The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa (49 page)

page 79

Sagres
, a coastal town in southern Portugal, was the site of Prince Henry the Navigator’s legendary—but unproven—school of nautical science. Prince Henry did build an observatory at Sagres, and some of the voyages he sponsored set sail from its port.

page 80

Malthusian Law
: Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), an English economist, argued in his
Essay on the Principle of Population
(1789) that the human population increases geometrically but the food supply only arithmetically, with obviously disastrous consequences.

page 88

What Is Metaphysics
?: The passage translated here is the conclusion to Campos’s article, which was published in the second issue of
Athena
(Lisbon, 1924) as a retort to a piece by Pessoa that appeared in the magazine’s inaugural issue. Pessoa was one of the coeditors of
Athena
, in which Alberto Caeiro and Ricardo Reis were both published for the first time. The magazine’s fifth and final issue appeared in 1925.

page 92

RIDDLE OF THE STARS: Archival reference numbers to the manuscripts cited in the introduction: “Principles of Esoteric Metaphysics,” 54A/85–87; “A Case of Mediumship,” 54A/78–82; Pessoa’s comment on astrology, 54A/7; poem signed by Wardour and Pessoa, 58/12; communication that mentions Gosse, 133I/42; “Move to Sengo’s house,” 133B/99; communications predicting business success, 133A/69 and 133D/80 (among others). The first two manuscripts were published in Lopes’s
Fernando Pessoa et le drame symboliste
. The draft of the letter to Sá-Carneiro was dated December 6, 1915. It was in an autobiographical sketch dated March 30, 1935, that Pessoa claimed to be initiated in the Knights Templar.

page 96

Aleister Crowley
(1875–1947), who billed himself variously as Master Therion, 666, and The Great Beast, was a talented, mischievous, much adored, and much reviled English occult master. He was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (whose most famous member was William Butler Yeats) in 1898, cofounded the Astrum Argentum, or Order of the Silver Star, in 1906, and became head of the Ordo Templi Orientis in 1921. This last group, of German origin, employed tantric sex rituals, to which Crowley added animal sacrifices and drug use. Blasted by the English press after one of his disciples died in a proto-hippie commune in the early twenties, perhaps from the ritual consumption of cat’s blood, Crowley faded from view and died in relative obscurity, but by the end of the century most of his many books (including some poetry) were back in print and various occult groups had taken up his teachings. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” is the central tenet of
his doctrines, and it was the first sentence of the first letter he sent to Pessoa, in late 1929, thanking him for having pointed out a mistake in the natal horoscope published in his autobiography. The two men corresponded and exchanged some of their writings, and in September of 1930 Crowley came to Lisbon with a girlfriend, who quarreled with him at a certain point and abruptly left Portugal. Crowley, with Pessoa’s help, committed a dramatic pseudo-suicide, writing a jilted lover’s note left at the Mouth of Hell, a cavernous rock formation on the seacoast west of Lisbon, where Crowley had ostensibly taken a flying mortal leap. He had in fact left Portugal by way of Spain, but Pessoa, who explained to the Lisbon papers the significance of the astrological signs and mystical words that graced the suicide note, also reported seeing Crowley, “or Crowley’s ghost,” the day after his disappearance. Crowley’s occult activities were always flavored with shenanigans of this sort, which has led some biographers to portray him as an unqualified charlatan, but it was probably this very playfulness that drew Pessoa to him. Here was a man who could be passionately devoted to the quest for spiritual truth and yet not take it completely seriously. Pessoa, whose skepticism prevented him from taking anything too seriously, seems to have been inspired by Crowley’s example.

page 99

the good wishes it contains
: For Pessoa’s birthday, June 13th.

Mother’s condition
: Pessoa’s mother, who in 1911 moved with her second husband and their children from Durban to Pretoria, had recently suffered a stroke.

page 100

Manuel Gualdino da Cunha
: Pessoa’s great-uncle.

The communications
(...)
anonymous
: In fact, Pessoa was already receiving communications signed by Henry More, one of which [138/55] instructed him not to divulge their contents to his Aunt Anica.

I consulted a friend
: Mariano Santana, a habitué of the Café Brasileira whose name is mentioned in several automatic communications.

page 101

Café Brasileira of Rossio
: There were two Café Brasileiras—the one at Rossio, Lisbon’s busiest downtown square, and the one at nearby Chiado, the neighborhood where Pessoa was born. The latter is still in business.

page 103

[30
Astral Communications
]: Previously unpublished. The archival reference numbers are: (1) 138/37, (2) 138/36, (3) 138/49–51, (4) 133I/24, (5) 138/33, (6) 138/38, (7) 138/39, (8) 138/44, (9) 114
¹
/64, (10) 138/42, (11) 138/54V, (12) 138/48, (13) 133I/98, (14) 133L/94, (15) 144D
²
112, (16) 133J/91, (17) 133I/34, (18) Sinais 5, (19) 133I/63,
(20) 144Y/22, (21) 144Y/31, (22) 144Y/35, (23) 144Y/42, (24) 138/52–3, (25) 133J/3–5, (26) 133L/11, (27) 133A/38, (28) 133I/75, (29) 49A
⁶
/52, (30) 133F/86.

page 106

Orpheu: See S
ENSATIONISM AND
O
THER
I
SMS
.

page 107

The Key to the Tarot
(Papus)
: The full book title is
Absolute Key to Occult Science: The Tarot of the Bohemians
, translated from the French and published in London in 1892. Papus was the pseudonym of Gerard Encausse (1865–1916), an active promoter of the occult sciences. He cofounded the Martinist Order, a para-Masonic association, in 1891.

page 110

Mamoco e Sousa
: José Ferreira Marnoco e Sousa, a Portuguese professor and scholar of law, was born in 1869 and died in March of 1916, the same month that Pessoa began to write automatically. The Pessoa archives contain an isolated bibliographical reference [48B/39] to a history of Roman law by Marnoco e Sousa.

who married many
: “who married much” in the original.

page 113

a man who made Joseph
: Joseph Balsamo (the alias of Cagliostro—see the introduction to this section), who signed communication #18 and part of #19.

He is interrupting me
: Interrupting his handwriting, which at this point in the manuscript becomes jagged and uncontrolled, as if produced with a struggle.

page 115

20
: Written on or after January 13, 1917, the date of an unfinished English poem that precedes the communication.

page 116

transversal backward line
: Beneath More’s signature.

page 118

Love gives back to each man himself
: “Love gives back himself to each man” in the original.

is for a need to exist
: “is to exist a need” in the original.

page 120

your martial tendencies
: Refers, perhaps, to the astrological influence of Mars.

Essay on Initiation
: Pessoa left a number of typewritten pages, in English, for this projected essay that dates from the 1930s. They were first published in
Fernando Pessoa e a Filosofia Hermética
.

page 121

the path taken
: “the path that is taken” in the original.

Treatise on Negation
: Original Portuguese published in
Textos Filosóficos
.

page 131

before my family arrives
: After the death of his stepfather in 1919, Pessoa’s mother, half sister, and two half brothers returned from South Africa to Lisbon. Pessoa undertook to find and lease an apartment for the family, which arrived on March 30, and he himself lived there until his death in 1935.

Osório
: An office boy who delivered letters between Fernando and Ophelia.

page 132

Rua do Arsenal
: The two sometimes met in a bookstore on this street.

Mr.
Crosse
: As noted in the section T
HE
M
ASTER AND
H
IS
D
ISCIPLES
, Pessoa competed in newspaper games under the name of A. A. Crosse, presumably the brother of Thomas Crosse and I. I. Crosse.

page 133

at home
: The new apartment mentioned in the March 22 letter.

page 134

Nininho
: One of Ophelia’s pet names for Pessoa, probably derived from Fernan-dinho, the diminutive form of his first name. He sometimes called her Nininha.

C. D. & C: C. Dupin & Cia. was the name of the firm where Ophelia had recently begun working, having transferred there from the office where she met Pessoa.

page 135

Rossio train station
: Ophelia’s older sister, with whom she often stayed, lived opposite this station, in downtown Lisbon.

Ibis
: Another pet name, used by Pessoa to refer to himself as well as to Ophelia. Ibis was also the name of a printing press that Pessoa unsuccessfully tried to set up in Lisbon, in 1907.

page 137

May 11th decree
: A government decree, issued on May 11, 1911, made it possible for mentally ill patients to commit themselves to a psychiatric hospital.

page 140

Petition in
30
lines
: From a letter written by Ophelia the same day, we can deduce that Pessoa, in a phone conversation, had asked her for a kiss, had expressed jealousy because she showered kisses on her eight- and ten-month-old nephews, and had promised he would send her this “petition in 30 lines.”

page 141

aren’t really aunts
: The two women, according to Ophelia’s letter from the day before, were her brother-in-law’s aunts.

Pombal
: A small town north of Lisbon, but also the Portuguese word for dovecote. Pessoa used doves as an amorous metaphor in several letters (see the first one dated October 9, 1929) and in some verses to Ophelia, as she recalled in her next letter to Fernando.

losing weight
: In a letter written the previous day, Ophelia reported having lost weight since her relationship with Pessoa had been rekindled, two weeks before. She also wrote that she had no appetite, wasn’t sleeping well, and thought incessantly of Fernando.

page 145

Mouth of Hell
: A dramatic rock formation
(Boca do Inferno
in Portuguese) on the coast beyond Cascais. See the note on Aleister Crowley, p. 329.

page 147

The Return of the Gods
: All the passages (of which only the first and third are actually marked
Return of the Gods)
were published in
Vÿginas Íntimas
, but my translation of the fourth passage is based on a different reading of the manuscript [21/43–4], especially toward the end. One of Pessoa’s publication plans [71A/2] confirms (as alluded to in the introductory note) that he hesitated whether to attribute this work to António Mora or to Ricardo Reis.

page 149

Christism
: Disparaging term for Christianity often used by Mora and by Ricardo Reis.

page 153

Preface to the Complete Poems of Alberto Caeiro
: The four passages were published in
Páginas Íntimas
, but my translation of the first one is based on a somewhat different reading of the manuscript [21/73].

page 155

Julian was a Mithraist
: Mithra was a Persian and Indian god of the sun, whose slaying of a sacred bull had created life on earth and would be the means to human redemption and immortality. Mithraism, as practiced in the Roman Empire, involved a seven-step initiation and embraced astrology.

page 158

PORTUGAL AND THE FIFTH EMPIRE: The texts included in this section, all written in Portuguese, can be found in
Sobre Portugal
. The first one was written for a projected manifesto titled “Atlantism”; the second one is taken from an interview published in
Revista Portuguesa
, Lisbon, 13 October 1923; the third one is from Pessoa’s preface to
Quinto Império
(The Fifth Empire), a book of poems by Augusto Ferreira Gomes (Lisbon, 1934); the fourth one is from a series of questions and answers published in Augusto da Costa,
Portugal Vasto Império
, Lisbon, 1934; the fifth one is from a projected essay titled “Sebastianism”;
the last three, though not labeled, were no doubt meant for essays such as “Atlantism” and “Sebastianism.”

page 160

a long poem titled “Anteros
”: In a letter to João Gaspar Simões dated November 18, 1930, Pessoa explained that his English poems “Antinöus” (1918) and “Epithalamium” (1921) corresponded to Greece and Rome in a five-poem “imperial cycle” about “the phenomenon of love in its various expressions”; the last poem in the cycle, “Anteros,” corresponded to the Fifth Empire.