction instead of another is absurd if not outrightly criminal,
since it means causing a social disturbance with the express purpose of leaving everything the same
. If we think social fictions are unjust, why struggle to replace them with other fictions when we can strive instead to destroy them all?