An introduction to Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was, quipped one critic, Portugal’s three greatest modern poets. To read Pessoa is not just to read one poet but to enter into a whole literature. 

Pessoa’s attempt to forge a new literary modernism for Portugal took shape through his creation of different literary personas. He called these personas ‘heteronyms’, to distinguish them from pseudonyms, as essentially distinct personalities with biographies, literary styles and philosophical and political ideas as different from each other as from Pessoa himself.

Pessoa authored works under at least 72 different names throughout his life, and this compulsion seems to have been both an aesthetic and a psychological necessity. At the centre of his most important and accomplished literary achievements is the poetry authored by the three main heteronyms – Alberto Caiero, Alvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis; by Pessoa himself as one of that company of heteronyms; and his great prose masterpiece The Book of Disquiet, authored by the semi-heteronym Bernardo Soares.

Over five meetings we will take a sample of work from each of Pessoa’s heteronyms as a general introduction to the work – and the literary universe – of Fernando Pessoa. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• Six-week introductory study led by Desma Lawrence
• Tuesdays, 12.00-2.00 pm (UK), 13 May to 17 June 2025
• £180 for six-session study, to include opening notes and resources